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Dinner with global warming contrarians, disaster for dessert
Hermann Harde has commented regarding his paper on the EIKE website (German climate denial lobbying group), which has been promoting his paper. My German is quite poor, so I'm relying on Google Translate for this - I expect fluent readers to have more clear information. Some notes and statements from that comment:
- Harde is retired, writing on climate in his spare time.
- "...but generally about the greenhouse effect. It is almost nonsense, of a self-heating mechanism or Perpetuum Mobile to talk..." -this is Gerlich & Tscheuschner level nonsense, and in fact a term straight from G&T; the greenhouse effect is not invalidated by thermodynamics.
- "That the CO2 concentration increases delayed (by Prof. M. Salby about 9 months) due to heating caused mainly by increased solar activity, no one disputes in this county. This has only effect that so climate sensitivity is additionally influence as a feedback or gain to the solar sensitivity." - No, it's not the sun, CO2 increases over the last century are _not_ due to the warming ocean, as oceanic concentrations are rising too, and Salby's nonsense is demonstrably just that.
- "...GCMs turns out here so great that all were not able one and all and to indicate the climate evolution of the last 17 years and also for the near future..." - Ah, the inevitable 'hiatus' comment...
- "Limitations to this, it is only at a underlying thermally induced cloud feedback in the superimposed oscillations and can change the feedback coefficients." - The only feedback in his model appears to be a fixed cloud scaling with temperature. I cannot find any reference to water vapor or specific humidity.
- "Circulation and exchange between different zones I do not treat as a global ECS and no climate sensitivities of individual zones are considered here." - A _very_ simple model.
His starting point is rather worse than I had expected, loaded with climate denial myths. And while his radiative model is quite complex (228 layers - as I understand it line by line radiative code converges asymptotically after about 40 layers), his climate model and it's response to CO2 changes is clearly inadequate to the task.
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ajki at 15:25 PM on 16 October 2014Dinner with global warming contrarians, disaster for dessert
When I read the name "Harde" I had the bad feeling that another G&T embarassment might show up. To my relief the Rabett states: "Harde's stuff is of a much higher quality than the G&T joke."
But it may well not be much higher, either. The citation base seems to be grounded on known outliers (Lindzen, Spencer...), even Vahrenholts "Kalte Sonne" gets cited. How low can you possibly go? And then this brave retired man gets his applause from web sites like EIKE or "science skeptical" (a kind of german SkS travesty). Like G&T it is one of those 450+ "papers" that EIKE uses to show the real true truth that everything from the Alarmistas is wrong and fabricated (and they never turn down anything from that ongrowing list, even if so debunked and burned that the authors themselves do not mention it anymore).
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Joel_Huberman at 15:15 PM on 16 October 2014Ocean Warming has been Greatly Underestimated
A fascinating article. Thanks, Rob. You've persuaded me that it will be worth my while to read Durack et al. in detail. I hope others, who are more knowledgeable, will comment on the fascinating/frightening implications that jja (@1) sees in the results of Durack et al.
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Rob Honeycutt at 13:22 PM on 16 October 2014Scientist in focus – Arctic adventurer Will Steger
wili... It's just from conversations I've picked up from reliable people. And the fact that I am hesitant to assign intent (to exclude) when there's no particular reason to believe it's there.
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wili at 12:00 PM on 16 October 2014Scientist in focus – Arctic adventurer Will Steger
"too much being read into what actually happened"
That can certainly happen. Do you have any basis for the claim, besides the interesting points you've already shared?
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Bob Loblaw at 11:56 AM on 16 October 2014CO2 effect is saturated
Jonathan:
What KR and Glenn said. Scattering and absorption/re-emission are different beasts.
Wikipedia actually has an article on Rayleigh Scattering, which in the atmosphere is the scattering caused by the air molecules themselves. Ditto for Mie Scattering, which in the atmosphere is caused by all the particulate matter. In fog, also add reflection (including internal - i.e., inside the water droplets). And in all cases, expect multiple scattering - light that is scattered many times, sometimes to the point where you can't tell up from down (white-out in a blizzard).
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Bob Loblaw at 11:48 AM on 16 October 2014CO2 effect is saturated
Glenn @ 308:
A good catch. I had realized that figure 7.3 in that source was not covering the peak absorption wavelengths - hence my reference to figure 7.2 where the right side shows much greater absorption.
Other references I had on hand gave absorption coefficients with units such as kg/m2. When using Beer's Law, you must be careful of units, and typically simple distance (e.g., metres) isn't one you'll see because distance isn't a measurement of the amount of gas - you need density, pressure, etc. to get the full picture. I wasn't about to try to figure it out late at night, and missed the context of figure 7.1. I had also looked at table 7.1 in that document, which gives several possible units for path length, including "cm" and "cm atm". I don't think either one of them is intended to be simple linear distance.
It is possible to measure gas amount in length units, but the length isn't ordinary distance. Take ozone for example, where a Dobson Unit (a common measure of total column ozone) represents a thickness of ozone of 10 µm, when compressed to standard tempeature and pressure. The WIkipedia page also calls that a "milli-atmo-centimeter", so I'm going to guess that the "cm atm" unit in table 7.1 is a similar measure. Thus, just because an absorption coefficient has units of length doesn't mean the path length is really distance or height.
The data from figure 7.1 does definitely appear to represent a physical path in the free atmosphere of 1 metre, though. They refer to 100 and 1000 mb as the pressure, and "typical CO2 concentration".
The PDF file I linked to appears to be just one lecture in a course on atmospheric radiation, and the course syllabus is available here. It looks like it has a lot of interesting material.
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Rob Honeycutt at 11:42 AM on 16 October 2014Scientist in focus – Arctic adventurer Will Steger
wili... I get the sense there is too much being read into what actually happened.
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wili at 10:56 AM on 16 October 2014Scientist in focus – Arctic adventurer Will Steger
Thanks for the insights and links. As far as I've seen, no one is questioning their actual published data in any severe way, so it seems they should be heard. I have not heard of any scientists excluded for their scientific reticence about extrapolating negative info, so I think it is a bad precedence for peopl who err slightly on the other side. I would say the former (reticence), all in all, is ultimately more...problematic.
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Rob Honeycutt at 08:32 AM on 16 October 2014Scientist in focus – Arctic adventurer Will Steger
wili... I saw a little bit about this and it sounded like they were not actually excluded but the RS just couldn't reschedule on demand to accomodate them. Apparently it was a session where only about 18 or so people were invited, so they were not the only people who weren't invited.
On the methane bomb... There seem to be a lot of good scientists who are skeptical of this idea. Richard Alley, I believe is one who states something along the lines of, maybe, but probably not anytime soon. I've seen others state that magintudes are insufficient to compete with CO2.
Peter Sinclair just recently posted a couple of interviews related to this issue.
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scaddenp at 08:05 AM on 16 October 2014Scientist in focus – Arctic adventurer Will Steger
Wili - the issue I think, is not with Shakhova's science and observational contributions, but more with somewhat alarmist extrapolations from them.
I notice that David Archer responded to you on this very issue here. Modelling doesnt support a methane monster.
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wili at 07:24 AM on 16 October 2014Scientist in focus – Arctic adventurer Will Steger
(That is, of course, not to take anything away from Will Steger! I admire him greatly, have heard him speak and am pleased to live in the same metropolis as both he and John Abraham do.)
I just realized that I didn't link that correctly--some people never learn :-/
I'll try again: Ignoring the Arctic Methane Monster: Royal Society Goes Dark on Arctic Observational Science -
wili at 07:13 AM on 16 October 2014Scientist in focus – Arctic adventurer Will Steger
I would count any scientist who works in such extreme conditions to also be an 'explorer.' Last year a ship of scientist was in danger in a storm in the Arctic. They were saved, but many who went to save them perished.
Two such brave explorer/scientists are Igor Semiletov and Natalia Shakhova. They just returned from another long and dangerous voyage studying this critical region only to find that, in spite of being the two scientists with the longest history of working in the area, they were excluded from a session at the Royal Academy on just this topic.
Does anyone know what is going on here?
http://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/2014/10/15/ignoring-the-arctic-methane-monster-royal-society-goes-dark-on-arctic-observational-science/
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jja at 06:55 AM on 16 October 2014Ocean Warming has been Greatly Underestimated
In addition, a higher GHG forcing and stronger aerosol effect would reveal anthropogenic impacts on 1910-1975 warming trends as well as lend increased weight to Ruddiman et. al (2011) http://www.whoi.edu/pclift/Ruddiman.pdf
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scaddenp at 05:57 AM on 16 October 2014Dinner with global warming contrarians, disaster for dessert
"It is to an authors advantage to send their work to a journal that is likely to give them a hard time,"
Yes. In many areas of science (especially where there is real controversy rather than manufactured) , each paper published is a shot fired in a war. It is common around here to suggest as a reviewer the person that will hate the paper most. Such a person is much more likely to put the time and effort into giving the paper an exhaustive review. This results in a much better paper than one that has only had prefunctory review from busy colleagues, even if it delays publication.
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Dinner with global warming contrarians, disaster for dessert
There are a couple of references to earlier versions of Prof. Harde's work on Rabett Run, here and in the comments here.
The gist of it seems to be that Harde used some quite good molecular data for radiative calculations in a very simplistic climate model without feedbacks (or for that matter oceans) - and that seems to be the case with the current publication.
His result of 0.6 ˚C/CO2 doubling is therefore only comparable to the generally computed 1.1 ˚C of direct CO2 forcing (prior to feedbacks), as per Myhre et al. 1998. By comparison, Myhre used multiple atmospheric profiles with differing cloud levels, and compared three different radiative models for their estimates, which have held up in the literature quite well. I believe that Harde's very limited (and crude) model is responsible for the difference.
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Dikran Marsupial at 00:37 AM on 16 October 2014Dinner with global warming contrarians, disaster for dessert
I used to teach a postgraduate course (an afternoon) on how to review a paper, and I usually started by discussing why we publish and what the author gains from peer review (so you understand the aim of reviewing). The main purpose of publishing is so that other people working in our field will read ours ideas, test them, and if they work will use them in their own research. The thing that the author gains from peer review ought to be rigorous criticism that prevents publication of a paper that would be damaging to our research reputation (perhaps because it is wrong, or doesn't support the argument sufficiently well with observational or experimental) and if it is publishable make it a better paper that is more likely to be cited by other researchers who find it useful.
It is to an authors advantage to send their work to a journal that is likely to give them a hard time, as it is the criticism provided by peer review that maximises their chances of having an impact and being cited. If you think you have something that shows a whole research field is wrong, you ought to send it to the top journal, and if they don't accept it then perhaps it is because your idea isn't as good as you think it is and you need to work to refute their criticisms.The important thing in science though is not the source of the argument, but its validity. As others have suggested above, Prof. Harde's method is not actually very advanced, and has a number of obvious flaws.
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Ashton at 00:15 AM on 16 October 2014Dinner with global warming contrarians, disaster for dessert
Thanks for the discussion which is not overly supportive of Professor Harde. From the summaries of the list of reviewers from Tom Curtis I have to agree with Dikran Marsupial that the review panel may lack experience. I also have to agree that Dr Harde might have selected a more apposite and auspicious journal to which to submit his paper. Of course I can't know that he didn't.
I frequently disagree with posters here but on this occasion it is plain that the discussion of the paper here is in an entirely different and better, class from that I have read elsewhere
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Tom Curtis at 23:50 PM on 15 October 2014Dinner with global warming contrarians, disaster for dessert
Dikran @11, here are the members of the Editorial board registered with google scholar.
Chandra Shekhar Prasad Ojha cited 1126 times
water resources, evironmental engineering
Mohammad Hadi Dehghani cited 282 times
Environmental Health, Solid Waste Management, Air Pollution
Mrinmoy Majumder cited 70 times
watershed management, climate change, hydro power, nature based algorithm
Panagiotis T. Nastos cited 1382 times
Climatic Change, Human Biometeorology, Outdoor Thermal Comfort, Urban Microclimate, Atmospheric Pollution
T.N.Singh cited 1729 times
Rock Mechanics, Artificial Intelligence, Engineering Geology, Mining
That makes an avearge of 917.8 citations per editorial board member.
I don't have much perspective on that, but (for example) Kevin Trenberth has 39953 citations, Judith Curry has 12073, and John Church has 9905. It appears then, that they are on the lower end of a respectable citation results. However, the connection between their output and the journal's subject matter seems a little stretched in most cases.
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Dikran Marsupial at 22:29 PM on 15 October 2014Dinner with global warming contrarians, disaster for dessert
Tom, the h-5 index of the journal would indeed be a useful metric if it were available, however in its absence you can look at the h-indices of the editorial board. If the editorial board are not experienced leading researchers, it is likely to be a recipe for errors in the peer review process (c.f. Pattern Recognition in Physics)
It isn't immediately clear to me why a truncated icosahedron would be more mathematically tractable than a sphere!
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Tom Curtis at 22:21 PM on 15 October 2014Dinner with global warming contrarians, disaster for dessert
Glenn Tamblyn @9, simple is not the word for it.
The model treats the Earth as truncated icosahedron, ie, a regular solid with 24 faces. It divides the world into three isothermal climate zones. It appears to treat all gases as absorbing and emitting at 11 km altitude (with temperature determined by lapse rate), thereby elevating the influence of water vapour by about 6 km above its natural level and (due to overlaps) greatly reducing the impact of CO2 relative to real values.
Not so much a simple climate model, therefore, but a parody of a climate model. Even with this, Harde still needs to use a solar forcing greater than 230% above the upper bound of the 90% confidence interval for solar forcing from 1751 as given by the IPCC.
Finally, he eschews any effort to hindcast 20th century temperatures, limiting his empirical validation to the ability to predict the gross values for TOA and surface, upward and downward LW and SW fluxes. He makes not effort to retrodict individual sources of fluxes as determined by observation, or course, for doing so would massively invalidate the model (which is radically inconsistent with the results of LBL radiation models, and hence with the related observations).
I know that if I had to cite this article as evidence in an a discussion, I would have lost the argument.
Dikran @8, the article is published in an open access journal whose first edition was May, 2014 and which unsurprisingly does not appear in the Google h-5 index. It does not appear on lists of predatory publishers yet, but given the publication of the Harde paper, that must surely be only a matter of time.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 21:19 PM on 15 October 2014Dinner with global warming contrarians, disaster for dessert
Ashton
From the abstract of the Harde paper - 'The model describes the atmosphere and the ground as two layers acting simultaneously as absorbers and Planck radiators, and it includes additional heat transfer between these layers due to convection and evaporation'
Sounds like a very simple version of a climate model. No mention of the different layers in the atmosphere which you need to try and get clouds and radiative transfer right. And no mention of the oceans. If it doesn't model the oceans any conclusions are likely to be wrong.
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Dikran Marsupial at 20:57 PM on 15 October 2014Dinner with global warming contrarians, disaster for dessert
Ashton, open access journals are a good thing, unless they are predatory open access journals, and I doubt you will find anybody that fails to make that distinction. The real problem is journals with inadequate peer review processes. A good way of distinuishing between good journals and bad is to look at the Google Scholar profiles of those on the editorial board and see whether they are eminent and experienced scientists whos own work is well regarded (and therefore widely cited).
One possible solution to this problem is to make promotions etc. for researchers contingent on the citation of their papers rather than merely the existence of the papers themselves. Arguably there isn't much point in writing papers that nobody will cite. There then would no longer be the pressure for academic to publish, just a pressure to perform good work that will be valued by their research community.
I think if Prof. Harde had any real confidence in his work he would have sent it to a good journal that climatologists actually read.
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Ashton at 19:58 PM on 15 October 2014Dinner with global warming contrarians, disaster for dessert
Sorry that should be the L&C paper. Apologies for a very careless error
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Ashton at 19:56 PM on 15 October 2014Dinner with global warming contrarians, disaster for dessert
jja@1. An even more recent paper by Hermann Harde supports the lower estimate of climate sensitivity reported by Lewis and Curry. The paper in the Open Journal of Atmospheric and Climate Change is at http://www.scipublish.com/journals/ACC/recent and perhaps the significance of it and the L&K paper might be discused here.
I am aware that Open Journals are regarded by some as the spawn of the devil but perhaps the recent support by the Guardian may, in time, alter that view.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 17:54 PM on 15 October 2014The long hot tail of global warming - new thinking on the Eocene greenhouse climate
fairoakien
In addition to Howards points, there is fundamental observation of what is happening today that says AGW isn't natural variability. The warming of the oceans. If all we were looking at was warming of the atmosphere then certainly natural variability might be considered. But the warming of the oceans precludes this.
Heat build-up in the oceans is proceeding at a rate of around 250-300 trillion watts. If that heat were all going into the atmosphere then air temperatures - what we think of as climate - would be rising at around 15 deg C per decade.
And the rate of heat accumulation in the oceans says something very basic. It isn't coming from anywhere here on Earth. The largest heat source on the planet is geothermal heat. And geologists have been able to estimate the total rate of geothermal heat flowing out of the planet. 44.2 trillion watts. Simply too small to supply the energy we are seeing added to the oceans.
So the only conclusion that is possible is that this extra heat is coming from somewhere off the Earth.
In contrast the flow of heat from the Sun and then being radiated out to space by the Earth is around 120,000 trillion watts. Even a tiny disturbance in these two flows can easily supply all the heat we are observing. But the heat flow from the Sun hasn't increased - we have been monitoring the Sun for around 40 years now. If anything the energy flow from the Sun has declined ever so slightly.
Which leaves the heat flowing out from the planet as the source. If something is restricting that flow then the heating can easily be explained. And the something that modulates that flow is the Greenhouse Effect.
Key to this however is that this isn't natural variability! That can't explain what we are seeing.
So when skeptics suggest that natural variability is the explanation, they aren't looking at all the evidence.
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Jonathan Doolin at 16:03 PM on 15 October 2014CO2 effect is saturated
Thank you Glenn @313
I needed to understand what fog is, so I could understand why CO2 is not fog.
I guess that fog is made of tiny little balls of water, that have reflective surfaces.
I did not realize that Carbon Dioxide only absorbs and emits, but does not reflect.This is a very helpful answer.
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denisaf at 16:00 PM on 15 October 2014Dinner with global warming contrarians, disaster for dessert
The stark reality is that irreversible rapid global warming and ocean acidification in under way. Measurements confirm that hypothesis. The increase in storms, droughts, ice extent and floods provide substantiating data. As does the changes in the marine eco system.
Ironically, even sound mitigation measures will only slow this dleterious process down slightly.
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Magma at 11:11 AM on 15 October 2014Ocean Warming has been Greatly Underestimated
Fascinating paper and well worth a careful read. Actually the paper is dense enough that it requires a careful read. Personally I would have preferred that the AVISO sea surface height data was shown in the body of the main paper rather than being relegated to a supplementary appendix. There are enough inconsistencies with the multi-model mean that it would be better to put it in and let readers work their own way through the comparison and the authors' justifications.
The figure shown here as Figure 5 is Figure S5 in the appendix. There must be some subtle technical details I'm missing, but the comparison seems to be largely pointless, since both sets of modeled data in question pretty much have to have a high degree of correlation.
We find a very high correlation between modelled SSH (global mean removed) and steric height (global mean removed) derived from modelled salinity and temperature fields.
Apart from water transfered to the oceans from continental glaciers, ice sheets and groundwater, what else besides thermosteric and halosteric effects can affect sea level over large areas on a decadal time frame? Persistant wind patterns, maybe?Moderator Response:[Rob P] - As explained in the post, the multi-model mean is equivalent to an Earth without any natural variability, so of course there are inconsistencies. Yes, there is some circular reasoning here because the sea surface height (SSH) data only extend back to 1992, and it would be nice to see a comparison of two truly independent data sets over the entire period - but they don't exist. Perhaps tide gauge data in tandem with ocean models in the latter part of the 20th century could help here? Lots of issues to overcome there however.
In regard to decadal time frames, the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) has a significant effect on sea surface height. The negative phase (2000-to present-day) sees intensified trade winds which temporarily pile up water mass in the western tropical Pacific and diminish it in the eastern tropical Pacific (see the SkS Tuvalu sea level rise rebuttal) and cause greater-than-average precipitation over land, thus temporarily reducing the ocean volume (see SkS Sea level fell in 2010 rebuttal and SkS post A relentless rise in global sea level).
Maybe once/if a deep Argo network gets underway, we can come to grips with the nitty-gritty details and finally get around to closing that sea level budget.
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Tom Curtis at 10:32 AM on 15 October 20142013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #27B
LuisC has seen fit to accuse me of "insinuating" that he is a liar. Given his statement @2 above, and his own insinuations when he asks, "I would be interested to know how he maintains that it's ''not relevant'', when indeed many people have been left with the impression that gas coming out of faucets is something new under the sun and that fracking is to blame" about Fox, he seems rather to precious to me. That is particularly the case given that he misrepresented Fox in the passage from which that quote came; and that (assuming, as it appears, that he has watched Fracknation) he knows that the two intances about which he "... would be interested to know why they are not relevant" are two instances where the water did not contain methane in significant quantities until after the commencement of fracking (according to the propery owners), and hence for which he therefore already knows why the preexisting methane contamination of other local wells is not relevant.
However, I made no insinuation regarding LuisC's honesty. I presented him with a conditional. Accepting the conditional, he must either accept the consequent, or deny the antecedent. His inability to understand that - in effect, his determination to affirm the consequent in no way justifies assuming that I am likewise challenged in basic logic.
What is worse, I even (twice) indicated that the conditional may not apply to Luis, and indicated a reason why it may not apply to him. He has interpreted this possible exemption as itself an insinuation of dishonesty. Apparently nothing will do for him except my stating categorically that he was ignorant and that therefore the conditional did not apply.
His proper response to the dichotomy I presented him was either to explicitly reject McAleer's standard (and therefore to withdraw his claim @2 which while moderated is still his stated position); or to plead ignorance thus escaping the dichotomy), or to acknowledge himself and McAleer a liar (by McAleer's standard). He appears to want to escape the dichotomy a fourth way, by maintaining the standard, and inconsistently, rejecting the implications of that standard for his and McAleer's honesty.
For myself, I simply reject the standard. Video documentaries are a compressed form of communication that of necessity require leaving out of vast amounts of relevant information. Which information is relevant and vital (and hence should not be left out) and which is relevant but merely adds complexity (because it does not effect the overall case, or because other relevant information rebuts it) is a judgement call. I have no opinion as to whether or not Fox successfully navigated those judgement calls without error, and still less as to whether any errors in judgement (if they exist) were deliberate (and hence represent actual dishonesty) for the simple reason that I have not seen his video.
I do have an opinion as to whether McAleer has successfully navigated those judgement calls, and as to whether any of his "errors of judgement" were deliberate. Moderation policy, however, forbids me from sharing it. (And yes, that is an insinuation.)
Moderator Response:[PS] Discussion on the relative merits of science presented in popular documentaries is welcome here - provided everyone sticks to the science. Pointers to reports/papers, particularly peer-reviewed papers, in support of claims is particularly welcome.
This discussion however is being derailed by insinuations of deliberate deception which I tried to nip in the bud. I would request all commentators wanting further discussion to take a deep breath, chuck off the baggage, and concentrate on science. In particular, please refrain from personal attacks. Failure to do so by any party will result in comments being deleted.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 10:06 AM on 15 October 2014CO2 effect is saturated
Jonathon
I agree with KR that using analogies to understand something can be problematic. And your introduction of 'reflection' and 'diffraction' is inaccurate. Reflection only occurs when light interacts with a surface of a solid or a liquid. It does not apply to a gas. Similarly diffraction occcurs when light passes through a surface into a solid or liquid.
In the case of fog both of these things occur. Light is reflected off the surface of the drops of water and is also diffracted through the drops. Additionally there is also scattering of the light by the droplet. In all three cases the photon of light is not extinguished, its trajectory is simply changed.
None of these three phenomena are relevent to understanding what is happening wrt the GH gases. Reflection and diffraction don't apply and at the infre-red wavelengths involved here scattering is negligible.
So everything wrt GH gases is about absorption and emission. In absorption the GH molecule actually absorbs the photon. The energy of the photon is added to the energy of the molecule and the photon ceases to exist. In emission the molecule actually creates a photon which 'launches' away in a random direction, taking some of the molecules energy with it, leaving the molecule with less energy.
The form the energy takes within the molecule is important. A molecule can be thought of as a collection of atoms that are joined by elecrical bonds. The bonds allow the individual atoms to jiggle around relative to each other - the molecule isn't a rigid body. You could think of it as if each atom in the molecule is on springs connecting it to its partners. So there is energy involved in this vibration. And when a molecule absorbs a photon the photon's energy is added to this vibration and the atoms jiggle harder.
There is a second mechanism that applies to a few GH molecules, notably water. Molecules don't just vibrate internally, they also tumble and rotate. Some molecules are able to absorb energy from a photon and convert it into a change in the rotational motion of the entire molecule rather than internal vibration of the atoms.
Finally there is the movement of the molecule through space and the absorption of the energy and momentum from the photon contributes to changing that.
Because the energy the molecule absorbs is in the form of mechanical, energy of movement it is then easily able to be transferred to other molecules around it through collisions. Molecules in the air at sea level each undergo billions of collisions per second with other molecules, mainly th non-GH gases oxygen and nitrogen. So when a GH molecule has been energised by absorbing a photon, it will usually actually lose that energy through collisions. So the absorption ends up adding to the total pool of energy present amongst all the molecules in the air.
The main gases in the atmosphere, oxygen and nitrogen can't absorb or emit infrared photons so it might seem that the energy from the absorbed photon has been lost forever, never to be released. But thhis is not the case.
Because GH molecules can also be energised in collisions with other molecules. At any instant a certain percentage of the GH molecules in the air will be in a more energised state due to recent collisions with other molecules. Mostly they will be de-energised again by another collision - it is estimated that around 1 in 50 collisions between molecules cause changes in the internal vibrations of the atoms - but occasionally they will de-energise instead by emitting an IR photon.
So the molecule that absorbed the photon may not be the one that emits it later.
And the new, emitted photon goes of in a completely random direction, unrelated to the direction the original came from.....
... And after a short distance is likely absorbed by another GH molecule and the game starts all over again. It really is like a game of billiards in 3 dimensions and on a vast scale.
So, going back to your use of the fog analogy. It might have some merit if used carefully, strictly defined as an analogy for illustrative purposes only but it shouldn't be used to derive an understanding of the process.
And to be useful you need to introduce something missing from the simple fog analogy.
The fog is glowing!
Even when there is no headlight shining through it, the fog is glowing from its own internal energy.
If the idea of a gas glowing seems strange, look up at the sky. The Sun. A big ball of gas and plasma that is glowing very, very brightly. Well cooler gases glow as well, just not as brightly, and not in the visible spectrum, but in the infra-red.
Hope that helps some.
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ranyl at 09:34 AM on 15 October 2014Ocean Warming has been Greatly Underestimated
Thanks Rob for a good summary.
Bigger CS less carbon budget.
Not that we have one!
Might help explain why last CO2 350ppm the world was 3-5C hotter a little more, and that is being optimistic as those estimates don't include the warmer Pacific warm pool recently reported for the early Pliocene.
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Rob Honeycutt at 09:26 AM on 15 October 2014Dinner with global warming contrarians, disaster for dessert
I believe Betts is woefully naive in thinking this changes anything relative to Watts. My prediction is, this will end up like Muller. At some point Betts is going to have to tell Watts something scientifically accurate that he really doesn't want to hear and then Watts will turn the dagger on Betts.
Mark my words.
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tstreet at 07:27 AM on 15 October 2014Dinner with global warming contrarians, disaster for dessert
Way too much meat served at this luncheon. Can't tell, though, the distribution between the two groups.
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Rob Honeycutt at 04:22 AM on 15 October 2014Ocean Warming has been Greatly Underestimated
It can't be said enough times...
Uncertainty in not our friend!
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jja at 03:48 AM on 15 October 2014Ocean Warming has been Greatly Underestimated
ThisThis needs to be more fully looked at. 1. The adjustments are above the CMIP MMM error bars.
2. The adjustments come from the southern hemisphere only, the northern hemisphere follows with the CMIP MMM.
3. The error found in the 0-700meter southern hemisphere increases the total global heat accumulation (as compared by Nuccitelli et. al 2012) by (roughly) 9-30%.
Implications for TOA heat flux
1. Total heat flux imbalance is now adjusted upwards from .7 to .9 watts per meter squared.
2. Since the entirety of this adjustment occurred in the southern hemisphere, (but not the northern) indicates that there is a fundamental flaw in the basic model of understanding.
3. The basic model of understanding appears to be severely underestimating northern hemisphere aerosol effects.
4. The basic model also appears to be extremely underestimating GHG radiative forcing effects, (measurement error in SH + aerosol adjustment error in NH)
5. This analysis pushes the AR5 results to the very edge of the 2-sigma error range for these two forcing mechanisms.
Iplications:
1. ECS is now likely between 3C and 5.5C with an increased "most likely" value of 4C for a 2X CO2.2. Future land-only temperatures will increase under given emissions pathways at a much higher rate than previously modeled as TOA energy imbalance increases 20% more rapidly.
3. Carbon cycle and permafrost degredation will occur more rapidly and more intensely than previously considered.
4. This does explain a bit why the modeled arctic sea ice projections were deviatiing so strongly from observations. The relatively aerosol-free arctic is experiencing a much higher downward longwave flux than has been modeled.
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CO2 effect is saturated
Jonathan Doolin - I took a quick look at your video, and there are numerous conceptual issues present.
A 'blackbody' emits as per the dotted lines shown for various temperatures. Perfect blackbodies are not real, although some objects approach it for specific frequency bands. The ground, for example, has an emissivity of 98-99% in the IR range (98-99% of an ideal blackbody) - anything less than that in satellite observations indicates emission from something else in the atmosphere, rather than in an IR transparent window.
What you are looking at in any of the satellite or ground spectra is the result of many different molecules, many different gases and/or materials. CO2, H2O, O3, and other gases absorb and emit based on their molecular structure, acting as frequency dependent antennae. And the different levels in the spectra reflect what temperature the emitting object is, and (by the lapse rate) where it's located in the atmospheric column. You cannot treat this as the emission from a single object or material.
The small graph you looked at for an ozone peak appears to be from Harries 2001, and is a graph of changes in emission to space from 1970 to 1996 with increasing GHGs - it's a delta graph.
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I would strongly suggest some introductory reading to orient yourself to the general principles involved, such as the Greenhouse Effect Basics on SkS. To be quite frank, the gaps in your understanding will otherwise will prevent any useful technical reasoning on the issues.
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CO2 effect is saturated
Jonathan Doolin - Major issues: scattering is not absorption.
Scattering redirects incoming light in an anisotropic (angle-dependent) fashion. Fog scatters visibile light with neglible absorption, and when the headlights turn off the scattered light ceases as well. Think pachinko balls for this. There is a very small amount of momentum transfer involved, nothing on the level of thermal absorption.
Absorption raises the energy of the absorbing molecule, contributing to the thermal energy of the gas - if all other things are held equal an equivalent amount of past absorbed energy spread across the emission spectra will be thermally emitted by that gas volume at some later point (not, generally, at identical frequencies to incoming photons, or from the same molecules, but in the same spectra range), isotropically. This is a completely different phenomena.
So no, fog is not an "apt" analogy to absorption/emission in any way. If you start from that as your analogy you are already pointing in the wrong directions, even without the logical error of trying to reason analogically rather than in the system of interest. "If you think that the line of argument that led you to believe something about X might also apply to Y, don't talk about X. Apply the reasoning to Y and see if it works."
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Jonathan Doolin at 01:06 AM on 15 October 2014CO2 effect is saturated
Tom Curtis @295
Thanks.
Here is a video to give some more detail.
LINK
I think pedagogically I'm going to tend toward the use of k = T*1.96/(cm•K) for my Wein's Law needs. Though lambda • T = .0029 meter Kelvin will come in handy sometimes, too.To Rob @299 and KR @300
I'm still looking into this issue. How is the analogy "apt" and how is it not?The headlights should not only illuminate the fog, but should actually bounce off the fog. When the light bounces off the fog, since light has momentum, it does change the kinetic energy of the molecules in the fog.
But when you turn the headlights off, the fog does not continue to glow in visible light. Rather, the light dissipates fairly quickly.
I guess I have two major questions in this area. (1) Why does the visible light reflect off the fog, when it does not reflect off a region of no fog? My hypothesis would be that H20 has a significant absorption/emission spectrum in the visible range, wheras Oxygen/Nitrogen/Argon do not.
(2) Why does the light immediately dissipate once the headlights are turned off? My hypothesis would be that the internal energy of the fog is not sufficient to activate those modes of motion.
In any case, to feel complete to me, a model must include reflection, and transparency, (and possibly refraction) as well as absorption and emission...
Checking my assumptions, I'm thinking that a gas cannot emit, absorb, or reflect light in any spectrum where it is completely transparent. But fog is not transparent in visible light, so by that assumption must be absorbing, emitting, and reflecting visible light. It's just not heating to the point where the visible light becomes a significant part of its blackbody spectrum.
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Rob Honeycutt at 00:56 AM on 15 October 2014Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
Skinny_Pete... You seem to have failed on my other suggestions of reading the relevant material presented in the articles above, and the suggestion that you read the comments policy. I resubmit both of those suggestions to you.
The fact is, the radiative properties of CO2 are extremely well established physics. I can accept Tom's sense that the bottle experiment is not a well controlled one, but you can see the same effects at work with a thermal camera set up. Here.
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JohnSeers at 00:50 AM on 15 October 2014Tung and Zhou circularly blame ~40% of global warming on regional warming
When I try to watch the video I get a message "This video is private". Any chance of fixing that?
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CO2 effect is saturated
Glenn Tamblyn - Far more accurate than the references I was looking at.
"Saturation" is a horrible term, really, inappropriate for an exponential decrease with distance as there is no specification of an end-point. Far better to use e-fold distance or mean path length - some measure with actual values.
So absorption path lengths for GHGs can be quite short at sea level depending on wavelength. The biggest issues with the "CO2 is saturated" claims are that:
- Path length increases with decreasing atmospheric pressure
- The energy radiated to space depends on the lapse rate and altitude of emission, and
- Increasing GHGs increase that altitude, decreasing IR to space, creating an imbalance until the climate and atmosphere warm enough to redress it.
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John Hartz at 23:49 PM on 14 October 20142013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #27B
[Moderation Comment]
Luis C: Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can and will be rescinded if the posting individual continues to treat adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
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JARWillis at 23:37 PM on 14 October 2014Dinner with global warming contrarians, disaster for dessert
This sort of discussion, while perfectly reasonable, lends weight to the popular misconception that sufficient doubt remains about climate science to allow us to safely delay significant action.
The message to the public is simple common sense - we cannot afford to take the risk that these indefatigable doubters are wrong and the overwhelming body of expert opinion turns out, when it is too late, to have been right.
There will always be debate about details of the science, but the press, including the Daily Mail, must accept that there is absolutely no doubt about the need for action. You hit the brake before you hit the wall - even if you are not yet sure what you have seen is a wall - and especially when you have a car full of children
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DSL at 23:22 PM on 14 October 2014Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
Isn't there a "But I built this box/bottle/aquarium experiment, and it proves that . . ." myth somewhere in the list?
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CBDunkerson at 22:00 PM on 14 October 20142013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #27B
LuisC wrote: "To the extent that fracking faciliates more extraction and the driving down of gas prices, it is of course facilating humanity's ''addiction'' to fossil fuels, and in this sense is dangerous."
In a roundabout way, this may actually turn out to be a good thing. Fracking is responsible for the fossil fuel boom in the US... which is now starting to drive down global oil prices. However, those lower prices are a problem for many countries (e.g. Russia) which can only extract oil at relatively high cost. Indeed, the fracking boom in the US itself is only possible due to high oil prices. The 'gold rush' mentality in the US may actually lead to fracking making itself temporarily uneconomical. Depending on how big the bubble and how damaging its collapse will be, the forthcoming 'fracking bust' could put the breaks on further deployment of the technology long enough for renewable alternatives to grow into the dominant energy source.
Had fracking been rolled out slowly with careful regulation and long term planning, it could have been profitable for decades. Instead, there has been a 'drill baby drill' mentality with everyone in the industry rushing to capitalize in the quickest and dirtiest ways possible. That foolishness will come back to bite them. The question then is whether the industry will be able to quickly restructure itself to a somewhat 'sustainable' (for a few decades anyway) model before renewables can move into the gap.
As to the rest, I notice you are no longer saying that fracking does not cause earthquakes. Conceding the point in the face of overwhelming evidence, or just avoiding an argument you can't win?
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Tom Curtis at 21:40 PM on 14 October 2014Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
Skinny_Pete @159 & 162:
1) With regard to your experiment, nearly all incoming solar radiation is in the visible wavelengths. CO2 does not trap energy in visible wavelengths, and moreover, the ground is a good absorber in the IR wavelengths at which CO2 is a good absorber. Therefore increasing the CO2 in a small box will not increase the temperature of the box in sunlight appreciably due to traping more incoming. Further, due to the small size of the box, the normal motion of atmospheric particles within the box will keep the entirety of the box at essentially the temperarature of the ground on which it is located (or the floor of the box). Therefore any excess energy trapped by CO2 in the box from outgoing IR radiation will be replaced by an equal amount of outgoing IR energy radiated by the CO2. Therefore, and contrary to Rob Honeycutt, the temperature will not be appreciably different in either case. (I have seen several videos of this experiment done, with some showing a slightly higher temperature for the box containing CO2, and some showing the reverse. Both differences are down to errors in the conducting of the experiment.)
2) I am dubious about the experiment shown in the video linked by Rob Honeycutt. The two bottles with stoppers and thermometers installed are essentially air tight. Therefore, plausibly, the CO2 released in the bottle will raise the pressure in the bottle, thereby increasing temperatures. I do not see how this contaminating effect is controlled for, so I consider the results to be dubious at best.
3) Having said that, if the CO2 could be generated seperately and then poured into the bottle before sealing, and then the bottle left to sit till it was at room temperature before turning on the light, you would then have a far better experimental design than typically seen. Specifically, because the light shines in from the side and all sides are transparent, visible light for the most part will shine straight through the bottle without warming, so that IR radiation absorbed by the CO2 would in fact be additional warming. The amount of additional IR radiation absorbed is likely to be small, however, so I am not convinced that the additional warming would be appreciable relative to experimental error.
4) I have given considerable thought as to how to perform the experiment you are interested in correctly. It would be difficult, however, and require maintaining a vacumn in parts of the experiment for the duration of the experiment, so I don't expect to see it done correctly on Youtube any time soon.
5) Such experiments are, however, entirely beside the point. Simple radiation models have shown the ability to predict upward and downward radiation in the Earth's atmosphere with stunning accuracy. Here, for example, is a comparison between predicted and observed upward IR radiation at a site in Texas from 1970:
And here is a comparison of measured and predicted total Outgoing Longwave Radiation for 134,862 observations over a wide range of atmospheric conditions (both as to temperature and latitude) reported in 2008:
These are models of radiation only. They involve no problems with chaos theory, and no problems with performance. It is the output of models like these that predict the greenhouse effect, and that the greenhouse effect is not saturated. The greenhouse effect has been observationally proved to exist, as much as such a term is ever appropriate in science.
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Tom Curtis at 20:58 PM on 14 October 20142013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #27B
LuisC @12, I also apologize for mispelling your name.
I note that you have misquoted me in your reply. Specifically, I stated:
"Given the standard McAleer and (apparently) Louis use for accusations of dishonesty, the failure to mention that case by either demonstrates them both to be liars. Perhaps Louis was merely ignorant."
(Emphasis added.)
You chose to delete from the quote those sections I have bolded above, including the first clause of the sentence which clearly makes the sentence conditional. I at no point indicate that I accepted the standard of McAleer, or your apparent standard. I merely point out that those that do, including McAleer, if they are are consistent must conclude that McAleer is a liar.
In your case, it is open for you to reject McAleer's standard. You can conclude that a person can reasonably leave out information considered germain by others without thereby being a liar. But if you will not reject McAleer's standard, you (not I) brand yourself a liar for you have clearly left out germain information.
I will note that your new guise as "devil's advocate" is inconsisent with your initial sally @2 above.
Moderator Response:[JH] The first of Luis C's comments that you are responding to has been deleted for violating two elements of the the SkS Comments Policy, i.e., no moderation complaints and no sloganeering/trolling.
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Skinny_Pete at 20:58 PM on 14 October 2014Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
Thanks for the brush off. I disagree with the You Tube video. I have tried this experiment numerous times in sunlight and the temperature has always stayed the same in both greenhouses. Clearly many other factors are needed to make the temperature go up, e.g. smoke, dust, pollen, pollutants, water vapour etc.
Moderator Response:[JH] Please keep it civil.
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can and will be rescinded if the posting individual continues to treat adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
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michael sweet at 20:04 PM on 14 October 20142013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #27B
LuisC,
Sorry about msispelling your name, I often make spelling errors.
It is not the purpose at SkS to discuss all thngs that anyone thinks might be related to tangently to Global Warming. For example, there is no nuclear dedicated thread. I suggest you take your complaints to a forum that is dedicated to your questions.
I get the impression that you are a concern troll. You say that you are concered and then outline all the vague accusations made against Fox, without references to support your claims. Please begin to support your claims with data beyond an industry propaganda piece.
In the future I will adhere to DNFTT.
Moderator Response:[JH] Luis C's comment that you are responding to has been deleted for violating two elements of the the SkS Comments Policy, i.e., no moderation complaints and no sloganeering/trolling.
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