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Ashton at 02:22 AM on 19 August 2014Global warming denial rears its ugly head around the world, in English
Unfortunately I think you'll find that almost always reports in the MSM (yes even the reviled MUrdoch papers) reach many, many more readers than does SkS, Real Climate. Open Mind etc. Given that, it is unlikely this analysis will have much effect on the average citizen. Getting a piece into a newspaper, other than The Guardian which is not a high circulation paper as it is regarded by many as a subversive, left wing publication (despite the brilliant Feicity Loake), will achieve much more than 10 pieces here. And yes. I am aware of John Cook's 97% paper and the subsequent comments both for and against that paper. Why not see if Fairfax or indeed News Ltd will publish this piece?
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Dikran Marsupial at 00:28 AM on 19 August 20142nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
MA Roger, while the translation doesn't explicitly use the phrase "net flow of heat", I think it is implicitly clear in the translation of the first edition of Clausius' textbook in the footnote mentioned in my post at 1146:
"In the first place this implies that in the immediate interchange of heat between two bodies by conduction and radiation, the warmer body never receives more heat from the colder one that it imparts to it."
The only way for this to be satisfied (in the absence of "some other change") is for the net flow of heat to be from the warmer to the cooler body.
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Leland Palmer at 00:22 AM on 19 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
Hi chriskoz-
Archer thinks he can predict what will happen.
I don't think so.
We've now seen three cold gas eruption events. Does anyone doubt that there will be more?
This new explosive release plus slow subsidence mechanism needs to be factored into all future scenarios. We need to find out- urgently- how much methane this mechanism will release, and how much it has released in the past.
Beyond that, we need to just stop experimenting on our planet, and introducing factors that no one is competent to predict. Isaksen wrote his paper before he knew about this new explosive release mechanism. I wonder what he would say, now.
The laws of physics will not be denied. Permafrost melts and gas expands when heated. Heat millions of square kilometers of permafrost, and we run the risk of setting off side effects that no one is competent to predict.
Moderator Response:[JH] You are now skating on the thin ice of excessive repetition which is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy.
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One Planet Only Forever at 00:12 AM on 19 August 2014Climate scientists dub this year’s El Niño “a real enigma”
It is clear that the intricacy of the global system related to the ENSO is worthy of the pursuit of better understanding. Being able to better predict its formation will benefit the many actvities, including plans for potential emergency response, affected by the global influence of this condition.
However, it is possible to clearly show that the expected warming of our planet by the increased CO2 has been occurring and is evident in not only the deep ocean temperatures, but in the global average surface temperature data. Though this El Nino has not yet fully developed the way some models predicted, the 12 month global average surface temperature is currently warmer that the highest 12 month value during the very strong 1997/98 El Nino.
In the NASA GISTemp data set, and probably in the other data sets, the recent averages of 12 months have been warmer than the warmest 12 month average during the 1997/98 event. The maximum 12 month averages during that event were 0.61 C for periods ending in August and September of 1998, after the tropical Pacific had cooled - as measured by NOAA as the ONI. The 12 month averages ending in May, June and July of this year are 0.65 C, and the tropical Pacific has not yet warmed to El Nino levels.
This is another clear indication that the warming so many want to believe has not been continuing has actually continued. And there is no need to wait for the 'full formation of an El Nino' or for the end of the year global surface 12 month average to point out the clear facts of the matter.
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chriskoz at 23:30 PM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
Leland@15,
The study you cite explicitly says:
Although the high‐CH4 scenarios applied in this study are unlikely, they demonstrate the strong CH4 feedbacks in the climate system, with large amplification of atmospheric composition changes and RF compared to the direct RF of CH4 emissions.
I would use even strongeer language: "very unlikely". 2.5 times the rate of current CH4 emissions is where they start their experiments. Note, the current emissions (500Mt/y of which about third can be antropo emissions from FF leakage) already have been shown to be the central estimate of PETM rates (if sustained over several ky). This is the real problem. And the CO2 rate is much larger: 10GtC/y and growing. The potential addition to that rate from thawing permafrost has been shown to be miniscule by comparison.
Expert like David Archer repeat that permafrost feedback is very slow. When talking about deep geological past in search for examples that unleashed said feedback, we need to be aware of the necessarily very long timescale of such events. I speculate (i'm not expert not even familiar with the processes triggering them) they can be even slower than for example orbital forcings. If it wasn't so, then we would have observed such feedback more frequently in the past (say every few orbital cycles of 100ky, rather than only couple in the entire 65My history of Cenozoic).
So, it is unlikely that 2.5 the rate of CH4 feedback will kick in next couple hundred y. The problem of FF emissions is occuring at least 100times faster, therefore its effects may come and go (assuming people grow up to the task of successful mitigation and end up with zero emissions soon), before permafrosts starts thawing. That's IMO the most likely scenario, based on our best knowledge, without scaremongering.
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MA Rodger at 22:45 PM on 18 August 20142nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
MattJ @1451 & @1455.
@1451 you use words of mine @1436 to exemplify "many people here get on their high horses in defense of science — yet show they cannot even read well enough to do it."
@1455 you complain of "three simple questions" that have failed to be answered here.
It is worth considering the reasons for both these complaints as they have a common source. My input @1436 pointed to potential confusion created @1435 which is also where we find your "three simple questions."
Perhaps I should give three simple answers - (1) What is the "it" you are asking about? (2) Who do you think we are, Sky Dragon Slayers? (3) See (2).
And be mindful, MattJ, that @1435 there had already been a prior trail of alleged missed points and disputes over what you had actually written.Seeking some semblence of sound thinking, we can look back to MattJ@1429 - "It does no good to quote the Second Law incorrectly, and then say, "it does not contravene the second law of thermodynamics" ... since you are still requiring radiating CO2 molecules in a -20C stratosphere to heat up an ocean layer that is on average above +20C ... it is still a violation of the "imaginary second law", but not of the law as Clausius really stated it." (Note my editing here makes things a whole lot clearer.)
Simply MattJ argues that the statement of the Second Law as presented in the SKS post is inadequate. He suggests using the WIkipedia version (from Clausius (1854) - an 1856 translation here) to overcome the inadequacies of the version used by the SKS post. Meeting a rebuff on this MattJ, you compound the confusion with comments that are pretty dire at describing your position and in detail packed with trollish statements.Now, if your "it" in your first question @1435 encompassed the whole of that '@1429 statement' presented above, then there is sensible discussion to be had. For myself, I see a lot of scope for improving the post but I am not convinced that some pre-photon eighteenth century quote will expose the nonsensical cherry-picking of Sky Dragon Slayers and their ilk, however authoritative the quote. Do note in the quote from Wikipedia and its source, Clausius still talks throughout in terms of "the interchange of heat between two bodies of different temperatures" and, beyond the implications of the word 'interchange', never makes clear that he talks of 'net heat flow.'
However to argue the "it" actually is the whole statement @1429 would be rather difficult as it requires some strange interpretation of the words used.
So my response to MattJ @1451 is this - It is not my reading of the words that is at fault but instead the fault lies with the writing of the words I am being expected to read. -
MA Rodger at 22:13 PM on 18 August 2014Error identified in satellite record may have overestimated Antarctic sea ice expansion
BojanD @22.
The transition from V1 and V2 (or V2 to V1) does indeed constitute the error in question. When you say there may be "a minor mistake lurking," do you really mean to suggest there is still something 'lurking' beyond the chosen method being properly applied, another abet minor V1toV2/V2toV1 mistake? I mention this as I can but assume such a harsh meaning is not intended. Yet it is still made.
Regarding your "enigma," it is your creation but its definition as you have described it down this thread has now become itself 'enigmatic'. (And I would add that the Nature article linked @15 had effectively made the "much more closely" comment which was also illustrated in the Supplimentary Discussion & Figures of Eisenman et at (2014) data for SIE (although not the SIA data), so the NSIDC post should not come as some recent revelation.) -
newairly at 19:55 PM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33C
"Why We're Definitely Not Headed for Another Ice Age"
is behind a paywall
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Dikran Marsupial at 18:21 PM on 18 August 20142nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
MattJ wrote "For he does say it expresses the same idea as "by itself", and we all agree that the heat transfer from colder CO2 to warmer ocean thin surface layer is ultimately driven by the energy input from the sun, it is not "taking place 'by itself'".
I think you still have not quite understood. While the original source of the heat is the sun, the upper atmosphere is warmed by outboud IR radiation emitted by the surface. Thus the interchange of heat between the surface and the upper atmosphere (no need to mention the sun at all) involves a greater transfer of heat from the surface to the atmosphere than vice versa.
It would be more accurate to say that the backradiation is not compensated by energy from the sun, but that it is directly compensated by outbound IR from the surface.
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Dikran Marsupial at 18:17 PM on 18 August 20142nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
MattJ wrote "I am genuinely surpised at your interpretation of the word 'generally'. I would have thought English is nor your native language. Either that, or you are the one who is 'digging' and engaging in pedantry."
As it happens, English is my first language (my second being MATLAB). In the context of the quote the word "generally" indicates that there are exceptions to the rule as stated, see e.g. the third definition given here):
3. without reference to or disregarding particular persons, things, situations, etc., that may be an exception:
What could those exceptions be? Rather obviously the exceptions are the cases where there are "some other changes...".
This doesn't weaken the second law at all, it is just a statement of only the general case of the second law, where the exception is not relevant (such as the case for the greenhouse effect, where no "some other change" need be introduced to explain what we observe).
The problem appears to be that you are unaware of a (perhaps idomatic English) usage of "generally", not that there is something badly wrong with the quote. As it happens, I am working on rewriting the article, and I shall use quotations from the translations of Clausius' book.
Now I asked: "MattJ@1460 does that mean you now agree with me on my interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics only applying to the net transfer of heat, and hence there is no need to introduce the "other changes" clause?"but you appear to have ignored yet another of my questions.
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Leland Palmer at 16:05 PM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
Hi scaddenp-
"The natural gas fields that you are associating with the methane hydrate are deep thermogenic gas."
I don't recall saying that these gas eruptions are associated with methane hyrates -just that they could be. I don't know that there are hydrates in the eruption craters, I just said that assuming only gaseous methane under pressure makes the calculated release smaller, I think. Maybe there are hydrates associated with these eruption events, maybe not. Maybe the methane is biogenic, maybe it's thermogenic. Permafrost can contain hydrates, but we don't know yet that these eruption events are associated with hydrate.
About the PT extinction, if I don't get carried away about that one, there are a series of carbon isotope excursions associated with extinction events that I can get carried away about instead. The largest calculated methane release I am aware of in a peer reviewed paper is one that claims a total release of about 12 trillion tons of carbon (16 trillion tons of methane) during the End Triassic.
There are hundreds of peer reviewed scientific papers that agree with the methane release explanation for the carbon isotope ratio excursions associated with a variety of mass extinction events. So, what would you be willing to bet that they are wrong? Would you bet the planet on it, for example?
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scaddenp at 15:23 PM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
I wouldn't get too carried away with PT extinction. Hydate release is but one hypothesis and like the others has it's strengths and weaknesses. Hydrate release could have been a contributing side-effect with others being the cause. The globe was a very different place in PT, including have much larger areas of shallower seas (and thus hydrates). It is an interesting problem but not one that you can use to draw too many conclusions about what might happen in the modern world.
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scaddenp at 15:17 PM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
The natural gas fields that you are associating with the methane hydrate are deep thermogenic gas.
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Leland Palmer at 15:14 PM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
Hi scaddenp-
"But I would also note you have such lakes and landscapes without any gas fields." Maybe. Some areas could be depleted enough by the eruption scenario of 8000 years ago that they fall below the threshold for commercial desirability. Or maybe there are such lakes and landscapes, currently free of methane. Or, maybe nobody has happened to drill in those areas. It's too soon to know, the hypothesis is still too new.
"Leakage of methane from thermogenic reservoirs can definitely create methane hydrates but they have a different chemical and isotopic signature to biogenic hydrates that are normal for permafrost. "
Huh? Who said anything about thermogenic methane? Most of it is of bacterial origin, and certainly isotope ratios can be used to investigate the origin of the methane, but so far as I know, we are talking about normal C13 depleted C12 enriched bacterially generated methane in the eruption scenario, with a bit of random thermogenic thrown in.
Having said that, it looks like an interesting link, and I'll read it. I'm not sure that how that applies to this eruption scenario, though.
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Leland Palmer at 14:57 PM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
Hi chriskoz-
To make it short and sweet, methane is scarier than CO2 because of the carbon isotope excursions associated with past mass extinction events like the End Permian, plausibly due to the release of trillions of tons of methane from the oceanic methane hydrates. The End Permian killed upwards of 90 percent of all species- surely more than 99% of all individual organisms. And the sun is hotter now than it was then, by a couple of percent- an effect Hansen says is equivalent by itself to 1000 ppm of CO2.
Two major greenhouse gases is much scarier than one, mainly because infrared absorption bands get saturated, and because of the ability of methane extend to extend its own lifetime through degradation of the hydroxyl radical degradation mechanism. And three major greenhouse gases is worse than two, if you figure that water vapor will increase about 7% per degree of warming, whether that warming is due to CO2 or methane.
Then there are the atmospheric chemistry effects of methane, and the oceanic chemistry effects of methane.
Strong atmospheric chemistry feedback to climate warming from Arctic methane emissions
"The indirect contribution to RF of additional methane emission is particularly important. It is shown that if global methane emissions
were to increase by factors of 2.5 and 5.2 above current emissions, the indirect contributions to RF would be about 250% and 400%, respectively, of the RF that can be attributed to directly emitted methane alone. " (RF is an abbreviation for Radiative Forcing)For the oceanic chemistry effects of methane, read Peter Ward's book "Under a Green Sky".
No, methane is definitely scarier than CO2. The runaway feedback effects of methane are far, far scarier.
Methane is why we need to ban fossil fuels, not just decrease their use.
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scaddenp at 14:37 PM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
But I would also note you have such lakes and landscapes without any gas fields. Leakage of methane from thermogenic reservoirs can definitely create methane hydrates but they have a different chemical and isotopic signature to biogenic hydrates that are normal for permafrost. I didnt find data for Yamal though in a quick look. Do you know of any? Examples of analyses from elsewhere in Siberian permafrost can be found here. Occam's razor only applies when you have hypotheses that can equally explain the data. I am not sure the data shows that.
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chriskoz at 14:25 PM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
Leland Palmer,
You seem to be missing the final point of David Archer's RC article:
In conclusion, despite recent explosions suggesting the contrary, I still feel that the future of Earth’s climate in this century and beyond will be determined mostly by the fossil fuel industry, and not by Arctic methane. We should keep our eyes on the ball.
Maybe because David did not clearly compare his GHG numbers coming from this "hole from the end of the world" with the FF emission numbers.
So let's try to hypothesize and assume the worst, that this hole is heralding a new PETM-like event. What type of CH4 emissions and what magnitude of GHG forcings can we expect as the result of such bold assumption? There is extensive literature on that subject. Let's take for example Schmidt & Shindell 2003, their Table 2 on p4 lists the possible PETM scenarios. The scenario David is talking about is the release of couple Gt/y on a short timescale. That corresponds roughly to this row in said table:
Experiment: 0.3 Gt/yr (5 kyr)
Atmospheric Concentration Increase (ppmv)
CO2 : 100
CH4 : 1.8
H2Ostr: 0.6
Forcing (W/m2)
CO2: 1.9
CO2+CH4: 2.6
Note the CO2 increase of just 100 (compared to antropo 120 already and rising). Also note the forcing in bold: it is about the same level of forcing antropo emissions have already achieved and rising. That should be really scary to you, not your tale from "the end of the world".
So, according to your own ockham's razor principle, you should be looking at the hints of what's already happening, rather than at the unsubstantiated speculations. To give you the examples of latest developments that should look "scary" to you, read those economic/political events/comments that incidentally could have been the topics of this Roundup. The news are from my part of the world. I don't know what part you live in, perhaps closeby as you're posting at the same time herein.
Claims of Australia's biggest oil discovery in 30 years
The dicovery is not that surprising to me. But the fact that:
Shares in Australian company Carnarvon Petroleum, a junior partner in the venture, instantly more than doubled on the news
look scary to me. Another scary news is the comment by this guy (the current OZ PM business advisor):
which means the politicians are complete nutters and ignorants when it comes to the AWG problems.
That's the ball David warns that you should keep your eye on. The methane tale should not obstruct that view.
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Leland Palmer at 14:11 PM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
Hi Tom Curtis-
"The current crater is of the same size as the "thousands" of little lakes on the Yamal peninsular, as can be seen by the video on the article to which you link, and which speckle the photo you showed."
Oh, I wasn't just talking about that one area of the Yamal Peninsula, Tom.
I was talking about the probably hundreds of thousands of generally circular lakes, of all sizes, that cover maybe 5 percent or so of the 13 million square kilometers of Siberia, and even a couple of small areas of the Canadian Archipelago. I urge you to fly around a little using Google Earth, and tell me what you see.
I really, really hope that they are due to thermokarst processes. I hope that there is another explanation for the apparent association of these lakes with the huge methane gas fields in the area. Occam's Razor works better with simpler systems than the whole planet, and two processes producing similar looking holes operating in the same area is not impossible - it just seems unlikely to me.
I really hope we will not see an accelerating series of methane eruption events- of all sizes- as the permafrost thaws, and subsequent slow releases of methane from enlarging craters. So far, we've apparently seen 3 such events - and it only takes two events to make a pattern.
But, thawed permafrost is weaker than frozen, and heated gas expands, and we are heating millions of square kilometers of permafrost with our human caused global warming.
And, the laws of physics and chemistry will not change just because we want them to. Ice still melts and gas still expands, and we really should not be surprised if the unexpected happens when we experiment on an entire planet.
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Leland Palmer at 13:15 PM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
Hi scaddenp-
I hope you are right, about the thermokarst. Phekhanov and his collaborators seem to take the eruption hypothesis seriously, though, and surely if anyone would know about thermokarst, these Russian scientists would.
Our modern rate of waming is much faster than past events, and is certainly much more systematic. Past events have not had the terrible consistency of human fossil fuel based climate forcing. So, things that took a couple of thousand years in the early Holocene could easily take only a hundred years now.
I'd like to see a serious calculation done, one that looks seriously at how much methane could be released by a realistic distribution and number of eruption events and a realistic duration of subsequent slow subsidence events. Nobody has done that, yet, that I know of, and I look forward to seeing the results.
I'm not convinced by Archer's calculation - it could easily be off by a factor of 10 or even 100, if methane continues to flow into the crater over decades or centuries.
And this first eruption event could be a tiny one, compared to the ones that may come.
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Leland Palmer at 12:50 PM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
Hi Tom Curtis-
Yes, we can argue the math. But we do have a process going on - abrupt global warming in the Arctic - which could produce very large numbers of simultaneous eruptions- and we don't know that they come in only one size. This mecanism could produce enough eruptions, of various sizes, perhaps, to fit Archer's reqirements for concern.
Global warming can also simultaneously produce other, perhaps larger, emissions of methane.
Or, this new explosive release plus slow subsidence mechanism could be the answer to the riddle of past methane catastrophes. This mechanism could form a bridge from a triggering mechanism like orbital forcing or a flood basalt eruption to a general release of methane from the oceanic methane hydrates.
Why draw a distinction between the large Yamal lakes and the smaller ones? Looking at the topography, which I urge you to do, these circular lakes come in all sizes. Perhaps the large ones are the result of the fusion of multiple eruption craters, but what we are concerned about the most is the total amount of methane released.
Do you believe that there is a bimodal size distribution? If so, that's interesting, and could be a clue to the nature of the process.
We're concerned about the total amount of methane released, not the amount released from any single event- or even the amout release by any single mechanism.
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scaddenp at 12:24 PM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
Even if all the "lakes" are methane craters, it is still not an issue if they formed over the whole of the holocene. Archer is asking how many craters do you need a relatively short period before there is problem. The methane in atmosphere from past outgassing of hydrates is clearly not an issue so you can only have a problem if there is a huge increase in rate. Without some detail on geology and detailed morphology of lakes, it's a bit premature to conclude that they are methane eruptions. Simple thermokarst lakes seems at least as likely.
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Leland Palmer at 12:22 PM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
I don't think that Plekhanov and his collaborators are proposing that the large circular lakes on the Yamal Peninsula were formed exclusively by an explosive process.
What he is saying, I think, is that an explosive eruption creates the first deep crater. That crater has a lake in the bottom of it. The lake undercuts or weakens the edges of the crater, and the edges keep falling into the deep crater. So, the craters enlarge in diameter but get much shallower as this process continues for decades or centuries.
But, during the enlargement process, I'm afraid that much more methane will likely be released than was released during the initial gas eruption.
Without the evidence of the crater itself, this whole process seems unlikely, which may be why the original hypothesis died in the 1980's- for lack of evidence.
Suddenly, though, with the generation of these 3 craters, the logic changes. Project the processes we see at work on this crater into the future, and what we get is a circular lake, just like the tens or hundreds of thousands of other circular lakes in this area of Siberia.
Saying that there is another explanation for these circular lakes suddenly seems to violate Occam's Razor. We would be postulating an unknown process to explain them, when we already know one process that could produce them - the eruption plus progressive enlargement process.
Except, the other lakes in the area are much, much bigger. One of the lakes near the Yamal crater is about 10 miles in diameter - at least 100,000 times the area of the current Yamal crater. So the inital eruption that may have produced this lake would have had to be much, much larger than the current Yamal eruption.
Can we safely ignore this chain of logic, and hope that there really are two unusual processes producing circular holes in these same geological areas, which just happen to sit above giant natural gas fields?
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Tom Curtis at 12:18 PM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
Leland Palmer @6:
1) The current crater is of the same size as the "thousands" of little lakes on the Yamal peninsular, as can be seen by the video on the article to which you link, and which speckle the photo you showed. This is particularly the case as erosion will fill the great depth of the creater by broadening the surface diameter. It is not the same diameter as the large lakes that dominate that picture, but there are not thousands of such lakes. Rather, there are about 34 of them, with the cluster of lakes in the picture being both the largest such cluster, and containing the three largest lakes on the peninsular. You can do your maths on the thousands, or on the thirty four. What you cannot legitimately do is do the maths on the three largest out of the 34 lakes, and multiply that out by the "tens of thousands".
2) The lake with the largest diameter, and the most circular of the three large lakes in the cluster has a diameter (generously) of 16 km, giving it at most an area 40,000 times that of the crater analysed by Real Climate. Based on that, the formation of the entire lake cluster would have released approximately 3 x 40,000 x 0.000003 (= 0.36 Gtonnes of methane) or 0.72 ppmv of methane. That is a 40% increase on the current concentration, but only 0.7% of a Sarkhova event.
You can argue details of that calculation. I would argue it is a probable overestimate in that the lakes were likely formed by the formation of a number of smaller crates which were then joined by erosion. To that point I note that they are not circular, and most of the large lakes are not even close to circular. Against that you might argue that a crater formed with a larger diameter would also have a greater depth of the methane chamber exposed, and hence more methane overall. While possible (indeed, probable for the intermediate and actually circular lakes of which there are many), it is invokeing a greater complexity in the phenomenon, and hence runs up against ockham's razor itself.
3) Regardless of how we do the maths on the lake complexes, for them to even contribute a 10% Sarkhova event, all the lakes and small craters must have formed more or less simultaneously. Even spaced out over a few centuries the rapid conversion of methane to CO2 in the atmosphere would mean the forcing would be best modified by a 1 or 2 ppmv increase in atmospheric CO2, which is inconsequential.
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Leland Palmer at 10:56 AM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
Hi Tom Curtis-
David Archer of Real Climate essentially calculated how much methane it would take to fill a hole the size of the current crater in Yamal, under a certain amount of pressure. It's not really a very big crater, and is less than 100,000 times the area of some of the large circular lakes on Yamal.
I would like to know how much methane would be released if Plekhanov's mechanism for forming the tens of thousands of circular lakes in the area is correct. It's not at all the same calculation, and the results could easily be different by millions of times.
It seems strange that there would be two geological processes for forming circular holes in the same area. This seems to violate Occam's Razor.
It seems strange that the circular lakes seem to concentrate in the same vicinity as current huge gas fields supplying a substantial portion of Europe's natural gas.
I don't want to borrow trouble, but I don't want to hide from it, either.
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Tom Curtis at 10:21 AM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
jenna, I'm not sure "breathing a sigh of releif" is the appropriate reaction in that we have got genuine problems enough from global warming. Perhaps, let's just not buy trouble when we are in over our ears already.
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jenna at 10:05 AM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
Thanks to Tom @3 for posting the link to the Real Climate article. I knew I had read that "sanity check" about methane releases somewhere but couldn't find it. Let's all breahte a sigh of release on that one!
Jen
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Tom Curtis at 09:40 AM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
Leland Palmer @1&2, Real Climate had a recent article on the release of methane by eruption craters:
"If the bubble was pure methane, it would have contained about … wait for it … 0.000003 Gtons of methane. In other words, building a Shakhova event from these explosions would take approximately 20,000,000 explosions, all within a few years, or else the climate impact of the methane would be muted by the lifetime effect."
As a further sanity check, those thousands of lakes probably formed during the transition from the last glacial to the current interglacial. That transition did not trigger a massive methane driven global warming event. Therefore they are not evidence that the current warming will do the what did not occur when they were formed.
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Leland Palmer at 09:05 AM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
Seriously, I invite other readers to look at the areas on this natural gas field map of Siberia in Google Earth, and see if they see the same correspondence between gas fields in the present and possible erruption craters in the past as I do:
The Yamal Peninsula is in the upper part of the image, in the left center. But most or all of the major gas fields marked on the map seem to be seriously pockmarked with thousands of possible methane eruption/subsidence craters, when you go to the corresponding areas in Google Earth and look for them.
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Leland Palmer at 08:36 AM on 18 August 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B
Regarding the changes in the Arctic, those Siberian Yamal Peninsula craters and the other Arctic methane stories are seriously scaring me. Not only are the stories about large methane emissions from the ESAS recorded by the oceanic expeditions scary, but so are the news stories above and the implications of the new explosive mechanism for releasing methane by methane eruption events.
Looking at Siberia with Google Earth, large areas are covered with tens of thousands of circular lakes and circular landscape features, and some of them are ten miles or so across. It seems possible that those tens of thousands of circular depressions were generated by similar methane gas eruptions, followed by melting of ice and methane hydrate and subsidence to enlarge the initial gas eruption craters.
Andrey Plekhanov, Senior Researcher at the State Scientific Centre of Arctic Research, thinks this might be the case:
Quoting Plekanhov- “‘I also want to recall a theory that our scientists worked on in the 1980s – it has been left and then forgotten for a number of years.
‘The theory was that the number of Yamal lakes formed because of exactly such natural process happening in the permafrost.
‘Such kind of processes were taking place about 8,000 years ago. Perhaps they are repeating nowadays. If this theory is confirmed, we can say that we have witnessed a unique natural process that formed the unusual landscape of Yamal peninsula.”The Yamal area gas fields, by the way, have been supplying large quantities of natural gas to Russia and Europe for decades, so there is a lot of methane in the area. Looking on Google Earth at the areas of Siberia that contain those giant methane gas fields, they seem pockmarked by thousands of circular lakes and other landscape features. There seems to be a visual correspondence between gas fields and the thousands of possible past methane eruption/subsidence craters.
We need to do a realistic calculation to of the methane generated by the hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of circular Siberian landscape features which could plausibly have been generated by this process.
Since erosion might soon erase such landscape features, it seems possible that most of the circular features visible using Google Earth were generated in a burst of methane gas eruption activity a few thousand years ago, perhaps in the early Holocene, as Plekhanov suggests.
Perhaps, no realistic scenario exists that would release sufficient methane rapidly enough to make a big difference. But, our rate of change of temperatures in the Arctic is very, very rapid, and a similar burst of methane eruptions might occur more rapidly now than in the early Holocene.
And, of course, these possible widespread methane gas eruptions are not the only change occurring in the Arctic, as permafrost melts and decomposes.
What are the possibilities of similar eruptions occurring in the shallow waters of the the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, as the shallow underwater permafrost there melts and potentially uncaps more reservoirs of methane?
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Tom Curtis at 08:32 AM on 18 August 20142nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
DSL, I don't know about burrying it, but a strong case for locking this thread can be made, and would be supported by every SkS commentator. Notifications of any errors in future edits could be made by email, and if somebody realy thinks they have a strong case for violation of the 2nd law, they can email a copy of a blog post as well, which can be published with or without reply should they be able to convince an "editor" and "two referrees" from the SkS team that that should be worthwhile.
Surely everything that is worth saying on this thread has already been said repeatedly.
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Tom Curtis at 08:28 AM on 18 August 20142nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
MattJ @1468-70:
1) We have established that Clausius' first statement of the 2nd Law, as translated into English was:
"[The] general deportment of heat [is that it] everywhere exhibits the tendency to annul differences of temperature, and therefore to pass from a warmer body to a cold one."
That was glossed by Clausius as:
"Heat cannot of itself pass from a colder to a warmer body"
The original purported quotation sourced from wikipedia and appearing in the OP is:
"Heat generally cannot flow spontaneously from a material at lower temperature to a material at higher temperature."
It mashes the two together, taking glossing "general deportment of heat" from the body of the text as generally, and glossing "of itself" in the footnote as "spontaneiously". Both glosses are transparently reasonable, ie, they fairly present the information content of the phrases they gloss. Presented as a summary of Clausius' first statement of the principle (rather than a direct quotation), it is therefore wholly unobjectionable. If you have a problem with the use of the word "generally", take it up with Clausius.
2) As already noted, I would prefer the use of either of the two more considered forms of Clausius statement, and as direct quotations. The word "generally" does not appear in either, so that should satisfy you.
3) As shown in my post @1444, the heat transfer processes between surface and atmosphere are not changed by the absence or presence of sunlight in the short term. Therefore they do not involve one of the changes which are irreversible except by supplying the heat deficit from warm to cold of which Clausius was talking about in the footnotes.
It is compensated by the direct flow of a greater quantity of heat from the warmer surface to the cooler atmosphere. That is the other case of "compensation" that Clausius discusses and does not involve the Sun in any way except in replenishing the heat thus lost by the surface. Discussing the Sun as compensating the supposed reverse flow of heat merely confuses the issue for not such net reverse flow occurs, and hence no such compensatory role is called for. (As stated initially, this case is quite different to that of refrigerators, where a compensatory change in pressure of the coolant is required.)
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DSL at 07:46 AM on 18 August 20142nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
I generally disagree with you, MattJ, but only because I'm trying to get this thread to 1500 comments. At that point, it will be taken out back and shot (and buried in an unpublished location).
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MattJ at 07:38 AM on 18 August 20142nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
@1452
""Spontaneously" is a perfectly reasonable synonym for "of itself" in this context, and the "generally" refers to the possibility of there being "some other change...", which happens not to be relevant in this case.
Please stop digging."
I am genuinely surpised at your interpretation of the word 'generally'. I would have thought English is nor your native language. Either that, or you are the one who is 'digging' and engaging in pedantry.
No, the only reasonble interpretation of the word 'generally' here is to make the whole sentence a generalization, which may have exceptions. But this in turn weakens the law to the point of uselessness, which is exactly why Clausius did not use the word 'generally' in <b>any</b> of his formulations. Not even in the footnote you provided. Nor is it used in any of the valid restatements of the law, both old and modern.
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MattJ at 07:28 AM on 18 August 20142nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
@1466 & @1464
That is, as Dikran said, good detective work. But I am still amazed that you can claim, "I need only add that the formulation given in the OP is certainly a good paraphrase of the last formulation quoted from Clausius. Therefore there is nothing wrong with it except for the point that paraphrases should not be presented as quotations."
That 'formulation' still has the disastrous interpolation, 'generally'. That weakens the law to the point of total uselessness. It accomplishes nothing and destroys everything. Even just ripping out that one word would improve the original article by a lot.
Remove that one word! That is all I ask! (though, I would also like direct quotes to be real direct quotes...)
I should also point out that at no time did I accuse SkS of dishonesty for making this mistaken statement of the law. But I cannot see it as anything other than negligence that it has gone uncorrected for so long, even after comment #955 pointed it out way back in 2011.
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MattJ at 07:14 AM on 18 August 20142nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
@1446
Dikran- Thanks for finding the link. I do need to point out, however, that when I right-clicked on the link labeled "Google Books", I got a broken URL. It was not hard to edit though: once I removed everything before "books.google.co", it worked (people using other browsers might have to insert/omit "http://" or "www.").
Now that I have read that note, I consider it more reasonable than I did before, to consider using his alternative statement of the same law "an uncompensated transmission of heat from a colder to a warmer body can never occur" and allow considering the sun's input of energy as such 'compensation'.
It still sounds odd to consider the sun's energy input 'compensation', we would not normally use the term that way nowadays, but as I read the footnote, I see he is using the term 'compensation' that generally. For he does say it expresses the same idea as "by itself", and we all agree that the heat transfer from colder CO2 to warmer ocean thin surface layer is ultimately driven by the energy input from the sun, it is not "taking place 'by itself'".
This has been a longer detour into the historical development of thermodynamics than any of us hoped for, but it does throw light on why the meme Science of Doom calls "the imaginary second law" is so persistent. Few thermodynamics courses at any level, even college level physics and engineering, are willing to take the time for such detours and show where misunderstandings of older thermodynamics terms and concepts still trip people up.
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billthefrog at 19:00 PM on 17 August 2014Climate scientists dub this year’s El Niño “a real enigma”
So, should we now refer to the phenomenon as an el Nigma?
(groan)
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Bart Verheggen at 07:42 AM on 17 August 2014Survey confirms scientific consensus on human-caused global warming
rkrolph,
I don't think that's quite true. Broadly agreeing with a dominant role of GHG in recent warming doesn't necessarily translate in being able to -or feeling comfortable to- put a relatively precise percentage range on it. In this case, choosing between the 3 categories (51-75; 76-100; >100%) that are all consistent with at least the most well known attribution statement. Because of the difficulty in choosing between these categories, many decided to fill out 'unknown' or 'don't know'. In many cases this can imo be interpreted as "we or I don't know the answer to that question to the level of precision that the answer options imply". An important argument for this interpretation is the comparison with the answers to Q3.
I don't think the answers to such a survey would be materially different a year from now. A year is a very short time in terms of scientific progress. Plus, the reasons as outlined above will still be valid, even as even more scientists may agree with the IPCC position.
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Dikran Marsupial at 05:07 AM on 17 August 20142nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Cheers Tom, I suspect you are right on the source, good detective work!
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Tom Curtis at 01:20 AM on 17 August 20142nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Dikran @1465, following up I have found the major revision of the wikipedia page on thermodynamics which eliminated the form of the statement quoted in the OP above, and replaced it with another version, which has since in turn been replaced. The original replacement took place on Oct 11th, 2010, with prior versions of the article having the quote in the OP. Evidently, therefore, the OP took its quote from the wikipedia page to which it linked. If it is a misquote, it is then entirely inadvertent as regards SkS. The original version on wikipedia may also explain the frequent occurence of that version on the web.
With regards to books, google books shows just five books containing that version of the quote. Of those, it shows the relevant contents of just three recent (2011 to 2013) textbooks, the former on "The Energy Problem", and the seond on thermodynamics, and the third being Farmer and Cook (2013). The earlier books are one from 2010 by Lawrence Soloman discussing "The Deniers", and one from 1992 by Richard Lindzen. Unfortunately without the text it is not possible to determine whether Lindzen attributes the version of the 2nd Law to Clausius, or whether he presents it as a quote.
Of the five, the most interesting is Stein and Powers (2011), which attributes the quote to "Rudolf Clausius' paper in 1850" (p27). In fact Clausius' talk to the Academy of Berlin in 150 was published in two parts in Pogendorff's Annalen, the first starting on page 368, and the second on page 500. These were translated in 1851, and included as the first memoir in the first edition of the "Mechanical Theory of Heat".
The closest formulation I can find in Clausius 1850 occurs on page 45 of the English first edition of "Mechanical Theory", and page 503 in the Annalen. In English it reads:
"Hence by repeating both alternating processes, without expenditure of force or other alteration whatever, any quantity of heat might be transmitted from a cold body to a warm one; and this contradicts the general deportment of heat, which everywhere exhibits the tendency to annul differences of temperature, and therefore to pass from a warmer body to a cold one."
The relevant principle is, of course, stated in the second part of the sentence. While the quote given in the OP is a good, if abbreviate, paraphrase of that sentence, it is also clearly not direct quotation. Interestingly, in the "Mechanical Theory" a footnote dates 1864 again glosses the principle stated in the body of the text as "... heat cannot of itself pass from a colder to a warmer body". That, or the alternative formulation, ie, that "A passage of heat from a colder to a hotter body cannot take place without compensation" have the strongest claim to represent Clausius' true formulation of the 2nd law (ie, the one he was happiest with on reflection).
Moving on: With misquotation, as with plagiarism, academic misconduct can exist in the absence of intent. That is why there are fairly strict academic rules about methods of quotation, which are always relaxed outside of strict academic contexts (and apparently always in the physical sciences). The strict rules are there to prevent inadvertent misquotation. One of those rules is that when you quote somebody indirectly by quoting somebody else quoting them you clearly indicate that so that any error can be attributed to the source that made the error. If you do not so attribute, you are considered as guilty of any error as if you yourself had made it.
In this case, however, clearly SkS misquoted here inadvertently by copying somebody elses "error". Further, they linked to their source and in a way that made it transperent that it was their source. At least, it made it transperent until the text of wikipedia was edited. Consequently no fault lies with the authors of the OP. Of course, that does not mean the text should not be updated with a correct quotation of an original source (or possibly rewritten in light of the other interesting material uncovered by this excercise.
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Dikran Marsupial at 20:58 PM on 16 August 20142nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Tom thanks for the adiditonal details, it does seem that Clasuius adopted the footnote for his second edition, as I mentioned in a previous post, but you have certainly clarified it further.
"I do not consider this a minor matter as misquotation is academic misconduct"
This is too strong a statement as it is only misconduct if done deliberately, if there is no intent to decieve, it is just an error and is not misconduct. I agree that it should be change if it turns out not to be a reasonable translation of something Clausius actually wrote, however this has not yet been established. It may be that his did write something along these lines in another work. Performing a google search suggests this exact wording does occur in other academic papers and books, so I doubt SkS are the first to make this error, if that is what it is. I am making enquiries...
However, in the light of my finding, I think it may be better just to rewrite the basic rebuttal from scratch as there is now a much more straightforward refutation of the myth based on Clausius' own understanding of his second law.
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rkrolph at 16:06 PM on 16 August 2014Survey confirms scientific consensus on human-caused global warming
Bart V.,
Thanks for the feedback. So, close to 20% of the AR4 authors were at least undetermined or unsure with respect to the precisely worded AR4 attribution statement. I think this survey was a great way to show where the consensus really is right now. I hope they do this survey in a year as I would expect the consensus should converge toward 100% as more evidence is gathered and the science improves. Unless, of course, legitimate contrarian evidence surfaces which would cause the numbers to go downward. This type of survey is a good way for non-experts to gauge that trend, without having to understand all the nuances of the scientific debate. That is important since it is the non-scientific public that needs to be convinced.
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Tom Curtis at 14:39 PM on 16 August 20142nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Dikran @1461, thankyou. In the second edition, Clausius attributes the formulation of the footnote in the first edition to himself (p78), and repeats much of the explanation from that footnote. In particular, he mentions the passage of heat from the colder to the hotter body, which is not prohibited, provided that a greater amount of heat flows in the opposite direction. His wording is:
"It is true that by such a process (as we have seen by going through the original cycle in the reverse direction) heat may be carried over from colder into a hotter body: our principle however declares that simultaneiously with this passage of heat from a colder to a hotter body there must either take place an opposite passage of heat from a hotter to a colder body, or else some change or other which has the special property that it is not reversible , except under the condition that it occasions, whether directly or indirectly, such an opposite passage of heat."
He concludes by formulating the 2nd law as:
"A passage of heat from a colder to a hotter body cannot take place without compensation."
That means in editing the OP to correct the misquotation, the author may use the above formulation, or that from the footnote which is now acknowledged by Clausius as his own. They need only include a link to the source either instead of or in addition to the link to wikipedia.
I need only add that the formulation given in the OP is certainly a good paraphrase of the last formulation quoted from Clausius. Therefore there is nothing wrong with it except for the point that paraphrases should not be presented as quotations.
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Tom Curtis at 13:57 PM on 16 August 20142nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Dikran @1453, while I still disagree that it is a cause of confusion, I do have to agree with Matt that the form of the 2nd law given in the article is not a quotation of Clausius, and is portrayed as such. If it was a paraphrase, it should not have been enclosed in inverted commas and should not have been indented (but may be higlighted in italics). By including quotation marks and indentation, the OP (whether intentional or not) has marked the statement as a quotation of Clausius, or (as it is in English) a fairly literal translation of Clausius. Further, if it is intended as a translation, it should be identical to the translation of the apparent source given for the quote, ie, the wikipedia article linked in the sentence introducing the quote.
As it happens, I have found a reproduction of the original Clausius article in german. From that it can be clearly seen that footnote was not included in that article, and hence it cannot be attributed to Clausius. On the other hand, Clausius did read and approve the proofs (footnote on page vii of the English translation). Therefore Clausius not only endorsed the translation of the principle given in that book, and quoted by wikipedia, but he also endorsed the explanation of the second law as given in that footnote. (He may even have written it, but we do not have proof of that and hence cannot attribute it to him.)
Turning to the actual words of Clausius,they were:
"es kann nie Wärme aus einem kälteren in einem wämeren Körper übergehen, wenn nicht gleichzeitig eine ander damit zussamenhängende Aenderung eintritt."
Google translate renders that as:
"it can never pass heat from a colder to a wämeren body, if not at the same time one other so zussamenhängende change occurs"
From that it appears that the rendition from the English version, and as given by wikipedia is fairly literal:
"Heat can never pass from a colder to a warmer body without some other change, connected therewith, occurring at the same time."
Given that, and the implied endorsement of the translation mentioned above, I think it is unreasonable to not take them as his words. The "quotation" in the original post, however, cannot be taken as anything but a loose paraphrase of those words, or a paraphrase of the English gloss from the footnote (which being originally published in English, requires no translation).
Given all this, the OP should be editted either to include the form of Clausius words as given in the English translation as quoted in wikipedia, or the text should be modified to indicate the law as actually given is a paraphrase, or the author's own phrasing of the law.
I do not consider this a minor matter as misquotation is academic misconduct, and therefore something SkS should never do except by accident, and in the later case the error should be corrected as soon as possible.
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PluviAL at 10:37 AM on 16 August 2014Global warming is moistening the atmosphere
Ian F: I got a real nice response from Snow and Ice Center. They detailed that in 2010 the loss was 134 Gt, 3 in 2011, and 23 in 2012, and that it is now losing 159 Gt per year.
It seems we need to keep good funding to our satellite and scientific talent. It is nice to have these measuring capabilities, and it would be a shame to let them degrade when they are most needed.
It is reassuring that we have people who study and understand these issues well. Although, this is a little frightening that Antarctica does not seem to be helping us, as much as guessed that it could. It seems intutiively, that it should be a moisture sink, rather than a net contributor.
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tcflood at 08:29 AM on 16 August 2014Global warming is moistening the atmosphere
One interesting side effect of this upper tropospheric moistening is that since the HCH bending vibrations of methane are overwhelmed by the HOH bend of water, the warming effects of increasing methane concentrations should be somewhat mitigated by higher humidity. Does anyone know if model projections show this effect?
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Phil at 07:56 AM on 16 August 20142nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
MattJ @1450
If, as you say, he had only used the word 'spontaneously', you would be correct. But he also put in the word 'generally', making it useless as a physical law.
Unfortunately the word "generally" is there to cover Spontaneous endothermic reactions, These are reactions driven by a large increase in entropy, which can overcome a loss of enthalpy (and hence heat), and ensure that the change in Gibb free energy is still negative. This, of course, is to modify Clausius's words to cover the modern understanding of the second law of thermodynamics, which is only rigourously expressed mathematically (as Tom did @1441).
Thus Clausius's formulation of the 2nd law is actually incomplete as we now understand it. The author of the OP could either quote him directly and expose himself to the criticism that it was incomplete, or add the word "generally" to deal (albeit rather vaguely) with our current understanding.
I would also point out that you are (now) misrepresenting post 955, which does not object to the word "generally".
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Dikran Marsupial at 06:33 AM on 16 August 20142nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
MattJ@1460 does that mean you now agree with me on my interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics only applying to the net transfer of heat, and hence there is no need to introduce the "other changes" clause?
BTW, the translation of the second edition suggests the footnote may not be an addition by the translator as the corresponding material is in the text of the second edition (translated by somebody else).
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MattJ at 06:30 AM on 16 August 20142nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
@1446
Thank you, Dikran, for that excellent find! Sure, a footnote several times the length of the text may be intimidating, but that one was well worth reading And his formulation in that footnote, "...the warmer body never receives more heat from the colder one that it imparts to it." Is particularly good for silencing the skeptic's objection. Now the cold CO2 can impart heat to the warmer thin ocean layer as long as the latter gives more heat back.
I wish modern texts had footnotes that explained the meaning of the various terms as well as that one did. But that is an old-fashioned practice, rarely duplicated now. They try to do the same with sidebars with only mixed results.
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2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
MattJ - What I find most frustrating in these discussions are exactly statements like "you have heat going from cooler to hotter".
"Heating" in colloquial usage is an increase in net energy causing an increase in temperature. Energy goes from cool objects to warm objects (in fact, to all objects within the radiative view of that cool object), not heat, not by the common use of that term.
Energy goes from cooler to warmer objects, which add to the sum of energy going into that warm object, an increase of incoming energy - and hence the object must warm to radiate energy equal to incoming.
But the net flow of energy, heat, is still from the warm object to the cool one. Adding a cool object simply reduces that net energy transfer.
To be more precise, a cooler object will cause a warmer object (or one of any temperature) to increase in temperature if that cooler object adds >0 energy, if the cool object radiates/conducts/convects more energy than an absolute zero background. The starting point is an contribution of zero, anything warmer than that will add incoming energy to an object in view, increasing the input.
For some reason the fact that any radiating object represents a positive contribution to incoming energy gets somehow overlooked in these discussions.
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Dikran Marsupial at 06:21 AM on 16 August 20142nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
"Then to the skeptic who still object, "but you have heat going from cooler to hotter", we can say, "but entropy did increase, so there is no violation".
or alternatively, you could just show them the pages in Clausius' book where it is carefully explained that this is O.K. as it is "compensated" by a greater flow of heat in the other direction. There is then no need to mention entropy.
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