Eliminating all Man-Made CO2 -- Earth gets Warmer?
Global warming advocates say that CO2 builds up in the atmosphere over a 50 to 250 year period, but this is not true. Figure 1 below shows that the CO2 concentration oscillates based on the growing season in the Northern Hemisphere. The ratio of land to ocean in the Northern Hemisphere is about 1 to 1.5 and in the Southern Hemisphere is 1 to 4. Therefore, the Northern Hemisphere with much more land mass has a growing season that dominates the Southern Hemisphere growing season with respect to absorption of CO2.
Does a correlation exist between the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and the earth's temperature? No! Does an increase in CO2 cause the earth's temperature to increase? No! Figure 1 below was developed by Joseph D'Aleo, certified meteorologist. Even a non-scientist can see there is absolutely no correlation between CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and the earth's temperature. If there were a correlation, they both would rise and fall together. The CO2 has been on a continuous upward trend - not true for the earth's temperature.
In Figure 1, each year around April, increased CO2 absorption by plants in the Northern Hemisphere starts reducing the CO2 in the atmosphere and the reduction continues until around mid to late August when plants start to go dormant. The cycles occur on a regular yearly basis and the swing in CO2 concentration is in the 5 to 8 ppmv range. If CO2 stayed in the atmosphere for long periods before being consumed, the season to season cyclic effect would not be seen. It is clear that nature reacts very fast in its consumption of carbon dioxide.
The atmospheric concentrations of CO2 were taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. Two sets of temperature measurements are shown, one set by NASA's Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) for the troposphere and the other by the UK's Hadley Climate Research Unit for the land and sea. Both show declining temperatures over time even as CO2 has increased from 366 ppmv in January 1998 to 385 ppmv by January 2008. Note that the land-sea and lower troposphere temperatures in January 2008 were some 0.7 Degrees C cooler than in January 1998.
Comments
Unfortunately we have too many advisors to governments and government officials who regard themselves as being infallible, an honor once accorded only to the pope at the Vatican. So governments in several countries have committed themselves to expenditures in the $-billions aimed at carbon reduction. The power industry did much to reduce carbon emissions at times past and independently of state decree. The thermodynamic efficiency of thermal power stations has improved with the introduction of ultra-critical steam power . . . the improvement has appreciably reduced carbon emissions, however unnecessary. I've even come across a government-sponsored carbon reduction initiative where citizens are encouraged to invest in CFL lights, LED lights, more efficient air conditioners and refrigerators to reduce carbon emission in a region that receives only hydroelectric power.
I believe you have revealed what is really going on with energy industry carbon emissions management and the whole AGW debate with your statement "government-sponsored carbon reduction initiative where citizens are encouraged to invest in CFL lights, LED lights, more efficient air conditioners and refrigerators to reduce carbon emission in a region that receives only hydroelectric power."
Carbon emissions reduction, indeed the whole global climate change debate, is being used by governments as an excuse to promote changes in public behaviors for reducing energy use, and also to make fossil fuel sources less economically viable. I submit that governments are actually being quite clever using carbon emissions reduction as one of the reasons because even if it is (proven to be) a false reason, they know the public is very passionate about the global climate change crisis. Getting the public to adopt these conservation and efficiency upgrade measures requires a widespread culture change with consumers, which would not normally be an easy thing to do effectively.
Major highways in my neck of the woods are as crowded with people burning gasoline and diesel as they were before. Maybe they talk the talk but they sure do not walk the walk.
Real change happens when technology enables it. People will stop burning gas when there is a viable electric car that is as good as the gas alternative and cheaper to buy and operate. People will use public transit when it is as reliable and comfortable and convenient as their personal vehicle alternative. People do not want to ride in cattle trucks and pay a premium for doing so. That is why most people are prepared to wait in traffic jams rather than take the train. At least they are not jammed in a railcar with hundreds of others getting sneezed all over. The best possible way to get H1 N1 is take public transit.
So what we need is technology - not more stupid public policies.
Malcolm
I think you give governments too much credit for being clever. And you give consumers too much credit for caring about climate change if it costs them anything.
I can think of some very good reasons for changing the public's energy consumption habits. First, imported oil helps support regimes that are not particularly friendly. Drive your car and you support a despot. Second, coal is dangerous - to those who dig it out of the ground and those who have to breathe it's untreated effluent and those who have to live near the combustion waste piles. Third, even if shale gas reserves meet their promise, it appears getting the stuff out of the ground could endanger our health even more than mining and burning coal. Fourth, consuming the most desirable fossil fuels (light crude and natural gas) at current rates is not sustainable for more than a few decades, and it could take a lot longer than those few decades to develop and introduce substitutes.
Notice that I have not once mentioned CO2.
I don't think we have to force the public to make drastic changes in lifestyle, with the possible exception of making urban life a more attractive option than suburbia. However, when an air conditioning plant uses electricity to chill air at a constant and uncontrolled rate and then it uses more electricity to reheat that same air because the chillers that can't be throttled is producing more cold air than is required, well that's just wasteful and unnecessary. Similarly, when it's deemed more cost-effective to build another peaking plant instead of finding a way to install similarly priced distributed thermal storage for cooling, something's not right. Even pretty simple things can make a big difference. In the course of building a new home, we learned that $500 worth of labor and spray foam could reduce our winter heating bills by up to 33%. the payback period is less than a year.
The US imports quite a large chunk of its oil from Canada and I would not place Stephen Harper our Prime Minister in the category of despot - although I am sure some may argue otherwise.
Drive your car and support the Maple Leaf might be a better slogan.
But you are right saving energy should be viewed as an investment with a rate of return - and cut out the ideology.
Malcolm
I can see there's quite a bit of dancing around the climate issue, because who wants yet another yelling match on that front? I know I don't.
I think both AGW advocates and critics agree on most things in terms of going forward, but some critics dispute the pragmatism of accepting AGW even if the ends might justify the means. I can appreciate this sentiment as well.
Perhaps we could agree that looking for efficiency gains is a good idea, as there is some low hanging fruit there. Since it just saves money for the consumer, it's hard to dispute.
Also, I think one could argue that reducing/displacing oil use is a good long term goal as well, given the problems associated with peak oil.
See? No CO2 mentioned here either.
Third, I think re-establishing our nuclear power program and getting some new nuclear power plants built is a good idea as well. I think as coal use increases, the (non-CO2) costs associated with coal use will only increase.
I can appreciate how skeptics of AGW can see how this whole thing can seem to be another mechanism of control by foreign officials in some world office. I couldn't agree more with that as well. That's an argument to get our country's in a mode where we use our own energy. This starts with displacing oil use. Our dependence on Mid-East oil has already caused more global problems (the ascendancy of radical Islam) than embracing the concerns of AGW ever will.
Practically everything you guys say here is correct, I will agree with you. What Malcolm reveals about consumers not wanting to give up gasoline cars for trains or electric cars is that comfort and convenience has large value with consumers, a lot more value than the feel-good potential of generating less carbon emissions.
Giving up incandescent light bulbs for CFLs, or buying more efficient refrigerators and air conditioners are changes that don't sacrifice anywhere near as much comfort and convenience. What I am saying is there is potential (for governments or anyone else) to sell these sorts of things by tapping into consumers’ passions about climate change, knowing full well that consumers otherwise will typically wait until their existing appliances are reaching near end-of-service life. Granted if consumers could save a substantial amount of money doing these things, they don't need much extra motivation from other passions, consumers’ wallets are far more important.
(I started my electronics engineering career over 25 years ago designing microchips for a few years that go into hearing aids. I was astonished that hearing aids were so expensive yet they sell in mass numbers worldwide so well, often typically subsidized heavily in countries with publicly funded healthcare like Canada’s. This happens largely because hearing has tremendously high value to people, yet in spite of general public knowledge that long-term exposure to loud noise, like listening to rock concert level music, causes hearing damage later in life, consumers still do these things too because the value of entertainment wins out over health risks.)
Guys, when it comes to fostering changes in the public’s behaviors, particularly when it comes to buying into new products or buying into lifestyle changes, marketing messages can and do have a huge impact on effectively selling them. Technology alone does not normally sell itself, especially in its early stages, unless there are obviously significant savings to consumers’ wallets.
"In the course of building a new home, we learned that $500 worth of labor and spray foam could reduce our winter heating bills by up to 33%. the payback period is less than a year."
This is a beautiful example of how marketing, or lack of it, influences consumers, in this case buyers of new homes. While your statement is correct and can save a consumer significant money over time, you have to ask why aren't more new home builders implementing this. Indeed why aren’t consumers generally aware of it.
New home builders don’t attempt to sell this extra foam and labor in spite of the fact they can potentially make a profit on it selling it as an "upgrade" to the house. Builders tend instead to make houses according to minimum code standards, then soak consumers for any upgrades the buyer asks for (100% cost markup is typical for a builder's upgrade profit). If they instead were to advertize it as a standard feature in their homes, they first commit themselves to putting it into every house even if some potential buyers don't want to pay for it, and secondly they lose out on the profit potential to offer it as an upgrade.
New home buyers in many cases won’t even ask for it simply because they don’t know about it, since builders generally don’t advertize all the myriad of upgrades possible when ordering a new house.
Energy technology is a harder sell but I am absolutely positive that if someone develops an electric car that is as comfortable, convenient, easy to maintain and cheap to run in ranges that are comparable to a gasoline vehicle they will sell by the millions.
Conversely garbage technology that does not REALLY work abounds and needs the hard sell and government incentives to make it attractive to wary customers. That;s why solar panels currently will never sell in significant numbers. Even the most technologically illiterate folks on the planet knows that its only going do do anything for you half the time. They do not work in the dark.
Good technology that does what it says and does it better and easier than the previous technology will indeed sell itself.
What we are short of is good technology in the energy business - not the fake stuff the so called "greens" keep trying to shove on us. Like mini flourscents that do not last anywhere close to what is claimed, cost 10 times the price and save you absolutely nothing and do not overall save any energy whatsoever. People are very wary of that sort of phony marketing.
People are probably careful about spraying foam into their new house as a result of the Urea Formaldehyde foam fiasco of the Federal Government some years ago. Another fake technology promoted by the greens who rapidly disowned it when they realized they made matters worse (as they often do).
Good technology is about as rare as common sense.
Malcolm
Malcolm
Good technology will only sell itself in its later stages of commercialization. Consumers have been conditioned to be wary about ANYTHING new until it has a track record, in fact so have governments. Once a new technology becomes widely advertized and its merits become widely known for being good technology, then and only then I agree with you it tends to sell itself.
"Good technology is about as rare as common sense."
One's view of what is good and what is not, or what is common sense is often a highly personal opinion in general. For everything you are prepared to ridicule, I'll bet you can find 1000 consumers including ones that have higher education levels that will disagree with you.
A good example lately is Toyota cars. Hundreds of thousands of consumers buy them and thought they are among the best technology automobiles, yet many today are changing their minds about how good they are, all because of one tiny mechanical deficiency in gas pedal design that can be supposedly fixed with a tiny slab of cut stainless steel. To technically educated people like you Malcolm, such a deficiency wouldn't warrant condemnation of the whole Toyota brand, but the public's degraded “perception” of the Toyota brand is expected to cost Toyota potentially billions in lost sales. And by the way, didn’t I say marketing and publicity have a lot to do with public “perceptions”.
It may seem like a "tiny mechanical deficiency" to you but thats is like saying Apollo 13 had a "tiny mechanical deficiency". It's not the size of the deficiency is it? It is the consequences of the deficiency. I am surprised that someone as educated as yourself cannot see the difference.
When your vehicle is accelerating uncontrollably into the rear of the vehicle in front I don't think the size of the deficiency really comes to mind. Or maybe you would just sit back and say thank goodness for Toyota airbag technology and pray it works better than the gas peddle.
Such omissions do indeed put the entire brand into question. Clearly these critical components were installed without adequate testing and quality assurance. If their QA was as good as they say this would have been found before the cars went in to full production. QA is a program vital to any manufacturing outfit and that program in Toyota is not working very well. The QA program affects all products they make not just one. Therefore if their QA is broken then yes absolutely I do question the ability of Toyota to make cars that are safe. These are major technical blunders - not tiny mechanical deficiencies.
To further illustrate the point Bob, it was a tiny technical deficiency that caused the space shuttle seals to fail that killed 7 astronauts. Nothing wrong with the other 99.99% of the space craft until after it exploded into a million pieces. A misaligned piece of rubber. It was a tiny piece of insulation - just happened to knock a hole in a critical component the heat shield - that caused the death of another set of astronauts.
The bottom line is Bob you can afford to make blunders in the paint or the seat cloth or the material on the dash board. With the gas pedal and the brakes and a few other vital components tiny technical deficiencies are just not permissible.
I don't ridicule Bob...I simply just tell the facts as they are. You may not like the truth of what I say because you seem to have been swayed by the marketers but that is up to your conscience not mine. Mini flourescent light bulbs use more energy to make than they save. The energy used to make them comes from coal in China where most are manufactured. I can give you the data if you would like. They do not last the 10 times longer than incandescent light bulbs that is emblazoned on most packaging - unless of course you leave them on 24 hours a day 7 days a week -which defeats the whole objective doesn't it. That is why I say they are not good technology...because they do not do what they say they do. They are sold as an energy saving device but they do not save energy. In the financial world that is called fraud.I don't think it is ridicule to state facts as politically incorrect as that may be.
There are many very good technologies that do not require "selling". MRI is another one that really did not require much marketng. The benefits were obvious from the outset. Electronic cameras is another. I just bought a new Canon EOS camera. Takes 1500 pictures of superb quality on a single chip that allows me to see the picture the instant it is taken. My previous camera used roll film and took just 36 and has to wait three days before I could see them.
Those are good technologies that have changed the landscape of their particular industries. Much of what I see in the "energy saving" world is not even close to that most of it rates as gimmicks.
As I said good technology is rare. Bad technology is plentiful.
Perhaps now you will understand why large nuclear power plants are viewed by so many as being an unacceptable safety risk. I can recall you saying many times on this website that the chances of nuclear power plant accidents are so extremely low it makes no sense to condemn them for safety concerns. However the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl disasters are still vividly remembered to this day around the world, so by your own logic about Toyota gas peddles, I think you get my point. Why should the public view nuclear plants any differently than many are now viewing Toyota cars.
Don’t get me wrong here, being a technical person I can live with small probabilities of failure. I wouldn’t have a big problem with driving a Toyota, or building more large nuclear plants, because I learned a long time ago that the mean-time-between failures for something that is very complex in design, or something that is mass produced in large numbers, is a statistical game where the chances of failures is NEVER absolutely zero.
It is also growing public knowledge that fossil fuels will likely become much more expensive to extract from the earth, and like the case of peak oil are likely to decline in production and rise substantially in price on average. When combined with the knowledge all fossil fuels are also responsible for man-made contributions to atmospheric CO2, small or otherwise, you have a recipe for two unstoppable trends;
a) the deliberate rigging of economic rules by government policymakers to make alternate energy sources more viable and oil less viable, and b) preying on the public’s passions to reduce man-made CO2 by getting us to change our energy use behaviors. The latter will be characterized by fostering new technologies to reduce energy uses with conservation and efficiency upgrades. The perceived economic benefits, particularly when it comes to electricity generation, is that the cheapest megawatt to build new generating capacity for is the megawatt the public is persuaded to avoid using in the first place.
The issues in the article here are the numbers and whether rising CO2 levels have anything at all to do with warming. Is it possible we are seeing warming n the polar regions but greater cooling outside the polar regions such that over the entire globe there is net cooling going on. If this is possible, then in my books it still means widespread climate pattern disruption, which is just as bad as overall net warming.
I'm curious what your crystal ball is saying, being probably one of the best on the planet in my view.
It would help to expose just how much the public cares about the environment because many consumers would then have the capacity to vote with their wallets when they go shopping for electricity. In light of my opinion here, the renewable source generation people in principle should be extremely in favor of adopting IMEUC, whereas coal and nuclear generators would likely be against it.
The moral of my comment here is that your IMEUC proposals would not just open up true generator competition and be good for consumers, it would open up a pandora's box for vested interests in conventional electricity generation. Needless to say your IMEUC concept is bigger and potentially more revolutionary than anyone can imagine.
I wish I had a crystal ball like yours.
Also thanks on IMEUC. I just wonder whether anyone else but you and me has even read the documents.
And you are quite right that there is no room for error in some critical components and in some critical technologies - nuclear power being one. But there are many other of course. Aircraft is another. Spacecraft another.
In nuclear technology thereis never reliance on a single system or a single component and there are multiple back-ups. A nuclear power plant does not have one system for shutting down the reactor and keeping the fuel cool it has several and they are triplicated.
Of course none of this thinking appears in Toyota or any other car manufacturers products for that matter. Deaths on the road caused by various vehicle malfunctions and design flaws or not great but they are significant and many times greater than that of nuclear power plants. Strangely no-one calls for triplicated safety systems on cars.
Compared to operating a motor vehicle nuclear plants are infinitely safer.
More people are killed on the roads of the USA every month than were killed at Chernobyl - but apparently that is OK.
The key point though Bob is that the "fly-by-wire" gas pedal introduced by Toyota appears to have missed some critical QA steps which is why their reputation is taking a beating just as Fords did when the tyres started to blow out on one of their models.
And I certainly do think the public expects flawless performance from the safety features of the cars that they buy.
And I do fully understand the expectation of the public when it comes to nuclear power plants. But of course it depends on which member opf the public you are talking about. If you go to any community with a nuclear power plant in their jurisdiction you will find that by far the majority consider them to be safe...which of course they are.
But I am sure if your public was drawn from other communities one may get a different answer. You will be interested I am sure on an upcoiming documentary "My Nuclear Neighbour" due to be aired on the CBC this Thursday. It will answer some of your questions about how safe nuclear p;lants are. (Much much safer than driving a vehicle - even a Toyota).
Thoughtful points Bob as always.
One thing I agree with you on though is people judgements of risk are entirely subjective. Not only that everyone's perception of risk is different.
Most people place the risks of nuclear power very high. The risk is actually very low (Real data Len - not my opinion). They place the risk of dying as a result of smoking lower than the risks of nuclear power - it is the other way around.
So absolutely right peoples perception of risk has nothing to do with the probability actually associated with that risk. However if you are behind the wheel of a car that is accelerating out of control it really doesn't matter does it.
99.99% is irrelevant if you are the poor soul that gets stuck with the .01%.
But Len you shed most of your credibility when you toss around opinions on probabilities as if they were facts....please take a leaf out of your own book before you criticise others.
Malcolm
Climate change odds much worse than thought - MIT Press
"The new projections, published this month in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate, indicate a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90% probability range of 3.5 to 7.4 degrees."
In this case they added in expected economic activity and projected an outcome based on a "no change" scenario i.e. no allowance for techniological innovation, no change in expected birth rate, etc.
The article goes on to state "...the model does not fully incorporate other positive feedbacks that can occur, for example, if increased temperatures caused a large-scale melting of permafrost in arctic regions and subsequent release of large quantities of methane..." I assume it also doesn't take into account any suggestions that solar activity has been a much better indicator of climate change than CO2 concentrations.
They do include allowances for all of the volccanic activity in the 20th century that has masked warming that would have appeared except for the particulate matter thrown into the atmosphere. Which is news to me. I was unaware that all of this vocanic activity had such a large impact on temperatures and haven't seen references to it in other places.
Using computer models and their projections as proof of something, when the models don't consider cloud cover or cloud formation and when the feedbacks the model uses are numbers that the operators feed into the system seems meaningless.
Computer models are not a substitute for a theory of climate change that can explain warmer temperatures during Viking habitation of Greenland, the Roman optimum period and the Halocene Optimum. When a computer model has adequate parameters to model periods of our recent history when temperatures were higher than now, without higher CO2 concentrations, and when it can reflect the cooling that occurred with the "Little Ice Age," the subsequent recovery (our current century and a half warming period) and the 11 year long stoppage in warming that has occurred since 1998 as CO2 concentrations have continued climbing, then you might have something worth paying attention to.
Paul Stevens
To your earlier comment, I believe that Dr. Romm would have a very difficult time supporting his high opinion of EE's cost/benefit ratio based on DATA rather than projected results. I doubt he would bother to try.
Ed
Of course if you don't like Fox News complaining about it, why not look back at the Collegian itself? It isn't six months yet, so I'm still not going to dive into this debate other than to reiterate previous points, such as self-investigative whitewashings. As the author above puts it, you wouldn't accept Exxon investigating ITSELF over the Valdez sinking now would you? Amazing how prejudicial blinders operate.
Len, so NOW you're an open-minded non-believer in AGW? Wow, I never thought I'd see the day. Perhaps you've accidentally clicked on some of the hundreds of links I've posted for you over the years and a seed of doubt is finally growing there between your ears. If so, great.
I can appreciate that not everything Joe Romm says is gospel. However, there is quite a bit of low hanging fruit with respect to energy efficiency (especially for some industrial processes) that can pay for themselves in 1-2 years. I don't think he was fibbing in this regard. I'm not talking CFLs. More like old equipment that had not been improved that was using up oodles of electricity or NG.
Jeff,
Yes, we have the 6 month agreement. I just wanted to get that information out there so you could say that it was a white wash. All part of the process. It looks like the only thing missing from this AGW conspiracy is Michael Mann on the grassy knoll.
This last one, John Coleman, Founder of the Weather Channel, discusses. Here is a short video he made in case you haven't seen it. It is worth watching.
http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/81559212.html
I've done analysis myself as well and I don't think it's a scam. Most of the points brought up by AGW skeptics (like the water vapor issue that John Coleman leads off with) are explained by detailed information about the phenomena that the skeptics don't seem to want to take the trouble to understand. The experts (whose job it is to investigate this stuff) think there is something going on, but that can't be right (can it?) so the skeptics cry out "conspiracy!". If your mindset is based on a large conspiracy being in place, you are DELUSIONAL. There's no other way to put it.
Your paper above contains at least two factual errors that I haven't even bothered to comment on. (CO2 lifetime in the atmosphere and CO2 correlation with temperature). It's not worth it because when critiqued you either complain about being badgered or else bring up further points that I have to waste more time refuting.
I'm the first to admit that not everything is know about AGW. And the first to admit that the potential costs of changing our behavior is onerous. But I think most people reading this site also agree that we have too many people on the planet. As humans, we've been pretty clever at managing resources such that lots of people can live pretty well, but like an overdrawn investment bank, when things finally start to tip unfavorably, they can tip pretty fast. I think the skepticism about AGW is a denial of the reality that we are living in a resource constrained world. While most of this can accept this in theory, when the implications of the reality hits, its hard for some of us to accept it.
Look at it this way; we are in global peak oil NOW, yet Bob writes a rant about denying global warming. This is like complaining about a dirty salad fork in the main dining room of the Titanic. WAKE UP, PEOPLE!!!
As to scientific discussion, I still fondly recall the hysterically IR funny photon taking a brownian walk through 60,000 feet of atmosphere. Does that count as science?
Jim, you don't want to wait 6 months do you? I TOLD you it would be a whitewash, I TOLD you WHY it would be a whitewash and you pretend conspiracy. So answer the question, do you have any problem with Chinese milk companies "investigating" tainted milk? RJR Reynolds "investigating" the hazards of smoking? Do I need to go on, or has your sarcasm limit been reached?
As to CO2 in the atmosphere for thousands of years (Albert Einstein Gore quote), I have one simple test. In 1945 we blew off several nuclear weapons and hundreds more since then in the atmosphere. Those weapons made massive quantities of carbon-14 CO2, which is trivial to detect. In fact it WAS detected and mapped and tracked continuously. Where is it today? Hint, NOT IN THE ATMOSPHERE!!! Quid est demonstratum.
But the climate "scientists" use "theories" and "models" to "predict" that it stays in the atmosphere for centuries and no one dares to say their emperor wears no clothes. Well, I dare.
OK, let's keep it buttoned, as agreed. But I will just note that they only cleared him on 3 of the 4 points, so it wasn't quite a whitewash. Maybe a beigewash?
The Catholic Church once believed that the sun revolved around the earth, while Galileo knew that the reverse was true. Belief has nothing to do with science.
I usually only read EnergyPulse lively banter that follows anything related to climate change or global warming. By your logic Mr Ashworth, we shouldn't care about small percentage annual increases in volumes of CO2 in the earth's ecosystem.
So let's apply this logic to another complex ecosystem, one which we are constantly studying like the atmosphere: the human body. Let's take a healthy 180 lb, 30 year old man whose caloric intake is just slightly out of balance with what his body can usefully use in a year, just 1.5% more. Within 7 years, this man would have put on 20 lbs. Within 10 years he would weigh 209 lbs. I am sure when visiting his doctor for his 40 year physical, the doctor would have some friendly advice for him about losing the tire around his waist and its implications for critical systems like his heart. The doctor would also talk about the risks of heart disease, diabetes and assorted other issues for which his risk goes up. Let's just say, this man doesn'b believe much in what his doctor ordered or can't execute a plan to address his inbalances.
After a second decade of this decidely small 1.5% inbalance, this man would weigh 242 lbs. and clearly his health risks are increasing. After a third decade he weighs 100 lbs more than at 30 years of age.
Now hopefully this man would be rational and take some action like increasing his exercise and lowering his caloric intake at some point to lower his health risks. Perhaps not easy, but necessary.
Hopefully, at some point we will recongize the same small numbers process at work in the atmosphere and take steps to reduce our risks.
is faulty in his understanding of the Keeling Curve. The implied baseline CO2 concentration of 373.5 ppmv is far from the natural, pre-industrial-revolution level of 280 ppmv.
How shall the car gain nuclear cachet?
In spite of all the evidence that CO2 level does not drive temperature change, but rather follows it, lets assume CO2 increases in isolation and only affects global temperatures. Well, data demonstrates that the effect is not linear, but logarithmic. So, with ever increasing levels, the marginal effect on temperature will diminish. More importantly, there are numerous dampening and opposing effects that drive the system equilibrium the other direction (you do know that plants use CO2 and make O2...remember that?).
Finally, NO ONE KNOWS what the optimum temperature for the planet is!! I rather like it a little warmer...so did western civilization as a warming climate boosted agricultural output and led Europe out of the dark ages...so do the multitudes of plant and animal species that flourish as temperatures rise...so do millions of starving people around the planet who benefit from increased agricultural output resulting once again from increased temperatures.
Can our lame efforts at controlling global climate have an effect? Only in that we will depress the standards of living throughout the world, with the bulk of that effect falling upon the poorest of nations, and ensuring increased suffering and mortality. All so a few elitists can feel good about themselves, deluded into believing they really have not wasted their lives' work a monumental fool's errand.
Conroy, you act as if CO2 is some hazardous gas, but neglect to understand that it is required for ALL LIFE ON EARTH!!! It is not a pollutant, regardless of what the EPA says. Its attraction to bureaucrats is obvious as Lindzen so eloquently observed:
“CO2 for different people has different attractions. After all, what is it? – it’s not a pollutant, it’s a product of every living creature’s breathing, it’s the product of all plant respiration, it is essential for plant life and photosynthesis, it’s a product of all industrial burning, it’s a product of driving – I mean, if you ever wanted a leverage point to control everything from exhalation to driving, this would be a dream. So it has a kind of fundamental attractiveness to bureaucratic mentality.” – Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D. Professor of Atmospheric Science, MIT
Again, this is NOTHING about science and nothing about weather (er climate since climate scientists always say weather does not equal climate when the weather is cold, but reverse their stance when the weather is hot). It is EVERYTHING about political control of our lives and our economies.
Thanks for the suggesting that my analogy is wrong only because is suggested that the human body is an ecosystem. Allow me to change my wording from ecosystem to complex system. I don't really want to argue specifically whether the human body is as complex as the atmosphere just because it is made up of a wide variety of interacting separate but linked systems (adrenal, nervous, digestive, circulatory, to name a few), each with their own forcing, feedback, and dampening effects that are only understood through simplified models (science of medicine). Frankly, the analogy does hold true. For instance the atmospheric (human) system has an amount of CO2 (e coli bacteria) which is normally stable, but forcing (combustion of fossil fuels/ingestion of raw meat) will cause severe issues.
My real point though is that Mr. Ashworth's discussion about 1.5% annual increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is senseless. To suggest that an annual increase of that amount when it occurs consistently over decades is something which we shouldn't be concerned suggests short term thinking. Small numbers add up over time and certainly the Keeling Curve is showing that. TIme will tell whether the science of AGW is correct, overstated, or understated but that doesn't mean we should ignore the evidence we have at hand and take action to reduce risks. After all we only have one earth.
As to optimum temperature, try reading Jared Diamond (Collapse) or Brian Fagan (The Great Warming) to find out what happens to civilizations that aren't prepared for climate change.
FInally, I am glad to see that we both are concerned about the welfare of those populations at risk. Some of the poorest nations are at the highest risk from climate change and apparently also from the cure to climate change. Perhaps we just need a better plan to improve their living situation.
BTW, the inverse square "law" (the intensity of any effect propagating in all directions from a point source changes according to the surface area of the sphere defined by the radius of the distance from the source to the point of measure) is so obvious as to not even be science, but merely engineering and not even challenging engineering at that. It also has no relevance to my analogy that I can see, but perhaps you have an explanation for why you consider it so?
I am glad I never stuck my head out very far on the CO2 issue. But I have stuck my head out very far on the population issue. Many times. Those who have heard it before might want to skip the next paragraph.
Until recently, i.e. the last 1000 years, there had never been more than 0.3 billion humans alive at one time. Basically that’s all that could be fed a subsistence diet. None of the vast encompassing empires of antiquity (China, India, Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome etc.) ever had the population of Mexico today. A few key inventions got us started: the lateen sail, we could then point to the wind in ships, the Caravel, that allowed Europeans to sail beyond sight of land knowing they had a good chance of coming back! The horse collar that made the horse the equivalent of an energy nuclear age and rid the European famer of oxen. Energy enhancements. And the population grew. Ta da, the steam engine, fossil fuels and the rest we know about. From the Dawn of Man until a mere 1000 years ago the population grew to 0.3 billion. There are now about 6.9 billion - in a veritable trice we are 23 times more numerous than the previous peak.
Not climate change, not oil depletion, not water shortages, not CO2 – our problem is too many people and it get’s worse by nearly 0.1 billion a year. Yet we dance minuets about solving problems with smart grids and electric cars. How fatuous.
It’s happened in my lifetime. I was born into a world that just might have been sustainable, one soon ticking over to 2 billion.
For the inverse square law to kick in meaningfully for particles leaving the earth's surface, you need to get to the point where the earth itself becomes more of a point source. That would be several radiuses of distance away, 10,000 to 20,000 miles or so.
Recall that the flux out of an infinite sheet is constant to infinity. But a large finite surface up close looks very similar to that infinite sheet. Even a large finite curved surface. So any flux from a sphere is essentially constant up to a radius or so away from the surface.
I am baffled by your comments about carbon 14. As this is being continually formed in the upper atmosphere (nitrogen atoms adsorbing free neutrons produced by cosmic radiation striking the atmosphere), how can you say that the c14 produced by nuclear explosions in the 40's & 50's was tracked and is no longer there? How is this c14 distinguishable from "natural" c14?
Using the table above in combination with a total concentration of 385 ppmv of CO2 seen in the atmosphere in January 2008, one sees that the increase in CO2 caused by all of man's activities amounted to only 11.5 ppmv.
The table shows annual amounts, not cumulative. If in year X nature outs in 770,000 million tons, man puts in 23,100, and nature absorbs 781,400, then the net increase that year is 11.4. Then next year is another 11.4 (plus or minus) and so forth and so on. This causes the gradual build-up where CO2 levels rise from ~280 ppm to today's 385 ppm. So I don't see where he can say that "all of man's activities amounted to only 11.5 ppmv." He simply multiplied the cumulative concentration of 385 ppm by the annual percentage of emissions 2.9%.
I could be wrong here but I think part of that increase is because Siberian permafrost has thawed (researchers have found that) and released stored methane that slowly converts to CO2 in the atmosphere. The reason they thawed is because the CFC effect is greater near the Polar Regions. The Polar Regions warmed some 1.2C from 1966 to 1998 and the earth averaged a 0.48C rise. Also the gradual warming of the oceans as we are coming out of a Little Ice Age is another effect that would increase CO2 in the atmosphere as shown by the Vostok ice core data. As you know, contrary to Gore's prestidigitation, a warming spike from the sun comes first followed by an increase of CO2 as the oceans warm and the solubility of CO2 in the water decreases.
I don't know why you are so confused about the amount of time CO2 stays in the atmosphere. Every year, some CO2 is deposited into the atmosphere by natural and man-made processes. And every years, some of it is drawn out, but not enough to make up for the deposition, so the overall amount increases. I don't see what point you are trying to make. Since the (temporary) draw down is about 8 ppm per year, each year a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere has about an 8/385 or 2% chance of being withdrawn. From that, you could calculate the average lifetime of a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere (if you wanted to). But the point remains, why is this important? The main issue is that the overall level keeps rising.
Let's say you are correct and a "warming spike from the sun" causes an increase in CO2 as oceans warm and methane escapes from polar regions. What then causes the cascading temperature rise after this initial event? Assuming there is not a staccato of warming spikes, then perhaps the increased CO2 levels drive the temperature rise further past the initial spike. This is what scientists believe and this is their explanation of the "CO2 follows temp" argument from the skeptics.
Adrian, Carbon 14 CO2 was part of the nuclear fallout from above ground testing and was monitored extensively. My father worked for the Atomic Energy Commission at the time and was part of the team responsible for moving the testing underground. There are literally hundreds of papers available on the subject. It is quite easy to discriminate between the naturally produced C(14)O2 and that produced by a nuclear blast. Other isotopes were likewise produced and were likewise monitored.
In fact to belabor the human body analogy, when we want to know what is going on inside, we use radioactive tracers.
Tying these simple concepts together, I theorized that someone else should have undertaken this study for the atmosphere and in seconds found this
As I surmised the unadulterated facts show that CO2 naturally remains in the atmosphere for 5-6 yrs. But of course you are welcome to ignore the evidence to your heart's content. Something tells me the good doctor won't be invited to the next gropehagen confab in Mexico since he isn't singing the party line.
Contributions to accelerating atmospheric CO2 growth from economic activity, carbon intensity, and efficiency of natural sinks
Josep G. Canadella,b, Corinne Le Que´ re´ c,d, Michael R. Raupacha, Christopher B. Fielde, Erik T. Buitenhuisc, Philippe Ciaisf, Thomas J. Conwayg, Nathan P. Gillettc, R. A. Houghtonh, and Gregg Marlandi,j
Time Series for Airborne Fraction (AF).
Actually, the CO2 buildup statistics you present make the perfect case that buildup of CO2 IS due to man-made forces.
Given that natural sources are base (they would be around with or without man) then the man-made sources are incremental. Without man there would be a net DECREASE of CO2 of 770-781.4 = 11.4 MMT. With man there is an INCREASE of CO2 of 793.1-781.4=11.7 MMT. Could somebody check my math I forgot my calculator today.
Chances are on Earth over time (the last few billion years or so) the net decrease/increase without man is closer to zero; the decrease shown above is just current observation.
You have to look at the INCREMENTAL impact that man's activities are having on the world to assess true impact. Same rules apply with project economics (look at cash flows at the margin).
Does the Earth have the ability to handle incremental CO2 from man? Nothing you show here demonstrates this, as man-made CO2 is not going to cause 'natural noise' as suggested in Figure 1. Man-made CO2 is going to be a constant increase over time, it does not vary from a mean close to zero. So Figure 1 does not apply to this situation.
I have no position on AGW, but the position posted here is plain lousy science.
"Len and Jim, I don't believe in fairies nor infinitely energetic particles. I think there is a serious lack of understanding of basic physics here."
I don't believe in fairies or infinitely energetic particles either. Never said I did. I DO believe that the inverse square law only applies to point sources, and the Earth is NOT a point source for the distances in consideration (60,000 feet).
And I DO agree that there is a serious lack of understanding of basic physics here as well!!!
Yes.
What happens when CO2 absorbs infrared radiation?
The energy in the infrared radiation is converted to heat.
Do humans create new CO2 in the atmosphere that would not be created naturally?
Yes.
Bob----it seems to me that if you want to disprove global warming----disprove that CO2 absorbs infrared radiation that is converted to heat.
Jim and Len, the point source is only one element of the inverse square law. The other of course is that the ENERGY of the wave proportionally diminishes as the square of the distance. Or I could just point you to Maxwell's equations, but I fear they would be far too much for you. So, light makes it all the way to earth from the sun, losing energy all the way, but it had a LOT to begin with. By the time it hits the earth, saying goodbye to the relative vacuum of space, it loses even more. The IPCC pretends it hits the planet like hitting a mirror, converts magically to IR and then heats the entire atmosphere as it escapes. Many physicists who were NOT invited to participate in the IPCC process have said things like, "The energy is largely gone within the first 30 meters".
Bottom line, the IPCC needs a better theory. Just because I say they do, by NO MEANS requires me to come up with one FOR them. They are the ones crying "The sky is falling" and attempting to wreak havoc on the economy of the planet, so it behooves them to do a LOT better job than they have, and that includes NOT cooking the numbers with statistical games as the emails proved they did, NOT hiding the data as the emails proved they did, NOT suborning the peer review process as the emails proved they did, I could go on, but you've already stopped reading, at least Len did, once he read "Maxwell's equations" his eyes glazed over and he had a flashback to unfortunate anxiety in calculus class, that is if he ever made it that far. ;)
The energy is not lost--------it is simply spread over a larger area. If you sit farther away from a campfire, you receive less radiant energy per unit of surface area than if you sit closer. If you are cold, you have to move closer to the fire to warm up.
--------" Many physicists who were NOT invited to participate in the IPCC process have said things like, "The energy is largely gone within the first 30 meters".--------
That is because physicists who say that are idiots. If that were true, the earth would be a frozen lifeless rock---as cold as the dark side of the moon.
All you need to do to disprove that statement is to step outside on a sunny day and stand in the sun. It gets warmer. You can feel it.
---------" Bottom line, the IPCC needs a better theory. Just because I say they do, by NO MEANS requires me to come up with one FOR them. They are the ones crying "The sky is falling" and attempting to wreak havoc on the economy of the planet,........"--------------
So how did they get ducks, geese and other birds to change their migratory habits?
Why are we having to rely more and more on irrigation to produce crops? Why are most glaciers and the polar ice caps melting and receding. Why are we having to rely increasingly on GMOs and herbicides to produce be able to produce crops in the face of weeds gone wild?
-------" Bottom line, the IPCC needs a better theory."---------
I don't think so. Everywhere I look I see signs that things are getting warmer. You are the one who can't figure out that if you stand in the sun it gets hot.
By the way Jeff------I just looked out the window-------it is 49*F, no snow. And the snow pack on Mt. Hood is about 2-3 feet below normal.
------" Mt. Hood Test Site 80 in 35.8° F 33.3° F 5400 ft "-------- It should be over 100 in-------and not too likely to get any more snow, it has to be below 32*F to get snow. Unless of coarse, we truck it in from Washington, DC.
This discussion appears to have degenerated into a "weather is not climate, unless the weather is warmer" argument; not unique, but unfortunate nonetheless. :-(
Fred,
"And the snow pack on Mt. Hood is about 2-3 feet below normal."
Your use of "normal" suggests that the snow pack has varied in the past, both above and below what you term "normal".
The snow pack in Washington, DC is 2-3 feet above normal.
We are relying on more irrigation, GMO and herbicides because we are growing more food for a larger population; and, choosing to do it in places otherwise unsuitable for growing certain of the crops. We are also growing a lot of corn which does not appear on anyone's table, but rather in their vehicle fuel tanks.
I would guess that the migratory habits of birds and fish have been changing in the current direction since about 1650, the trough of the Little Ice Age. I suspect many of the glaciers which are receeding have been doing so over the same period.
There is an interesting piece here today: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/13/congenital-climate-abnormalities/
This piece suggests, rather effectively, that the IPCC is "all sound and fury, signifying nothing". Perhaps even anthropogenic global urban heat island climate change remains unproven.
The following piece suggests that even Phil Jones may have encountered and perhaps even adopted some humility: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/12/crus-jones-climate-data-not-well-organised-and-mwp-debate-not-settled/
Ed
If migratory species do not change they will not survive. If humans do not change, the species will not survive.
----------" We are also growing a lot of corn which does not appear on anyone's table, but rather in their vehicle fuel tanks."-------------
This is not true. The same corn is doing both.
Humans from the northern tier of the US (snowbirds) have been migratory for decades. Perhaps, as the climate of the northern tier becomes more temperate, some of them will participate in a reverse migration.
Corn consumption for ethanol production is incremental. Corn enters the ethanol process; ethanol and byproducts leave the process. Corn does not leave the process for later use. DDGS is a partial replacement for field corn as animal feed. http://ncga.com/ethanol-coproducts
Ed
Ed
More bluster on your part. Now you are trying to change the argument. You were using your "inverse square law" to explain away heat emission FROM THE EARTH, not to it. Remember your explanation of re-radiation by bouncing the ball in a hallway? (09/17/09, Bob A's paper on CFC's)
"For some reason you want to argue about re-radiation. Yes it occurs, but since you don't understand the inverse square law, you don't understand why the effect has spatial and energy limitations. " -Jeff
But when we found out you were full of beans, you decide to change the argument and talk about radiation from the sun. Pretty lame on your part. But anything to win the argument, right Jeff? Including LYING, apparently.
Captured in 30 meters??? And the energy is "gone"? Where would it go? Basic heat transfer would indicate otherwise.
I know enough about Maxwell's equations to understand flux, and when a body can and cannot be considered a point source. That is more than you, Jeff. (Their presentation as quarternions is particularly intriguing -- but I guess that never caught on.)
Here is the fundamental problem. IPCC authors who are not nearly as good at physics as they think are using physics such as Stephan Boltzmann to explain earth's atmosphere as if it is a simple black-body exercise. Obviously it is not, and even when they try to apply SB to our neighbors, such as Venus and Mars their formulas don't work either. But this is pointless to argue, I may as well be speaking Greek, if you don't have the background to understand the concepts there is too much of a hole to fill to make it worth the effort.
Humans can not eat dent corn anyway.
------" DDGS is a partial replacement for field corn as animal feed."--------
Yes, it replaces soy meal. Since corn is about three times as productive as soy beans per acre, and about 1/3 the price per bushel, it makes a very attractive supplement. At about 1/2 the cost of soy meal, it makes the difference in having a profitable meat, fowl, fish or dairy operation.. Without DDG, there would be a lot less meats, eggs and dairy products available, and what would be available would be considerably more expensive. In a dairy operation, it would take between 10 to 15 acres of pasture land to provide the nutrition to the cows that can be gained from one acre of corn converted to DDG. Smaller farms can produce more product than considerably larger operations. And produce a superior product.
So, what do I think of global warming? So what if there are questions about the exact mechanism, it is relatively simple to me, CO2 along with some other gases trap and retain heat. Human activity is raising the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, since CO2 is part of the atmosphere, de facto, human activity is causing the atmosphere to warm. That heat is conducted elsewhere, but almost everywhere I look, I see signs that the earth is warming. Migratory patterns are changing, glaciers are melting and receding, polar caps are shrinking, growing seasons are changing, monsoon and rainfall patterns are changing.
Have these conditions happened before when humans were not involved? Yes. Primarily due to volcanic activity. We do not have such volcanic activity now----so those are a benchmark about what CAN(not necessarily WILL) happen. Those predictions seem pretty dire. If the brakes on your car make a squealing noise when you go to stop, but you ignore it and continue to drive fast and break hard-----are you going to have an wreck? Not necessarily, but the statistical odds that you will go up considerably. I prefer to get the brake pads replaced.
As I see things, we need to replace coal and petroleum for myriad reasons, not JUST global warming. On the list of top ten reasons to replace coal and oil, AGW is about #10. We have plenty of very good reasons to replace the use of coal and oil. AGW is just one, and a relatively low priority reason. The fact is,(the way I see it)----if we replace petroleum use with methane and biofuels, it is something we need to do anyway----and global warming will take care of itself if we do.
If we convert our vehicles to use methane, just a 6% mixture of biomethane that would have escaped into the atmosphere anyway(for instance, treating sewage and tapping landfills) will produce greenhouse gas effect neutral emissions. And it will cost us about 1/2 to drive our vehicles compared to the cost of driving them with petroleum. And we reduce pollution to almost zero.
Corn as a table vegetable ls best if it is boiled and eaten within hours of picking. So farmers’ roadside stands do sell corn literally hand picked within the last hour or so. It’s always sweet corn, and the produce departments of super markets generally sell corn the came day. There is no system for hand picking field corn, it’s harvested whole fields at a time. So it is simply not available, even if you wanted to eat it as a fresh vegetable.
Those who have vegetable garden near fields of dent corn might actually harvest something quite like field corn.
While only a minuscule portion of the corn crop is eaten as a table vegetable or a breakfast cereal if you look at the ingredient list on packaged or processed foods you will usually find corn produces.
All the corns we raise today are man-made - and quite recently, and cannot survive without man. The Pre-Columbian maize ear was about as big as a large thumb.
Is this the same God who encouraged us to reproduce ourselves into our dilemma – no reason, just because it feels good. The same God who similarly causes bacteria to reproduce themselves exponentially until the agar –agar is gone and the colony dies?
Today CO2 emissions are increasing every day. Every day more coal is being mined. Every day water tables are receding. Every day population is increasing. Every day there are more people malnourished and living without electricity. Every day we face the consequences of Peak Oil. Every day perhaps 20,000 children die from diarrhea because of bad water – when a few drops of laundry bleach would have prevented these deaths.
Population is THE problem – and only recently. Any plan that does not address population is doomed to failure. If you would save the world first tell me how to reduce world population.
Jeff: - "the ENERGY of the wave proportionally diminishes as the square of the distance. Or I could just point you to Maxwell's equations, but I fear they would be far too much for you. So, light makes it all the way to earth from the sun, losing energy all the way," - That's a very confused statement, even IF you may be discussing IR energy travelling in earth's atmosphere rather than in a vacuum, though that wasn't the impression your statement gave. The energy of a photon packet is entirely dependent on its frequency / wavelength, and that does not change over intra-galactic dimensions throughout the life of the photon. Possibly you may be thinking of the net intensity of photon arrivals at a measuring device, though it is difficult to concieve of the relevance of discussions of "waves" in that context. Try again.
Modern breeding methods have also introduced varieties incorporating multiple gene types:
sy (for synergistic) adds the sh2 gene to some kernels (usually 25%) on the same cob as a se base (either homozygous or heterozygous)
augmented sh2 adds the se and su gene to a sh2 parent
Often seed producers of the sy and augmented sh2 types will use brand names or trademarks to distinguish these varieties instead of mentioning the genetics behind them."-------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_corn
Sweet corns are a different genetic variety than dent corns. Cross pollination from dent corn nearby-----the dominant dent corn alleles will cause hybridization in the recessive sweet variety.
---------" Is this the same God who encouraged us to reproduce ourselves into our dilemma – no reason, just because it feels good."---------------
God didn't do that, humans did it, no reason, it just feels good. That and the fact that sex sells. There's a lot of money to be made in sex. Which is the cause of most human problems, greed. I don't recall any Divine Admonitions to be greedy.
----------" The same God who similarly causes bacteria to reproduce themselves exponentially until the agar –agar is gone and the colony dies?"--------------
Yes, the same God. The same God who allows the bacteria to reproduce until the agar is gone, is also the same God who made the bacteria to sporify so that they can become dormant and wait for suitable conditions again. Sometimes for years. And when conditions become suitable again, they will begin reproducing again.
--------" Today CO2 emissions are increasing every day. Every day more coal is being mined. Every day water tables are receding. Every day population is increasing. Every day there are more people malnourished and living without electricity. Every day we face the consequences of Peak Oil. Every day perhaps 20,000 children die from diarrhea because of bad water – when a few drops of laundry bleach would have prevented these deaths."-----------
If you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
I have to agree with Len on this. WE are the cause of the problems, WE are the solution to the problems.
If you were talking about radiation FROM the earth, then why were you spouting off about the inverse square law, which would not apply in this case? How could I NOT become confused?
"ALL radiation attenuates as it propagates PERIOD." -Jeff.
Absolutely false. Depends on if it is parallel (light from a laser) or diffusing from a point source (like the sun from a long ways away). When I was in college I added a lens to an ordinary flashlight so that it still kept a small beam even 500 feet away. Not even a laser. Some attenuation will occur with light in any non-vacuum, assuming the particles they hit can absorb the frequency of the light going through them, but this is often a minor issue compared with diffusion due to a point source.
I don't see what the problem is. Light from the sun (6500K black body) passes through clouds pretty well and hits the earth. Heat from the earth (290K black body, much more infrared) radiates upward (largely PARALLEL for the distances involved) and gets absorbed by the cooler clouds floating in the 5,000 - 20,000 foot range. The clouds heat up. Some of the heat radiates back down if the earth below it becomes cooler (such as at night). Insulating is nothing more than re-radiation. It can't be any other way. The presence or absence of clouds doesn't make the earth 'stop' radiating. Rather, two bodies of the same temperature radiate energy to/from each other at the same rate, such that the temperature doesn't change.
Land is not the only place that plants grow. Algae are plants. Algae grow in the ocean.
Growing season is a function of latitude. The closer you are to the equator, the longer the growing season. At the equator, the growing season is year round.
That is why oil drilling in the arctic is such a bad idea. The growing season is so short. The plants that make up the tundra can't replace the damage man causes. It can take hundreds or thousands of years.
As you move to a higher altitude going up a mountain, you move through the same climate zones that you would if you took a journey from the equator to a pole. In Rocky Mountain National Park, you can drive across Trail Ridge Road. Trail Ridge Road is the traditional route taken by the Ute Indians in their migration from summer to winter camping grounds. Trail Ridge Road crosses a mountain pass through the Rockies and reaches an altitude of over 12,000 feet. The summit has an arctic tundra climate. Even though it has been over 150 years since the Utes have used Trail Ridge Road in their migration, the trail is still clearly visible as a path devoid of vegetation through the surrounding tundra.
The Canadian Tar Sands are strip mined from a similar environment. The damage will remain from this for thousands of years.
Let's look at this another way. I've got a pen IR pointer laser on my desk. It is powered by three 1.2 v lithium batteries. In my basement I have an IR cutting laser, powered by 10,000 watts. Which one has more energy Len, since the "frequency / wavelength" are identical? Maybe you think that the higher the frequency gets, the greater the energy "automagically" rises? Now you see why it is so frustrating to talk with you, you spout off as if you know something but clearly you don't. Isn't this why you're no longer on the physorg website? These are trivial and basic concepts to me, but I suspect neither of you even get them.
A photon does not attenuate in a vacuum. What mechanism would cause a photon to stop/attenuate, other than striking something? If there is nothing for it to hit, it won't attenuate. Well, at least you've given up on the inverse-square nonsense for IR emitted from the earth to the atmosphere.
If the wavelengths are identical, the pen pointer and the cutting laser emit photons of the same energy. The cutting laser just emits a lot more of those photons. The energy of a photon is defined by its frequency (E = hv) and nothing else.
Heat transfer is based on just a few simple concepts. One of which is radiative transfer is proportional to the temperature difference between the two objects to the 4th power. As the cloud heats up, less (NET) transfer occurs between the earth and the cloud. That's re-radiation/insulation.
Only way that a photon could attenuate on its own would be when it is red-shifted due to the expansion of the space it is in. It's left as an exercise to the reader as to where THAT energy might have gone. ;)
Jeff: see Jim above. Pick up a physics text. You're talking about thinks you know very little.
Many physicists who were NOT invited to participate in the IPCC process have said things like, "The energy is largely gone within the first 30 meters".
Hmm, if that were true, then the entire field of IR imaging would be limited to only objects that are 30 meters away, as the energy lost would also result in the loss of IR signatures (they would no longer be coherent). Since this isn't the case, I'm going to have to side with the IPCC people on this one.
Jim, you over simplify every step you take, this is why you are led to false assumptions, just like the IPCC. Point source is far closer to the truth than you can imagine. You believe every particle that strikes the earth returns precisely orthogonal to the impact no? Hits earth no matter the angle and returns at precisely the right angle to space, free at last except for those 350 per million CO2 molecules that might eat it up like a Pac Man game no? That is what the models assume and worse of course, and further simplifications on simplifications based on theoretical underpinnings for which there is no legitimate relevance. I'm not talking electron volts here, who cares if the earth is hit by a particle with 1 billion Ev, that isn't going to power anyone's lightbulb is it? If you're going to model something as complex as weather let alone climate, you'd better have a firm model that firmly has a grip on reality, not a squishy model based on idealized metaphors.
bill payne Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
February 15th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Evaluation of performance of Harbor Freight 5 watt mono-crystalline cell solar panel reveals that the voltage is suprisingly high even under dim illumination open circuit.
Panel voltage drops precipitiously as the load increases.
And, most suprising, there appears to be an optimim resistive load for peak power. As resitive load ohms increases, power [watts] increases to a point and then declines because high voltage cannot overcome decreased current.
Google ’scripting language pollute’, then click on Solar generation of electricity: China emails.
Alas, it’s been immer schlimmer (relic of my high school Deutsch) over all man’s history. You might say we have solved the problem of keeping lots of people alive at the same time but this can’t be called a concerted effort and has probably created more suffering than benefits.
Education is often cited as a move toward solving problems. Germany and Japan had better literacy rates than we in 1939. (Those unbelievably cruel Japanese soldiers of the Bataan Death March were quite literate. As were those who efficiently managed the Holocaust. Quite similarly to the Persians of yore.)
To solve a real problem requires starting with the present situation. There will be no Re-deals. The present situation is dreadful, much worse than decades ago, and getting worse by the day. While I am pleased and impressed to see Stefan-Bolzman n and black bodies discussed, who has a word about population reduction?
------" “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” "-------------
Theodore Roosevelt
If there are multiple, independent problems with potential solutions requiring massive effort or investment, the problems must be prioritized to assure that the most important problem(s) receive sufficient effort and investment to actually solve them. (Lomborg has been pilloried for daring to state this obvious conclusion.)
Teddy Roosevelt was not extolling the importance on Don Quixote de la Mancha in the quote above.
What are the problems, in rank order?
What are the potential solutions to be tested?
How shall they be tested and who will conduct, supervise and evaluate the tests?
Don seems focused on population as problem number one. However, it may involve the most difficult and least palatable potential solutions to test and implement.
In the case of carbon emissions, it does not seem to me that we have even prioritized sub-goals. Is it more critical to: halt the increase in global annual emissions, reduce some annual emissions while allowing others to keep rising; or, pay reparations to low carbon economies for potential future harm? Are we attempting to achieve lower carbon emissions or some form of global equity?
"A goal without a plan is just a wish.", Antoine de St. Exupery
"A plan without a goal is insanity.", Ed Reid
"Insanity is continuing to do the same things and expecting different results.", Albert Einstein
I guess we just wish we weren't insane.
Ed
Fred: Rooseveltt forgot to address those who are "in the arena" but with intent to do no good, apparently a significant proportion of current political leadership everywhere.
Another comment like that and I will invoke the mercy rule. Like Len said, a photon cannot be attenuated. It exists until it is annihilated. Think of a photon's path as a path in space-time with a beginning (emission) and an end (detection or capture or annihilation). To the photon, no time passes during its 'lifetime'. It is simply 'there' throughout it's entire path.
A 5900K photon from the sun can reflect off the earth and many obviously do. But it can't 'change' into a 288K photon. Instead, it is absorbed by some object, the object heats up, and then emit photons in the spectrum appropriate to its temperature in a Lambertian (uniform) pattern.
So, it looks like the AGW skeptics seem to willfully ignore a basic understanding of E-M radiation that has been in place for hundreds of years (long before any AGW conspiracy could be in place).
1. "The energy is largely gone within the first 30 meters" (from the ground).
Absolutely wrong. If this were so, Thermal Imaging would not be possible. But it is.
2. "IR emissions from the earth disperses with the inverse-square law". True, but not at the distances in question. At 100 km (62 miles) below which 99.99% of the atmosphere lies, the diffusion of IR emissions due to the inverse square law would be less than 2-3%. At far distances (1-2 earth radii) the inverse-square starts to kick in. This is due to the emitting surface being several thousand miles from the point source center (the center of the earth).
3. "Re-radiation doesn't exist". Absolutely wrong. Two bodies of similar temperature both emit radiation at each other. There is no NET change in temperature, but emissions are occuring nonetheless. The idea of clouds 'insulating' the earth (which skeptics seem to be much more comfortable with) is merely re-radiation occurring. The atmosphere doesn't insulate both ways (up and down) equally because the photons coming in from emitted from a 5900K Black Body (the sun) and the photons coming up from the earth are being emitted from a 288K black body.
4. "Earth re-radiates at the angle of photon capture". Wrong. They are different photons! These reflect the a different body and a different temperature. So the spectrum of emission (black bodies emit photons of different energies according to a spectrum based on the temperature) is different and the emission is Lambertian (basically equal emissions from all surfaces of the body).
5. "The Earth is not a perfect black body, so none of this would apply anyway." True, as some energy from the sun is reflected away. But it is notable that it's black body temperature would be several degrees lower if it was a true black body. Instead it is higher (due to its atmosphere).
One should be reminded of the wisdom of Roger Arnold here. One shouldn't lightly question scientists on this sort of stuff. Yes, mistakes DO occur, and one could argue the procedural mistakes at CRU (not releasing data) are serious. But one should be very careful in questioning basic scientific theory of E-M propagation and heating. Like the image posted above that Both Jeff and Bob A. had so much trouble with. Instead of simply assuming a chart drawn up by a number of scientists (and viewed by hundreds of others) is WRONG, one might examine why you think it is wrong first. Everyone would like to be in on the big 'scoop' that shows these scientists are idiots. But that's the point. Since everyone would like to do this, then many people before you have TRIED and not found anything. It's unlikely (though not impossible) that there are any major gaffes lying around.
If I was to question the AGW, I wouldn't be digging here. The issue with data from stations, accuracy of base station measurements, etc. All much more valid points. Trying to re-write E-M theory though; not so good.
Don, Fred, and Ed,
Not sure where to start either, but a couple comments.
Any population control needs to be an integrated effort. If one or more groups comply, but others don't; it just won't work. Note how much of Europe is limiting child birth, but this is not being followed by their Moslem immigrant populations. So now France is 30% Islamic. Perhaps not what was intended.
So any comprehensive population control would mean dealing with religion. Maybe start be eliminating it's tax-free status?
Since capitalism is based on continuous growth, it is somewhat at odds with population control, at least in its present form. So that's a problem too.
Hmm, eliminating religion and capitalism. I'm sounding like a Commie.... That's not the case. More like altering them in some way. Anyway, there's some pretty tall orders here. The arena awaits...
"....if he fails, contact your spin doctors, and make it into a success! For while the modern world does not tolerate failure, we now have the tools to cover them up. So the politician need really not do anything at all, providing his spin machine outputs the vague but ineffectual success that satiates his constituents."
One problem I see though, sometimes results are hard to define and measure. For instance, how do you measure the pleasure you get from waking up on a chilly mountain morning, and watching the sun's first rays just beginning to creep over the peaks of the far ridge, drinking your hot chocolate, watching the sun's rays paint the underside of the clouds purple and orange. Your dogs, lying silently and patiently in the shadows, watching your every move----waiting for your slightest movement toward breaking camp and moving on. Seemly asleep---but ears up and swiveling like little radar antanae to catch the direction and location of tiny sounds, you can't even hear. Watching the billions of stars of the Milky Way slowly fade into the brilliant blue of daylight. Listening to the plaintive, ghostly call of a hawk somewhere far off, as it catches the first thermal to start another day of graceful circles in aerial patrol of the earth below. Then packing up while the dogs trot off into the trees to investigate minutely every nook and cranny with senses so keen, we can't even guess at the world they live in. Then, moving off down the trail. The dogs leaping and bounding, their excited barks echoing off the canyon walls, leading the way on the trail ahead. Knowing that in all the universe------there has never been another time, or place or feeling like this one. And there never will be again.
How do you measure that?
Point taken.
However, population is measurable. Forest cover is measurable from space. Land used for agriculture is also measurable from space.
Carbon emissions are either measurable or calculable. Processes which consume coal, oil and gasoline, natural gas and propane through combustion produce easily calculated quantities of carbon. Processes which might be fitted with CCS can be monitored to determine actual carbon emissions. Processes which use coal or hydrocarbons as feedstocks can also be monitored for emissions. However, it must be acknowledged that governments of countries which both produce and consume coal and/or hydrocarbons would be in a position to "game" such monitoring and reporting systems.
Methane emissions from animal husbandry can also be calculated with reasonable accuracy from animal population information.
If the world's governments commited to GHG emissions reductions, monitoring and enforcement would be achievable. However, that is several steps down the road from determining who must reduce emissions by what percentage over what period of time.
However, all of that is downstream of determining the "ideal" global average temperature and the "ideal" atmospheric carbon concentration, neither of which has yet occurred.
Ed
Since you couldn't follow the Miskolczi paper, here's the reader's digest condensed version.
By the way, both Zagoni and Miskolczi were part of the AGW camp, Zagoni vehemently so. I've seen nit picking of Miskolczi's papers, but his predictions are vastly superior to the IPCC's, so it is curious that the nit pickers aren't out in force against IPCC, as they should be in a fair world. But we all know the world isn't fair.
You are talking about science, measurements, plans, policies etc. that create conditions. That is all fine. We need that.
I had in mind the philosophy, and feeling for beauty and for want of a better word, ethic, of an open mind and soul to be one with our fellow humans and the world around us.
It does no good to create a perfect environment if your soul is so dead that the perfect environment can't be lived in. Even if we do create a perfect environment, without the appreciation of what we have, it won't last long.
I think environmental concern is half science, half art. You can't have one without the other. Without the science, the art dies. Without the appreciation of the beauty and wonder, the science is just hollow manipulation.
Science creates a place to live, Art makes the living worthwhile.
As I wrote above: "Point taken."
I am neither a scientist nor a philosopher. I am an engineer (RDD&D), market developer and marketer (retired) and a part time energy "conslutant". (Yes, I spelled that correctly.)
I am talking about what I know. I am talking about logical, technical approaches to problem solving. I am talking about "what you measure is what you get".
The solution to environmental issues will not be advanced by having Christo wrap the issue in miles of white cloth. I don't see fields of wind turbines as art. However, they can be an impressive display of technology when they are all operating together to produce power. I also don't see acres of dual axis concentrating solar mirrors as art, though they can also be an impressive display of technology as they focus the energy of the sun on a receiver.
I think in terms of problem definition, solution definition, path to solution, timeline, technology availability and economic impact. I realize that ain't prosaic. It is, however, a series of necessary steps in the process of getting from our current situation to the desired/required solution. However, the whole process must necessarily begin with an accurate definition of the current situation and the problem, both of which are currently absent in the instant discussion. But then, the solution is also ill-defined.
Ed
I agree. I don't think that is art either.
---------" However, they can be an impressive display of technology when they are all operating together to produce power."--------------
That is true.
What I was trying to say Ed, I think there are many many people these days who SAY the are for nature, environment, blah, blah, blah,-----but they have NO idea what it is. Nature is around us, and it is in us. It is one thing to look, but it is an entirely different thing to see. A person who is blind can not look, but he can see.
We can not save the natural environment of the earth if we can not see it. We can not see it unless we become part of it, and it becomes part of us.
Not scientific, not measurable or subject to objective testing, I know. But I think it is true.
You can only see heaven through the eyes of a child. You have to let your soul be open to the wonder and awe that is all around you.
Bob----it seems to me that if you want to disprove global warming----disprove that CO2 absorbs infrared radiation that is converted to heat.
CO2, water vapor and particulate all absorb and radiate infrared radiation. The only source of heat that hits earth, excluding heat from the earth's core, comes from the sun. So the radiant energy coming toward the earth will be absorbed and reflected just as radiant energy being emitted from the earth. The incoming energy will always be greater than the reflected energy. As an atmosphere becomes more dense, the days will be a little cooler and the nights will be warmer. For instance, Mars with a less dense atmosphere varies between -125°C to 25°C, delta 150 °C. The earth with a denser atmosphere varies between -89 °C to 57.7 °C delta 146.7 °C. However, the difference between them (3.3 °C) is not much regarding temperature swing so the atmosphere has a very minimal affect.
Mars has a very thin atmosphere made mostly of carbon dioxide. The surface pressure on Mars is only about 0.7% of the average surface pressure at sea level on Earth. So this again shows how miniscule the atmosphere affect is on a planet's temperature.
This item from Stanford seems fairly authoritative (answer approx. 6 degC) -- ,a href="http://nova.stanford.edu/projects/mod-x/id-green.html">Greenhouse Effect
"It is estimated that the Greenhouse effect on Mars warms the atmosphere at the surface by less than 10 degrees Fahrenheit."
I hereby nominate approx. 6 degC to be "significantly higher".
Atmospheric heat gain is conducted to other places by convection and conduction. Water vapor condenses and falls as rain, running water releases energy, winds release energy, the build up of heat energy melts ice.
Everywhere I look in nature I see signs that the earth is warming up. A huge snow fall in Washington DC and the South---it took energy to move the water from the ocean to Washington DC and everywhere else it is falling. Glaciers and polar ice caps melting and shrinking----that takes energy. It is short sleeve shirt weather where I am at right now---in the middle of February I can look at Mt. Hood and see dry rocks----when you should see nothing but snow right now from here.. The salmon runs were so bad that both California and Oregon closed the fishing seasons last year. The dogs chased ducks this morning that didn't even migrate this year. It will soon be necessary to close crab, and shellfish seasons because the oceans are getting more acidic and dissolving their shells.
(Fred, I clearly remember hearing Stephenson saying this (or essentially the same words.) Campaigning against Eisenhower. As for the quote of Teddy Roosevelt I’d much rather NOT have his hero for a platoon leader or leading a research team.)
AES’s questions are cogent.
When I asked for population as being THE problem not one Pulser would say they agreed.
When I asked for suggestions to reduce world population only a few make brave but futile attempts.
But none voiced any ideas as to who should propose how world population reduction should be addressed.
None suggested a proposing sponsoring organization. A council, as many convened by Popes? By Alexander? the Roman Senate?, the Arab league?, theLeague of Nations>, Nato? The UN?
Would you trust the UN with a bag of dead cats? Who does, who would?
If a democratic county got unfavorable instructions from an international body what would the electorate do? No question, throw the bastards out. What does the international body do?
You've just lost your cred. You're not thinking straight. You must at least admit that in any proposed orderly scenario to limit / reduce world population transnational equalization is a must. BUT you're so stuck on maintaining your absolutely necessary four-airconditioned-bathrooms-and-three-SUV-per-family lifestyle (which agreed is NOT possible for the entire world) that you will NEVER ALLOW the necessary steps to happen.
Whatever Jeff. Here's what Steve Short had to say about Miskolczi:
Quote:
This is nonsense. Look really, really closely (and very, very carefully) and you’ll find its mostly actually all clear sky data (or very close to it) which Miskolczi has used.
I suggest you carefully read F,T^K09 which is a review paper summarizing all the energy balance studies of the last decade or more. NOTE WELL has been way more work on the global energy balance since K&T97 e.g. the CERES and ERBE projects for a start.
Miskolczi’s ‘magic tau’ of 1.87 is actually only the true value at and close to the zero cloud cover. For every situation with some cloud his so-called S_T is actually a mixture of true LW IR transmission to TOA and the LW IR emitted off the tops of clouds through release of latent heat (water lines) which escape through TOA. Thus his tau is, for most sky situation not even a real tau (in the accepted meaning of the term).
Miskolczi Theory is a logical mess and and a mish mash of hand waving nods to inapplicable principles. I am surprised you are not actually reading anything I’m posting or in the other more hard core sceptical blogs and going away and actually checking it for yourself.
Otherwise you wouldn’t keep making these nonsense statements.
A lot of skeptics have been looking hard at Miskolczi Theory since 2007. Most, especially those with a background in hard science as a career have concluded it doesn’t get up. There are just a very few old diehards who still think its goer. Their capacity for self delusion, bad math and mental acrobatics simply reminds me how perverse the human species can be.
Look, Miskolczi didn’t even get invited back to the 2nd Heartland Conference in February because most skeptics with a brain and a good math training have realized it is a crock of s**t even just since the 1st conference.
I have lost count of the 100s of skeptical newbies who have passed through the skeptical blogs who thought they were going to rejuvenate this corpse, Frankenstein-like. You are just another in a very long line and also not going to achieve this, Lucy. I guarantee it.
The truly scientific skeptical viewpoint is sound and the AGW hysteria bandwagon will go the way of all historically doomed movements. We simply don’t need the snake oil of Miskolczi.
End Quote.
Note (obviously) that this critic is himself an AGW skeptic, so I don't think he has a particular axe to grind in that regard. Far from it. And if even the skeptics don't want to hear about him (Heartland Institute) then that says something, doesn't it?
Reading the condensed version, I did find a few problems. There are others, including how he applies the Virial theorem to the atmosphere. I think the main problem with Miskolczi is that he is not clear with what he is saying. If there's a pony here, then someone needs to clarify it. On the other hand, if no one can do so....
Interesting comments about Mars and Venus. However, it's not quite appropriate to cite temperature ranges and a metric for indicating atmospheric insulation. For one, the +25C that you can feel on Mars only happens at the bottom of its very deep Valles Marineris, the giant canyon system 10 times longer than the Grand canyon. More importantly, however, the canyon is more than 4 miles deep, so there is a measurably denser atmosphere at the bottom of it, which can support higher temps.
Mars also has a much more eccentric orbit that Earth, so its winters will be colder and its summers warmer. (It has the most eccentric orbit of all the planets, except for Mercury and Pluto, if you still consider Pluto a planet. I'm old enough to do that....)
Rather than using Mars, I think it would make more sense to use the delta temps of the moon, as it is the same distance from the Sun and has the same eccentricity, etc. as the Earth. The delta T on the moon goes from -153C to +107C. In one night!
=====
Don,Len,
To be fair, I've just started reading 'America Alone', which seems to be pretty (intellectually) light fare dealing with population demographics. Most of the Western countries are already reproducing at less than sustainable rates. I'm not saying the population is not still rising (it is) and I'm not saying the current population is sustainable (I don't think it is, at least the way things are going now), but I am thinking that population demographics might be more complicated than they appear.
To re-iterate some points made before:
1. If you embark on population control as a nation, then you need to control your borders. Many countries with low birth rates actually encourage immigration, as it is the only way to keep their numbers up.
2. You can't have a steady (let alone a decreasing) population as a society unless your social structure can handle this reality. Mark Steyn (America Alone) makes a valid point that the European style of 6-week vacations, free health care, free education, etc. is not sustainable when no one is having kids. There's no one to pay for all that down the line. I think Steyn is mixed up on several points, but it seems like no economic system known today is fully sustainable over the long run. That has to be worked out.
3. I respectfully disagree with Len about lifestyle choices for future humanity. Maybe not 3 SUVs per family, but it should be possible to live quite well sustainably. I don't think assuming a
diminished future lifestyle is necessarily accurate or productive.
4. Since other countries may not agree to population controls, a nation needs to be able to accomplish this alone, to protect their own way of life if nothing else. (The atmosphere may become fouled and the oceans depleted, but you can't force other people not to make bad choices.) In addition to protecting borders, you need to have some independence as a nation from other nations. In this case, I'm mostly thinking about energy supply.
5. (This one is pretty strange.) I think a long-term need for humanity IS expansion. And the only way to do that without filling up the earth would be to expand beyond earth. We need to become a space-faring civilization.
6. Along the way, something needs to be done about religion. Much of what is proposed regarding population control is in conflict with many religious beliefs. At this point, I'm ready to take off the kid gloves and stop being quite so polite to these folks. I'm all up for debate, but that can be problematic when every point can be countered with "But that is in conflict with the word of God!".
In 1956 I was far more interested in Howdy Dowdy than Adlai Stevenson or Dwight Eisenhower.
By 1960 I had a bit more interest. Something Dwight Eisenhower said in his farewell speech seems extremely prophetic right now, his warning about the dangers of the growing "military/industrial complex". Well, by today, it seems to me that the industrial half of the complex has become the tail that wags the dog. The military has already signed on and has stated openly and unequivocally that dependence on foreign oil and climate change are the two most pressing problems facing the US today----and they are making strategic planning accordingly.
This leaves entrenched and vested industrial interests as the greatest threat to US national security. Therefore, I'm not surprised that you have chosen to deride Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressive/Populist movements in favor Henry Cabot Lodge and his regressive Capitalist exploit and plunder Robber Barron viewpoints. I'll stick with TR thanks----HRL's policies led directly to WW2.
So, what exactly does mandating that all vehicles built in the US be biofuel and methane capable multi-fuel vehicles have to do with the UN? Nothing that I can discern. What exactly does converting coal fired electrical plants to methane have to do with the UN? Nothing that I can discern. What exactly does increasing the use of wind and solar energy have to do with the UN? Nothing that I can discern.
So population growth is a problem. Then it would seem to me that your position should be to limit family size to only two children. Is that what you want done?
1) Should corporations be allowed to ship goods (and services) from regions of severely sub-standard labour law regions to compete directly with the production of decent standard labour law regions?
2) Should banks be allowed to hide deposits from inspection, even those gotten criminally by eg. Baby Doc Duvalier in Haiti from legal pursuit by the persons stolen from (eg. Switzerland recently ruling that the govt. of Haiti had no claim on the multi-millions Duvalier has had hidden in numbered accounts. Pinochet in Chile. etc.)
3) Should perps (organizers, financiers, bagmen etc) of anti-democratic revolution be free from legal sanction? eg. Chicago School types in Chile, Shah of Iran, etc. etc.
Many more.
I have the one-word answers to above, but not the solutions. It is clear however, that EITHER the US will need to help develop a much more systematic system of world management of issues OR build some of the fences discussed above. Do you really want your navy to sink in deep water every vessel loaded with refugees which WILL arrive at your shore if nothing is done about population and our rate of consumption of earth's resources? Would you trigger the gun which sinks them?
Two children per family as an ideal would be a good start, though 1 or 0 per family would be better for at least some time.
Both are seriously flawed. What the UN does, or does not do, in no way changes what we should and need to do.
It is like arguing with a three year old who has a temper tantrum because it is nap time, and he wants to be stubborn and not take his nap because Mom tells him it is nap time.
In essence Dr Miskolczi showed that the solution to a differential equation for the greenhouse effect developed in 1922 by Arthur Milne, and central to the current paradigm, wrongly assumed an infinitely thick atmosphere. In re-solving this equation a new term and also a new law of physics have been proposed setting an upper limit to the greenhouse effect. Dr Miskolczi’s theory indicates that any warming from elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide will eventually be offset by a change in atmospheric moisture content. …
I suggest you read this link before you jump to your usual technique of googling for anyone who has disputed one of the papers I point to without reading a word of the paper yourself. As I told you before, you are no better than those Soviet apparatchiks who never read the source novel itself but were only allowed to read the reviews written by terribly biased functionaries in their government. But since you have no problem with only 1450 weather stations telling us the average temperature of the entire globe instead of using 20K or more, you certainly have no problem only reading movie reviews to wax eloquent about the merits of same rather than spending a single minute watching them.
Meanwhile to educate yourselves from actual physicists' discussions I point you to this link which was supposedly the ultimate refutation of the OTHER link I gave you previously, the two German physicists. The discussion below covers exactly the same warming and deltas that you are concerned with above, but has all the equations as well. Even though AGW lovers point to the atmoz site as some kind of silver bullet refutation, since it isn't censored like RealClimate and Soviet regimes, it unfortunately misses the mark, even with vigorous after the fact editing. Bottom line, the physicists win. REAL scientists want to know why REAL data doesn't match up to theory. Climate scientists don't want to know, they just HIDE the data, DELETE the data, MASSAGE the data or IGNORE the data that doesn't fit their theory. THAT is why I will have nothing to do with them and will fight them every step of the way, they are criminals stealing tax dollars to perpetuate a fraud.
5900K represents the spectrum of photons that leave the sun, as it is a good approximation of a black body of that temperature. The 5900K temperature means that the photons emitted range in wavelengths of about 250 nm to 2500 nm. There is no temperature associated with an individual photon. It merely has a frequency.
Since the sun is pretty far from the earth (about 100 or so solar diameters) then its radiation is diffused due to the inverse square law, down to about 1350 Watts/meter when reaching the earth's atmosphere. About the same reaches the moon, and around 700 Watts/meter reaches Mars.
I don't have the time or inclination or (frankly) skill to go through Miskolczi's work. Maybe that's a failing on my part. Who knows? Maybe someday. I don't think it's encouraging that even the Heartland Institute doesn't want him back, and they are all skeptics. The condensed version had at least one error in that if there was no CO2 at all, the earth could well freeze up completely, or at least have a risk of doing so, as frozen water (snow,ice) has a significantly higher albedo than open ocean. Enough to make a difference.
I don't know where you get the face to continue such discussion after having poeple point out to you such obvious disqualifications as not even understanding electromagnetic radiation. You're clearly WAY out of your depth.
Here's the (shorthand) problem with the IPCC AGW theory. They invoke Stephan Boltzman to come up with a temperature for the earth. That temp is wrong. They then theorize a mechanism that resolves that discrepancy something like so, "The SB number is wrong, therefore there is a magic gas, let's call it CO2, that automagically resolves this discrepancy. The proof is quite simple, the Earth isn't at the temperature that SB says it is, therefore our magic gas has solved the equation. QED". If you want to buy that kind of circular logic then be my guest.
Modern Physics was attacked vehemently the first time they published Gerlich and Tscheuschner's paper. EVERY technique outlined in the CRU emails were used against them. They have responded by RE-PUBLISHING the paper and giving it even higher prominence than the first time. Physicists are not to be trifled with. If the climate community continues to pick on them, they will have their arses handed to them, they cannot challenge the math, they cannot even UNDERSTAND the math.
As to why or why not Miskolczi didn't appear at the Heartland confab, it is purely speculation on your part and Short's. For all we know he had a conflict or wanted a higher per diem then they were willing to pay. Also even though the math showed him the CO2 couldn't cause the temp increase the IPCC wants to claim (along with a LOT of other people reaching the identical conclusion through other means, see Christy et al,) Miskolczi WAS an AGW proponent for most of his professional career. The truth didn't set him free however, the truth set him unemployed.
You were using inverse square to explain radiation attenuation from the earth to the atmosphere. In that case it wouldn't apply as it is too near to cause attenuation by more than a few percent. Look at it this way; the cover of a golf ball is only a tiny bit larger than the golf ball core itself. The skin of an apple on the other hand, is much larger than the skin of one of its seeds. Note that inverse square does not attenuate any particular photon, it merely reduces the number of photons per unit area as they disperse because they all can be sourced to a point origin. Yep, photons are weird. They are outside TIME, fer crissake. Can't get much weirder than that.
If I'm understanding your S-B argument, you are saying that the Earth "should" have a blackbody temp of about 279K, but that's not the case. If you try to account for the reflective properties of some parts of the earth, that would take the number down to 255K, but that's not the case either. Since the actual temperature is more like 288K, scientists have determined that the atmosphere plays some role in elevating this temperature.
I don't think most AGW skeptics would question this train of thought. If the atmosphere played no role, then we'd share similar temperature characteristics with the moon, but that's clearly not the case. The moon is about 270K, accounting for some albedo.
At this point, I'm not sure what your complaint is. Are you saying they are measuring the earth temp wrong, so S-B is correct and no "magic gas" is needed? I'm not convinced they are measuring the temps that badly. Further, the temps of Mars and Venus (esp. Venus) both can be accounted using both their distance from the sun and their atmospheres (Venus has a very thick one; Mars a very thin one).
I find it very hard to believe that the atmosphere plays no role at all in determining the planet's temperature. The details involved with that are very complicated and not well-understood at this point. Enough problems to raise skeptical inquiry into the details of the "greenhouse effect" as it were. But to state (if that's what you are doing) that it doesn't exist AT ALL and the scientists are wrong about this at such a basic level seems very hard to swallow.
Again, maybe I'm misunderstanding you.
"invoke Stephan Boltzman to come up with a temperature for the earth. That temp is wrong." -- Do you mean that the scientists are wrong because they don't understand radiative energy transfer, or that SB simply doesn't explain everything going on and everyone well knows it? I might buy the second phrasing.
Given your regular difficulties even with your "shorthand" phrasing discussing this topic I find it very strange that you claim academic qualification in physics..... or then again did you? Wasn't it project management? That might explain. In my specialty i can't recall ever working for a project manager who was technically qualified to do the job. S'why I contract consult rather than bothering to climb corp ladder.
It appears from your second-last paragraph that you are now distinguishing between "the Climate Community" and "physicists" ? If by "the climate community" you mean the amateur and political types who propose scenarios like that stupid movie where a GW-caused tidal wave swamps NY city, or greenpeace et al, then on THAT I can agree with you whole-heartedly. (give me credit here, I'm trying :<)
(This is Gerlich & Tscheuschner disproving the greenhouse effect)
(Quote)
3.8.3 In the kitchen: Physics-obsessed housewife versus IPCC
In Section 3.3.5 it was indicated how simple it is to falsify the atmospheric greenhouse hypotheses, namely by observing a water pot on the stove: Without water filled in, the bottom of the pot will soon become glowing red. However, with water filled in, the bottom of the pot will be substantially colder.
In particular, such an experiment can be performed on a glass-ceramic stove. The role of the Sun is played by the electrical heating coils or by infrared halogen lamps that are used as heating elements. Glass-ceramic has a very low heat conduction coefficient, but lets infrared radiation pass very well. The dihydrogen monoxide in the pot, which not only plays the role of the "greenhouse gas" but also realizes a very dense phase of such a magic substance, absorbs
the infrared extremely well. Nevertheless, there is no additional "backwarming" effect of the bottom of the pot. In the opposite, the ground becomes colder.
(end of quote)
This isn't analgous to the atmosphere at all! The pot with water in it stays relatively cool because the water MUST remain at 212 F before it boils off. When additional heat is added, the water does just that, in the form of steam. The water forms a heat reservoir that must stay at 212 F, which therefore keeps the pot at 212 F as well. Additional heat is released (compared with an empty pot) by the energetic water molecules leaving the system as steam. Until the water has boiled off, then the pot would get hot again as well. Our atmosphere can not "boil off" to eliminate heat -- it's a completely false analogy.
If the G & T paper has been what's been causing all this fuss with the Ashworth papers and Jeff's comments about the greenhouse effect not being real -- well, I'm sorry, but G & T are completely mistaken. At best this has NOTHING to do with how carbon dioxide and water vapor retains heat on the planet.
I don't care if you don't believe me, but please don't believe that "backwarming" (re-radiation) does not exist because G & T say so. These guys are IDIOTS!!!!
I can feel Len and Jim B twisting in the wind as they shout louder, and try to pee higher than everyone else. However, when Jim accuses others of 'changing the subject' to avoid addressing the science, I just about died laughing.
Truthfully, I think I AM peeing higher here. Hate to rain on your parade.....
Progress happens!
Ed :-)
Your discussion about inverse squared law is specious at best. Do you believe the CENTER OF THE EARTH is where the photons go or come from? That is what you are implying. From the perspective of a photon, an atom or molecule may as well be a solar system to a satellite. On the other hand photon annihilation is a very real event and bound to occur sooner rather than later when the target density is sufficient. Now if you want to discuss eigenvalues of the charge conjugation multiplicative operator c and their relation to photons and antiphotons, I think that discussion can occur elsewhere. But ask yourself this, where does EM radiation go to "die"? What is its "afterlife"? How you answer that will tell me how you TRULY understand physics.
I can follow G & T easily enough. I think the original submission was probably in crayon. But I'm not going to take the time to dispense with each of its 117 pages. Tell you what, I'll look it over and find the core. If you can agree that's the substantive portion, I can take it from there.
I can and will withdraw my "faith" as you call it, should the facts present themselves. A guy on Green Car Congress handed my *ss to me because I didn't understand scale height. (I do now, and I thank him for that.)
No, the photons are not emanating from the center of the earth. Or the center of the sun. But they are emanating normal to the curved outer surfaces of these spheres. Since these normals, if traced backward, all meet at the spheres' center, it's AS IF the flux is coming from the center of the spheres. It's an assumption that is perfectly valid mathematically for all regions outside the surface of the spheres. This is reflected in the equation for the effective temperature of the earth: Te = Ts*sqrt(Rs/2Ao) Where Ts = temperature of the sun, Ao = distance from sun to the earth, and Rs = radius of the sun.
Ed, maybe the atmosphere is warming because of all the hot air blowing around---it wasn't the sun or CO2 after all! LMAO!!!!
Maybe we should set up some wind turbine farms...............why let a perfectly good resource go to waste?
The world's glaciers and ice caps. It is changing ice into water.
--------" When I asked for population as being THE problem not one Pulser would say they agreed."--------------
In the US, 4% of the world's population uses 25% of the world's energy consumption. The problem is not population. The problem is profligate consumption by a small minority of the world's population.
That small minority is very small indeed. I have been trying to think of one person I know or have ever known who belongs in that group as I don’t mingle with junketing public servants, Wall Street wheeler dealers, NBA players, Al Gore, those in the dope business or entertainment stars.
India has exceedingly low per capita energy consumption and I am sure the 300-400 million without electric service go to bed happy in the knowledge they are not in the profligate group
.
Indians who have air conditioning use them. Those with cars use them. Just as I do. But because I am an American I am profligate. How specious can an argument get?
But wait, India’s population is growing rapidly and will soon exceed China’s, and a middle class that can afford air conditioning and cars is burgeoning, raising the energy demand dramatically without reducing the number of people without electric service. Again, population is THE problem.
To everyone else, let's see, the climate chief of the IPCC has just been fired, IPCC's Pachauri still refuses to resign, but his days are clearly numbered, there will be further fallout from the CRU business, Jones has already lost his position there. As Sutherland said in his paper, these climate scientists have given the rest of science a bad name, now they'll have to take their just desserts.
You have air conditioning and cars, therefore you use them. This consumes energy and generates pollution. Yet you say that people who do not have air conditioning and cars are the problem and they should be eliminated.
How specious can an argument get?
All right, let's wave a magic wand and give everyone air conditioning and cars. The problems of providing energy and pollution will remain and become much worse. And you are still one of the people using energy and creating pollution.
That won't work.
Back to square one. Wave the magic wand, and suddenly all the people who do not have air conditioning and cars disappear. The same problems of dwindling energy resources, environmental damage and pollution still remain. And you are part of the problem because you use air conditioning and drive cars.
It is called denial.
What makes you so special that people who do not have air conditioning or cars are responsible for your actions, which is using air conditioning and cars? Why should they be considered the problem when you are the one whose actions are creating the problems?
It would make more sense to eliminate air conditioning and cars. Then, there is no problem. Either that, or change the sources of energy to renewable and sustainable sources so that dwindling supply and pollution are not a problem. Then everyone can have air conditioning and cars with no problem.
I hate to recite the problems associated with our dismal here and now situation. They are legion and I cannot think of one that is not getting worse (with the possible exception of shale natural gas situation that gives us more time.)
As we are about to tick over to 7 billion without even the hint of population control in the offing I am afraid we have passed the point of a solution, we are over the cliff in free fall. I don’t much like being wrong but in this case I hope I am wrong.
Our civilization is the child of fossil fuels, a one shot deal. We are nearing the end of a potlatch.
For 50 years I had been optimistic about fusion energy. Alas, today even if we were could build fusion plants I’m afraid it’s already too late. And fission plants have become so expensive that how can those who could never afford electricity from coal expect to afford electricity generated in plants costing perhaps 10 times as much?
We hear how science and technology will save us. Science and technology has produced fission energy and no other significant sources of energy. Our increased production of green energy has been swamped by population growth and increased demand so we are still building coal plants like crazy.
It is far too late for a bucolic world which might be idyllic for maybe 0.3 billion people or so – but we have 23 times that many today.
Science (and simple arithmetic) is as much about telling us what is impossible as it is about telling us what is possible. No body ever says that.
--------" I am afraid we have passed the point of a solution, we are over the cliff in free fall. I don’t much like being wrong but in this case I hope I am wrong."-------
I must say, you are sounding very much like a firm believer in the Apocalypse of Revelation.
-------" Science (and simple arithmetic) is as much about telling us what is impossible as it is about telling us what is possible. No body ever says that."------
You could very well be most correct in your assessment.
I think we both agree that if we do nothing we are facing a grave crisis.
I think we need to do what we can to change that You might be correct in that we can not avert a crisis---however, I think it is still our moral obligation to do what we can.
As for population growth being a problem that needs to be addressed, I agree with you there too.
In the "run up" to Copenhagen (prior to Climate-gate), there emerged what I have referred to elsewhere as the "three legged stool" of Anthropogenic Global Climate Change (AGCC).
The first "leg" consists of a massive, if messy, reduction in global annual carbon emissions toward zero global annual carbon emissions. The "350" crowd would also require efforts to extract sufficient anthropogenic carbon from the atmosphere to return the atmospheric carbon concentration to 350 ppm. However, AFAIK, there is no clear statement of a unique GOAL and TIMEFRAME for this effort.
The second "leg" requires the end of animal husbandry globally to eliminate the methane emissions resulting from that activity. This "leg" was posited most openly by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. (I will make no effort here to estimate the incremental effect of a change from animal protein to legume protein in the global diet on methane emissions.)
The third "leg" is population control, advocated in the US by presidential advisers John Holdren and Cass Sunstein (and here by Don), among others. For the US, this is a relatively simple, if politically hazardous, exercise. Eliminating illegal immigration into the US and returning the currently resident illegals to their countries of origin would stabilize our population within two generations. The problem is not so easily controlled in much of the rest of the world, particularly in Muslim countries or countries with large Muslim populations.
The "seat" of the stool is global governance, advocated by early drafts of the ill-fated Copenhagen Accords and by the president of the EU. This global government would have the power to tax, to mandate, to penalize and to distribute wealth.
I would venture that few outside the ruling classes have envisioned this "stool" on their own; and, even fewer have had it clearly explained to them.
I believe that this "stool", had it been successfully assembled in Copenhagen, would have been the ugliest piece of very expensive furniture ever constructed anywhere.
The actual Copenhagen negotiations clearly showed a world divided into three "camps": the indefensibly guilty (US, Canada, EU, etc.); the unassailably growing (China, India, etc.); and, the piteously aggrieved (Africa, island nations, etc.). The deal which didn't get done would have had the unassailably growing take the necessary technology from the indefensibly guilty at no cost, while the piteously aggrieved would take the indefensibly guilty's money to salve their wounds. For some reason, this was not perceived as leading to "...and they lived happily ever after".
The above may sound rather cynical. It probably is rather cynical.
That is likely because watching the process unfold has left me rather cynical. This comment thread has done nothing to dispel my cynicism. Neither has the past three months of "guidance" from the AGCC community. My condition may well be irredeemable.
I think it is also an assault on science to politicize the results of scientific investigation in the surreptitious pursuit of a new world order.
I think it is also an assault on science for politicians to create and promulgate doomsday scenarios unsupported by the science.
The sceptics, for all of the abuse they have received, have functioned as the BS meter when it comes to what has now degenerated to "Anthropogenic Global Wierding".
These ways do not require any new or pie in the sky technologies. It can all be done with technologies that are available and in use right now.
All of this argument and hostility over something that is easy to fix. Atmospheric greenhouse?------we can not only fix it, we can reverse it. And it is in our own best interest from a security, economic and environmental viewpoints.
Please provide a list of the technologies which meet your "spend much less" and "economic" criteria.
Perhaps we could provide copies of the list to China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, etc. which are currently investing $ billions in the "same old stuff", which will then be around for another 50-60 years.
Ed
Methane is both a fossil fuel, and a biofuel. CO2 is a greenhouse effect gas because it absorbs infrared radiation. But CO2 is not the only greenhouse effect gas. Methane is also a greenhouse effect gas. Methane has 17X the heat capture ability of CO2. If we capture methane that would have ordinarily escaped into the atmosphere anyway(for instance, treating sewage and tapping landfills--things we should be doing anyway)----and mix it with fossil methane, just a 6% mixture will produce greenhouse effect neutral emissions. We are trading high GHG effect methane to low GHG effect CO2. Both fossil and biomethane are exactly the same stuff, CH4, they can be mixed in any proportion for any application with no loss of performance. If one day in the future we begin to run out of fossil methane, we can always make more from any type of organic material available, and just "Keep On Truckin' ".
Solar thermal energy requires no advanced technology---has been around for centuries, is simple and inexpensive to build, install, and maintain. Solar thermal works best as an auxiliary system to heat buildings and water. Your furnace or water heater would work just the way it always has with solar thermal installed---it would just come on far less often and use less energy when it does. In Israel, over 80% of hot water is solar heated. Solar thermal heat is so easy and inexpensive to construct and install that we could afford to give it away to consumers at a cost less than PV subsidies in most cases. Since the largest bulk of natural gas goes to heating buildings and hot water right now because it is the cheapest form of energy available to consumers, if consumers installed solar thermal----then used the savings and displaced natural gas to run their vehicles, they would, in effect, be running their vehicles on free solar energy. No batteries required.
Natural gas is easy to extract, causes minimal environmental damage, and is easy to move around by pipeline or liquid. It is a mature technology and already has a widespread distribution network available. Compressors are available that can allow consumers to fill their vehicles from home. Most service stations already have natural gas hook ups available from utilities ----- adding natural gas fueling would simply be a matter of adding a compressor and storage. It could be done in a week at most, in most cases, it would probably be a matter of having things set up and ready to start fueling in a day or two. Almost every town has a natural gas utility company. An NG utility could have a vehicle fueling station set up very quickly---it is what they do.
Natural gas is abundant and cheap. Current estimates of reserves project a supply of over 100 years. That doesn't even count methane clathrate deposits or man made methane.
Methane is also a basic industrial feedstock material to produce any type of carbon based material.
The end product of methane production from waste plant and animal material is compost. A valuable commodity in itself. And an excellent reason to make methane. We can never have too much topsoil. And we have not been very good at all at protecting that resource, even with all our gee whiz scientific technology.
I’ve always thought I was pretty good at making “calculations without data”, i.e. getting some kind of number. Not in this case. I can’t get started. It’s a real stinker.
But it does put me in mind of some playful sorts who ran human effluvium through the mass spectrometer back in the 50’s(?). Lots of methane of course but also a variety of organic sulfur molecules. I’m afraid what the subject had eaten is lost to science forever.
http://www.goodcleantech.com/2007/08/new_fiat_siena_ttrafuel_runs_o.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_natural_gas
http://green.autoblog.com/2008/02/28/geneva-08-preview-volkswagen-passat-variant-tsi-ecofuel/
http://www.worldcarfans.com/109061219908/vw-reveals-golf-plus-bifuel--lpg-or-petrol
http://www.cat.com/cda/search/search/search?searchField=natural+gas+engines&s=25&m=102221&x=7
http://www.worldcarfans.com/109031217833/ford-to-unveil-trifuel-capable-mondeo
http://alternativefuels.about.com/od/naturalgasvehicles/a/cngconversion.htm
Not at all Don. Garlic and onions contain organic sulfides, that is what gives them their di-stink-tive aromas and flavors. The plant's chemical weapons in the battle against insects.
Of coarse, humans will eat things no self respecting insect would go near.
LMAO!
I love to perform before an audience which likes my material. :-)
Ed
Science got mugged and real science got a black eye. My worst fear is that once the actual stinky stuff hits the fan, be it due to whatever cause, "scientists" will be held in such disrepute that they won't be any help even if all humanity desperately needs them. There really is no reason to respond to Len's outbursts, if you or I were to receive $10-15Billion per YEAR from government agencies to study something, I believe you and I would be more than happy to respond long before we received freedom of information act requests, but you and I are honest brokers, versus what Phil Jones and "team" have become.
In 2002 when Steve McIntyre emailed Phil Jones asking for weather station data, so began the tribalism among scientists that led to 'climategate' Another link Len won't touch with a 10 foot pole Remember, the Guardian's Fred Pearce (author of this article) is PRO AGW as is the vast majority of their editorial staff! They must have been chewing their own hands off to mention this "innocuous" statement by Dr. Mann: mike
p.s. I know I probably don't need to mention this, but just to insure absolutely clarify on
this, I'm providing these for your own personal use, since you're a trusted colleague. So
please don't pass this along to others without checking w/ me first. This is the sort of
"dirty laundry" one doesn't want to fall into the hands of those who might potentially try
to distort things...
Yup, scientists worried about "dirty laundry" aren't scientists, they're houskeepers? lol
I had (without really giving it much thought) wrongly assumed one human fart was pretty much the same as another. So I was very surprised to learn that most people, 2/3rd, don’t make methane. So, the difference is in the DNA. Non methane maker parents produce non methane making children.
Nitrogen is the major constituent. We swallow much air. Beans have some hard to digest sugars that get eaten by bacteria in the gut releasing lots of CO2. Anyway, I didn’t want to leave the false impression of the importance of methane.
The second analysis sees it as democracy in action – the outcome of an entirely laudable effort by amateur scientists and others outside the scientific mainstream"
...
"But as (CRU's work) comes under assault, it is worth remembering that it does not directly touch on other key issues like the physics of climate change, forecasts of future climate change and so on. Even if all the work of CRU were revealed as entirely phoney, which is far from being true, it would not demonstrate climate change was a hoax, or even much alter predictions of future climate."
You should read the articles you link to yourself, Jeff.
Len,
You really should stop jumping to conclusions based on appearances. I certainly made no such assertion above, nor in any other comment stream on this site.
Ed
Jeff,
Thanks. I try. Some days I'm more trying than others. :-)
Ed
Don,
You obviously took my concerns about a legume-based diet more seriously than I did. (I am a methane producer, by the way, and most definitely NOT a good candidate for a "miracle fruit" diet.) :-)
Ed
See this link:
"The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years. Not all individual proxy records indicate that the recent warmth is unprecedented, although a larger fraction of geographically diverse sites experienced exceptional warmth during the late 20th century than during any other extended period from A.D. 900 onward.
Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium."
They then make an aside mention that certainty for proxy data prior to AD1600 is not as good as the rest, but DOES NOT CHANGE MANN'S ORIGINAL CONCLUSION SUBSTANTIVELY.
Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years (2006) Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (BASC) - The National Academies Press
Some honesty would be appreciated. And that McIntyre character. As a scientist?
"Plausible" is a long way from "undeniable".
McIntyre is a statistician. His critiques have focused on misapplication of statistical techniques. I have seen no convincing refutation of his critiques.
Ed
You obviously took my concerns about a legume-based diet more seriously than I did. (I am a methane producer, by the way, and most definitely NOT a good candidate for a "miracle fruit" diet.) :-)
Ed "--------------
Ed, as a breeder and trainer of working K9s for the last 35 years, often with as many as a dozen dogs in the house at the same time, I think I can offer you some advice based on experience.
The problem is an imbalance with the intestinal flora. Add yogurt to your diet, and substitute cheese and eggs for some of the meat in your diet.
The people riding the elevator with you will thank you.
But in looking over Gerlich and Tscheuschner's paper: "Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics", I've noticed the following:
It was very hard to figure out what the paper is about, until I found where they said the purpose of the paper is to show there is NO fundamental CO2 greenhouse effect in physics, and (thus) there is NO fundamental principle behind this CO2 greenhouse effect, and finally, it is NOT physically correct to consider radiative heat transfer as the fundamental mechanism controlling the weather setting thermal conductivity and friction to zero.
How do they do this?
Well, they basically say the Stephan Boltzmann equation for used for indicating planetary heating by the sun is inaccurate. Then they say it's impossible to determine the average temperature of the planet anyway, so no one knows what the temperature is, let alone what it is supposed to be.
The then try to leverage this uncertainty to disprove the greenhouse effect. Example:
"Disproof: The concept of the Earth’s mean temperature is ill-defined. Therefore the concept
of a rise of a mean temperature is ill-defined as well."
I can appreciate the determining the mean temperature of the earth is problematic and may even be impossible to measure with any accuracy. But that doesn't constitute "dis-proof" that under certain situations, a system can become warmer than in other situations.
It's after this point, I start to get lost, and not due to my intellectual shortcomings. G & T seem to acknowledge that the planets do not all heat up according to S-B, so something must be causing the added heat. But this "something" cannot be CO2, because they can't stomach the re-radiation of heat from the sky to the ground (even though this can and would occur if a cloud became warmer than the ground beneath it).
In the end, they just don't like the concept of a greenhouse effect by CO2. While G & T may acknowledge that the earth is warmer than S-B should indicate, they make no effort to figure out what that additional mechanism might be (but they are sure it is not CO2).
The extensive bibliography of footnotes cites other skeptics of AGW, including Jaworowski and E-G Beck. Bad science in support of more bad science.
In the end, it's really not hard to disprove G & T. If you can allow that SOME temperature measurement (even very broadly defined) is possible, then you will see that Venus is much hotter than it should be, even accounting for its distance from the sun. What discriminates Venus from the Earth and Mars? It's much thicker atmosphere. Rather than discussing Venus and Mars in detail, G & T prefer to discuss pans heating on a stove.
Venus Earth Mars
Distance from Sun (A.U.) 0.72 1 1.52
Flux, W/m2 2643 1370 593
Albedo 0.8 0.3 0.22
Effective Temperature, K 220 255 212
Actual observed Temp, K 730 288 218
Greenhouse Effect, K 510 33 5
The fundamental issue remains. Climategate showed that there WAS in fact a gate, and the CRU and the others on the "team" including geographically disperse institutions including Penn, NASA and others WERE in OBVIOUS fact colluding, colluding on IPCC "reviews" colluding on denial of access to data, colluding on attacking publications that DARED to print anything remotely negative towards their AGW religion. This is all fact, this is all proven in dozens and dozens of emails per subject above. They were the gatekeepers of the data, the methods and the models, and CONTRARY to established scientific norms, they REFUSED to relinquish said data, including under FOIA even though they are PUBLICLY funded! That is completely unacceptable, it is contrary to science and it HAS given science a bad name.
You would be unwise to attack McIntyre his methods and approach and even his funding are beyond reproach, unlike YOUR side, caught with their hands in the cookie jar including shaking down oil companies for funding with threats of how the data would "come out" if it were not forthcoming. What McIntyre and others asked for should have been granted immediately, if not sooner. Everyone should recall the cold-fusion imbroglio wherein scientists from Utah thought they discovered this wonderful new thing. But THEY unlike the AGW "team" DID release their methods as is REQUIRED by scientific first principles and unfortunately for them, other scientists were unable to replicate their findings. The gatekeepers in AGW do NOT relinquish their data, their methods or their models so others are NOT able to replicate ANYTHING, and yet we're expected to believe in them. I'm sorry, but that's just not science, that's religion.
What would happen? This is where the warmers get it all wrong. Greenhouse gases do indeed absorb radiation, but the thermal laws say that anything that absorbs thermal radiation will also emit it at the same level of emissivity. In other words, once absorbed, it will emit photos of its own. In fact, gh gases are always emitting photons because they always have kinetic energy.
So we know that gh gases emit radiation, and we can say that 50% of that radiation is directed to space, and the other 50% is directed toward earth. This is true whether it is incoming sun energy or radiated energy from the earth's surface, or from another radiating gh gas molecule.
So far, so good. Now, we also know that all of the energy received from the sun must be radiated back to space in order to maintain radiative balance. Never mind the avenues for the moment, it is unimportant. On average, every day, the same amount of energy received from the sun is radiated back to space from all radiative elements, including gh gases.
So, there is one more thermal law that must be remembered. The amount of radiation from any given object is proportional to its temperature. The warmer it is, the more it radiates. So, we can say the average temperature of the earth is due to the radiation from the surface to space, plus the radiation from gh gases to space. So, I assume everyone is still with me, and knows that I've been quoting thermal laws, not hypotheses.
So, what would happen if all the gh gases were removed from the atmosphere? The answer should be obvious - the earth would have to warm up in order to radiate more - the amount it radiated before, plus the now extinct radiation from greenhouse gases. And, if the earth increases in surface temperature, the rest of the atmoshpere, made up of inert (non radiation absorbing or radiating) gases, so THEY TOO would warm. Earth would warm until a new equilibrium was reached, such that the earth's surface alone would radiate back to space the amount that was received each day.
THAT is what is wrong with the AGW hypothesis - it violates the thermal laws, the ideal gas laws, and plain common sense.
And for those talking about 'reradiation', consider what happens when you step into the shade during a sunny day - you are cooled, because you are not receiving direct thermal radiation. Try that at night. Put up a shield of any substance, including anything with the lowest possible emissivity, such as styrofoam. See if youi can create 'shade' at night. You can't even do it in the presence of low lying clouds full of energy. That is because it is not RADIATED energy that controls air temperature at night, but the conduction of air molecules between the surface and clouds. No clouds, no warming from them, resulting in cooler surface air.
John