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Post by Andrew on Sept 18, 2013 21:13:45 GMT
For me, the most irritating part of Theos statements on climate is the way he announces he knows better than some of the greatest scientists who have ever lived. There is a whole group of such freakophysics practitioners on this board and unfortunately they are so dominating that almost no sane newcomer to this board is going to hang around in what is essentially a madhouse. It is a pity for example that Socold and Steve are no longer active here when we discuss fairly simple physics such as latent heat, or the ability of the sun to increase the temperature of earthly objects which begin cooling less. SoCold and Steve both were forecasting a continual rise in temperatures - steve had already admitted that 15 years without a temperature rise would make him reconsider. With the current dialling back of the climate sensitivity by the IPCC and its acceptance that the warming has 'paused' some positions are difficult to sustain. Trying to invent your own version of physics does not change what the climate is doing. Trying to argue points with 'members of a blog' rather than accepting university course lesson notes, scientific papers and meteorological studies that all say the opposite to your view, is a strange approach. It does not alter the current published science - even if you believe it is 'freakish'. I am certainly not inventing my own version of physics, and evidently you prefer to find somebody who agrees with you rather than working things out for yourself, so that like me, you can challenge the director of the NSIDC and get him to admit his article was confused and technically incorrect. If you still really believe things begin warming up suddenly when ice begins freezing at 0C you are a beyond all hope of education! How can it possibly be that people think the environment that is cooling water begins warming up when ice begins freezing at 0C??? That must surely be one of the dumbest beliefs of all time!
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Post by icefisher on Sept 18, 2013 22:06:53 GMT
How can it possibly be that people think the environment that is cooling water begins warming up when ice begins freezing at 0C??? That must surely be one of the dumbest beliefs of all time! the only thing dumb there is that somebody would narf out so bad on latent heat (it goes to expanding the ice and chipping away mountains) that the only place to retreat was to take a defensive position against a strawman, a strawman you erected and continue to prop up above. Nobody around here ever said that the freezing of ice would warm anything above freezing except you in making your claim that everybody else was taking that position including the NSIDC.
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Post by AstroMet on Sept 19, 2013 3:52:20 GMT
if that is the claim I'm with you Num. For me, the most irritating part of Theos statements on climate is the way he announces he knows better than some of the greatest scientists who have ever lived. There is a whole group of such freakophysics practitioners on this board and unfortunately they are so dominating that almost no sane newcomer to this board is going to hang around in what is essentially a madhouse. It is a pity for example that Socold and Steve are no longer active here when we discuss fairly simple physics such as latent heat, or the ability of the sun to increase the temperature of earthly objects which begin cooling less. Andrew, For starters, not everyone on this board is an amatuer. And two, don't ever put words into my mouth. I've never 'announced' that I know better than "some of the greatest scientists who have ever lived." Just where, if I may inquire, have I ever said such a thing? The real 'pity' and what is most 'irritating' is that rather than to learn and apply, that you lower yourself to making such silly comments, as if talking 'fairly simply physics' somehow has to mean we all go round and round and round on that silly wheel, all the while never to actually apply any of those physics in the real world of climate and weather? As for people like Numerouno, whose silly argument that my being a mundane astrologer and astrometeorologist somehow invalidates me proves just how ignorant he is. He fails to note that the founder of the planetary laws of motion were discovered by an astrologer (Kepler) and that meteorology itself was invented by astrologers. Facts like these (which some of you on this board are entirely clueless about) shows that it is not a wonder why some of you spend most of your time in useless series of entirely petty arguments over the most negligible of minor matters that involve the Earth's climate in general and the operation of solar, lunar and planetary motion, as well as astrophysics in particular. Numerouno confirms that himself, by going on, endlessly, about a trace gas that is somehow suppose to alter the Earth's entire climate, without knowing that the Sun contains 99.8% of the total mass of our solar system. Yes, this is coming from a mundane astrologer too. For it is the Sun that drives the Earth's climate. To therefore treat the Sun as being somehow a 'minor player' in the Earth's climate, while promoting carbon dioxide is more than anything a serious question of mental health. As Isaac Newton (by the way, one of the greatest scientists to have ever lived who was also a mundane astrologer) once said, that the whole purpose of science is the ability to predict. That means that while it may be all well and good to sit on one's backside bantering endlessly on 'freakophysics' however, the purpose of all of that is to actually apply it and forecast in the real world and that is exactly what I do. Why don't you try it sometime? That way, you might just learn the difference between opinion and actual practice. As we footballers like to say, why don't you get yourself out on the field and bang heads with the rest of us forecasters, rather than sitting in the peanut gallery being all critical of those who actually walk their talk?
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Post by Andrew on Sept 19, 2013 5:44:02 GMT
For me, the most irritating part of Theos statements on climate is the way he announces he knows better than some of the greatest scientists who have ever lived. There is a whole group of such freakophysics practitioners on this board and unfortunately they are so dominating that almost no sane newcomer to this board is going to hang around in what is essentially a madhouse. It is a pity for example that Socold and Steve are no longer active here when we discuss fairly simple physics such as latent heat, or the ability of the sun to increase the temperature of earthly objects which begin cooling less. Andrew, For starters, not everyone on this board is an amatuer. And two, don't ever put words into my mouth. I've never 'announced' that I know better than "some of the greatest scientists who have ever lived." Just where, if I may inquire, have I ever said such a thing? The real 'pity' and what is most 'irritating' is that rather than to learn and apply, that you lower yourself to making such silly comments, as if talking 'fairly simply physics' somehow has to mean we all go round and round and round on that silly wheel, all the while never to actually apply any of those physics in the real world of climate and weather? As for people like Numerouno, whose silly argument that my being a mundane astrologer and astrometeorologist somehow invalidates me proves just how ignorant he is. He fails to note that the founder of the planetary laws of motion were discovered by an astrologer (Kepler) and that meteorology itself was invented by astrologers. Facts like these (which some of you on this board are entirely clueless about) shows that it is not a wonder why some of you spend most of your time in useless series of entirely petty arguments over the most negligible of minor matters that involve the Earth's climate in general and the operation of solar, lunar and planetary motion, as well as astrophysics in particular. Numerouno confirms that himself, by going on, endlessly, about a trace gas that is somehow suppose to alter the Earth's entire climate, without knowing that the Sun contains 99.8% of the total mass of our solar system. Yes, this is coming from a mundane astrologer too. For it is the Sun that drives the Earth's climate. To therefore treat the Sun as being somehow a 'minor player' in the Earth's climate, while promoting carbon dioxide is more than anything a serious question of mental health. As Isaac Newton (by the way, one of the greatest scientists to have ever lived who was also a mundane astrologer) once said, that the whole purpose of science is the ability to predict. That means that while it may be all well and good to sit on one's backside bantering endlessly on 'freakophysics' however, the purpose of all of that is to actually apply it and forecast in the real world and that is exactly what I do. Why don't you try it sometime? That way, you might just learn the difference between opinion and actual practice. As we footballers like to say, why don't you get yourself out on the field and bang heads with the rest of us forecasters, rather than sitting in the peanut gallery being all critical of those who actually walk their talk? Actually Astromet I am not currently sure what you are saying about the greenhouse effect and CO2. Upon reviewing your recent comments you appear to be restricting yourself only to CO2 rather than the GHE generally. Either way, an amount of warming by CO2 can be reasoned using the known laws of physics.
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Post by AstroMet on Sept 19, 2013 23:56:08 GMT
Andrew, For starters, not everyone on this board is an amatuer. And two, don't ever put words into my mouth. I've never 'announced' that I know better than "some of the greatest scientists who have ever lived." Just where, if I may inquire, have I ever said such a thing? The real 'pity' and what is most 'irritating' is that rather than to learn and apply, that you lower yourself to making such silly comments, as if talking 'fairly simply physics' somehow has to mean we all go round and round and round on that silly wheel, all the while never to actually apply any of those physics in the real world of climate and weather? As for people like Numerouno, whose silly argument that my being a mundane astrologer and astrometeorologist somehow invalidates me proves just how ignorant he is. He fails to note that the founder of the planetary laws of motion were discovered by an astrologer (Kepler) and that meteorology itself was invented by astrologers. Facts like these (which some of you on this board are entirely clueless about) shows that it is not a wonder why some of you spend most of your time in useless series of entirely petty arguments over the most negligible of minor matters that involve the Earth's climate in general and the operation of solar, lunar and planetary motion, as well as astrophysics in particular. Numerouno confirms that himself, by going on, endlessly, about a trace gas that is somehow suppose to alter the Earth's entire climate, without knowing that the Sun contains 99.8% of the total mass of our solar system. Yes, this is coming from a mundane astrologer too. For it is the Sun that drives the Earth's climate. To therefore treat the Sun as being somehow a 'minor player' in the Earth's climate, while promoting carbon dioxide is more than anything a serious question of mental health. As Isaac Newton (by the way, one of the greatest scientists to have ever lived who was also a mundane astrologer) once said, that the whole purpose of science is the ability to predict. That means that while it may be all well and good to sit on one's backside bantering endlessly on 'freakophysics' however, the purpose of all of that is to actually apply it and forecast in the real world and that is exactly what I do. Why don't you try it sometime? That way, you might just learn the difference between opinion and actual practice. As we footballers like to say, why don't you get yourself out on the field and bang heads with the rest of us forecasters, rather than sitting in the peanut gallery being all critical of those who actually walk their talk? Actually Astromet I am not currently sure what you are saying about the greenhouse effect and CO2. Upon reviewing your recent comments you appear to be restricting yourself only to CO2 rather than the GHE generally. Either way, an amount of warming by CO2 can be reasoned using the known laws of physics. Andrew, Let me be clear, as I always have been: The Sun is the cause of all global warming, global cooling and everything else in-between that takes place upon Earth's climate. And, C02 is a trace gas, and a thermostat, that in no way leads to the Earth ever becoming a 'greenhouse.' If you want to discuss GHE, then learn that water vapor, which constitutes the largest GHE on Earth acts as a kind of sweater over the Earth's atmosphere, to protect it against the extreme cold of space, along with the ozone layer. The Earth is a water planet whose entire climate is governed and directed by the Sun. However, any amount of warming by means of CO2 cannot be 'reasoned' using any of the laws of physics, which state: that the Earth can NEVER become become a 'greenhouse' by means of C02. Is that clear enough for you?
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Post by magellan on Sept 20, 2013 1:53:46 GMT
Andrew, For starters, not everyone on this board is an amatuer. And two, don't ever put words into my mouth. I've never 'announced' that I know better than "some of the greatest scientists who have ever lived." Just where, if I may inquire, have I ever said such a thing? The real 'pity' and what is most 'irritating' is that rather than to learn and apply, that you lower yourself to making such silly comments, as if talking 'fairly simply physics' somehow has to mean we all go round and round and round on that silly wheel, all the while never to actually apply any of those physics in the real world of climate and weather? As for people like Numerouno, whose silly argument that my being a mundane astrologer and astrometeorologist somehow invalidates me proves just how ignorant he is. He fails to note that the founder of the planetary laws of motion were discovered by an astrologer (Kepler) and that meteorology itself was invented by astrologers. Facts like these (which some of you on this board are entirely clueless about) shows that it is not a wonder why some of you spend most of your time in useless series of entirely petty arguments over the most negligible of minor matters that involve the Earth's climate in general and the operation of solar, lunar and planetary motion, as well as astrophysics in particular. Numerouno confirms that himself, by going on, endlessly, about a trace gas that is somehow suppose to alter the Earth's entire climate, without knowing that the Sun contains 99.8% of the total mass of our solar system. Yes, this is coming from a mundane astrologer too. For it is the Sun that drives the Earth's climate. To therefore treat the Sun as being somehow a 'minor player' in the Earth's climate, while promoting carbon dioxide is more than anything a serious question of mental health. As Isaac Newton (by the way, one of the greatest scientists to have ever lived who was also a mundane astrologer) once said, that the whole purpose of science is the ability to predict. That means that while it may be all well and good to sit on one's backside bantering endlessly on 'freakophysics' however, the purpose of all of that is to actually apply it and forecast in the real world and that is exactly what I do. Why don't you try it sometime? That way, you might just learn the difference between opinion and actual practice. As we footballers like to say, why don't you get yourself out on the field and bang heads with the rest of us forecasters, rather than sitting in the peanut gallery being all critical of those who actually walk their talk? Actually Astromet I am not currently sure what you are saying about the greenhouse effect and CO2. Upon reviewing your recent comments you appear to be restricting yourself only to CO2 rather than the GHE generally. Either way, an amount of warming by CO2 can be reasoned using the known laws of physics. I don't know how long you've been following this whole global warming thing, but 25 years of failed observations based on "known laws of physics" (guesses) has taught me it isn't about "known laws of physics", but rather a hypothesis of how the climate system works via climate modelers embedding their imaginations into computer programs. If it were about simple physics, there should be a pronounced warming in the tropical troposphere AKA the hot spot. I've been waiting 25 years for it to materialize after first reading about it in 1988, and watching James Hansen's Congressional testimony. Something is not right with the hypothesis, and I must say despite all the supposed nails in the coffin of a solar relationship to weather/climate (ex. L&F 2007), it is becoming more clear than ever the sun and its celestial counterparts (e.g. cosmic rays) have a much larger impact on our climate than anyone knew or knows now. It is my view that so little is known about how the climate system works, very little coming out of the science journals should be taken as fact. However, research on the sun since AR4 will likely be ignored in AR5. The 2013 freeze up of the Arctic should cause even the most rabid AGW True Believe to start asking questions.
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Post by Andrew on Sept 20, 2013 3:51:55 GMT
Actually Astromet I am not currently sure what you are saying about the greenhouse effect and CO2. Upon reviewing your recent comments you appear to be restricting yourself only to CO2 rather than the GHE generally. Either way, an amount of warming by CO2 can be reasoned using the known laws of physics. Andrew, Let me be clear, as I always have been: The Sun is the cause of all global warming, global cooling and everything else in-between that takes place upon Earth's climate. And, C02 is a trace gas, and a thermostat, that in no way leads to the Earth ever becoming a 'greenhouse.' If you want to discuss GHE, then learn that water vapor, which constitutes the largest GHE on Earth acts as a kind of sweater over the Earth's atmosphere, to protect it against the extreme cold of space, along with the ozone layer. The Earth is a water planet whose entire climate is governed and directed by the Sun. However, any amount of warming by means of CO2 cannot be 'reasoned' using any of the laws of physics, which state: that the Earth can NEVER become become a 'greenhouse' by means of C02. Is that clear enough for you? What you are saying and particularly why you are saying it is very unclear. If you think CO2 warming violates the laws of physics then you need to identify to your audience the particular laws of physics that you think are broken by a CO2 warming. It should be clear to anybody that there are no laws of physics which state that the Earth can NEVER become warmer via CO2. As currently stated what you are saying below is gibberish: >>any amount of warming by means of CO2 cannot be 'reasoned' using any of the laws of physics, which state: that the Earth can NEVER become become a 'greenhouse' by means of C02.
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Post by AstroMet on Sept 20, 2013 8:41:21 GMT
Andrew, Let me be clear, as I always have been: The Sun is the cause of all global warming, global cooling and everything else in-between that takes place upon Earth's climate. And, C02 is a trace gas, and a thermostat, that in no way leads to the Earth ever becoming a 'greenhouse.' If you want to discuss GHE, then learn that water vapor, which constitutes the largest GHE on Earth acts as a kind of sweater over the Earth's atmosphere, to protect it against the extreme cold of space, along with the ozone layer. The Earth is a water planet whose entire climate is governed and directed by the Sun. However, any amount of warming by means of CO2 cannot be 'reasoned' using any of the laws of physics, which state: that the Earth can NEVER become become a 'greenhouse' by means of C02. Is that clear enough for you? What you are saying and particularly why you are saying it is very unclear. If you think CO2 warming violates the laws of physics then you need to identify to your audience the particular laws of physics that you think are broken by a CO2 warming. It should be clear to anybody that there are no laws of physics which state that the Earth can NEVER become warmer via CO2. As currently stated what you are saying below is gibberish: >>any amount of warming by means of CO2 cannot be 'reasoned' using any of the laws of physics, which state: that the Earth can NEVER become become a 'greenhouse' by means of C02. Andrew, You are incorrect. That means that you are plain wrong. And for heaven's sake, learn about the basics of the Earth's climate rather than trying to come off as if you know what you are talking about: because you do not. There are several laws of physics which state, by their very operation, that the Earth can never become a 'greenhouse' - among them, the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics. And, do I need to remind you that C02 is a thermostat that acts to shed excess heat from the Sun in the Earth's atmosphere back out into space? This is what I mean by people who claim to know what they are talking about, then presume to say, with a straight face, that "it should be clear to anybody that there are no laws of physics that the Earth can NEVER become warmer via CO2." That, Andrew, is gibberish. You know, Yale law school professor Dan Kahan conducted some ingenious experiments about the impact of opinion and ideological passions on people’s ability to think clearly. His conclusion, is that opinion, personal sentiments and ideology, including partisanship, 'can even undermine people's very basic reasoning skills. For instance, people who may be otherwise very good at math may totally flunk a problem that they would otherwise probably be able to solve, simply because giving the right answer goes against their ideological beliefs. In other words, say bye bye to the dream that education, journalism, scientific evidence, media literacy or reason can provide the tools and information that people need in order to make good, sound decisions. It turns out that in the public realm, a lack of information is not the real problem. The hurdle is how the human mind works, for no matter how smart or clever some people think they are, or how rational many people want to believe that they are, the truth is that their reasoning process turns out to be based an ex post facto way of what their emotions already want to believe. In other words, the judgments that you have are based on beliefs that you've already made beforehand, and which are impervious to the actual facts that contradict them. And nowhere is this most observed then in opinions about the factual and true operation of the Earth's climate, such the foolish ignorance of some to the very fact that CO2 is a trace gas that cannot, and does not, supercede the function of the Sun and the laws of physics that govern the Earth's entire climate. The Sun, alone, contains 99.8% of the total mass of our solar system, and rules the Earth's climate. And anyone, and I mean anyone, who says that a trace gas like CO2 can turn the Earth, via 'man-made global warming,' into a greenhouse does NOT have both oars in the water, nor all 52 cards in their deck.
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Post by Andrew on Sept 20, 2013 9:48:42 GMT
What you are saying and particularly why you are saying it is very unclear. If you think CO2 warming violates the laws of physics then you need to identify to your audience the particular laws of physics that you think are broken by a CO2 warming. It should be clear to anybody that there are no laws of physics which state that the Earth can NEVER become warmer via CO2. As currently stated what you are saying below is gibberish: >>any amount of warming by means of CO2 cannot be 'reasoned' using any of the laws of physics, which state: that the Earth can NEVER become become a 'greenhouse' by means of C02. Andrew, You are incorrect. That means that you are plain wrong. And for heaven's sake, learn about the basics of the Earth's climate rather than trying to come off as if you know what you are talking about: because you do not. There are several laws of physics which state, by their very operation, that the Earth can never become a 'greenhouse' - among them, the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics. And, do I need to remind you that C02 is a thermostat that acts to shed excess heat from the Sun in the Earth's atmosphere back out into space? This is what I mean by people who claim to know what they are talking about, then presume to say, with a straight face, that "it should be clear to anybody that there are no laws of physics that the Earth can NEVER become warmer via CO2." That, Andrew, is gibberish. You know, Yale law school professor Dan Kahan conducted some ingenious experiments about the impact of opinion and ideological passions on people’s ability to think clearly. His conclusion, is that opinion, personal sentiments and ideology, including partisanship, 'can even undermine people's very basic reasoning skills. For instance, people who may be otherwise very good at math may totally flunk a problem that they would otherwise probably be able to solve, simply because giving the right answer goes against their ideological beliefs. In other words, say bye bye to the dream that education, journalism, scientific evidence, media literacy or reason can provide the tools and information that people need in order to make good, sound decisions. It turns out that in the public realm, a lack of information is not the real problem. The hurdle is how the human mind works, for no matter how smart or clever some people think they are, or how rational many people want to believe that they are, the truth is that their reasoning process turns out to be based an ex post facto way of what their emotions already want to believe. In other words, the judgments that you have are based on beliefs that you've already made beforehand, and which are impervious to the actual facts that contradict them. And nowhere is this most observed then in opinions about the factual and true operation of the Earth's climate, such the foolish ignorance of some to the very fact that CO2 is a trace gas that cannot, and does not, supercede the function of the Sun and the laws of physics that govern the Earth's entire climate. The Sun, alone, contains 99.8% of the total mass of our solar system, and rules the Earth's climate. And anyone, and I mean anyone, who says that a trace gas like CO2 can turn the Earth, via 'man-made global warming,' into a greenhouse does NOT have both oars in the water, nor all 52 cards in their deck. View AttachmentLess is more. What aspects of the first and second laws falsify CO2 being the cause of a warmer Earth? In order to cut down on the amount of typing you do, I suggest you restrict yourself to answering the question rather than repeating what you have already written.
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Post by glennkoks on Sept 20, 2013 12:26:26 GMT
Physics is not my strong suit so a quick google search on the topic brought this up:
The greenhouse effect and the 2nd law of thermodynamics
What The Science Says: The 2nd law of thermodynamics is consistent with the greenhouse effect which is directly observed.
Climate Myth: 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
"The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that many authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861, and Arrhenius 1896, and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist." (Gerhard Gerlich)
Skeptics sometimes claim that the explanation for global warming contradicts the second law of thermodynamics. But does it? To answer that, first, we need to know how global warming works. Then, we need to know what the second law of thermodynamics is, and how it applies to global warming. Global warming, in a nutshell, works like this:
The sun warms the Earth. The Earth and its atmosphere radiate heat away into space. They radiate most of the heat that is received from the sun, so the average temperature of the Earth stays more or less constant. Greenhouse gases trap some of the escaping heat closer to the Earth's surface, making it harder for it to shed that heat, so the Earth warms up in order to radiate the heat more effectively. So the greenhouse gases make the Earth warmer - like a blanket conserving body heat - and voila, you have global warming. See What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect for a more detailed explanation.
The second law of thermodynamics has been stated in many ways. For us, Rudolf Clausius said it best:
"Heat generally cannot flow spontaneously from a material at lower temperature to a material at higher temperature." So if you put something hot next to something cold, the hot thing won't get hotter, and the cold thing won't get colder. That's so obvious that it hardly needs a scientist to say it, we know this from our daily lives. If you put an ice-cube into your drink, the drink doesn't boil!
The skeptic tells us that, because the air, including the greenhouse gasses, is cooler than the surface of the Earth, it cannot warm the Earth. If it did, they say, that means heat would have to flow from cold to hot, in apparent violation of the second law of thermodynamics.
So have climate scientists made an elementary mistake? Of course not! The skeptic is ignoring the fact that the Earth is being warmed by the sun, which makes all the difference.
To see why, consider that blanket that keeps you warm. If your skin feels cold, wrapping yourself in a blanket can make you warmer. Why? Because your body is generating heat, and that heat is escaping from your body into the environment. When you wrap yourself in a blanket, the loss of heat is reduced, some is retained at the surface of your body, and you warm up. You get warmer because the heat that your body is generating cannot escape as fast as before.
If you put the blanket on a tailors dummy, which does not generate heat, it will have no effect. The dummy will not spontaneously get warmer. That's obvious too!
Is using a blanket an accurate model for global warming by greenhouse gases? Certainly there are differences in how the heat is created and lost, and our body can produce varying amounts of heat, unlike the near-constant heat we receive from the sun. But as far as the second law of thermodynamics goes, where we are only talking about the flow of heat, the comparison is good. The second law says nothing about how the heat is produced, only about how it flows between things.
To summarise: Heat from the sun warms the Earth, as heat from your body keeps you warm. The Earth loses heat to space, and your body loses heat to the environment. Greenhouse gases slow down the rate of heat-loss from the surface of the Earth, like a blanket that slows down the rate at which your body loses heat. The result is the same in both cases, the surface of the Earth, or of your body, gets warmer.
So global warming does not violate the second law of thermodynamics. And if someone tells you otherwise, just remember that you're a warm human being, and certainly nobody's dummy.
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Post by glennkoks on Sept 20, 2013 12:35:15 GMT
This from Dr. Roy Spencer's blog, He is not exactly an alarmist:
In Defense of the Greenhouse Effect April 1st, 2009 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D. (corrected 2 April 2 p.m. CDT for error in discussion of Kirchoffs Law…kudos to Ben Herman, U. Arizona)
One of the points that Dr. Richard Lindzen made during his keynote speech at the 2nd International Conference on Climate Change, held in New York City March 8-10 this year, is that we global warming skeptics need to be careful about what aspects of the theory of manmade global warming we dispute.
And I fully agree.
In an e-mail I just responded to this evening, I once again found myself defending the existence of the Earth’s “greenhouse effect”. I’m talking about the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect, not mankind’s small enhancement of it. And it’s amazing how many scientists, let alone lay people, dispute its existence.
I’ll admit I used to question it, too. So, many years ago Danny Braswell and I built our own radiative transfer model to demonstrate for ourselves that the underlying physics were sound.
To briefly review: because water vapor, clouds, carbon dioxide, and methane in the atmosphere absorb and emit infrared radiation, the atmosphere stays warmer in the lower atmosphere and cooler in the upper atmosphere than it would otherwise be without the greenhouse effect.
Even though the physical process involved in this is radiative, the greenhouse blanket around the Earth is somewhat analogous to a real blanket, which we all know tends to hold heat in where it is being generated, and reduce its flow toward the colder surroundings. A blanket – real or greenhouse — doesn’t actually create the separation between hot and cold…it just reduces the rate at which energy is lost by the hot, and gained by the cold.
In the case of the Earth, most sunlight is absorbed at the surface, which then heats and moistens the air above it. This solar heating causes the lower atmosphere to warm, and the greenhouse effect of the water vapor thus generated helps keep the lower atmosphere warm by reducing its rate of cooling. (Long before radiation can make the surface too warm, though, convective air currents kick in…e.g. thunderstorms…and transport much of the excess heat from the lower to the upper atmosphere. As a result, the lower atmosphere never gets as warm as the greenhouse effect ‘wants’ to make it.)
So where do the objections to the “greenhouse effect” come in?
IT’S NOT A REAL GREENHOUSE The processes involved in the atmospheric greenhouse effect are not the same as what happens in a real greenhouse. Yes, we all know that, but the misnomer has stuck, and it is not going away anytime soon. A real greenhouse physically traps warm air, preventing convective air currents from carrying warm air out of the greenhouse, which would then be replaced by cooler air coming into the greenhouse. In contrast, the infrared atmospheric greenhouse effect instead slows the rate at which the atmosphere cools radiatively, not convectively.
IT VIOLATES THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS A second objection has to do with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It is claimed that since the greenhouse effect depends partly upon cooler upper layers of the atmosphere emitting infrared radiation toward the warmer, lower layers of the atmosphere, that this violates the 2nd Law, which (roughly speaking) says that energy must flow from warmer objects to cooler objects, not the other way around.
There are different ways to illustrate why this is not a valid objection. First of all, the 2nd Law applies to the behavior of whole systems, not to every part within a system, and to all forms of energy involved in the system…not just its temperature. And in the atmosphere, temperature is only one component to the energy content of an air parcel.
Secondly, the idea that a cooler atmospheric layer can emit infrared energy toward a warmer atmospheric layer below it seems unphysical to many people. I suppose this is because we would not expect a cold piece of metal to transfer heat into a warm piece of metal. But the processes involved in conductive heat transfer are not the same as in radiative heat transfer. A hot star out in space will still receive, and absorb, radiant energy from a cooler nearby star…even though the NET flow of energy will be in the opposite direction.
In other words, a photon being emitted by the cooler star doesn’t stick its finger out to see how warm the surroundings are before it decides to leave.
Furthermore, we should not confuse a reduced rate of cooling with heating. Imagine you have a jar of boiling hot water right next to a jar of warm water sitting on the counter. The boiling hot jar will cool rapidly, while the warm jar will cool more slowly. Eventually, both jars will achieve the same temperature, just as the 2nd Law predicts.
But what if the boiling hot jar was by all by itself? Then, it would have cooled even faster. Does that mean that the presence of the warm jar was sending energy into the hot jar? No, it was just reducing the rate of cooling of the hot jar. The climate system is like the hot jar having an internal heating mechanism (the sun warming the surface), but its ability to cool is reduced by its surroundings (the atmosphere), which tends to insulate it.
Another way the objection is voiced is that a layer of the atmosphere that absorbs infrared energy at a certain rate must then also emit it at the same rate, so how can that layer “trap” any energy to warm? This misconception comes from a misunderstanding of Kirchoffs Law, which only says that the infrared opacity of a layer makes that layer’s ability to absorb and emit IR the same. The actual rate of infrared absorption by a layer depends upon that opacity AND the temperatures of the emitting layers above and below, but the rate of emission depends upon the the same opacity and the temperature of the layer itself. Therefore, the rate of infrared flows in and out of the layer do not have to be equal, and if they are not equal, the layer will either warm or cool radiatively.
THE ATMOSPHERE IS ALREADY OPAQUE TO THE TRANSFER OF INFRARED ENERGY
Some claim that since the atmosphere is already quite opaque to the transfer of infrared energy, adding a little more CO2 won’t do anything to warm the lower atmosphere and surface. While there is a grain of truth to this, it must be remembered that the Earth’s surface does not radiatively cool directly to outer space, but to the layer of air above it, which in turn cools to the next layer of air above it, etc.
Think of it like several blankets covering your body on a cold night. Your body does not lose energy directly to the cold air outside of the blankets, but to the first blanket, which then transfers heat to the second blanket, etc.
Finally, the most vivid evidence that infrared radiation can cool something below the temperature of its surroundings – in seeming contradiction to the 2nd Law — is what happens on a clear calm night. The Earth’s surface cools by losing infrared radiation, which then chills the air in contact with it. This nighttime cooling causes a thin layer of cold air to build up near the surface…even though it is colder than the ground below the surface, or the air immediately above it.
There is no way for cooler air aloft coming down to the surface to be causing this effect because when air descends from any altitude, it will always be warmer (not colder) than its surroundings, due to adiabatic compression.
Therefore, we have a cold air layer sandwiched in between two warmer layers, becoming colder still as night progresses. Is this a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? No, because the entire depth of the atmosphere – as a system — is indeed losing infrared energy as a whole to the cold depths of outer space.
The same thing happens to the top of your car when the sun sets…it cools by infrared radiation to a temperature cooler than the air, and as a result is often the first place you will see dew form.
THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT WORKS…FOR NOW The greenhouse effect is supported by laboratory measurements of the radiative absorption properties of different gases, which when put into a radiative transfer model that conserves energy, and combined with convective overturning of the atmosphere in response to solar heating, results in a vertical temperature profile that looks very much like the one we observe in nature.
So, until someone comes along with another quantitative model that uses different physics to get as good a simulation of the vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere, I consider objections to the existence of the ‘greenhouse effect’ to be little more than hand waving.
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Post by glennkoks on Sept 20, 2013 12:43:18 GMT
Since my physics is rather weak and you can find just about anything on the internet I wen't straight to a bunch of really smart guys with advanced degree's in well Physics. This from the American Institute of Physics: www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm
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Post by glennkoks on Sept 20, 2013 13:01:40 GMT
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Post by sigurdur on Sept 20, 2013 15:23:42 GMT
Glenn: What is very obvious is that H2O vapor is the primary greenhouse gas. The band overlap indicates that CO2 is only workable once it is high enough in the atmosphere where H2O vapor is negligible. That is where the cylindrical properties of the atmosphere also play a role, in the fact that the emission of photons goes out to space.
CO2 helps in that regard, but is truly a minor influence on temps, as is shown by the divergence of the modeled expected response and reality.
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Post by glennkoks on Sept 20, 2013 16:45:24 GMT
Glenn: What is very obvious is that H2O vapor is the primary greenhouse gas. The band overlap indicates that CO2 is only workable once it is high enough in the atmosphere where H2O vapor is negligible. That is where the cylindrical properties of the atmosphere also play a role, in the fact that the emission of photons goes out to space. CO2 helps in that regard, but is truly a minor influence on temps, as is shown by the divergence of the modeled expected response and reality. sigurdur, no doubt. water vapor is a much more powerful greenhouse gas as is methane. But to say that contradicts the second law of thermodynamics? Is it's effect on our climate overstated? Most likely. Are there other much more powerful drivers? Absolutely.
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