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Post by nautonnier on Aug 17, 2009 19:12:55 GMT
This is the Kelvin Fallacy - we know everything there is to know therefore : "Without the climate system itself amplifying the forcing in some way, and ghg changes are one such way, it is not possible to explain the magnitude of temperature change (from glacial to interglacial)"The Kelvin Fallacy is a kind of hubris So as AGW proponents cannot conceive of another reason for Earth to warm, it must be CO 2. This despite the warming and cooling in the past out of synchronization with the level of CO 2, so obviously something else can heat and warm the planet. This is the Strawman Fallacy. Misinterpreting what someone wrote, attacking that misinterpretation and then claiming to have addressed what they wrote. The Stawman Fallacy is a kind of Hubris. No strawman and no misinterpretation... AGW proponents cannot think of ANYTHING else that could cause the warming that occurred in the last decades of the twentieth century apart from CO 2- so as they cannot think of anything else - it must be CO 2 . If you cannot accept that it could be something else as you do not know of anything else. You as Kelvin believe that there is nothing that remains to be discovered - you already know everything there is to know. |
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Post by chrisc on Aug 17, 2009 20:55:37 GMT
In response to some of points raised against my post or other replies since my writing: 1) The attribution of warming to CO2 has nothing to do with a process-by-elimination approach, nor is CO2 pulled out of a hat because we don't know of anything else that could do it. Just the opposite in fact, as attribution involves sorting through the many physically plausible mechanisms, both natural and anthropogenic, and providing a relative contribution for individual agents. This should be fairly obvious to anyone who has read a few documents summarizing the D&A process, particularly in some of the links I already provided. It is also blatantly untrue that scientists ignore or have dismissed other possible forcing mechanisms... it's just an unfortuante reality that they don't provide a sufficient magnitude or are inconsistent with observed and modeled spatio-temporal patterns associated with the physical response of the atmosphere system. People here are welcome to perform their own attribution study, but there's no purpose in misrepresenting the current way in which this process is done or disregarding the myriad studies on the topic. 2) The planck (no-feedback) response to climate change can indeed be calculated by the inverse of the derivative of the Planck function with respect to temperature. This yields an output of 1/(4*sigma*T^3) and the relation between CO2 concentration and radiative forcing is k*ln(C/Ci) where k is some number derived from line-by-line radiative transfer codes (typcially taken to be 5.35, see Myhre et al 1998, 2001; Collins et al 2006), C is the final concentration, and Ci is the baseline concentration. This forces a roughly 1 C rise in temperature per doubling of CO2 holding all other variables fixed, which indeed is really straight-forward physics. These details can be found in any basic atmospheric physics book which treats these topics in some mathematical detail. This is why the GHG's have a very small uncertainty associated with their radiative forcing, while other things such as aerosols have a much wider uncertainty band, as in the below diagram.  3) It is well understood that the surface of the planet loses heat in a large number of ways, including radiation, and the latent and sensible heat fluxes. Heat transport by changing phase of water vapor was included even in primitive radiative-convective models (see Manabe's work in the 1960's) and before that as well. The planet itself only loses heat by radiation however, and the top of the atmosphere radiation balance serves to be the key regulator in global climate change. By the way, if anyone feels that these many decades of physics are all wrong, it's probably much better to take it up with scientists in the actual literature then with me. Unfortunately, the objections I have seen in the several comments here show a fundamental misunderstanding of lessons which are developed at the undergraduate level, and so I am highly confident they will not serve to cause a paradigm shift in the climate community or make it into the refereed literature. Sorry. Cheers, chris |
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Post by woodstove on Aug 17, 2009 21:16:28 GMT
Don't feed the trolls.  |
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Post by sigurdur on Aug 17, 2009 21:26:27 GMT
In response to some of points raised against my post or other replies since my writing: 1) The attribution of warming to CO2 has nothing to do with a process-by-elimination approach, nor is CO2 pulled out of a hat because we don't know of anything else that could do it. Just the opposite in fact, as attribution involves sorting through the many physically plausible mechanisms, both natural and anthropogenic, and providing a relative contribution for individual agents. This should be fairly obvious to anyone who has read a few documents summarizing the D&A process, particularly in some of the links I already provided. It is also blatantly untrue that scientists ignore or have dismissed other possible forcing mechanisms... it's just an unfortuante reality that they don't provide a sufficient magnitude or are inconsistent with observed and modeled spatio-temporal patterns associated with the physical response of the atmosphere system. People here are welcome to perform their own attribution study, but there's no purpose in misrepresenting the current way in which this process is done or disregarding the myriad studies on the topic. 2) The planck (no-feedback) response to climate change can indeed be calculated by the inverse of the derivative of the Planck function with respect to temperature. This yields an output of 1/(4*sigma*T^3) and the relation between CO2 concentration and radiative forcing is k*ln(C/Ci) where k is some number derived from line-by-line radiative transfer codes (typcially taken to be 5.35, see Myhre et al 1998, 2001; Collins et al 2006), C is the final concentration, and Ci is the baseline concentration. This forces a roughly 1 C rise in temperature per doubling of CO2 holding all other variables fixed, which indeed is really straight-forward physics. These details can be found in any basic atmospheric physics book which treats these topics in some mathematical detail. This is why the GHG's have a very small uncertainty associated with their radiative forcing, while other things such as aerosols have a much wider uncertainty band, as in the below diagram. 3) It is well understood that the surface of the planet loses heat in a large number of ways, including radiation, and the latent and sensible heat fluxes. Heat transport by changing phase of water vapor was included even in primitive radiative-convective models (see Manabe's work in the 1960's) and before that as well. The planet itself only loses heat by radiation however, and the top of the atmosphere radiation balance serves to be the key regulator in global climate change. By the way, if anyone feels that these many decades of physics are all wrong, it's probably much better to take it up with scientists in the actual literature then with me. Unfortunately, the objections I have seen in the several comments here show a fundamental misunderstanding of lessons which are developed at the undergraduate level, and so I am highly confident they will not serve to cause a paradigm shift in the climate community or make it into the refereed literature. Sorry. Cheers, chris Chris: There are several factors that have started a shift in teh climate community. 1. When you explained co2, you menttioned that everything is remains fixed. In reality, that is never the case. 2. There have been several studies in the last few years that are starting to look at cloud formation and the affect that our solar orbit, etc, has on them. Those folks are looking for the drivers of climate that have caused warming and cooling in the past. I am not talking the mmmm......Mygovich?.....theory. 3. The big stick in the ointment is that co2 continues to rise when temps fall. I am not talking the current small warming, but on a geological scale. That should give any scientist pause in their studies to find out why that happens. These are just a few things to ponder. As far as the models are concerned, their error bars are so large that they prove themselves to be essentially worthless. Our understanding of climate/weather is actually so poor that one can't predict weather for a day, much less 10 years or more out. Things happen in reality that just keep screwing up the models. Any person can see that the earth has warmed in the past 200 years. The warmth is not alarming to most folks, as they have enough education to know this has happened before. Even our present co2 levels on a geo scale would be considered low, so the addittion of co2 is a welcome phase I do believe as plants become much more efficient with co2 levels much higher than today's dismal levels. With the above being said, we all need to conserve our resources. That is what should be paramount in everyone's thinking. The tactics used to try and scare have worn thin when it comes to co2. When one scientist says we are going to have more hurricanes that are cat 5's....and, heck, the ones we have pale in comparrison to previous ones....thinking of Galveston, and historical records that show 5's being quit common hundreds and thousands of years ago. This is but one example of the chicken saying the sky is falling, and it didn't. As a person has said, co2 works in the lab, but in real climate, the response appears to be quit insignificant. |
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Post by glc on Aug 17, 2009 22:52:33 GMT
NASA (including Gavin Schmidt) thinks the Maunder Minimum took place:
Amazing who you'll believe when it suits.
To sum up, the Little Ice Age took place, it was caused by solar minima,
What do you mean it was caused by solar minima. You are claiming the LIA lasted ~500 years. Are you saying that the sun was in a state of slumber for all that time. Bear in mind, that solar scientists such as Leif Svalgaard and now even Judith Lean believe the sun's output is more constant than previously thought.
But, for the time being, let's be generous, let's assume Lean's TSI reconstruction holds. Can you tell us how the 2 w/m2 change in TSI explains the temperature variation that has taken place between the late 17th century and the end of the 20th century. Better still - can Schmidt?
Oh, by the way, because of the earth's albedo and geometry the ~2 w/m2 increase in TSI corresponds to a ~0.4 w/m2 increase in average insolation at the earth's surface.
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Post by nautonnier on Aug 17, 2009 23:06:04 GMT
In response to some of points raised against my post or other replies since my writing: 1) The attribution of warming to CO2 has nothing to do with a process-by-elimination approach, nor is CO2 pulled out of a hat because we don't know of anything else that could do it. Just the opposite in fact, as attribution involves sorting through the many physically plausible mechanisms, both natural and anthropogenic, and providing a relative contribution for individual agents. This should be fairly obvious to anyone who has read a few documents summarizing the D&A process, particularly in some of the links I already provided. It is also blatantly untrue that scientists ignore or have dismissed other possible forcing mechanisms... it's just an unfortuante reality that they don't provide a sufficient magnitude or are inconsistent with observed and modeled spatio-temporal patterns associated with the physical response of the atmosphere system. People here are welcome to perform their own attribution study, but there's no purpose in misrepresenting the current way in which this process is done or disregarding the myriad studies on the topic. 2) The planck (no-feedback) response to climate change can indeed be calculated by the inverse of the derivative of the Planck function with respect to temperature. This yields an output of 1/(4*sigma*T^3) and the relation between CO2 concentration and radiative forcing is k*ln(C/Ci) where k is some number derived from line-by-line radiative transfer codes (typcially taken to be 5.35, see Myhre et al 1998, 2001; Collins et al 2006), C is the final concentration, and Ci is the baseline concentration. This forces a roughly 1 C rise in temperature per doubling of CO2 holding all other variables fixed, which indeed is really straight-forward physics. These details can be found in any basic atmospheric physics book which treats these topics in some mathematical detail. This is why the GHG's have a very small uncertainty associated with their radiative forcing, while other things such as aerosols have a much wider uncertainty band, as in the below diagram. 3) It is well understood that the surface of the planet loses heat in a large number of ways, including radiation, and the latent and sensible heat fluxes. Heat transport by changing phase of water vapor was included even in primitive radiative-convective models (see Manabe's work in the 1960's) and before that as well. The planet itself only loses heat by radiation however, and the top of the atmosphere radiation balance serves to be the key regulator in global climate change. By the way, if anyone feels that these many decades of physics are all wrong, it's probably much better to take it up with scientists in the actual literature then with me. Unfortunately, the objections I have seen in the several comments here show a fundamental misunderstanding of lessons which are developed at the undergraduate level, and so I am highly confident they will not serve to cause a paradigm shift in the climate community or make it into the refereed literature. Sorry. Cheers, chris Chris you are new to this forum - so let's start with a revision. Radiative forcing is DEFINED as the effect of a GHG on the radiation transfer through a unresponsive slab atmosphere after an instantaneous increase in the GHG (in CO 2 terms this is an instantaneous doubling of CO 2) with the outgoing radiation measured at the tropopause NOT the TOA. If you want to use the TOA you are going to have to use a different metric. If you are going to acknowledge the reality of convection and the hydrologic cycle you will have to use a different metric. You can do all the clever calculation you want but if it is based on unreal behavior by the atmosphere it is just a mathematical game and not reality. "It is also blatantly untrue that scientists ignore or have dismissed other possible forcing mechanisms... it's just an unfortuante reality that they don't provide a sufficient magnitude or are inconsistent with observed and modeled spatio-temporal patterns associated with the physical response of the atmosphere system. "I cannot see anything in what I posted as saying that 'scientists ignore or have dismissed other forcing mechanisms' what I did ask and you signally failed to address was that you have not (and nor did the IPCC in your diagram) address the hydrologic cycle and convection. There has been a lot of discussion here on this. All I asked was that you quantify the hydrologic cycle energy transfer from the surface to the tropopause (where radiative forcing as defined is measured) as you are saying that only CO 2 forcing can account to the energy transfer rate reduction and calculate this to a precision of 0.1WM -2. Yet the IPCC accept that no-one knows the overall effect of the water vapor forcing plus the latent heat transfer, convection and albedo negative forcing to the same level of precision . This is extremely poor science and surely as a scientist you would want to calculate all methods of energy transfer to the tropopause to the same 0.1WM -2 level of accuracy. This is especially strange as the AGW hypothesis relies on the hydrologic cycle to act as a positive feedback (apparently this is the reason that the major GHG - water vapor - is left out of the diagram from AR4 that you show.). Your calculations are based on questionable assumptions - that is why I gave you some simple questions asking you to quantify your assumptions - none of which you were capable of answering. |
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Post by nonentropic on Aug 18, 2009 1:03:32 GMT
There are some issues and I love Chrisc's complete confidence in the science being done and the confidence limit on the CO2 being tight and all other forcing agents being trivial.
The temperature record does not follow the story. Everything has been looked at by big fact brains all over the world and undergrad plonkers have no input, but the temperature record is not in lockstep with the CO2 forcing as is implied.
Some of the concerns I have are the data coming from the Argo buoy project and the stuborn fall in ocean temp, yes I know only 6 years. The southern hemisphere has been very cold yes I know we only live on the land and there have been hot spots but you get the feeling that some of the biggest forcing is coming from the data working to fit computer models.
Sorry Chrisc I am impressed with your knowledge but concerned that you may receive to much money from the story you pedal.
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Post by sigurdur on Aug 18, 2009 1:24:52 GMT
Every climatologist that knows anything will freely admit that they can't model the hydro-logic process. Even the IPCC admits they can't. And the fact is, that process seems to be a force for about 97% of the climate feedback.
So when you can't direct the dinosaur in the room, how are you going to keep track of the flea?
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Post by chrisc on Aug 18, 2009 3:02:19 GMT
This is my last posting since people are now questioning my motives, and the objections raised are still rooted in fundamental misunderstandings or strawman attacks. Other third party readers can judge for themselves, but the information necessary to evaluate the various claims on this thread is easily accessed online or through purchases of advanced textbooks such as geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/ClimateBook/ClimateBook.htmlwww.amazon.com/Global-Physical-Climatology-International-Geophysics/dp/0123285305www.amazon.com/Physics-Atmospheres-John-Houghton/dp/05210112211) Concerning the comments of When you explained co2, you menttioned that everything is remains fixed. In reality, that is never the case You can do all the clever calculation you want but if it is based on unreal behavior by the atmosphere it is just a mathematical game and not reality. It's obviously true that the Planck-feedback calculation is not realistic for what actually happens in the atmosphere. I specifically noted that this applied only to a hypothetical situation in which all other things were held fixed. It's obviously not so simple when you include the effects of water vapor response, clouds, albedo change, the vertical temperature structure, etc which is why you use observations, paleoclimate data, models, etc when theoretical considerations are limited. Therefore one may actually have to do real research rather then ask for simple equations or numbers on blogs/forums. This is how science usually advances in most fields. 2) It was said that AGW proponents cannot think of ANYTHING else that could cause the warming that occurred in the last decades of the twentieth century apart from CO2- so as they cannot think of anything else - it must be CO2 which is completely wrong. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with my quote that "It is also blatantly untrue that scientists ignore or have dismissed other possible forcing mechanisms... it's just an unfortuante reality that they don't provide a sufficient magnitude or are inconsistent with observed and modeled spatio-temporal patterns associated with the physical response of the atmosphere system. "
3) The quote Yet the IPCC accept that no-one knows the overall effect of the water vapor forcing plus the latent heat transfer, convection and albedo negative forcing to the same level of precision Is meaningless. In fact, the IPCC specifically notes that water vapor is not a "forcing mechanism" and neither is convection or latent heat transfer. This is why they are not included in the posted figure. This is either a confusion of terminology or a poor understand of what happens. On a more relevant note though, it is certainly true that we don't understand the overall sensitivity of the climate system (after responses from clouds, the lapse rate, etc are included) to the same level of detail that we understand CO2 forcing. We also don't know the modern aerosol forcing to the level that one would hope. For those incapable of seeing this distinction, we can say that the response of the climate system is dT= lambda*F where ë is the climate sensitivity paramater which relates temperature change to the radiative forcing. Encompassed within lambda is water vapor feedback, cloud feedback, lapse rate feedback, albedo feedbacks at the surface. Encompassed within F is the radiative forcing due to GHG's, solar activity, volcanic activity, aerosols, and the like. Therefore saying that the RF due to CO2 is understood to high accuracy is not the equivalent of saying that dT or even F is understood to high accuracy. 4) "The hydrologic cycle" is a very broad statement. One can put a number of the global net flux of energy from latent heat from the surface to the troposphere (See Kiehl and Trenberth 1997 or their paper in 2009 along with Dr. Fasullo) but this alone doesn't quite say anything meaningful about the response of clouds or gaseous vapor to global warming, and so questions I am accused of ignoring may just be ill-posed. I noted in my original post that cloud feedbacks represent the largest source of uncertainty in constraining climate sensitivity, yet the water vapor feedback is relatively well understood and its behavior is robust across a broad range of tests. The response of global precipitation also features less uncertainty then the cloud feedback or overall temperature response. The "hydrologic cycle" also encompasses other aspects of precipitation or evaporation which may or may not necessarily have anything to do with feedback or temperature response. 5) I understand that the terminology or subtleties may be confusing, but once understood, there is nothing contradictory or unclear about what I have said. I have also not said that other forcings were unimportant or that feedbacks were unimportant, and so comments such as as you are saying that only CO2 forcing can account to the energy transfer rate reduction and calculate this to a precision of 0.1WM-2 love Chrisc's complete confidence in the science being done and the confidence limit on the CO2 being tight and all other forcing agents being trivial.
are completely unjustified and not compatible with anything I wrote. I believe I have sufficiently addressed these criticisms, which as I've noted are not going to dent the scientific literature on global climate change. Because of the personal attacks and repeated falsehoods, I will not "debate" anymore but if people have further questions or comments you can always post on my site or probably better yet, e-mail working scientists in those fields or buy a relevant textbook. I promise they aren't all trying to steal your money. |
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Post by poitsplace on Aug 18, 2009 6:21:13 GMT
You can do all the clever calculation you want but if it is based on unreal behavior by the atmosphere it is just a mathematical game and not reality. It's obviously true that the Planck-feedback calculation is not realistic for what actually happens in the atmosphere. I specifically noted that this applied only to a hypothetical situation in which all other things were held fixed. It's obviously not so simple when you include the effects of water vapor response, clouds, albedo change, the vertical temperature structure, etc which is why you use observations, paleoclimate data, models, etc when theoretical considerations are limited. Therefore one may actually have to do real research rather then ask for simple equations or numbers on blogs/forums. This is how science usually advances in most fields. In order to cause a pronounced change in temperature CO2 has to cause a pronounced change in the tropospheric gradient. This "signature" of AGW is missing because water vapor bypasses it. Every day an estimated 1300 cubic kilometers of rain falls. To evaporate that much water it takes over 800 petawatts of energy. CO2's supposed forcing is less than one percent of this energy. Any energy that CO2 does manage to slow down is disproportionately radiated away by water vapor in wavelengths not covered by CO2. The notch observed for CO2 is because of the balance struck between CO2 slowing the flow of energy within its spectrum...and water vapor denying it of that part of the spectrum by radiating "back radiation" away in other frequencies. |
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Post by glc on Aug 18, 2009 10:03:38 GMT
Nautonnier, you say
Your calculations are based on questionable assumptions -
The 'basic' forcing calculation for a doubling of CO2 assumes all other factors remain fixed. What is questionable about that? Why, in the first instance, would you assume anything else? Of course, we know they won't remain fixed but, to address these other processes, is to effectively address the feedback issue. So ...
... all other things being equal, doubling CO2 will reduce the outgoing LW IR by ~3.7 w/m2 and would lead to an increase in temperature of ~1 deg. ChrisC has posted these figures somewhere, I have posted them dozens of times, Richard Lindzen (the best-known sceptical scientist) has posted them on several occasions as have several others on BOTH sides of the argument.
It is, therefore, a fairly robust estimate of the warming that can be expected from a doubling of CO2. Now you (and I) might decide - ok that's fine we can live with that. But as you have argued the assumption that everything remains fixed is flawed and it is here that we have the real crux of the debate. The pro-AGW people believe that the 'feedback' from an increase in CO2 will be positive and this will further enhance the warming. Others, such as Richard Lindzen, believe the feedback effect will be low or even negative which may actually reduce the ~1 deg warming.
The problem I have with your (nautonnier) argument is that you seem to want to use the uncertainty over the feedback response to sweep aside the whole GHG theory. You are not alone, though.
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Post by jimcripwell on Aug 18, 2009 12:17:02 GMT
glc writes "It is, therefore, a fairly robust estimate of the warming that can be expected from a doubling of CO2."
I see glc is still telling us about his irrelevant calculations. I am quite sure that radiative transfer models have their uses, but estimating the effect of what a doubling of CO2 will do to world temperatures is not one of them. In the chaotic world of the earth's atmsophere, assuming that one only needs to consider the effects of radiation is an overly simplistic approach that gives irrelevant numbers. As long as glc continues to write this sort of thing, I hope that I will be around to give my opinion.
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Post by poitsplace on Aug 18, 2009 13:55:51 GMT
glc writes "It is, therefore, a fairly robust estimate of the warming that can be expected from a doubling of CO2." I see glc is still telling us about his irrelevant calculations. I am quite sure that radiative transfer models have their uses, but estimating the effect of what a doubling of CO2 will do to world temperatures is not one of them. In the chaotic world of the earth's atmsophere, assuming that one only needs to consider the effects of radiation is an overly simplistic approach that gives irrelevant numbers. As long as glc continues to write this sort of thing, I hope that I will be around to give my opinion. Heh, I think you should pick your battles...if people that believed we were warming the world only expected as much warming as GLC (roughly 1C by 2100) nobody would feel any need to "save the world" |
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Post by glc on Aug 18, 2009 14:01:10 GMT
I see glc is still telling us about his irrelevant calculations.
So is Richard Lindzen as he agrees with the 1 deg per CO2 doubling - and why not as nothing seems to stop your irrelevant ramblings about convection and latent heat.
It still doesn't appear to have dawned on you that the only way the climate system loses heat is by radiation
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Post by nautonnier on Aug 18, 2009 16:01:30 GMT
Nautonnier, you say Your calculations are based on questionable assumptions - The 'basic' forcing calculation for a doubling of CO2 assumes all other factors remain fixed. What is questionable about that? Why, in the first instance, would you assume anything else? Of course, we know they won't remain fixed but, to address these other processes, is to effectively address the feedback issue. So ... ... all other things being equal, doubling CO2 will reduce the outgoing LW IR by ~3.7 w/m2 and would lead to an increase in temperature of ~1 deg. ChrisC has posted these figures somewhere, I have posted them dozens of times, Richard Lindzen (the best-known sceptical scientist) has posted them on several occasions as have several others on BOTH sides of the argument. It is, therefore, a fairly robust estimate of the warming that can be expected from a doubling of CO2. Now you (and I) might decide - ok that's fine we can live with that. But as you have argued the assumption that everything remains fixed is flawed and it is here that we have the real crux of the debate. The pro-AGW people believe that the 'feedback' from an increase in CO2 will be positive and this will further enhance the warming. Others, such as Richard Lindzen, believe the feedback effect will be low or even negative which may actually reduce the ~1 deg warming. The problem I have with your (nautonnier) argument is that you seem to want to use the uncertainty over the feedback response to sweep aside the whole GHG theory. You are not alone, though. I have to use analogy or you will nit pick Lets say I want to see how well a new boat design will work so I assume a totally immovable ocean and instantaneously 'stand' the boat on its surface. I can now prove with my model that the boat is seaworthy? Obviously the model is of no use yet this is the methodology for calculating 'radiative forcing'. The approach throughout the AGW debate appears to have been that it MUST be radiation that is the problem in the lower atmosphere as the intent is to show that GHG will result in atmospheric warming. So all other heat transports are disregarded or called 'feedbacks' and only radiation is considered. Even ChrisC has acknowledged that this is an inaccurate approach. "It's obviously true that the Planck-feedback calculation is not realistic for what actually happens in the atmosphere. I specifically noted that this applied only to a hypothetical situation in which all other things were held fixed. It's obviously not so simple when you include the effects of water vapor response, clouds, albedo change, the vertical temperature structure, etc which is why you use observations, paleoclimate data, models, etc when theoretical considerations are limited. Therefore one may actually have to do real research rather then ask for simple equations or numbers on blogs/forums. This is how science usually advances in most fields." (Jim Cripwell would approve  ) Surely a scientific approach would be to quantify how much heat each transport mechanism transfers to the tropopause (if that is where you are measuring from as with the radiative forcing definitions) and what albedo changes are and how they are linked to the heat transport. Then only when you have those quantifications you can start measuring what happens when one of those is perturbed. The continual 'one club golfer' approach that assumes the only way heat can reach the tropopause is by radiation is totally unscientific. *All* I asked was that some of the known areas involved were quantified to the same level of precision that is used for radiation. Yet no-one will even say when they talk about watts per square meter - where those square meters are - this _is_ kind of important. When a 'scientist' disregards parts of a system being measured and is not even clear about the units being used it is difficult to trust anything subsequently calculated. |
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