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Post by radiant on Sept 6, 2009 21:57:38 GMT
I could conceive of a large scale experiment in which a vacuum tube 15 miles long was built, into which was placed a smaller 15 mile long tube which contained a cleverly maintained atmospheric profile of gases, with declining pressure, temperature, varying concentrations of different gases, etc all set up to represent the properties of a 15 mile high column in the atmosphere with plenty of sensors to measure precisely the temperature, pressure, emission, etc at any point. You could then shine shortwave light radiation through one end to simulate sunlight which would pass through the column and warm the base. The base would then emit IR back through the column. There would be convection due to the temperature gradient. There would be problems with a lack of horizontal energy transport as there would be no neighboring columns, there would be problems with a lack of IR and visible light coming from an angle, but supposedly they could simulate this once they saw the behavior of a single column. But then I think, why would anyone bother doing such a big experiment when it can all be accomplished in many smaller steps? Why couldn't scientists instead take 1 meter columns of air in the lab under varying conditions and measure and record all the input/outputs. They could then piece together the behavior of 15 mile column of air knowing the behavior of each 1 meter segment. They could also piece together the interactions of neighboring columns of air. Well this is what climate science has done. This is why no large scale experiment exists to show co2 causes warming. It's because the sum of the small scale experiments performed provide enough, if not all, of what a large scale experiment would show to make it unnecessary. The idea of this thread is to bring forth links showing the experimental science to support the theory. If there are these studies you are talking about then please let us know the references and ideally since this is the internet rather than a university library system, the links to them.
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Post by sigurdur on Sept 6, 2009 23:47:48 GMT
I could conceive of a large scale experiment in which a vacuum tube 15 miles long was built, into which was placed a smaller 15 mile long tube which contained a cleverly maintained atmospheric profile of gases, with declining pressure, temperature, varying concentrations of different gases, etc all set up to represent the properties of a 15 mile high column in the atmosphere with plenty of sensors to measure precisely the temperature, pressure, emission, etc at any point. You could then shine shortwave light radiation through one end to simulate sunlight which would pass through the column and warm the base. The base would then emit IR back through the column. There would be convection due to the temperature gradient. There would be problems with a lack of horizontal energy transport as there would be no neighboring columns, there would be problems with a lack of IR and visible light coming from an angle, but supposedly they could simulate this once they saw the behavior of a single column. But then I think, why would anyone bother doing such a big experiment when it can all be accomplished in many smaller steps? Why couldn't scientists instead take 1 meter columns of air in the lab under varying conditions and measure and record all the input/outputs. They could then piece together the behavior of 15 mile column of air knowing the behavior of each 1 meter segment. They could also piece together the interactions of neighboring columns of air. Well this is what climate science has done. This is why no large scale experiment exists to show co2 causes warming. It's because the sum of the small scale experiments performed provide enough, if not all, of what a large scale experiment would show to make it unnecessary. Socold: The problem with what you just wrote is that small experiements do not equate to big experiments, nor to real world conditions. A breeze at 10' would change the output of the whole at 20'. RH would change the output....etc. There are so many real world variables that enter into climate/weather that are not accounted for. It must be very frustrating for a modeler to use backwards regression and find out that they can't model the climate to account for the MWP nor the LIA. Regression analysis is the only true way of finding out if a model has any certainty at all. Maybe you know of a model that does ok with regression, I have not seen one yet and I would appreciate it if you could/would post one that does.
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Post by radiant on Sept 7, 2009 6:31:09 GMT
The real climate arguments seem to me to be a bit odd. Higher in the atmosphere there is almost no atmosphere. Already at very low altitudes the air has already radiated most of the energy gained from earth to outer space The vast bulk of the atmosphere exists close to the earth relative to the size of the atmosphere For some reason real climate is saying because there is almost no atmosphere away from the earth this makes C02 more important. If C02 was more important away from the earth it would not be -50C above the clouds. Obviously whatever happens above the -50 layer is irrelevant because further up there is so little atmosphere it has almost no ability to warm us from up there. For example a million degree C satellite radiating energy from 100 miles up is not going to be felt on earth until it has a very large mass and the higher atmosphere relatively has almost no mass.
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Post by glc on Sept 7, 2009 8:45:03 GMT
Yesterday at 1:56pm, northsphinx wrote:Here is some information: www.cfa.harvard.edu/hitran//
Theory from "the other side" www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc....gassy-argument/ And part two: www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc....gument-part-ii/
The articles still forgets that CO2 is in the shadow of H20 and that the atmosphere is a fluid that moves.The articles do not forget that "CO2 is in the shadow of H2O". I don't particualrly wish to defend Realclimate but they have, in the past, published an article which showed the relative strengths of the greenhouse gases in the atmposphere. From memory their figures were: water vapour contributes between 66% and 85% to the gh effect and CO2 between 9% and 26%. The CO2 numbers are definitiely right. What do the percentages mean? Looking at CO2 as an example. The low end of the range (9%) represents the reduction in the greenhouse effect if CO2 were removed - but all other ghgs remained at current concentrations. The high end (26%) represents the percentage of the current gh effect which would remain if all other ghg were removed leaving CO2 only. The reason the 2 numbers are not the same is because of the spectral overlap. i.e. if CO2 were removed H2O would absorb some of the radiation previously absorbed by CO2 and if H2O were removed CO2 would absorb more of the pevious H2O absorption. Of course this doesn't take into account the fact that removing CO2 would cool the atmosphere which would probably cause the water vapour content to drop. This is known as a feedback. I may have mentioned feedbacks before.
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Post by glc on Sept 7, 2009 9:06:27 GMT
The real climate arguments seem to me to be a bit odd. Higher in the atmosphere there is almost no atmosphere. Already at very low altitudes the air has already radiated most of the energy gained from earth to outer space
The altitude at which CO2 emits to space is important. Higher is colder. The energy emitted from a cold body is less than that emitted by a warm body (Stefan Boltzmann Law). So if the height at which energy is emitted increases then the amount of emitted energy is reduced. If the amount of emitted enrgy is reduced then we have an imbalance between the incoming solar and the outgoing LW radiation. i.e.
Incoming > Outgoing ------> Warming
As more CO2 is added to the atmosphere then more will accumulate at higher altitudes. This means that the average height at which energy is emitted will increase which means that the incoming/outgoing balance will be disturbed. The atmosphere will then warm until a balance is re-established. Note, we know from emission spectra that CO2 dominates at higher altitudes.
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Post by glc on Sept 7, 2009 9:34:25 GMT
A quick word on the Wood experiment. Wood's experiment showed that real glass greenhouses warm by inhibiting convection rather than by back radiation. It tells us nothing about the atmospheric "greenhouse" effect.
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Post by northsphinx on Sept 7, 2009 9:53:38 GMT
I do not agree glc. The CO2 is not working at higher altitudes. The atmosphere in the troposphere is cooled by radiation from mainly water, as vapor and clouds. When the water vapor and clouds is dried out at about 220K height is the atmosphere dry. The atmosphere above 220 K is dry and is radiant cooled in IR mainly from CO2. The result? The atmosphere above the troposphere have a temperature increasing with altitude. Basically because CO2 is not capable to emit enough energy to the cold space to cool the atmosphere in these altitudes. And that CO2 became less efficient with altitude, since the temperature increase with altitude. This real life experiment show that CO2 is NOT working more efficient with altitude. It is all about the clouds
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Post by radiant on Sept 7, 2009 13:49:55 GMT
The real climate arguments seem to me to be a bit odd. Higher in the atmosphere there is almost no atmosphere. Already at very low altitudes the air has already radiated most of the energy gained from earth to outer spaceThe altitude at which CO2 emits to space is important. Higher is colder. The energy emitted from a cold body is less than that emitted by a warm body (Stefan Boltzmann Law). So if the height at which energy is emitted increases then the amount of emitted energy is reduced. If the amount of emitted enrgy is reduced then we have an imbalance between the incoming solar and the outgoing LW radiation. i.e. Incoming > Outgoing ------> Warming As more CO2 is added to the atmosphere then more will accumulate at higher altitudes. This means that the average height at which energy is emitted will increase which means that the incoming/outgoing balance will be disturbed. The atmosphere will then warm until a balance is re-established. Note, we know from emission spectra that CO2 dominates at higher altitudes. This sounds like weird science to me where people are inventing things to create the results they want while ignoring basic natural observations they dont like. Higher is increasingly colder until you are very high above the earth where the air then becomes even more rarified and even more irrelevant. Where is this magic height were C02 works so impressively? There is only 0.00003% air in the entire atmosphere above 100KM of which only less than about 0.000001% of the surface air is C02 There is only 0.1% air above the top of the stratosphere of which C02 is about 0.001% of the surface air. C02 might be the only gas up there but if there is almost no gas up there it is irrelevant as a warming factor compared to the enormous heat of the sun and ability of the earth to radiate very quickly the earths surface temperature out via the thinning atmosphere. Almost no atmosphere must mean almost no ability to absorb heat. By what reasoning does C02 absorb radiation when it is hardly present? Whatever is going on must be lower down where there is a denser atmosphere that can make a difference Woods experiment is relevant. Gravity creates an earth bound layer of air and gases close to the earth. Even if the layer was totally transparant to radiation the air down there has nowhere to go and warms the earth. The atmosphere higher up is an irrelevant almost unpresent entity. All the heat has to do is escape the area near the ground. We know it can do this because it is desparately cold at even the altitude of aeroplanes. We live at the earths surface where heat is partially trapped and recycled. Further out there is almost nothing to trap what at a maximum must be therefore almost no heat trapped. The reality of our earth is part atmospheric greenhouse gas and part garden green house
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Post by nautonnier on Sept 7, 2009 14:36:34 GMT
It would be nice just once to see glc, SoCold or Steve provide quantification (or a link/citation to where it is) for the energy transport from the surface to the tropopause* by convection and by the latent heat of state changes of water vapor. This will be a variable dependent on surface temperature, surface type and humidity and the atmospheric lapse rate. So there should be a nice formula for the variance based on these metrics.
It should be easy enough for them to do.
Remember all wind energy, rain, weather systems, waves on oceans and lakes, and clouds are a result of convection and water vapor and its state changes so it is likely to be a not-insignificant value. And as we have seen the AGW theories already accept that there is a feedback relationship with surface temperatures. But I am sure there is a simple laboratory experiment that can be carried out for its quantification.
* Note NOT the TOA: as the tropopause is where radiative forcing is calculated
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Post by magellan on Sept 7, 2009 15:04:35 GMT
It would be nice just once to see glc, SoCold or Steve provide quantification (or a link/citation to where it is) for the energy transport from the surface to the tropopause* by convection and by the l atent heat of state changes of water vapor. This will be a variable dependent on surface temperature, surface type and humidity and the atmospheric lapse rate. So there should be a nice formula for the variance based on these metrics. It should be easy enough for them to do. Remember all wind energy, rain, weather systems, waves on oceans and lakes, and clouds are a result of convection and water vapor and its state changes so it is likely to be a not-insignificant value. And as we have seen the AGW theories already accept that there is a feedback relationship with surface temperatures. But I am sure there is a simple laboratory experiment that can be carried out for its quantification. * Note NOT the TOA: as the tropopause is where radiative forcing is calculated You guys are wasting your time. Challenges of this type were posted months back. The True Believers have no experimental evidence; zero, nada, zilch. As Pielke points out, so-called science papers in recent years have bypassed the scientific method, pushed through like crap through a goose, using one hypothesis to test another hypothesis. glc, socold and steve will never provide observational evidence to support their POV because it does not exist. Observational evidence refutes the basic tenets of AGW (caused by CO2 ), but True Believers just ignore and move on to a new paradigm. pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/06/04/short-circuiting-the-scientific-process-a-serious-problem-in-the-climate-science-community/pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/09/07/another-paper-that-short-curcuits-the-scientific-method-gangulya-et-al-2009-in-the-proceedings-of-the-national-academy-of-sciences/Warmologists do not employ the scientific method most of us learned in grade school. This is one reason I came to the conclusion AGW (caused by CO2) is complete bohunk. Where's the beef?
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Post by poitsplace on Sept 7, 2009 16:31:29 GMT
The altitude at which CO2 emits to space is important. Higher is colder. The energy emitted from a cold body is less than that emitted by a warm body (Stefan Boltzmann Law). So if the height at which energy is emitted increases then the amount of emitted energy is reduced. If the amount of emitted enrgy is reduced then we have an imbalance between the incoming solar and the outgoing LW radiation. i.e.
Incoming > Outgoing ------> Warming
As more CO2 is added to the atmosphere then more will accumulate at higher altitudes. This means that the average height at which energy is emitted will increase which means that the incoming/outgoing balance will be disturbed. The atmosphere will then warm until a balance is re-established. Note, we know from emission spectra that CO2 dominates at higher altitudes. How exactly is that supposed to work? The notch in CO2's spectrum clearly indicates that the top of atmosphere output in CO2's spectrum is actually being radiated from the tropopause. The tropopause is already the coldest part of the atmosphere. All the CO2 above and below radiate CO2's spectrum more effectively than the tropopause. Shouldn't the tropopause heat disproportionately (more) until an equilibrium is reached...with the tropopause simply being more efficient at emitting and the ground only being slightly (possibly not even detectably) warmer?
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Post by socold on Sept 7, 2009 19:56:59 GMT
It would be nice just once to see glc, SoCold or Steve provide quantification (or a link/citation to where it is) for the energy transport from the surface to the tropopause* by convection and by the l atent heat of state changes of water vapor. This will be a variable dependent on surface temperature, surface type and humidity and the atmospheric lapse rate. So there should be a nice formula for the variance based on these metrics. It should be easy enough for them to do. It easy enough for me to point you in the right direction, but the physics is too advanced for me to summarize to you myself (I wonder if it is even possible to summarize the physics even if I knew it - could a textbooks be taught in a single forum post?). It takes atmospheric physics textbooks, this one is free, many are not: geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/ClimateBook/ClimateVol1.pdfThat perhaps can eventually lead to understanding the modelled physics: www.ccsm.ucar.edu/models/atm-cam/docs/description/
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Post by radiant on Sept 7, 2009 20:35:56 GMT
It would be nice just once to see glc, SoCold or Steve provide quantification (or a link/citation to where it is) for the energy transport from the surface to the tropopause* by convection and by the l atent heat of state changes of water vapor. This will be a variable dependent on surface temperature, surface type and humidity and the atmospheric lapse rate. So there should be a nice formula for the variance based on these metrics. It should be easy enough for them to do. It easy enough for me to point you in the right direction, but the physics is too advanced for me to summarize to you myself (I wonder if it is even possible to summarize the physics even if I knew it - could a textbooks be taught in a single forum post?). It takes atmospheric physics textbooks, this one is free, many are not: geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/ClimateBook/ClimateVol1.pdfThat perhaps can eventually lead to understanding the modelled physics: www.ccsm.ucar.edu/models/atm-cam/docs/description/You are talking about sci fi instead of science. Aeroplane models that dont fly are built by children and hobbyists with no regard for their ability to fly Aeroplane models that can fly have to have some qualities that enable them to really fly A computer can be used to help design an aerofoil but ultimately working successful aerofoils arrive out of a process of trial and error of constructed physical aerofoils. What qualities do climate models have if they only exist inside a computer programme?? Simple experiments demonstrating warming would speak a thousand words to people like me who were educated before the age of personal computers where all of our science was done with physical equipment that we either found in the lab or made or assembled ourselves or was done by other people who had to follow the same basic practice of hands on experimentation. Maths and statistics as we all know can be used to prove anything you want to prove, but a well designed experiment either gets results or it does not and it is then up to us to explain how that can be so. With models it does not matter what the result is as long as you believe it is true. It is an antiscience methodology.
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Post by icefisher on Sept 7, 2009 20:51:33 GMT
Of course this doesn't take into account the fact that removing CO2 would cool the atmosphere which would probably cause the water vapour content to drop. This is known as a feedback. I may have mentioned feedbacks before. But if water vapor is reduced (and everything else held the same like CCNs) wouldn't fewer clouds warm the atmosphere? What do you call that a feedback to the feedback?
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Post by icefisher on Sept 7, 2009 21:16:44 GMT
I do not agree glc. The CO2 is not working at higher altitudes. The atmosphere in the troposphere is cooled by radiation from mainly water, as vapor and clouds. When the water vapor and clouds is dried out at about 220K height is the atmosphere dry. The atmosphere above 220 K is dry and is radiant cooled in IR mainly from CO2. The result? The atmosphere above the troposphere have a temperature increasing with altitude. Basically because CO2 is not capable to emit enough energy to the cold space to cool the atmosphere in these altitudes. And that CO2 became less efficient with altitude, since the temperature increase with altitude. This real life experiment show that CO2 is NOT working more efficient with altitude. It is all about the clouds I agree. I don't think anybody disagrees with the basics laid out by GLC. But one has to be careful when one says the atmosphere will warm as that could be taken to mean the atmosphere we actually measure for the daily temperature would rise. Not necessarily! The process of convection and condensation is controlled by the temperatures in the region of the atmosphere where those effects take place. GLC's theory first warms the upper atmosphere, if the upper atmosphere warms then thermals and convection, and condensation will rise higher in the atmosphere also. Its only politics that comes to the conclusion that change is bad, they are completely clueless on the actual effects. They made their run at trying to attribute every hundredth of a degree of the warming of the past 30 years to human emissions and what it has gotten them is a lot of egg in the face and an embarrassment that increases almost daily.
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