It appears Michael Tobis has a new online communication outlet called “Planet 3.0”. Some of you will recognize the “planet 3.0” as the name of a Google groups email list organized by Michael Tobis. For example, I blogged about the group way back in Dec, 2009 when they posted invitation to a press conference to discuss “discuss the state of climate science against the backdrop of the Climategate/email affair.”
In terms of functionality, the new outlet appears to resemble a group blog organized by individuals who run their own individual blogs. Today, the front page displays 4 posts by Michael Tobis, one by Dan Moutal and one by ClimateSight. Michael and Dan are evidently the editorial team; Arthur Smith, Bart Verheggen, Michael Tobis, Steve Easterbrook are listed as the scientific review panel. Many of us are familiar with blogs run by some of those involved.
The layout of Planet 3.0 appears similar to those used by aggregators. I’m not sure if that’s intended. Today’s article by Climatesight also runs at his (her?) own blog; I didn’t find Dan’s article echoed at his blog.
When I see a new group blog-like entity by a group of existing bloggers, I wonder what the goal might be. Clicking one of MT’s articles, I find,
We seek to provide the missing journalism, the long view that is hopelessly missing from the obsessions of the press and the political sector.
That is what we will deliver on the front page, at a rate of a story or two per day. This site is above all an attempt to answer the question of what journalism would be doing differently if it weren’t hopelessly screwing almost everything related to sustainability. We intend to do it right.
Evidently, this is not intended to be a blog per-se, rather some sort of new type of journalism.
One post presents a bleg, telling readers “We would like to provide a resource page categorizing and linking to the best online resources about sustainability.” and includes detailed rules for providing information.
Scrolling to the bottom of Planet 3.0, I found an somewhat unusual – for – a blog explicit level of detail discussing copyrights. But I guess Planet 3.0 isn’t really supposed to be a blog. It’s some sort of new journalistic endeavor. Anyway, for the first 365 days after publication, the copyright on each article is held by “Ducks-In-A-Row LLC unless otherwise noted”. Curious, I googled, and found Three ducks in a row efficiency consultants” whose about page mentions Michael and Irene Tobis. So, basically, the Tobis’s more-or-less own the copyrights, unless otherwise stated.
For those interested in participating at Planet 3.0, they are Planet requiring registration for those who want to comment without moderation. Keith Kloor blogged his reaction to that (basing his comments on an About Page Michael Tobis (MT) later revised). Because I may eventually visit from time to time and I like my comments to appear real time, I’ve applied for an “invite”. We’ll see if I get one.
Meanwhile, let’s all wish Michael and his collaborators luck with their journalistic endeavor to inform people about sustainability.
“Evidently, this is not intended to be a blog per-se, rather some sort of new type of journalism.”
Lucia, I believe you’ve hit it on the head. And for this reason, in addition to my own interest in sustainability issues, I’m most curious to see what this “new type of journalism” looks like. I say this as someone (along with my peers) who has often been chastised by Michael for not doing the right type of journalism.
During our various exchanges about journalism’s role in the climate debate, I have occasionally advised Michael to demonstrate how he thinks it should be done. So I’m glad that he’s taken up that challenge.
Keith–
I know Michael has been thinking and planning this a long time. Presumably, we’ll see how his vision translates into hard reality over the next few months. Maybe he’ll show he’s hit on some method of presenting information that will work for policy-advocate- journalists of all stripes.
It looks like a portal to alarmist advocacy trash to me. The blogroll is comprised of the most climate insane of the bloggers. Deep Climate, Open mind etc…
As a hint to the logic 3.0er’s. The problem isn’t the messenger guys, it’s the crazy message.
Ah.. the magic word: “Sustainability”…probably the most abused and (mis)used expression this century.
The goal of sustainability is a good one. I believe MT means well and though he and I often see things very differently I believe he is sincere in his efforts.
The concept of closed doors/we control the message is eerily familiar. This is a method that works well in North Korea and Iran but may meet with stiff opposition in the free world. I’ll watch to see how this all plays out.
Hoi/ivp0–
I admit to thinking sustainability sound good. I also admit to not being entirely sure what precisely is supposed to mean when used in political advocacy. It reminds be a bit of “family values” or “politically correct”.
This seems like a follow-on to the establishment of the Climate Rapid Reaction Team earlier in the year, and is evidently an attempt to provide POV on scientific stories in a forum that is not tainted by the rancorous history of the climate blogosphere.
This will all depend on execution. If they do their job well, it may have something to contribute that is less hysterical than Joe Romm and less dictatorial than RC.
As for comments, if they’re smart they’ll pay more attention to comments from their own side than opponents. If everything’s coming from people like dhogaza and Secular Animist, they’re in trouble. If people like Kloor and Lucia get over there frequently it will contribute mightily to the street cred of the site.
Best of luck, MT. Work hard on it now so you don’t have to clean up messes later.
‘Sustainability’ was all I needed to know – I’ll stay away. If this was 200 years ago, they’d be talking about sustaining wood to cook and heat homes – and they’d be ready to fight against the use of coal (because some day, it would run out). Sustainability is just another offshoot of vulgar Malthusianism. And NO ONE has been proven wrong more often in more ways over more time than Malthusians.
There is a finite number of petroleum molecules on the planet, but that fact says nothing about whether I should fill my car’s tank today. What matters is not the lack of imagine in those who see life full of limits. What maters is the imagination and ingenuity of those who see problems and come up with answers. Today, we feed more people and produce less pollution than we did when I was a child. The world is getting better every day. Simple fact. We add a billion people to the planet, and the price of wheat comes DOWN in constant dollars. Aren’t we cool?
Illya–
Do you mean I said I was going to write about solar collectors? I started a post but other things came up.
Defining “sustainability” is not easy, but excluding endless economic growth on a finite planet is reasonably straightforward.
Since endless growth is in fact the hypothesis on which our present organizational structure is predicated, we have a systemic problem.
Since we have a systemic problem that operates at a global level, we need something new, which amounts to a global social contract.
Some people will have a knee jerk revulsion at the idea and see no space between that and Stalinist triumphalism. We have no hope of addressing people who see it that way, and can only hope that their stridency vastly overstates their influence, which I think is the case.
The specific issues that come under the rubric of unsustainability include but are not limited to CO2 accumulation. We can try desperately for an ad hoc solution to each issue, but the history of CO2 shows that this is far beyond the capacities of existing institutions.
So we need to start inventing mechanisms for a global, top-down, big picture conversation, and eventually a global consensus that is too powerful for politicians to ignore.
Planet3.0 is an attempt to contribute toward this shift.
Our community’s origins are climate focused, but Planet3.0 the web community aims for a broader focus than that.
My personal ownership of the effort is intended as stewardship of an enterprise to a level where it can be spun off or sold. We encourage release of all materials into Creative Commons.
As for the people on our blogroll, (essentially identical to our initial membership) that’s historical. I’m not inclined to start fights by kicking people out. There is little agreement among the members, who span a wide spectrum of opinion, other than on the fact that we have a greenhouse gas problem, and that we are ethically obligated to attempt to communicate the facts in an accessible way.
We may have had many failures but we have learned in the process. So hopefully we’ll do better.
We welcome tough questions. We are not an advocacy group that intends to finesse those questions which are most difficult. Please make an attempt to be polite and on topic.
Michael, the problem I see with statements like this is that you are confusing assumptions or opionions with facts. Perhaps your group would do better to invite debate on the “Limits to Growth” hypothesis rather than assume it to be true.
Michael Tobis (Comment #83355) says:
So we need to start inventing mechanisms for a global, top-down, big picture conversation, and eventually a global consensus that is too powerful for politicians to ignore.
…because the bottom-up (local) way doesn’t give the “right” answer. The bottom-up way is where it is up to each individual to decide how many children to have and to make their own decisions to make their own and their children’s lives a little better.
The bottom-up way has worked very well for the US in the past.
Where are the successes of the top-down way?
The more he talks about his agenda, the better.
“Since endless growth is in fact the hypothesis on which our present organizational structure is predicated, we have a systemic problem. “……….”My personal ownership of the effort is intended as stewardship of an enterprise to a level where it can be spun off or sold.”
It may take me some time to figure out how those two ideas fit seamlessly together.
Ilya–
I have no idea what you think I promised to dig into. Since you did not answer “yes” to the solar collector issue but wrote a whole bunch of other things, I’m guessing you aren’t hoping I’ll write about the solar collector. If you think I promised to write something, could you link to the comment where I promised it so I can remember what I meant when I made whatever it is you take to be a promise?
Speaking of wrong thermodynamics, see Holdren’s and Erlich’s paper of 1970.
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To whom it may concern: Comments from people using “anonymizer” services will be moderated. I’ve added @nyms.net to my list, since it lists itself as an anonymizer. https://www.nyms.net/login.html
More Communist/Socialist/liberal con artists who can’t stand a proper debate.
Wonder why you always pander to them?
Leddite #83359
The bottom-up way has worked very well for the US in the past.
Stipulated. But these cannot properly account for the global constraints which we are up against. The situation is novel.
Where are the successes of the top-down way?
Well, the US itself is quite huge and worked fairly well until recently. We only need to scale up an order of magnitude from that.
Humans are demonstrably capable of social innovation, and the times call for it.
“So we need to start inventing mechanisms for a global, top-down, big picture conversation, and eventually a global consensus that is too powerful for politicians to ignore. ”
I call this borrox. There is no crisis and no need for you, the self annointed to tell the little people how to live their lives. You are welcome to come to my front door and tell me how much better off I will be for accepting your vision, and being poor. In return you’re welcome to accept a kick in the nuts.
Illya: “At the same time, you should keep in mind that a CO2 molecule needs some 7-15 microseconds to re-emit.”
No, that’s the collisional deactivation time @ ~1 atm. The radiative lifetime is more like a second. The difference is what establishes local thermodynamic equilibrium for vibrationally excited CO2 sitting in the atmospheric thermal bath.
Stalinism is about the farthest thing from sustainability on this planet. Its economic goal, as the case for early Chinese Comunist versions was to maximize industrial output. Whether it succeeded is another questions.
Individual organisms are unsustainable, species are semi-sustainable and life is sustainable.
Life functions by replication and using an energy gradient.
Thiobacillus ferrooxidans is the autotroph which has the smallest energy gradient that can support growth, oxidizing Fe(II) to Fe(III) and using oxygen as its terminal electron acceptor.
Ureaplasma urease has the smallest energy gradient for heterotrophic growth. It converts urea into ammonia and CO2, the ammonia protonates, crosses it outer membrane and generates a membrane potential.
The bottom line is that you need to both growth and energy to survive; true sustainability. If you don’t want to exit in an extinction level event you can go one of two ways, you either become a specialist at the bottom of a niche or become a wide-ranges opportunist living in a wide range of niches.
In all biotica, the biggest competitor for resources are members of your own species, not from other species. Species balloon until they reach a dynamic equilibrium in a particular niche, very successful species live in a wife range of niches.
E. Coli has done pretty well, it lived in the guts of the Dinosaurs and now lives in us. Not too specialized, not single niche specific, but the mass of E. Coli in the world is a hell of a lot more than the combined mass of all humans.
er, 1980. ‘Availability, Entropy, and the Laws of Thermodynamics’. Two Ehrlichs and one Holdren. James Hansen was an assistant to Ehrlich at the time, but I don’t know whether he contributed to this dreadful but influential paper.
===============
Tony #83362 “It may take me some time to figure out how those two ideas fit seamlessly together.”
I am sorry to hear it. It does seem like the difference between wholes and parts is central to the difficulties some people have in understanding sustainability issues.
For instance, some places may be having a dry year (sigh) and others a wet year. But the total precipitation over the whole world over the whole year is (within a relatively small and easily specified residual) exactly identical to the amount of water that evaporated. The constraints on the whole are much stronger than the constraints on the components.
It’s actually a common feature of climate problems. It applies elsewhere as well, but the whole global-constraint thing comes very hard to some people.
Michael Tobis,
I just love it, absolutely love it. Command and control. Rule of the unwashed masses by the intellectual (AKA university) alphas. Please.
.
There are legitimate economic issues related to the long term cost/availability of raw materials.. or if you prefer, ‘sustainability’. There are legitimate questions related to GHG forcing and potential future warming. There are even more pressing issues related to human health and population growth, especially in nations that can’t really support that growth, or even feed their growing population.
.
But for goodness sakes, get off the left wing-nut bandwagon and address these issues without political preconditions. People are ready for a real dialog, but I doubt you are.
Ilya–
Please quote or link so I can learn what you are trying to communicate.
Good luck MT. I dont know if I would lead with the negative positioning you’ve employed, but I honestly haven’t thought enough about it to suggest something better.
“We seek to provide the missing journalism, the long view that is hopelessly missing from the obsessions of the press and the political sector.
That is what we will deliver on the front page, at a rate of a story or two per day. This site is above all an attempt to answer the question of what journalism would be doing differently if it weren’t hopelessly screwing almost everything related to sustainability. We intend to do it right.”
dear Jesus. please do not position yourself negatively. You want to differentiate, that is the key to positioning, but put it in positive terms rather than… COKE SUCKS. Pepsi never says COKE SUCKS.
more like this… see below.
“Our mission is to deliver a message that goes deeper than the short term vision dominating today’s coverage and provide the long view required for a complete understanding of sustainability. We will deliver that long term vision at a pace that encourages participation from our readers as we expect to post no more than an article or two per day.”
when you say you “intend to do it right” you just set yourself up for all sorts of questions ( from Keith) about whether you did do it right. When you say that you will provide whats missing, you set yourself up to be taken down by someone who points out that you are merely repeated what has been said elsewhere. When you set your opponents up as obsessed, expect them to throw that back at you. There is a term we use, its called “ghosting”. never mention the competition directly. otherwise the main message become the war between you two, rather than the message you are trying to get out.
Let OTHERS draw the comparision. Let others say you are providing what is missing. your endorsers are the ones who are supposed to do this dirty work. sheesh.
Thank you Eli.
iiya,
“There is a weird thing going on.
Some people accuse us people who earn our living from understanding physics that things are not as they should be.
Like this “backradiationâ€.”
The second thing I was taught in thermodynamics Frame of Reference, right after KISS. right before “ASSUME”
Someone assumed, the frame of reference should be TOA, because with all that computer power he kissed of logic. 🙂
Tom
“As for comments, if they’re smart they’ll pay more attention to comments from their own side than opponents. If everything’s coming from people like dhogaza and Secular Animist, they’re in trouble. If people like Kloor and Lucia get over there frequently it will contribute mightily to the street cred of the site.”
We should talk I have an idea. see below. Friends. right around the corner.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/29/kred/
Michael Tobis (Comment #83371):
Thank you, this is exactly the point I wanted to elaborate.
Sustainability is an opinion, not a fact. It is a projection into the future of currently perceived trends. It is something to be alert to, but yet unknowable. End of the world cults, or end of the world as we know it cults, come and go but we are still here, and doing better now than ever.
If you don’t believe that, play this game. You have a one-way time machine that you can set to any year that you want. The only catch is that you will end up as one of the people living at that time, randomly chosen, so it could be any country, any race, any sex, any social status, etc. Which year would you pick?
Humans are capable of innovation, and you believe that innovation is needed. What social/political environments are best to produce that innovation. I doubt that it is a top-down one. Even if the situation is seen as novel and serious.
Thinking outside the box, made the US.
Wonder if I will get a mug?
why is my post in moderation?
Mosher makes an excellent point about the “negative positioning.”
Think about in terms of when you get an evaluation from your boss. Smart managers don’t lead off telling you what you’ve been lacking. They tell you the good stuff first, accentuating the positives, then go over areas that can be improved and how they can be improved.
Another way of putting it would be for MT to highlight the strengths of Planet 3.0, what will differentiate it from mainstream press coverage of sustainability.
Doc–
Sorry your comment went into moderation. I fished it out!
illya (Comment #83390)
October 8th, 2011 at 8:15 pm
Maybe Lucia should have “her people” get back to “your people”.
Anyway, I did indeed go back and review that entire post and thread. The only thing Lucia promised to post a follow-up on was solar cookers, and she later apologized that she had gotten busy.
Yes Keith. negative positioning never works. MT and his buds wouldnt last a day in my world. But they have willard helping them, so there ya go.
JohnM–
As it happens, I had started the post on solar cookers and still plan to finish it. After that, I still plan post it. But I
a) don’t know if this is what illya is talking about,
b) don’t necessarily see saying I was going to discuss it a “promise” as in some sort of unbreakable pledge and
c) don’t plan to make this a priority to fulfill the hopes and dreams of illya– whose first post came after the discussion of the solar cookers and who uses a throw away email address.
BTW: I know check the @xxxx.xx part of email addresses when a particular new commenter displays borderline troll symptons. If the address is from a “throwaway” email provider, I add that to my moderation set. I do so especially if the IP address looks “weird” Illya’s IP goes through a virtual private network– that is: an anonymizer. Specifically: https://overplay.net/
To me, the combination of throwaway email and IP is “weird”. Illya is moderated. I will be looking through comments to see if others are commenting from overplay.net, and I’ll block that IP if no one else is doing so.
He has posted quite a few comments which I find pointless and I have sent them to “trash”. I’ll allow comments to appear if they become substantive.
Dallas–
I don’t understand what you think your theory is. Please don’t try to turn every thread into a discussion of your theory about climate sensitivity. After clicking “submit” I’m going to be moving your comments about climate sensitivity to a more appropriate post. That will permit this thread to be about planet 3.0.
Dallas,
I don’t think you’l get much traction with “your theory”. What I think would be a fun experiment would be to ask the question about CO2 reversing the long-term global cooling trend to both Climate Etc (on the Lacis thermostat thread) and on planet 3.0. Use the exact same wording. It would be interesting to hear what the planetary community would have to say about this.
I’ve moved dallas’s discussions of climate sensitivity to http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/walking-the-planck-parts-1-2/
That’s more of an “open thread / climate sensitivity” thread.
Whoever said Pepsi never says COKE SUCKS never had business that sold soda and talked to a Pepsi sales guy.
“Eli Rabett (Comment #83380) October 8th, 2011 at 6:24 pm
Stalinism is about the farthest thing from sustainability on this planet. Its economic goal, as the case for early Chinese Comunist versions was to maximize industrial output. Whether it succeeded is another questions”
The goal of maximizing industrial output was not to provide better lives for the populace, but it was for the aggrandizement of the state, particularly of the elite overlords. Central planning, coercion, and political oppression were the methods to achieve the goal. The results were not good for the vast majority of the people living under those systems. So whether it succeeded is not an open question, if you care about the people. How will “sustainability” be achieved without similar top-down control, from a new set of elite overlords? And will sustainability be any more successful, or tolerable, than communism was?
PS: How will “sustainability†be achieved without similar top-down control, from a new set of elite overlords, even if their motives are benign?
Sustainability has already been addressed by economists. Economics is the “allocation of scarce resources for alternative purposes.” First chapter (available free on Kindle)
http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-4th-Ed-Economy/dp/0465022529
I wish an economics course had been a requirement for a physics degree.
Don Monfort–
It’s not clear to me that the main goal of any top-down overlord would ever be sustainability.
Sustainability has become the marketing tool. It used to be New and Improved, now it’s “New and Sustainable”. Everybody uses it, so in fact it has become a hollow phrase.
lucia,
A benign/do-gooder top-down overlord ( I nominate Eli:) might have sustainability as his/her main goal. I wouldn’t be surprised if Stalin and Mao didn’t start out with good intentions. The problem is that power corrupts. See “Animal Farm”. See the IPCC:)
We are unlikely to achieve global sustainability, without a dominant central authority that is powerful enough to impose coercive policies on all the various locals acting-as they naturally do-in their own narrow self-interests.
But the central authority will get the policies wrong, as central planners always do, and there will be revolutions, chaos; we will be back to doing it the old-fashioned way. War, famine, and pestilence. Sustainability is mainly a population problem. Ain’t it?
Don Monfort (Comment #83453)
October 9th, 2011 at 4:04 pm
“But the central authority will get the policies wrong, as central planners always do. . . . .”
——————————
I should point out that the American military is an example of central planning/central authority. As is the CIA. As are CDC and NIH. As are most companies.
Eli.
“Whoever said Pepsi never says COKE SUCKS never had business that sold soda and talked to a Pepsi sales guy.”
as part of a BRANDING campaign ( which is what I am talking about) as part of a mission statement and vision, it would be foolish to position yourself by criticizing your opposition. On the sales call, of course, you say what needs to be said to get the job done. If you like we can discuss our backgrounds in these areas, but I don’t think you will like to play that game. I’ve got a billion dollars in product revenue under my belt, you.. got the irish curse I suspect.
Owen,
So you think running an army, or an intelligence agency, or a chain of convenience stores is the same as running an entire economy. I would also inquire as to whether you have ever worked for the Army, or the CIA. You think they are cost-effective, and don’t make some very big mistakes? Did you hear about what happened to Enron, and Worldcom, Lehman Bros, et al? Is any of this sinking in?
Don M.,
Don’t you think “always” is a bit strong?
Maybe “often” would get the job done.
Owen:
Well, sort of. Central command (as is necessary) sets over-all strategy, but tactical decisions get pushed to as far down the chain of command as possible.
Not even close (even worse example). Agents have a high degree of autonomy.
Which is why NIH funding decisions get made by peer review committees (which I’ve been on) composed of people who don’t even work for NIH. As in not even “not even close”.
Companies are all over the place in terms of their structure, which in turn depends on the type of product they sell, market structure & forces etc.
The structure of the US republic is probably a good exemplar for an ideal organization. You have a central government, state government, county government, municipal government. Decisions get made at the most appropriate level.
Running everything from the center forces you into “one size fits all” decisions. Sometimes that is appropriate (there should be uniform safety standards) sometimes, that’s inappropriate (the cost of living in Mississippi is very different than in New York City. What is “impoverished” and therefore qualifies for “in need” is very different for a MS resident than for somebody living in NYC).
Carrick,
Central planning hardly precludes some level of autonomy at the ground level.
Don Monfort (Comment #83457)
October 9th, 2011 at 6:32 pm
“So you think running an army, or an intelligence agency, or a chain of convenience stores is the same as running an entire economy.”
———————————
Oh, you were talking about running an entire economy. Well the highly centralized Chinese government doesn’t seem to be doing to badly with the China Incorporated juggernaut. For them, centralization at times seems to be an advantage (over our currently dysfunctional alternative?).
Owen,
WRT how companies are “centrally planned”. Well that is the closest example from your list (your others are terrible examples, as Carrick has pointed out).
However, I would point out that a company is a rather simpler organization in the sense that it exists only to make money. The US government (or for that, matter any government) exists to spend money, not make it, and so makes 100% politically motivated decisions.
Owen:
True, but if you break it down to just “central planning” you’ve brought it to the level I’ve described it, which is pretty non-descript and really says very little about whether the sorts of market control proposed as “solutions” would have any chance of working.
Again rather a non-descript sort of take on thing. I’m sure any XXX has an advantage over any YYY at times.
SteveF,
Military?
Carrick,
The central authority (at least as I understand it) of the Chinese government allows it to more readily make strategic decisions, such as infrastructure development, green energy targets, etc. Setting and implementing strategic goals can be very important for the economy of a nation.
Owen, as I recall most of the growth is in the Chinese Free Trade Area. That seems to argue the opposite point you’re trying to make, doesn’t it?
Chinese Central Planning does a fine line in Potemkin villages:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPILhiTJv7E
RE: Owen (Comment #83461)
“Oh, you were talking about running an entire economy. Well the highly centralized Chinese government doesn’t seem to be doing to badly with the China Incorporated juggernaut. For them, centralization at times seems to be an advantage (over our currently dysfunctional alternative?).”
Thanks Owen, I just snorted a nice Pino Grigio through my nose. Do you really believe the current economic success in China is due to their efficient and effective central govt?? Please…
The economic boom in China is essentially due to the fact that Chinese workers are willing to work for 1/20th the pay of an equivalent worker in the US, Japan or Europe. Right now it makes good business sense to ship your raw materials there, have products assembled for $1.50/hr, and ship them back to market. Owen, you are in a position to reverse the trade deficit in the US and create millions of jobs here. All you have to do is convince Americans to work for $1.50/hr. A piece of cake. You can start with civil service employee unions and let us know how it goes.
The reality in China is that the Chinese youth are keenly aware there is a free world outside their borders. They have tasted capitalism and they want to taste freedom. I suspect the central govt there will lose support of the people in less than 20 years and a quiet revolution will take place. Glasnost East.
ivp0 (Comment #83468)
Indeed, wages are a big issue. And capitalism migrates to low wages (there is no fidelity with multinational companies). But the Chinese government has nonetheless worked hard (and spent much public money) to build infrastructure and support the surging economy.
Owen,
Others have beaten you up sufficiently. No need for me to rub salt in the wounds.
J Ferguson,
Don’t try to put words in my mouth. It’s always. You are free to provide examples of centrally planned economies that have not spectacularly failed to keep up with market economies. I am sure that you can come up with something that you can torture into fitting the description. Maybe some long-lost civilization that the rest of us don’t know about. Or perhaps a village in the deepest darkest parts of New Guinea, or the Amazon forest. Anything on Mars that we should know about?
Much of the “infrastructure” being built is empty buildings and cities that Chinese people cannot afford to buy. A massive oversupply of infrastructure uses up resources and serves only to keep the ball rolling a little longer. China is the poster child of unsustainability. The crash in China will be far more severe than the great recession in the US.
J Ferguson,
Sorry, I forgot about Cuba and North Korea. They claim they are doing just fine. Everybody has health care and we don’t have that? Is that so, J?
This is typical of the way they do business in Red China:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T55tz4qwFMo
Also, Google “China reverse merger fraud” Hundreds of fraudulent Chinese companies have creeped into US capital markets to steal billions from pigeons mesmerized by the alleged Chinese economic miracle.
Also Google Jim Chanos, China bubble.
One more thing. Who planned this?:
http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/
In my 30ish trips to China, I’ve seen a lot of odd stuff. The cities are huge and look modern, yet many of the expected infrastructure is actually lacking. For instance, traffic police and quality hospitals.
China created special economic zones some years ago. If you look at their economic growth, it started when these were created and has exploded ONLY in these areas. SEZ is code for capitalism. People have to apply for government permission to enter these areas and come from literally all over the country to get high paying jobs.
It is an amazing cultural phenomenon as China is one of the few cultures which doesn’t hate the US these days. They want to beat us badly in every way possible, not for communism, but for their country. It was very difficult to find a true communist in a SEZ. They exist, but they are few and far between.
It is unbridled, uncontrolled capitalism, survival of the fittest and all of a sudden, China has a middle class. Anyone who claims Capitalism doesn’t create wealth for the poor better than controlled economics, socialism or redistribution systems is either naive or dishonest. Some planning doesn’t hurt though. China’s control of business locations gives a more modern impression of their cities than otherwise would have occurred.
Owen says:
“I should point out that the American military is an example of central planning/central authority. As is the CIA. As are CDC and NIH. As are most companies.”
Central planning can work ok for some scale of operations, and these are some examples of small and medium-sized operations where sufficient control can (usually) be maintained. But the larger the operation, the harder it is to maintain control. Planetary control of global environmental and economic policy? You’ve seen how well the UN works already.
The Chinese economy is not as good as things might appear. In the long-run too, the one-child policy is likely to burden an aging society.
If it is a top-down conversation, doesn’t that mean by definition that the politicians have already been replaced or co-opted? If not, where is this place where the top-down conversation begins, to which place those who possess governing power must look up? A UN-sanctioned Olympus of the self-appointed?
The sheer narcissim of leftist fantasy is a marvel. That is so corrupts climate science is a tragedy.
Also, the belief that economic growth must be limited to the imagination of the politically correct is both anachronistic and amazingly stupid. That a lack of imagination, optimism and faith combined with lazy arrogance can regard itself as the epitome of social policy thinking would be self-correcting from sheer embarrassment but for the echo chamber social construction of the left.
Innovation, imagination, problem-solving and growth are not “top-down” byproducts. It may have been fashionable to believe they were in the 1930s but most people have moved on.
George Tobin: “…the belief that economic growth must be limited to the imagination of the politically correct is both anachronistic and amazingly stupid. ”
Bravo. This is one of the most potent observations i’ve seen in years. It certainly speaks to the weakness in basing our planning on the technical insights and capabilities of the political class.
I might have said ….limited BY the imagination of the politically correct….
I cannot number the times I’ve done something after hearing that i wasn’t capable or qualified by one of the folks you allude to.
It’s pretty easy to come up with failures of central planning.
Here’s a harder question: what are the best examples of large-scale, long-term, long-range central planning success? (*)
The most useful examples would have the most direct relevance to the role of central planning in climate-change economic policy, pro or con.
.
One major issue seems to be, “who benefits?”
For, say, a Neighborhood Watch or a coffee-growers co-op, it’d be a couple of score of families in the same geographic area.
For a lawsuit against sulfate emissions by an upwind electric generating facility, it’d be the hundreds-of-thousands or millions of people downwind.
For a country’s military policy, it’d be the citizens of that nation.
Etc.
Is there a point at which benefits become too diffuse to be perceived as “ours” rather than “theirs”?
Related question in thinking about central planning. Who (if anybody) gets penalized? Who gets to define what a penalty is, and what its severity is — the beneficiaries, the penalized, or the central planners? (*)
.
(*) I don’t mean these as rhetorical questions. The best examples of large-scale central planning successes that I can think of at the moment are the Moon Landing, the U.S. Interstate highway system, and the Allied alliance in WW2. None seem very relevant to climate policy. I’d like to know what the proponents of top-down central planning to avert CAGW see as this idea’s best precedents. Or, perhaps, they don’t see any wonderful historical examples, but argue that it’s worth trying, anyway.
AMac,
Yes – what are the limits of centralized planning & control? At what point does it necessarily break down?
.
George Tobin,
Yes – a narcissism that is hard to fathom. How closed must ones eyes before the world starts to appear this way?
It’s Procrustean. No thanks, I’ll travel on under the dancing sun.
=============
Amac–
As government things go, was the Moon landing really all that large? Compare to say, the military effort in Korea or Vietnam? I guess I could go google those answers, but it strikes me that the Moon landing, while dramatic, wasn’t something that involved the whole economy, huge numbers of people etc. No one was conscripted, people’s food wasn’t rationed etc.
The US interstate highway system is a glorious thing.
There are aspects of the allied alliance that are top-down. But that was also top-down with tremendous support from the bottom up.
In contrast, it seems to me that the reason MT wants top down is to impose something the bottom otherwise would not wish to comply with. And the imposition would not be light. This is a very difficult issue, particularly for people who are accustomed to and value democratic principles. (Or even for people who are used to foiling the government by setting up black markets!)
I think that for the post-war period, the Marshall Plan and the G.I. Bill are generally viewed as large-scale programs with immense long-term payoff. Government efforts were important for the success of the Green Revolution in third world countries. The precedent for AGW has to be the ozone-related policy, though not quite the same since fossil fuels are not easily substituted.
The Home Owner’s Loan Corporation is also viewed as a successful government program for the depression era.
George Tobin, Bender,
I don’t think it is narcissism so much as a bizarre isolation from the real world. The more exhaled the position (worst is an Ivy League professor) the greater the disconnect from practical reality.
People are not ever going to tolerate being dictated to by their intellectual ‘betters’; the whole idea is just nuts.
bender (Comment #83490)
October 10th, 2011 at 10:09 am
AMac,
Yes – what are the limits of centralized planning & control? At what point does it necessarily break down?
####
Like any control system it breaks down when it ignores feedbacks.
when a business ignores feedbacks it goes broke.
It breaks down when its controls have lags that prevent it from responding quickly enough.. so you get PIO.
Mosher,
I see that you don’t tie feedback viscosity to size of system. One might suppose that a system in which the feedback information might be subtle, too subtle for the system to recognize might be larger or the communication chain not well suited to the nature of the feedback, a poorly designed system.. of course this seems obvious, but then if you don’t set the thing up to anticipate the kinds of feedback you are going to need to respond to, it won’t work even initially.
in the case of some of our climatologists, who seem incapable of asking themselves, “What could be wrong with this?” I don’t have much confidence that they could concoct a system with the sensitivity it might need to do anything useful.
PIO, indeed.
J.
The following occurred to me long ago. I think I have a comment on RC to this effect.. if it made it through.
We know that the climate response function is seriously lagged to the inputs. We also know that over 30 ( carrick says 60) years we have a lot of noise.
Put on a c02 control today. The public will watch the response in the short term, that is all they can do. We know this, the output of the system in the short term will indicate that the control input was wrong. The science of climate science tells us that we cannot get the control set right. it will look like we didnt do enough or did too much. The noise we see in the system, the lag we know is there all make it an impossible control problem under current political structures.
Our short term vision will always be wrong, it will always ( unless you get super lucky) look like you over controlled C02 ( hey its a cold winder over here.. turn the C02 back on!) or it will look like you didnt control enough ( hey its warm in my room, turn the C02 off) That means politicians will have to ignore the governed. That can only happen in a political system that we dont like.
You wanna control C02. That will require a top down system that doesnt listen to the feedback of the governed ( winners and losers) for decades. That’s an output of the science itself which tells us we have a noise signal, noisy as hell, AND a seriously lagged response. PIO without a doubt. and the only way to avoid PIO is to set a hard control input and wait. wait while none of the governed is happy, because the governed dont see “the average”, they see a local response that is totally at odds with the story the top is feeding them.
Thats why Moshpit knows that local adaptation, while more expensive than global mitigation is the only politically viable option.
Hows that. climate science itself combined with control theory tells me that global control of C02 will not work.
Mosher,
That’s really good. Control can’t be done effectively because without timely feedback corrections, it’s likely to run off the rails.
PIO with 100 year period.
The beauty of adaptation is you know what the problem is and it very likely points to the response, or at least the family of possible responses – and they will necessarily be local because it seems unimaginable that the effects of the warmup would be uniform across the globe, similar in magnitude, or even signed the same.
Mitigation always seemed to require measures which i thought were nuts, but that wasn’t sufficient to kill them off. That they cannot be made to work with any efficacy for the reasons you suggest should be an easier objection to make.
What sort of response did you get at RC? Did their wizards understand what you were getting at?
If you think about the control parameters envisioned by the IPCC and the NOG’s, it becomes clear that understanding a noisy, long lagged control problem is beyond their apparent capabilities. Such systems require high filtering, (well maybe we have that with IPCC), so let me correct that to correctly implemented filtering, and a slow control response curve. Such systems, if real, are known to have control problems such that typically response time needs to be slowed, not decreased. It is of more than just academic issue to consider the post at Curry’s about CO2 being the real regulator in the control part of climate. It is a horror if true. As the current decade shows, and was alluded to as 30 or 60 years, this tells us the first real test time for a control effeicency approximation is about 60 to 120 years in the future, unless we reach some tipping point. With noise like this and lag like this, a typical PID would most definitely be overtuned and drive the system into crash mode. There are several assumptions anyone has to make in order to propose a program. My favorite is whether the CO2 sink, actual emissions versus measured emissions, remains the same or changes wrt CO2 sensitivity, if assumed senstivity is constant. A confounding factor is that a significant amount of PO4 and NO3/NH3 have been added to the biosphere such the gigatons of Carbon, and the flux are increasing at the same exponential rate as CO2. With short term rates of as little as 6 hours for cyano bacteria to respond to nutrients to the century plus rate for ocean floor deposition, depletion and sedimentation, nutrients could be the greater effect. Using the same logic as the CO2 cycle where the rate limiting step is the determining step, we could be ensuring we are headed for the snowball earth. Though I think this is extremely unlikely, it is a problem inherrent to preferring one rate over the other. Using the methodology developed for CO2 to nutrients indicates a huge potential problem. And of course, considering a control system for such a large system with such a lag bodes ill for any who would attempt such.
John F. Pittman, j ferguson, Steven Mosher, SteveF, lucia, kim, bender, George Tobin, Jeff Id, Don Montfort, ivp0, and Carrick:
On the basis of your comments to the tail end of this thread, I nominate all of you as players of lobster chess. I don’t think you’ll contribute much to building the online community of shared purpose that will be Planet 3.0. Peddle your piddling exoskeletal nostrums elsewhere, if peddle them you must.
Heavy-handed moderation of dissenting commentary is an idea that has yet to be tried by a climate-themed blog. Until Planet 3.0 gives it a whirl, there’s no way of telling whether it will improve the caliber of discussions a little, or a lot.
j.
Thank you.
I like the notion of proving that controlling c02 is not possible (politically) given what we know from the science (as given)
If you follow me long enough this pattern of rhetorical ji jitsu is
one of my favorites. Accept the given, and show how it leads to its own contradiction. far more powerful than the frontal assualt of denial.
J,
Not sure whether the comment even made it through. it was 4 years ago. I started out at RC, I basically believe AGW, but the treatment gavin and others showed me drove me to read other material.
I’m pretty sure they would not get it or if they got it not allow it.
the difficulty they have is handling anybody who believes the science, but doesnt care for a) their public behavior. b) their attitudes toward transparency. c) their politics.
They think that those values should be over ridden by saving the planet. thats why I call their behavior noble cause corruption.
John Pittman, I have a real problem with the tipping points argument and the ‘fat-tailed’ transfer from the atmosphere into geological sinks, if only from a historic point.
The Earth gets hit by big rocks with great frequency. It is relatively easy to drop the yearly light flux by a significant fraction following such an impact. We know that this causes a big die back, normally the big guys suffer the most and then so on down the food chain.
One would expect a rapid cooling, a drop in photosynthesis and a huge increase in CO2/CH4 from decaying animal/plant matter. As the crap in the atmosphere clears you have a bolas injection of CO2/CH4 into the atmosphere. Lose half of plant and animal life and you can pretty much double CO2, adding heat to a damaged biosphere would increase desertification. Disrupted food webs wouldn’t help the rebound over the decade timescale.
So why has there been no runaway effect in the past? A hot, high CO2 world would be the norm.
Amac–
I have to admit that I cannot fathom why people in MT’s “coherence network” think saying something like “lobster chess” creates some sort of powerful or meaningful argument about… something.
Kyoto was top-down. How effective was that? And since then, efforts to generate any meaningful top-down action have failed miserably. That’s really what the CAGW people mean, when they say: “It’s worse than we thought.”
Re: lucia (Oct 10 14:27),
A few months ago, Michael penned a lengthy tome and posted it as a set of comments at a “lion’s den” blog — ClimateAudit, perhaps. I can’t find the post. MT made an argument building off E.O. Wilson’s “Consilience,” though I don’t recall that he cited that essay. The point was that — through hard work, reflection, study, and general excellence — professional climate scientists have regularly scaled heights of insight on the subtleties of climate that other people cannot fathom. Worse, stodgy earthbound plodders lack the insight to sense that there might be something beyond the flickering shadows on cave walls that they (er, we) are able to discern.
It seemed that, through application of effort, MT was able to refrain from expressing the contempt that Muggles are due, for supposing that they deserve entry into the chambers of climate wizardry. As if they (er, we) might have anything of note to contribute to the deliberations of the Wise.
As I recall, Michael’s ideas elicited responses that were less than fawning, prompting him to observe that he hadn’t expected any better, given the general benightedness of those who don’t perceive CAGW around the next bend.
Lobster Chess seems to follow pretty naturally from this sort of outlook.
.
Why go out of one’s way to antagonize other people by mocking them as dumb-#ss crustaceans? (*)
I suspect it’s because the emphasis isn’t on crafting workable ideas and effecting them, but on other, less-tangible outcomes. (**)
(*) Rhetorical question
(**) My answer to the rhetorical question I posed, thus satisfying blog policy.
Planet 3.0? The MT Quarter?
DocMartyn, so do I. But there is a fundamental control problem with noisy and long lags. Basically control has to be slow, mutlipoint like 3 point control on a boiler water level, and very very slow tuned. One of my favorites used for pH control is to have one large control that only tries to get to about 90 or 110% of setpoint, the other smaller control trims it the rest of the way, with a kicker that the large control tries to go to the minimum the smaller can control within a set comparison or range. It takes awhile for it to stabilize, but whenit does it stops the large swings that one typically gets when controlling pH.
With lags up to 1000+ years for two semi-independent variables that confound each other’s ultimate rate, just what would a control system that worked look like? Though I note, Andrew Lacis at Curry’s blog downplays the liklihood of great cooling from low CO2, using the same methodology of the Bern Carbon cycle with nutrient increase from mining of nutrients, production for fertilizer, and from fuel burning, even wood and biomass, one cannot easily downplay that we may be cooling eventually with a long lag to correct if true.
Though perhaps, you like I, don’t think that such are likely with the noise and feedback of the faster processes.
AMac,
“I don’t think you’ll contribute much to building the online community of shared purpose that will be Planet 3.0. ”
.
Planet 3.0 sounds more like an on-line echo chamber for the unrepentant extreme left. If you have to agree with MT to be allowed to say anything, then it is 100% a waste of time… including that of the participants. Talk about stupid. Excluding people from the conversation is never going to contribute to finding the needed political compromises on ‘sustainability’.
“John F. Pittman (Comment #83516) October 10th, 2011 at 4:32 pm
DocMartyn, so do I. But there is a fundamental control problem with noisy and long lags. Basically control has to be slow, mutlipoint like 3 point control on a boiler water level, and very very slow tuned.”
You will have to forgive me, but this I don’t understand.
I am from England, but have lived in Scotland, Canada and the USA. At night it is dark and cold. At dawn the big light in the sky appears and things start to warm up. Some time in the afternoon, we hit our peak. Then things cool, and it is normally coldest before dawn.
Now I have been in a desert, the temperature peak is just after noon, but near lake Michigan it was about 1:30.
Now, the min temperature is less than the ‘equilibrium’ temperature and the max ‘temperature’ is greater.
I can measure CO2 levels in rain forests and in the top of the ocean. At noon they are low and at dawn they are high. I can measure more difference in the [CO2] level in a rain-forest in 24 hours than the ‘average’ atmospheric [CO2].
Now if the fluctuation of CO2 at source is dynamic and the fluctuation of temperature is dynamic; why this unknown delay in seeing a connection.
Steven Mosher: “Thats why Moshpit knows that local adaptation, while more expensive than global mitigation is the only politically viable option.”
I find your argument about the political impossibility of mitigation to be very clever. And I’m in agreement that adaptation is preferable to mitigation, although for different reasons. But I don’t see why adaptation is necessarily more expensive than mitigation. There will be regions which will be positively affected by warming, and regions with negative effects; and I don’t see how it is possible to make a reliable estimate of the net, given the information which we currently have.
Steven Mosher,
I like the notion of proving that controlling c02 is not possible (politically) given what we know from the science (as given)
If you follow me long enough this pattern of rhetorical ji jitsu is
one of my favorites. Accept the given, and show how it leads to its own contradiction. far more powerful than the frontal assualt of denial.
Yeah, but it’s somewhat less effective if you say to people “hey, look what I’m doing”.
“I find your argument about the political impossibility of mitigation to be very clever. And I’m in agreement that adaptation is preferable to mitigation, although for different reasons. But I don’t see why adaptation is necessarily more expensive than mitigation. There will be regions which will be positively affected by warming, and regions with negative effects; and I don’t see how it is possible to make a reliable estimate of the net, given the information which we currently have.”
Harold, I am not sure that adaptation is more expensive. Its basically immaterial since mitigation can’t work politically.
Steven Mosher:
Which doesn’t even broach the question of whether it is economically feasible in practice. These two of course may be intrinsically related….“Wisdom of the crowd” and all that.
One of the major failures of centralizing control is ignoring the fact that a well informed populace is smarter than any individual in the group.
Consider the ways of the ant and be wise.
Re: Steven Mosher (Comment #83529)
It cannot work on the absolute terms you stated (and that was a very clever argument BTW), but certainly steps towards mitigation can be undertaken by individual governments, provided they do not result in wildly unpopular changes to their populations’ lifestyles. Many countries have, in fact, managed to reduce CO2 emissions somewhat since the Kyoto agreement, so some degree of mitigation is certainly feasible. If only we could get China and the US on board, making a substantial dent in the worldwide CO2 emission rate would not be entirely out of the question.
Zero worldwide emissions is of course impossible, but every gigatonne of CO2 that we do not emit right now is one less gigatonne to worry about later. The key is to work towards that goal at a pace that will not break society’s back. People will put up with some amount of discomfort if they have to (we do it all the time, because of some new government regulation or another), provided it is not excessive.
yes, Julio.
Mitigation would have to be rebranded as something more positive and beneficial.
Adaptation projects rebranded as infrastructure investment.
As hansen notes skeptics are winning because they have better paid PR. Does self examination every cross these guys minds. Hansen, maybe its because you effed up the branding and made counter play a breeze.
Re: steven mosher (Comment #83532)
I think “energy independence” sounds good. “Clean energy” doesn’t sound bad either.
These are things worth striving for regardless. The problem they have is that they seem to bring out the snake-oil salesmen, and politicians seem to fall for them every time…
Julio:
As I understand it, it’s not the current CO2 emission levels that are even the real issue, it’s future CO2 emissions from the now developing countries. Most of the projected increases in CO2 concentration come from them, not the already developed nations, like the US.
If you want to study this question, CO2 emissions per capita isn’t the right approach, because that conflates economic productivity, which CO2 emissions is a proxy of, with how “polluting” a particular economy is. [Note, I’m not saying anybody here is making that mistake, just that the mistake is getting made.]
What you want to look at is CO2 intensity, which is the weight of CO2 emissions divided by price-parity GDP.
Here’s a table from Wikipedia
(Except they use GDP per emissions):
Measured in that fashion, here is where several of the top countries show up (the last colum is ton emisisons per 1000 US dollars)
5 China[4] 2.29885
90 Australia 0.492611
100 United States 0.436491
103 Canada 0.425894
147 Germany 0.276167
159 United Kingdom 0.233427
If you look at the US or Canada versus Britain or Germany, for example, there are two big differences. One is we have higher heating and cooling needs, the second is our transportation costs are higher because our population density is lower.
Based on these numbers, the easiest way for the US or Canada to half its emissions is to cut its GDP in half. An alternative would be to force-migrate the populace to moderate climates and pack them up in energy efficient cities (so we’ve dropped two of the biggest differences with the UK).
Neither of these is probably the best way forward of course. 😉
Seriously this isn’t as easy as waving a magic wand of centrally controlled economies, and expecting it to just magically fall out right.
Carrick,
I was not thinking in relative (to GDP, population, etc.) but absolute terms, that is, just the total amount of emissions. In those terms, if the US could reduce its emissions by, say, a modest 10%, that would already be more than the total of the UK emissions. Something to ponder, perhaps.
If future emissions are the main problem, then even a reduction in the rate of growth now would have the potential to make a large difference down the line…
Of course, I agree with you that centrally planned and controlled economies do not work, for practical purposes. (It is remarkable how many people still have not digested one of the 20th century’s clearest and most emphatic lessons!) Nonetheless, a reasonably competent government still can have a positive role to play in the economy/technology/innovation arena.
The average American either directly or indirectly uses 10kW of power of which 22% is consumed in people’s homes. Solar could be an economically viable energy of the future.
Also, proponents of a revenue neutral carbon tax still require the market to provide the solutions.
DocMartyn, I don’t disagree. My comment was under the assumption that increasing CO2 causes a general increase in temperatures. Another asumption is based on the way feedback is defined where it means that a positive feedback will express itself as phenomena with a large response time. Such noisy systems and such characteristics means one needs to have a control scheme quite different from what is proposed. It is not a control system that is being proposed, it is an attempt to brake to a stop. Different things.
RB,
I’ll bite. 10kW/hour? per Day? What?
Jferguson: 10kW is already energy/unit time.
RB, are you sure you don’t mean Kw-hrs/day?
Jferguson, the answer you are looking for is 240kWh/day
I can understand that. is that our total energy consumption of all kinds divided per capita? It’s a lot more than i would have thought, but doesn’t sound impossible.
Yes, I believe so.
Maybe they are trolling for a Soros grant?
Maybe they are just trolling.
It will be difficult to tell, since Soros buy-offs of ‘jouranlists’ is apparently fairly low key.
The AGW promtoer sort of blur togehter, after awhile: Is Tobis the guy who has “in it for the money”?
China is headed to double US emissions.
On adaptation. Look at the last 100 years of extreme weather in the US. Look at all the damage. What does that tell you? It tells me that we are not even prepared for what occurred much less what could occur under AGW. Assume no warming for the next 100 years. I would still argue that our planning for disaster is a disaster and we should plan for twice the number that we currently plan for. Even IF AGW is dead wrong, the history of our preparedness is a joke. Our reliance on foriegn energy a severe weakness.
Steven,
Deaths from extreme weather is down worldwide.
Flooding events and wind losses are down on a per capita rate.
We are muddling through pretty well using adaptation.
Can we improve adaptation to extreme weather?
Of course.
But we are no where close to facing a disasterous failure in adaptation.
Hunter.
1. I said NOTHING about the trend in deaths
2. I said nothing about loss rates
3. You might find the record good, I don’t
You might think that a reduction from horrible to bad doesnt constitute a problem.
given your attitude, Id say plan for triple the extreme events.
Steven Mosher, that said, in spite of the inadequacies, dollar for dollar, disaster preparation has been one of the most benefiical ways of spending dollars, on an economical, human, political and even spiritual level.
J Fergunsen, I got slightly higher numbers than RB using the 2010 US energy consumption numbers (94.6 quadrillion BTUs
Converting to kW-hr/day:
94.6e15 BTU * 1kW-hr/3412.14163BTU/365 days/307e6 capita= 247 kW-hr/day/capita).
What that means (interpretation) is a bit more nuanced.
Carrick,
That looks like a whole lot of energy per person. It’s been so long since we led a normal life, i don’t have the bills to figure out how much of this is spent directly and how much is “background.”
This is an interesting number to worry about.
thanks for the check, john
j ferguson, just to be clear, that’s total energy consumption.
If you want to restrict it to electrical, for example, the total is about 3.9e15 W-hr annually. If I did my math right, that’s 35 kW-hr/day.
Here’s Wikipedia’s article on it.
re: disaster preparedness
point is: there’s ample room for improvement
mosh’s anlaysis of historical natural variaiblity is dead on & in line with pielke’s take
it’s the one thing i’ve not liked about dr curry’s take
Mosher: “It tells me that we are not even prepared for what occurred much less what could occur under AGW”
Less hurricanes! What will the insurance agents do for work?
Lower winter mortality! The horror!
Longer growing seasons! More food to burn in our cars! Oh no!
mosh, turn off the ghgs for good and what does earth climate look like 1-2000 years from now? got a credible ref?
Steven Mosher,
I think that your argument assumes that the majority of people will never be convinced of the general thesis that AGW is real and dangerous and needs to be halted. If I was convinced of this general thesis, then a cold winter would be unlikely to alter my opinion and have me clamouring for more CO2 in the atmosphere (and in the oceans).
While I agree that in general people operate on short-term horizons, as a pessimistic global warming alarmist I remain optimistic that the majority of people will at some point become convinced of the general thesis.
Adaption will still be extremely important, of course, and will have greater importance the longer it takes to reach that majority point.
[If I was horribly cynical, I would also point out that in reality all that is needed is for both political parties in the two-party systems that, for example Australia and the US have to accept the thesis. And I am horribly cynical. ;)]
Carrick.
“Steven Mosher, that said, in spite of the inadequacies, dollar for dollar, disaster preparation has been one of the most benefiical ways of spending dollars, on an economical, human, political and even spiritual level”
Yes that would be my argument. Especially now. Given the state of the economy, given our less than stellar preformance in the past on disaster preparedness, I’d much rather see dollars go into that.
Bruce.
You miss the point.
“Less hurricanes! What will the insurance agents do for work?”
I make no claim about increasing or decreasing huricanes. That is not a part of any premise in my argument. Watch carefully.
Given the last 100 years of fequency and damage. Assume No increase or decrease. Given, our preparedness was not adequate.
conclusion, if you just used the past as a guideline and assumed no increase or decrease, you’d have to accept that we can do a better job. That argues to do a better job, regardless of what the uncertain science says. That is a not a complicated argument.
“Lower winter mortality! The horror!”
Same argument. look at the past 100 years. Assume the same for the next 100, if you cant see room for improvement, then you will never get this argument. This argument has nothing to do with accepting or rejecting ANY piece of AGW. The argument says.. AGW theory has nothing dispositive to contribute. Base on what we know, we can conclude that a better job is possible.
“Longer growing seasons! More food to burn in our cars! Oh no!”
One pressing issue in food is water management. We havent done a good job in the past, the argument is to do a better one in the future. Has Zip, zero, nada, to do with AGW.
I could also stipulate that AGW is false and make this same argument. AGW is a wheel that doesnt turn in the argument. So, your comments indicate to me that you have not grasped the first thing about this line of argument.
David Gould
Yes. The requirment that many people a vast majority accept the theory could make mitigation more practical. However, you will note that some people who believe in AGW dont think this is needed. They think they only need to speak truth to power. In their minds they ought to have red buttons to blow up dissenters. Three choices.
1. Insolate politicians from feedback
2. get nearly everyone to buy in
3. start adapting because 1 and 2 aint happening.
steven mosher,
No. 1 would happen to a relatively large extent if both political parties accepted the thesis, which I think is pretty much guaranteed in the next 20 years.
No. 2 is not as far off – imo – as some people think.
No. 3 also faces problems if people do not accept the thesis. If I propose to spend public funds doing something adaptive I would either need to disguise the fact that I am doing it because it is adaptive or have a reason for doing it that those who did not accept the thesis could get behind. This can be solved, of course, but it would not be smooth sailing by any means.
When regional impacts of climate change are not completely understood, there is also the problem – from the perspective of an AGW alarmist – of wrong adaption.
David Gould:
when’s the last time you polled Indochina on this postulate #2? And is Michael Tobis planning on broadcasting in the relevant languages? Because if not, I’m afraid mosh has you trumped.
David Gould:
Your postulate #1 may be true for the US. But there are far more political parties than just two in play when you consider the full world of emitters and planned emitters. Or did you not read what Carrick wrote?
bender,
I have no idea whether Michael Tobis will be broadcasting in the relevant languages. However, it is doubtful that action by China and India completely hangs on what Michael Tobis does …
In China, polling of the populace is not particularly relevant, given that China is a dictatorship.
In India and China, significant action will not be taken (imo) unless we take significant action. So at present their policies are not my personal priority.
bender,
My postulate #1 is true for most democratic nations in the world – effectively, there are two major political forces in every country, and one of these two political forces is in power at any one time.
This is not universally true. Further, the identity of those two major political forces changes over time – in Britain, for example, the two parties used to be the Whigs and the Tories, but the Whigs withered and Labour rose.
However, it is true enough that effectively for most of the time in most places there are two sides of politics – in abstraction, those on the Right and those on the Left. Once both sides embrace a particular position, there become no political consequences for taking action on it.
And I would agree that China is the big issue for the future. But tackling China is, imo, impossible until we tackle ourselves. If we pessimistic alarmists fail in that task it is a bit much to expect success with China.
China, India, other developing nations account for 85% of the world’s current population. In 30 years, they’ll be well over 90% and much more industrialized. The vast majority of the CO2 that will be in the atmosphere in 2100 will come from that industrialization event, and not from the currently developed nations.
What happens in the US and the EU will hardly matter beans, unless it is developing new technologies to displace fossil fuel with.
Carrick,
It hardly matter beans in terms of the physics.
It matters a lot in terms of convincing others to take action, which matters a lot in terms of the physics.
David:
That is a tenet of your faith, I suppose. but I don’t think it logically follows. I don’t think it will matter either politically, economically or technologically which in the end, without some draconian top-down coercion, is why societies will refuse to accept these remedies. (See comment on wisdom of crowds again.)
A much more productive path (IMO) is to put the money in alternative energy sources (R&D not subsidy of “to market products”).
I’d love to see somebody connect the dots *realistically* for how US adoption of mitigation strategies that have a microscopic effect on global CO2 emissions will somehow sway the third world to see the error in their ways and adopt a course of future poverty. (I exaggerate only slightly.)
Carrick,
It is not so much that the US doing something will magically make China do something; it is the fact that if the US does nothing there is no way in hell that China will do anything. In other words, I see it as necessary but not sufficient.
What would be sufficient? The US – and others; I do not exempt Australia here- doing things and for the Chinese government to come to accept the thesis.
My personal view is that it is likely that the Chinese government have already accepted the thesis (at least to a reasonable degree) but that they do not want to cede to the US a potential economic advantage by acting when it is clear at the moment that the US is not going to act, tragedy of the commons style.
David Gould:
I’m not trying to pick on you, but I don’t follow your logic at all.
Why would the failure of the US to enact legislation precluded China from doing so???
If it were in their best interest, why would China not do so?
It’s unlikely that the US is going to be economically in first place in thirty years in any case, regardless of what economic policies the US chooses now. (They’ll be most likely to be running fourth and not have nearly the economic leverage that you ascribe to them by then.)
Carrick,
It is the best interest question.
US emissions are going to be high (in terms of total emissions) for a long time to come. Their economy, while not first, is going to be in the top 10, if not the top five, for the entire century.
If China believes that cutting its emissions by X will cause Y damage to its economy *and* it believes that by the US doing nothing the benefits of cutting its emissions will not eventuate, why would it cut its own emissions?
And this is exactly the same argument that is being used to justify the US not doing anything: if the US cuts emissions but China does not, then the US gets pain for no gain.
The reason that I believe that China has accepted the thesis is that they are doing things on emissions around the edges. They are ready to act even more strongly … if they think it is worth their while to do so.
A statement from an English translation of ‘China’s National Climate Change Programme’:
“To follow the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities†of the UNFCCC. According to this principle, developed countries should take the lead in reducing greenhouse gas emissions as well as providing financial and technical support to developing countries. The first and overriding priorities of developing countries are sustainable development and poverty eradication. The extent to which developing countries will effectively implement their commitments under the Convention will depend on the effective implementation by developed country of their basic commitments.”
While the document is full of propaganda, I think it lays out some of the Chinese position, which at the very least is, ‘Climate change is a problem, but if you don’t do much, we won’t do much either.’
http://en.ndrc.gov.cn/newsrelease/P020070604561191006823.pdf
David Gould —
> In India and China, significant action will not be taken (imo) unless we take significant action.
Etc.
As far as I can tell, this is a faith-based assertion of certain types of Westerners, acerbically given the moniker SWPLs by cynical right wingers.
I see no evidence that this is true or likely to be true, in any meaningful sense of the word. There are more parsimonious explanations for the Chinese statement that you quote (you gave one).
David Gould,
and you believe this document to be an honest portrayal of their policy? “you first”? Gimme a break.
.
“My country is completely in favour of total disarmament. You first.”
.
Guess how that one turns out.
Has the IPCC or anybody else examined the effect of a drastic global reduction in fossil fuels use before energy alternatives are ready for prime time? The poorest one or two billion of us sent back to burning wood and doing subsistence farming? I have to believe the environmental impact of such AGW-fighting-induced poverty would be horrific.
If somebody out there produces a marketable set of energy alternatives that would be great. If not, we conserve where we can and adapt to a warmer world. Fantasies about enlightened super-bureaucrats reordering society according to the aesthetic preferences of a rather spoiled elite are silly. (It is always fun to listen to people who clearly detest the free market talk about creating ‘market incentives’ with draconian mandates, taxes or cap and trade gimmicks.)
China is not going to follow the enlightened example of economic suicide. Perhaps when their economy produces as many useless yuppies as ours, completely detached from productive sectors such that national tastes and ideological preferences change as a result, the Chinese may be amenable to a top-down green agenda but that outcome is many megatons of carbon down the road.
George Tobin says:
“China is not going to …”
.
No kidding. Belief to the contrary is part of the echo-chamber narcissism referred to earlier. “Aren’t we beautiful? Aren’t we holy?” Umm. No. You’re nothing I want to emulate.
.
If planet 3.0 can’t bring the lukewarmers on board, the entreprise is sunk before it’s launched.
David Gould:
Nope, still doesn’t make sense, unless the US is the primary competitor to China.
Suppose these are the list of the largest GDPs in 30 years (2010 dollars) and amount of emissions:
1) China ($50 T) (20 billion tons CO2)
2) India ($42 T) (22 billion tons CO2)
3) EU ($29 T) (3 billion tons CO2)
4) US ($25 T) (4 billions tons COS)
China is going to care a whole lot more what India does than the US does, even if we make the most positive assumption that the changeover to non-fossil fuels by the US has no economic costs.
Equally important: If it is that “painful” for the US, you’ve as much admitted there is an economic cost conferred for the transformation. Isn’t that contrary to one of the assumptions by your group? Isn’t it supposed to be “revenue neutral”?
If it’s not revenue neutral, then you do have to weigh the costs of mitigation versus the cost of adaptation, and even if the US were to switch, that in no way guarantees other countries will make the same economic choice.
Also there is this: Chinese sceptics see global warming as US conspiracy.
David,
Carrick has hit the nail on the head. If your assumption is true, and China is holding back on curbing emissions because it does not want to fall behind the US economically, then what kind of emissions reductions would the US have to implement in order to make it “safe” for China to follow suit? Nothing short of reductions that would actually cripple the US economy.
Is that what you are advocating? Hopefully not, but you must understand that anything short of that–reductions that have a minimal impact on the US economic activity–are, by your own assumptions, not likely to have any effect on China’s attitude.
The following article was published in the Philosophical Magazine in
1909 (Vol. 17, pp. 319-320):
XXIV. Note on the Theory of the Greenhouse
By Professor R. W. Wood (Communicated by the Author)
THERE appears to be a widespread belief that the comparatively high temperature produced within a closed space covered with glass, and exposed to solar radiation, results from a transformation of wave-length, that is, that the heat waves from the sun, which are able to penetrate the glass, fall upon the walls of the enclosure and raise its temperature: the heat energy is re-emitted by the walls in the form of much longer waves, which are unable to penetrate the glass, the greenhouse acting as a radiation trap……
….It seems to me very doubtful if the atmosphere is warmed to any great extent by absorbing the radiation from the ground, even under the most favourable conditions.
http://sci.tech-archive.net/Archive/sci.physics/2008-04/msg00422.html
to follow my previous post (#83592) up:
What China needs to do (for its own good, never mind the planet) is to come up with an environmental policy that achieves something positive with minimal impact on its economic growth rate. They need this because they have a terrible old-fashioned pollution problem on their hands right now.
My hope would be that such an environmental policy could be made comprehensive enough to address the problem of of CO2 emissions, at least in part. (Anything is better than nothing, and when it comes to a giant like China, even a small percentage reduction can be a huge help in absolute terms.)
What the West, including the US, does about its own emissions is largely irrelevant to the above, except for propaganda purposes.
Carrick, David Gould,
An interesting exchange. I would only add:
.
1) If the Chinese and Indians really believe that future warming will be economically harmful to them, then they most certainly would be motivated to act, even without USA or European action, because their future emissions will be much larger. The developing world will pretty much unilaterally decide what the future path of CO2 emissions will be. The reality is (most likely) that the people in China, India, and elsewhere do not believe the potential long term benefits are greater than the present day cost of emission reductions.
.
2) The converse is NOT true; even if the USA and Europe believe future emissions will be harmful, they will likely recognize their potential contribution to resolving the problem is minor, and that unilateral action would have minimum effect on the environment and be economically harmful. For the developed economies, the only rational path forward is a broad international program that includes essentially all developing economies as well as developed economies.
.
3) Political consensus on significant public action to reduce GHG emissions in democracies, developed or not, will require much better (more certain) projections of the consequences of CO2 emissions. Real, testable projections (as in “the future”, not the past) of measurable consequences, which are subject to direct falsification are the only thing that is going to do it. Arm waves and excuses about why IPCC projections haven’t come true is not enough. Simple, testable things like projections of the increase in ocean heat content have to be very close to correct, and so far, they are way wrong. It is hard to have faith in models which project twice as much ocean heat accumulation as has been measured. It is hard to have faith in models which each assume a drastically different aerosol history to match the instrumental temperature history. Even those who are not very scientifically literate can understand an obvious kludge when they see one. Lots of people do not believe the model projections… and with good cause.
.
4) The consistent connection of left-wing/green political goals (“environment justice”, “economic justice”, redistribution of wealth, and draconian public restrictions on personal activities, etc) to CO2 emissions reductions serves only to make political consensus impossible, independent of of the quality of the projections of future consequences. People who want to reduce/control CO2 emissions have to find a way to divorce themselves from the policy prescriptions of the left; those prescriptions make political consensus, national or international, impossible.
.
5) The green/left has to stop the idiotic opposition to nuclear power; it is the only practical solution that is available to produce the great quantities of energy that will be needed in the future as developing economies grow. Excluding the most obvious energy solution from consideration only makes consensus on how to deal with CO2 emissions more difficult (if not impossible!), and discredits all who insist on both reduced emissions and elimination of nuclear power.
Re: Comment #83596,
Aside from that, SteveF, how do you like the play?
(ref., for ex-US readers.)
David Gould,
I suggest you read Pielke, Jr.’s The Climate Fix. Believing that an increase in CO2 will cause warming is nowhere near sufficient. It’s being willing to spend a lot of money, i.e. accept a lot of pain, that is required. That is nowhere near close to happening.
Re: MarkR (Oct 12 09:07),
Wood’s experiment has precisely nothing to do with how the, admittedly misnamed, atmospheric greenhouse effect works. It’s about how a greenhouse where you grow plants works. It’s a very stinky red herring. I can’t find the reference any more, but I remember reading that even Wood later admitted that his experiment was not relevant to the atmosphere.
AMac,
As you probably guessed, I do not like how the play has gone so far… I think the playwright, who goes by the name I. Paul Charles Crane (or just I.P.C.C.), is either delusional or insane. Most of the actors also seem a bit crazy.
Mosher: ” look at the past 100 years. Assume the same for the next 100, if you cant see room for improvement, then you will never get this argument.”
AGWers conned the UK into thinking they need to mitigate “warming” and several near record winters showed them cold is the enemy and should be prepared for.
Your cult wanted them to stop stockpiling grit and snowplows.
Your cult leader in Australia convinced them that drought was permanent and they should spend billions on desalination plants when the reality is that drought is cyclic and only dams can control those cycles.
Do you want to know what is the biggest and BEST disaster preparedness is? Dams. They stop disastrous flooding. Most of the big dams int he west were for flood control, not power. Power was the side benefit.
Take a look at how few dams are being built in California compared to 50 years ago.
You say look back 100 years ago.
The econloon green cults (of which AGW is the biggest money suck) are preventing the construction of dams.
Your cult is stupidly evil.
Re: Bruce (Oct 12 10:32),
Your reading comprehension score must be off the bottom of the chart.
“n 1948 floods swept through the Columbia watershed, destroying Vanport, then the second largest city in Oregon, and impacting cities as far north as Trail, British Columbia.[108] The flooding prompted the United States Congress to pass the Flood Control Act of 1950, authorizing the federal development of additional dams and other flood control mechanisms. By that time, however, local communities had become wary of federal hydroelectric projects, and sought local control of new developments; a Public Utility District in Grant County, Washington ultimately began construction of the dam at Priest Rapids.[109]
In the 1960s, the United States and Canada signed the Columbia River Treaty, which focused on flood control and the maximization of downstream power generation.[105] Canada agreed to build dams and provide reservoir storage, and the U.S. agreed to deliver to Canada one-half of the increase in U.S. downstream power benefits as estimated five years in advance.[110] Canada’s obligation was met by building three dams (two on the Columbia, and one on the Duncan River), the last of which was completed in 1973.[111]
Today the main stem of the Columbia River has 14 dams, of which three are in Canada and 11 in the U.S. Four mainstem dams and four lower Snake River dams contain navigation locks to allow ship and barge passage from the ocean as far as Lewiston, Idaho. The river system as a whole has more than 400 dams for hydroelectricity and irrigation.[16] The dams address a variety of demands, including flood control, navigation, stream flow regulation, storage and delivery of stored waters, reclamation of public lands and Indian reservations, and the generation of hydroelectric power.[112]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River
Mosher claims we don’t spend enough on disaster preparedness.
I’ll argue we once knew how to do it, but we’ve “forgotten” as the con men in the green movement prove over and over.
Dewitt: “Your reading comprehension score must be off the bottom of the chart.”
I know enough history to know we once tried to tame nature … now greenies try and con people into spend 220 trillion on windmills and solar panels in the next 39 years and we aren’t allowed to build dams.
Hummm… if Mosher’s “cult is stupidly evil”, then I am not sure if Bruce can find sufficiently negative adjectives to accurately describe the “cult” of people like Michael Tobis.
.
I find Mosher is pretty reasonable; after all, he suggests an equilibrium climate sensitivity between 1.5C and 3C per doubling of CO2 (that is, the final response hundreds of years or more after a doubling). I guess between 1.5C and 2.0C is more likely. I wonder if I am then part of the same cult, of if if my cult is somewhat less evil than Mosher’s by virtue of my lower estimate.
I think of Mosher as a vulturous, tipsy, iced lily. Tellingly, that is an anagram for Your cult is stupidly evil.
Re: David Gould (Comment #83565)
There is also an assumption somewhere in there that AGW can halted. Has there been any compelling evidence that this is, in fact, the case?
DeWitt,
I’m convinced that Bruce is actually Goddard in disguise.
Mosher makes the argument that not enough money was spent on disaster preparedness in the last 100 years.
I point out the modern equivalent of trillions were spent trying to prevent flooding and to control water flows so drought did not impact agriculture and people and floods did not wash away whole cities.
And that environmentalists now fight against such dams and very few are being built while the old ones decay.
And his counter argument is to accuse me of being Goddard.
I’m not, and Moshers rhetoric is exposed as just a front for spending more money on AGW “mitigation” instead of tried and true disaster mitigation.
Bruce:
This is a pretty good read on that.
Note there were huge problems created by the continued “improvements” in the Mississippi levee system and the unchecked deforestation in the east, which bears permanent scars from the ecological disaster that created.
To the degree this has anything to do with anthropogenic CO2 emissions, it is more of a sobering reminder of how humans can’t anticipate the consequence of their actions very well, and how industry unchecked can result in calamity and untold misery.
Not sure that’s the message Bruce was going for, but it’s the lesson I take from it.
David Gould,
fair points.
“No. 1 would happen to a relatively large extent if both political parties accepted the thesis, which I think is pretty much guaranteed in the next 20 years.”
The problem I laid out was ongoing support. That is, you set a control during the obama administration, the short term, ( 4 year) weather does not get the memo, ask Jayne Byrne about the weather and politics.
No. 2 is not as far off – imo – as some people think.
See bender. China and India
No. 3 also faces problems if people do not accept the thesis. If I propose to spend public funds doing something adaptive I would either need to disguise the fact that I am doing it because it is adaptive or have a reason for doing it that those who did not accept the thesis could get behind. This can be solved, of course, but it would not be smooth sailing by any means.
When regional impacts of climate change are not completely understood, there is also the problem – from the perspective of an AGW alarmist – of wrong adaption.
Agreed, Thats why as a policy maker I would want US scientists to focus on regional or downscaled experiments. You want a science problem to solve? DONT solve the “whats the climate look like in 1000 years” do not wast wall time on that shit. I want the regional skill worked and worked hard. I want better decadal skill,
etc..
Read the book on adpative governance and the climate
GIYF
DeWitt, I think this is a pretty good read too.
It deals with the evolution of the warning system in the US and the interplay between the public and private sectors in making it possible.
For warnings gone arwry, Isaac’s Storm is a good reading on the early evolution of the warning system.
Can you image how the alarmists would have reacted to the flooding in the 1920s and 30s in the US? The US has spent a lot on flood control and that has lead to the reduction in lives lost and property damage, in spite of the increase in precipitation and population growth and increased land usage over the last century. Contrast and compare that to countries like Pakistan with a burgeoning population but lacking the capacity to address the impacts of that population growth on flood risk.
Oliver,
Good question. Probably not, although if people everywhere substituted nuclear plants for fossil fuel plants (like in France http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sources_of_Electricity_in_France_in_2006.PNG), there would for sure be much lower total emissions than there would otherwise be.
Carrick, how many “1927 floods” were prevented? How long has the Mississipi been kept in its current channel — instead of changing course into the Atchafalaya River?
http://www.americaswetlandresources.com/background_facts/detailedstory/LouisianaRiverControl.html
Re: Bruce (Oct 12 12:03),
… and your answers?
Gosh Mosh,
I always thought it was Bilandic.
Bruce:
The proper question is how many Mississippi river floods were created by bad ACoE policy.
I suggest you start a reading list, start with “Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America” by John M. Barry. Should be available in your public library.
Where are all the Tobis supporters, to shoot down these right wing fallacies?
Carrick,
Regarding ‘revenue neutral’, if that refers to me thinking that the costs and pain now will save us greater costs and pain later, then this is indeed my belief. If you are talking about the nonsensical notion that tranforming our economies towards carbon neutrality will not cost us anything, then I am not one with the people who believe that.
AMac,
I think that you are confusing the thesis: I am not saying that China will do something if the US does; I am saying that unless the US does something significant China will not do anything significant. What is illogical about this statement? Do you think that China is going to do things without the US doing things? That seems to me to be a much more cogent example of a leap of faith.
They would see it as pointless and instead concentrate on creating an economy that could adapt to climate change at least as well as the US’s economy can. This would not be the optimal path for either the US or China, and would be disastrous for many other places. But it would be more optimal for China than taking action, damaging their economy and still having to suffer the negative effects of climate change anyway …
julio,
I do not think that the requirement would be for the US to cripple its economy (although I guess it depends on your definition of the word ‘cripple’). I do think that many on ‘my side’ have been disengenuous about the cost of this challenge, and that this has been a bad tactic to use. I am a pessimistic climate change alarmist precisely because I do not think that there is any way that we can smoothly and easily move towards a carbon neutral economy.
But I am actually amazed at how quickly we are moving nonetheless, even though the speed at which we are moving is nowhere near fast enough [understatement]. Thirty years ago, climate change was not on the policy agenda of any nation on the planet. Now it is part of pretty much every nation’s thinking. That to my mind is incredible for an issue that is so horribly complex and which has effects that are so slow and incremental – and variable and difficult to predict, as Mosher has pointed out.
People talk about the sceptics ‘winning’ the debate. From my perspective, it is pretty obvious that if you take the long view they have quite clearly lost. So, while I am still horribly pessimistic, over that longer time horizon I am an unashamed optimist.
Re: David Gould (Oct 12 16:03),
> Do you think that China is going to do things without the US doing things?
No.
Do I think that China is going to do ‘things’ with the US doing ‘things’?
By China’s and the US’ ‘things,’ you probably mean “the steps that David/AMac/MT would find to be a strong mitigating response to AGW.” In which case, my guess is ‘No,’ again. And of course, China (ie the Politburo & PLA elite) gets to play, too: they get to decide which US ‘things’ would be big enough steps to qualify. Whatever the US does, I expect China will respond, “not enough.”
Carrick outlined these problems upthread, along with others.
Steven Mosher,
Regarding the ongoing support, I think that if both political parties accepted the thesis and measures were put in place to reduce CO2 emissions, the parties would not change their minds simply because the weather was colder this year. My assumption would be that they had come to accept the thesis because they understood the longer term projections/predictions/forecasts. It is difficult for me to see that they would suddenly change their minds, especially as the membership of the upper echelons of a political party tends to remain fairly constant over relatively long periods (10 to 20 years).
Regarding China and India, firstly, India is not going to be a problem of the size of the US for quite a while. If the Indian population doubles in the next 20 years and their CO2 output per person triples, they will be up to around 11 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. I doubt that that is going to be their trajectory – my projections have their emissions at around 5 billion tonnes in 2030, their population having increased by around 35 per cent and their emissions per head being 2.5 times what they are now. Without US action, the US will still be ahead of India (and will have pumped much more into the atmosphere than India over that period).
Further, I think that China and India are indeed doing things – around the edges, it is true, but they are things that imo they would not be doing if their governments did not accept the thesis in at least its most general terms.
AMac,
But at least you recognise that a necessary [but insufficient] condition is for the US to do things. 😉
And I agree that we and they will not do enough in the short term. That is why I am a pessimist.
However, in the long term, I am an optimist.
“India is not going to be a problem of the size of the US for quite a while”
India’s coal usage increased by 10.8% from 2009 to 2010.
6 years to match US usage.
It will take China about 3 years for its coal usage to increase by the amount the US uses.
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/reports_and_publications/statistical_energy_review_2011/STAGING/local_assets/pdf/coal_section_2011.pdf
The US could deindustrialize completely and China+India in 4 years will increase CO2 usage by the amount the US stops using.
My cult is not stupidly evil.
My cult is evily stupid.
“Optimists” that base their predictions and prescriptions on faulty logic are dangerous fools. What was the earlier comment about “stupidly evil cults”?
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And what was mosher’s old line about not insulting the evil by calling them stupid? (heh heh)
“My cult is not stupidly evil.
My cult is evily stupid.”
.
Great! How can I grant you more political power?
Bruce,
From the same document, the difference between US coal use and Indian coal use actually grew in 2010. So, while India will indeed catch the US, it is difficult to see them matching the US in six years. If we assume that India increases coal consumption by 11 per cent per year and that the US stands still, then you are correct. But do you see that happening?
Further, emissions are not just coal. While India’s recent oil consumption growth has been large – 40 per cent in a decade – the US still uses six times as much.
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=in&v=91
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=in&v=91
bender,
No need to grant it; we will just appropriate it. But if you have any spare babies lying around, I’m feeling a bit peckish.
“we will just appropriate it”
.
I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords …
Attention all David Goulds of the Solar Federation,
Planet 3.0 has assumed control
lol
DG:
you sock-puppet, you
you nearly had me fooled
bender,
Re the document being an honest statement of their policy, not particularly. But I think that when they say that they will not act if the US does not act they are telling the truth. They have no reason to lie on this point. Note this is not the same as them saying that they will act if the US acts.
And I am not a sockpuppet of anyone but myself. David Gould is my real name.
David, US usage is still well below its peak in 2006.
“EPA modeling and power-plant operator announcements show that EPA regulations will close at least 28 gigawatts (GW) of American generating capacity, the equivalent of closing every power plant in the state of North Carolina or Indiana. Also, 28 GW is 8.9 percent of our total coal generating capacity.”
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2011/10/07/ier-identifies-coal-fired-power-plants-likely-to-close-as-result-of-epa-regulations/
As for cars …
“As of 2010, India is home to 40 million passenger vehicles and more than 3.7 million automotive vehicles were produced in India in 2010 (an increase of 33.9%), making the country the second fastest growing automobile market in the world.[4][5] According to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers, annual car sales are projected to increase up to 5 million vehicles by 2015 and more than 9 million by 2020.”
DG:
ok, then you are hopelessly naive. or young. but that’s ok.
please read more and (for your own sake) consider writing less.
(unless you’re ok with being wrong most of the time. in which case, have the decency to admit it before moving on.)
y’know the thing that ills me about my new insect overlords, herr dr monsignors Tobis et al., is that he/they hope to profit from this religious enterprise and then extricate himself from it by, ummm, selling it off ??!!
.
what in dear god’s name is this? is this what america has become? theocracy for sale? please. no.
bender,
Given that I am not young, I must be hopelessly naive. 😉
I read a lot of stuff – reading is my life. And I do not write all that much – usually when I write it is in bursts of activity if something catches my interest, which Mosher’s comments did.
I am happy to be wrong. But I am yet to be convinced that I am wrong on these particular issues [that we have made amazing progress to a low carbon economy, even thought that is nowhere near enough; that the governments of China and India basically accept the thesis; that China will not act if the US does not act].
Bruce,
Yes, India’s car use and by extension oil use is growing dramatically. Even adding adding 10 million cars per year to that 40 million total starting this year will not see India have the same number of cars as the US until after 2030 (assuming the US does not increase the number of cars and assuming that Indians keep their cars for at least 20 years).
India’s total emissions will not surpass the US’s until somewhere in the mid to late 2020s. And over that time period of 15 to 20 years, the total of US emissions will surpass India’s by [assuming steady US emissions] around 40 per cen
China and India are acting David. They are growing their economies and plan to match US per capita emissions as soon as possible.
As “environmentalists” work to deindustrialize the USA and move even more jobs to China and India, they will reach their goal even sooner.
DG:
Do your community a disfavour and go spread the word over at planet 3.0.
bender,
In general, talking to people who agree with me is not something that I find enjoyable on a long-term basis, although I do comment from time to time at various warmist sites. The cut-and-thrust of political or religious debate with people who disagree with me is much more interesting [and usually more intellectually useful].
Having said that, many people who might be considered to be alarmists like me disagree with me on lots of things regarding the policy and process issues.
And I probably will register at planet 3.0, as I am likely to want to comment there at some point.
SteveF
“1) If the Chinese and Indians really believe that future warming will be economically harmful to them, then they most certainly would be motivated to act, even without USA or European action, because their future emissions will be much larger. The developing world will pretty much unilaterally decide what the future path of CO2 emissions will be. The reality is (most likely) that the people in China, India, and elsewhere do not believe the potential long term benefits are greater than the present day cost of emission reductions.”
The thing is, they may well believe that without USA or European action there will still be negative consequences on top of the negative consequences of China and India taking action. When you add those up, it is likely that they calculate that taking action without the US is the worse option than taking no action.
However, the calculations change if the US does take action, and that change may well move their cost-benefit analysis over to the ‘take action’ side of the ledger.
“2) The converse is NOT true; even if the USA and Europe believe future emissions will be harmful, they will likely recognize their potential contribution to resolving the problem is minor, and that unilateral action would have minimum effect on the environment and be economically harmful. For the developed economies, the only rational path forward is a broad international program that includes essentially all developing economies as well as developed economies.”
I agree. I just think that the only way to get there is to start taking action. At the moment, no-one believes that the US is going to take action, so why would they sign on a dotted line? Further, if we wait until we have a broad international program before we take action then we will suffer more than we will have needed to.
Regarding 3, I do not think so, given that there is already political consensus in many nations on this. Even in Australia, for example, the conservative Liberal Party is committed to action of a sort. And quite a few establishment Republicans are, too. As I have stated, I am amazed at how quickly this move towards a consensus has occurred.
“4) … People who want to reduce/control CO2 emissions have to find a way to divorce themselves from the policy prescriptions of the left; those prescriptions make political consensus, national or international, impossible.”
Very tricky to do. While I disagree that they make political consensus necessarily impossible on a national level – in the UK, for example, there is effectively political consensus, as there is in most other European nations – I do agree that they make it very difficult for a global agreement and in the United States.
“5) The green/left has to stop the idiotic opposition to nuclear power; ”
I completely agree. Convincing them of this is tricky, though. It may be necessary to circumvent them by building lots of nuclear power stations in countries which have not yet been trapped by this opposition. I take heart from Slovakia’s plans to expand its nuclear fleet to supply German needs and the UK’s plans to effectively turn into France re nuclear power.
“I probably will register at planet 3.0”
.
Great. See if they are as helpful and proficient in pointing out the numerous and serious flaws in your logic and data. I bet not.
bender,
It will be tricky for them, given that there has never, ever been a flaw (serious or otherwise) in any of my logic or data … 😉
David Gould,
Just to make sure my issue #3 is clear: Justifying the cost of moving from fossil fuels to non-fossil energy sources over anything less than a century-long period depends on showing that the long term cost from future warming, (discounted at some reasonable rate) is greater than the present cost for making a rapid change. That seems to me impossible based on the current state of knowledge and the rather extreme uncertainties involved. Which is to say, if we could know (for certain) that the ultimate climate sensitivity is 1.6 C per doubling, then it would be difficult (impossible?) to justify any kind of crash program. On the other hand, if we could know (for certain) that the ultimate climate sensitivity is 4.2C per doubling then justifying immediate action would not be so difficult. Considering that I personally think, after much consideration, that the true number is closer to 1.6 than to 4.2, I can’t get too fired up about doing anything with great urgency.
.
The true extent of future warming is more important than any other factor in generating a political consensus for action. Which is why I say the science is at present woefully inadequate.
SteveF,
I understand that issue. However, given that consensus has emerged in numerous countries it does not seem to me to be axiomatic that the climate sensitivity needs to be narrowed down before consensus can emerge.
It may be that it is axiomatically necessary to do so for certain countries or for a worldwide agreement, of course.
The Governor of my state just threw his support wholeheartedly behind a large offshore wind project. This is to Fight Global Warming. Although the net effects as far as GHG emissions will be… next to nothing. As a ratepayer, though, I’m certain to experience the effects. It’ll sure feel good, knowing that I can hold my head up high. I’ll be able to carry my bill around to show how much I care.
This strikes me as an early peek at the dynamics that the great and the good hope to impose on lesser mortals everywhere. For the children.
David Gould, if there was a secret Chinese plot to undermine the west and move as many manufacturing jobs to China as possible, and to triple or quadruple CO2 emissions from coal, how would you prove to me you are not part of that plot?
I’m not saying there is such a plot (except for the strange financing of Al Gore from China) … I’m just asking how you would prove you aren’t a witting or unwitting member of such a plot.
Especially when the net result of your advocacy is to increase CO2 emissions and black carbon emissions.
Bruce,
Proving negatives is tricky in any case and given that we are poles apart in our thinking it is difficult for me to imagine what I could say or do to demonstrate that I am not a dupe of the Chinese.
Would, for example, me pushing for an end to Australian coal exports to China while at the same time pushing for a massive expansion in uranium mining and exports (concurrent with a push for nuclear power here in Australia) ease your mind at all or would it simply provide confirmation?
Re: David Gould (Comment #83654)
October 12th, 2011 at 8:14 pm
All right, but consensus to do what, exactly? We can all agree in principle to do X, but when push comes to shove, how much X really gets done when there are, as always, other, competing needs?
Oliver,
Difficult to say at present. As an example, it appears that in Britain quite a few nuclear power stations are proposed to be build over the next two decades. Will they be built? I hope so. But consensus to build them among the two sides (or three sides) of politics seems to exist.
In Australia, both sides have a consensual target for CO2 reductions over the next decade. Will that target be met? I hope so – indeed, I hope that it is exceeded. But we will not know if we are going to for a few years yet.
Where do these people come from?
And can we please try to talk about Michael Tobis and his echo chamber for planetary salvation and profit?
This person comes from England, although I have lived in Australia for 40 years and eight months of my 41 years and one month of life. Where do you people come from? 😉
As to Michael Tobis and his echo chamber, what do you want to discuss about it? I assume that you think it will be bad because it will be populated by people with whom you disagree. In some ways, I think the same thing: I wonder how they are going to reach out to people with whom they disagree, as they are the people who need to be convinced to join the Chinese Conspiracy.
Did I say ‘the Chinese Conspiracy’? I meant to say ‘those who accept the thesis’.
J fergeson.
Bilandic, Byrne, one of them. I think you’re right. It was college daze. my precious bodily fluids were in demand.
david G.
Sorry I haven’t had time to follow closely, but I’m glad that my observation was thought provoking.
Here is another one. Apply the pre cautionary principle to your optimism. That is, it is the optimism over global action on mitigation that has put us in the hole on adaptation. Assume the worse case, assume you are wrong about the possibility of global action.. pascalian logic says choose adaptation
Arrg.. learning about support vector machines. haha. they actually call a math technique “the kernel trick”
back later
steven mosher,
I do not think that it is an either/or choice. Why not, for example, take the money from a carbon tax and spend that on adaptation? A win-win: price pressure on carbon use and a big pile of cash for disaster preparedness. And we are a step closer to a global agreement. 😉
I understand, of course, that your argument is that there is no consensus for a carbon tax so this is not politically possible. And you are correct that it may well be much more politically possible to take money from other things and spend them on disaster preparedness. I would be fine with this; I would support it. But that would not stop me pushing for mitigation.
The arguments in this thread have helped me understand the pros and cons of centrally-directed global mitigation strategies.
Back in 2008, “Half Sigma” first wrote about Value creation vs. value transference:
Obviously, most of us making a living by value transference prefer to see our activities as value creation. And, obviously, there’s no bright-line distinction between the two. One shades into the other.
Mitigating GHG emissions so that a 4 C/century increase was cut to a 2 C/century increase would certainly count as “value creation”, to me.
And yet.
I’ve read Michael Lewis (“The Big Short,” “Boomerang”), Steve Sailer on mortgage securitization (e.g.), Mish Shedlock on TARP, ARRA, and the Greek default.
Happily, almost all of the players at the apex of these innovative paradigms in business and politics come out ahead. Well ahead: the problems of the various chumps left holding the various bags don’t trouble their personal finances or their beauty sleep.
So. Massive transnational programs to counter the urgent threat of CAGW. Centrally planned, under the aegis of the most dynamic and efficient worldwide organizations, with new ones created to devise objectives, targets, and quotas. Compliance to be ensured or coerced, as needed.
What’s not to like?
What could possibly go wrong?
I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords …
.
Excellent ! Indeed humbling ! I hasten to bend my knee to this vision of glory too ! All hail our new overlords !
.
P.S
Bender did you know that insects can absorb radioactivity up to 10^5 rad, can tolerate a large temperature or pressure interval, are highly agressive and eat virtually everything ?
Your visionary exclamation proves that the insects are just waiting for the upstart human to self destroy in the fight against global warming and to take over.
I bet that they won’t need more than 100 millions of years to create a highly sustainable civilisation (e.g a civilisation where only they exist), to emit unholy amounts of CO2 and to invade the rest of the Galaxy.
We might appear in their history books as an example of a very weak attempt at global control which failed because we didn’t understand that whatever is good for the Hive is good for the Universe.
Ultimate Darwin’s victory.
It’s not what you say David, it’s what the result is.
The developing world is burning vastly more coal in their quest to industrialize while the western capitalist nations are being exhorted to rely on unreliable wind power. And jobs are being exported to China/Japan and other countries.
David: “Would, for example, me pushing for an end to Australian coal exports to China while at the same time pushing for a massive expansion in uranium mining and exports (concurrent with a push for nuclear power here in Australia) ease your mind at all or would it simply provide confirmation?”
1) It would suggest you think China and India have no right to industrialization and the poor should stay dirt poor. I disagree with that.
2) You seem to hate Australians working in the coal mines and ancillary industry. I disagree with that.
3) I don’t actually believe environmentalists are ever pro-nuclear. When it is convenient they say they are, but when they’ve shut down the coal mines they will push just as hard to block nuclear and shale gas. And I disagree with such dishonesty.
Amac:
They say that the thing trickles down ..
DeWitt Payne (Comment #83599) The Wood experiment shows that trapping IR radiation DOESN’T cause temperature increase. Find your reference otherwise instead of making assertions. There is not a shred of empirical evidence that CO2 causes warming.
Bruce,
1.) But I want to send them more uranium. Doesn’t that contradict your notion that I want them to remain poor?
2.) I am unsure what, precisely, you are suggesting that I ‘hate’. I tend not to hate. But I certainly believe that if we are to prevent serious damage to ourselves and to the environment we need to wind down and ultimately close the coal industry.
3.) It is disappointing that you do not take me at my word, but not unexpected in a general sense. I suggest you have a read of the website bravenewclimate by Prof. Barry Brook of the University of Adelaide. It may perhaps be more difficult to dismiss his push for nuclear power, even though he is an environmentalist.
Basically Mosher has done everything he can to support the “luke warmer” position. First by supporting his poodle in instantly undermining Watts work assessing the quality of temperature measuring. Second by relying on models of infra red in the atmosphere.
Lucia fawns over the modellers, but can’t cope with Gerry Browning’s point that “…Thus, if a numerical model is unable to resolve the spectrum of the continuum solution, the model is forced to artificially increase the viscosity coefficient or use a numerical method that has nonphysical viscosity built into the method.” http://climateaudit.org/2006/05/15/gerry-browning-numerical-climate-models/ . Sorry, but it’s the truth.
TomV
Yes, I sometime wonder if our brains have any long term adaptive value.
David G.
In theory I have no issue with taxes to nudge us toward carbon reduced energy sources where such taxes are used for adaptation, I would look at that as a good hedge strategy. However, the guy holding the money ( congress) doesnt have the best track record on
1. picking winners
2. admitting failure
3. keeping promises.
4. not lining the pockets of interested parties.
of course people like me always have those objections, so that is an unexamined prejudice that I would have to reconsider.
This is an interesting problem because it does cut to core values in the end. When the problem is serious I think a re examination of core beliefs is required. That is, folks who believe as I do should not simple rest on those core values as the end of the matter.
To tie this into MTs blog.
I think this problem forces us to face core values. MTs way of facing his core values is to impose them on the very structure of dialogue. I think that is wrong. I think it is interesting that this science problem has made philosophy of science a “live” topic again. I think it should make morality a “live” topic again. MT does not want to talk to the devil. I think he should.
Steven Mosher,
It has made me face my core values. The more I have looked at this problem, the more I have seen the foolishness of those on my side regarding things like nuclear power. And, as I pointed out up thread, their false claims of no cost to change our economy. Allies can often be the devil, too.
MarkR (Comment #83691)
October 13th, 2011 at 3:51 pm
DeWitt Payne (Comment #83599) The Wood experiment shows that trapping IR radiation DOESN’T cause temperature increase. Find your reference otherwise instead of making assertions. There is not a shred of empirical evidence that CO2 causes warming.
============================================================
MarkR, you seem pretty convinced by the Wood experiment. Professor Vaughan Pratt of Stanford University attempted to repeat this simple experiment in 2009. They found that IR absorbing windows produced far higher temperatures within the box than did a window that did not absorb IR, See http://boole.stanford.edu/WoodExpt/
Owen – is there any CO2 involved in that Stanford experiment? Did you see any calibration results reported with a known heat source in each box?
curious, It was an attempt to replicate Wood’s experiment, which was a very simple experiment. No heat sources were in the boxes in either of the experiments. You can read the details at the link I provided above.
I’ve read the details at the link you provided – have you? If so please can you point out any reference to CO2 – I missed it. Thanks.
curious, Both experiments had air inside the boxes (as far as I can tell), therefore both had atmospheric levels of CO2 in all boxes. The CO2 effect, however, was not the intent of either of the two experiments. The intent was to measure the effect of IR transparent and IR absorbing windows on the retention of heat imparted by direct sunlight.
Ok – so we are in agreement that the Wood experiment and its replication, as described, are not relevant to the atmospheric effects of CO2.
Do you have a link to any info. on Prof. Pratt’s proposed follow on experiment?
Curious, I somehow suspect that our “agreement” would not run very deep. But no, I don’t have any further information on Pratt.
David:
1) No. The uranium doesn’t do them any good because they need an economy reliant on cheap coal power to pay for reactors that won’t match even todays coal output for 40 or 50 years, let alone how much coal their economy will need in 5 or 6 years.
2.) Your compatriots have in fact encouraged the coal industry in China by working so hard to make energy too expensive in the west … and they like to demonize nuclear and shale gas just to make sure no one can undercut the Chinese manufacturers energy costs.
3.) Environmentalist only pretend to like nuclear while working so hard to kill off coal and gas. When that is done they will try and kill off nuclear. Some of your fellow environmentalists are already attacking nuclear and won’t stop, thereby encouraging Germany to rely on their coal plants and those in the Czech Republic.
Bruce,
The environmentalists in Germany never pretended to support nuclear power – they were always openly opposed to it, and have foolishly seized upon the Japanese tsuanmi disaster to attempt to get rid of it. There are not many environmentalists, in fact, who openly support nuclear power, which is unfortunate. Read Barry Brook.
I am not sure that I understand your point 2 at all, to be honest. The Chinese manufacturing industry can make things cheaper than we can because of labor costs, not energy costs.
Regarding point 1, I do not intend to shut down the coal industry tomorrow. Ramping up the nuclear power industry will take time. But if we do not push hard for it, it will not happen.
One of the things that I would like you to understand, Bruce, is that environmentalists – like every other group of individuals – do not all think in the same way.
Owen (Comment #83709)
The claimed “replication” missed out this important bit:
“…When exposed to sunlight the temperature rose gradually to 65 oC., the enclosure covered with the salt plate keeping a little ahead of the other, owing to the fact that it transmitted the longer waves from the sun, which were stopped by the glass. In order to eliminate this action (ALL THE INCOMING?)… sunlight was first passed through a glass plate.”
This second level of isolation stops radiation coming into both boxes, but allows IR to leave the rock salt one. Result, emission of IR from rock salt one did not materially affect temperature.
http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/wood_rw.1909.html
Re: David Gould (Oct 13 21:55),
Barry Brook — a very credible person. His blog was one of the go-to places for information as Fukushima unfolded. He didn’t tailor the information he presented and linked to his own policy preferences. Instead, he respected his readers. The comments, while moderated, allowed for a great deal of informed, intelligent dissent.
I don’t have to agree with all of Prof Brook’s positions to respect him.
The science-is-settled partisans and true believers could learn a great deal from Brook. But they won’t.
David: “One of the things that I would like you to understand, Bruce, is that environmentalists – like every other group of individuals – do not all think in the same way.”
Sure … but the largest environmental organizations like Greenpeace and WWF do think the way I described. They have billions to spend and they are against nuclear when it suits them and get “scientists” to write papers that proclaim shale gas is worse than coal etc etc.
China and India are right to ignore them. They should and do burn coal until it isn’t economical to do so. They will keep undermining the “developed” nations and Greenpeave and WWF will help.
Your side will continue to encourage economic suicide for “developed” nations and all it will result in is vastly more coal being burned.
Maybe you should try and convince them to support nuclear and shale gas instead of coal (and by them I mean Greenpeace/WWF etc) before you waste more of our time encourage policies which will do the opposite of what you claim to want.
Re: Owen (Oct 13 19:11),
Vaughn Pratt left out an important detail from the Wood experiment. Wood put a glass sheet above both boxes to block near IR from sunlight. It’s obvious that if you have an IR transmitting cover exposed to direct sunlight, more energy will enter the box and the temperature will be higher than for a glass covered box exposed to direct sunlight.
But Wood also only looked at peak temperature. The peak temperature in sunlight isn’t very important. It’s the minimum temperature at night that matters. There is indeed evidence that the minimum temperature for an IR transparent cover is lower than for an IR blocking cover for a night with clear sky and low humidity.
Re: MarkR (Oct 13 15:51),
If the Earth could transmit energy to space by convection, then Wood’s experiment would be relevant to the atmosphere. But it can’t so it isn’t. The Earth can only receive and transmit energy by radiation.
The atmospheric greenhouse effect is more about the minimum temperature at night rather than the peak temperature during the day. Consider, for example, a greenhouse on the Moon. Do you really think that a greenhouse covered by rock salt wouldn’t cool faster when the sun drops below the horizon than a greenhouse covered by glass? If you can’t understand this point then further communication is pointless.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #83732)
October 14th, 2011 at 9:05 am
Re: Owen (Oct 13 19:11),
“But Wood also only looked at peak temperature. The peak temperature in sunlight isn’t very important. It’s the minimum temperature at night that matters. ”
—————
Thanks, I had not noticed that Pratt omitted the glass filters for all boxes. So, are you saying that finding of Wood is to be expected because the high energy solar input is able to overpower the ability of either box to lose heat during a period of insolation, or perhaps that convective losses from these boxes play a bigger role than radiative losses during the high temperatures while under solar heating?
De Witt #83734
Woods result stands. You don’t have any experimental evidence to the contrary.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #83732)
October 14th, 2011 at 9:05 am
Re: Owen (Oct 13 19:11),
“Vaughn Pratt left out an important detail from the Wood experiment. Wood put a glass sheet above both boxes to block near IR from sunlight. It’s obvious that if you have an IR transmitting cover exposed to direct sunlight, more energy will enter the box and the temperature will be higher than for a glass covered box exposed to direct sunlight.”
——————-
Actually, doesn’t this omission by Pratt makes his conclusions even stronger as he has put his glass box at a solar heating disadvantage (solar IR is blocked) over the polymeric film box and it still shows far elevated temperatures?
Re: MarkR (Oct 14 10:46),
Actually, there is. After further consideration, Vaughn Pratt’s experiment is better than I thought it was at first reading. In his case, a thermal IR transparent cover does result in a lower box temperature than for thermal IR opaque covers. But all covered boxes have elevated temperatures because convective heat loss is blocked.
The decreased near IR transparency of the glass and acrylic covers should result in slightly less radiant energy coming into those boxes, yet their temperatures are higher. The glass cover sheet used by Wood for both boxes to equalize incoming radiant energy may actually have minimized thermal IR loss for the rock salt covered box as the glass would look like a black body at the local surface air temperature while the effective temperature of the sky would likely have been much lower.
Re: DeWitt Payne (Oct 14 11:55),
In fact, the experiment is easy and cheap enough to do, that I may set one up myself. Roy Spencer did something similar, but was measuring the effective sky temperature at night rather than solar radiation during the day.
Re: MarkR (Comment #83694)
October 13th, 2011 at 4:16 pm
It’s well-known that numerical methods are not “exact.” Yet, amazingly, they work reasonably well, sometimes. What point specifically are you trying to make here?
DeWitt Payne (Comment #83784)
October 14th, 2011 at 3:01 pm
In fact, the experiment is easy and cheap enough to do, that I may set one up myself. ”
——————
I was thinking the same thing. One could just let a well-insulated box heat up to a certain temperature, cut off the heat supply (shield from sun or cover with a dark box), and measure the kinetics of the drop in temperature as affected by the IR absorbing characteristics of the window. Somebody must have done this.
Re: DeWitt Payne (Comment #83734)
October 14th, 2011 at 9:16 am
But, of course, it’s never quite that simple, since as you well know, the earth’s surface can dump heat to the upper atmosphere by convection. 😉
Better than arguing about how Wood’s experiment might or might not apply to the radiative-convective balance of the earth, maybe you could just ask MarkR what connection he is claiming.
Re: MarkR (Comment #83691)
October 13th, 2011 at 3:51 pm
Okay, I see your assertion now.
Wood’s experiment shows that IR trapping is not, under certain conditions, the main reason why a covered box is observed to be warmer inside than an uncovered box .
The conclusion of the study is not the same as the “blanket” assertion which you seem to be making.
Re: Owen (Oct 14 15:54),
What I’m thinking of doing is building a well-insulated, low thermal mass box painted black on the inside with a small opening in the top, i.e. an approximation of a black body. By having a relatively small opening, the emissivity/absorptivity of the inner surface becomes less relevant. I may even include a tube on the opening to provide collimation. With a long tube, convection should be minimal and it might not even need a cover. Then point the thing at the sun and look at the temperature inside. Then put a glass plate over the hole and see if the temperature changes. I may put in another small hole so I can use an IR thermometer as well as having a probe thermometer inside.
I have the suspicion that the dimensions of the box are important. With a deep box, the sky view factor will be lower, I think. That may make the cover less important. If that’s the case, then the cover won’t matter for a box with a small hole pointed at the sun. The boxes in Vaughn Pratt’s experiment look to be quite shallow, while Spencer’s box looks to be pretty deep. Wood didn’t give a lot of experimental detail, to put it mildly.
To all, the assertion that Wood made was: “I do not pretend to have gone very deeply into the matter, and publish this note merely to draw attention to the fact that trapped radiation appears to play but a very small part in the actual cases with which we are familiar.”
How come, no one has apparently done a proper experiment to prove that increased CO2 produces Global Warming?
Are not the trillions of Dollars and Billions of lives at stake sufficient motivation? Why the rush to discuss the political and economic consequences of a fraudulent theory?
Oliver (Comment #83785)
The point is that one can’t model climate.
Re: MarkR (Oct 14 17:04),
From Wood’s note:
[my emphasis]
The statement I emphasized is incorrect. In fact, near the surface depending on the specific humidity, the atmosphere is nearly opaque to thermal IR. We know this because it has been measured in the lab and in the field. So even if his experiment was done correctly, his conclusion from the data is wrong because the premise he based it on is wrong.
re: MarkR (Comment #83792)
October 14th, 2011 at 5:09 pm
I think that one’s going to pretty hard to back up.
Dewitt: “In fact, near the surface depending on the specific humidity, the atmosphere is nearly opaque to thermal IR.”
Thats so weird. Because if the atmosphere was opaque, to IR, an IR thermometer pointed at the sky would only be measuring the temperature of the air only a few feet above the IR thermometer.
Dewitt: “If you point an IR thermometer (~$50 at auto parts and kitchen supply stores) at the sky (not the sun), you will find that the sky has a temperature.”
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/monckton-neither-0-15-wk-m2-nor-0-18-wk-m2-are-the-kt-implicit-planck-parameter/#comment-82950
Re: Bruce (Oct 14 20:46),
It is nearly opaque over much of the wavelength range, but there is a window. That window reduces Teff as measured by a simple IR thermometer.
For example, the calculated atmospheric emission spectrum for the MODTRAN tropical atmosphere from the ground looking up looks like this.
348.226 W/m² from 100-1500 cm-1 translates to an effective temperature of about 284 K while the surface temperature is 300 K. Note that the emission spectrum is very close to the 300 K Planck curve over much of the spectral range, so most of the energy does indeed come from close to the surface. At lower humidity, the temperature difference is greater because the window is wider. But there is near opacity over much of the spectral range so radiation from the surface is indeed absorbed by the atmosphere close to the surface, just not all of the radiation.
Looking again at the tropical spectrum, if inexpensive IR thermometers were really narrow band and the response was just in the window, then the sky temperature observed in the tropics would be on the order of 255 K at a surface temperature of 300 K. I just went outside with an IR thermometer. The ground temperature was ~281 K, and the sky temperature was ~243 K. There’s probably a temperature inversion because the air temperature is ~287 K. OTOH, the air temperature thermometer may lag the real temperature because it’s under the roof of the carport. The full spectrum Teff for the sky for those conditions is about 267 K, so the meter probably doesn’t respond all that well to the low frequency end of the spectrum. But if the response were only in the window then the sky temperature would be below 220 K (using mid-latitude winter atmosphere conditions adjusted for the local temperature and relative humidity) and it’s not.
Oliver #83795
See MarkR (Comment #83694) above.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #83799) Too many probably’s in that post,I think, but I commend your decision to do an experiment. From observation of a desert, or hot tarmac, one can see the convection at work with the naked eye. It seems obvious that it is the turbulence in the atmosphere that enables the heat loss. I think it is the also case that any IR leaving the surface would be absorbed by 4 foot into the atmosphere, so the height of the glass/other screens on the boxes is significant.I
DeWitt Payne (Comment #83799)
October 14th, 2011 at 11:13 pm
——————
Run the experiment in different conditions.
Note that cloud cover (which can be up to 65% of the time and be up to 50% opaque to sunlight, IR I don’t know) but cloud changes all the numbers.
The tropical surface looking up with low cloud under Modtran.
http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/7268/tropicalsurfacelookingu.gif
With mid-level cloud.
http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/6882/rad12081506.gif
One might find in cloudy conditions that the atmosphere is exactly like a blackbody with temperature just steadily rising from the surface to the cloud deck. CO2/other GHGs are, of course, operating above the clouds and, thus, might be influencing the temperature/energy levels in the cloud layers from above but we live on the surface.
Re: MarkR (Oct 15 05:13),
Convection is indeed important for transferring heat from the surface to the atmosphere. In fact for net transfer of energy, or heat flow, convection is more important than radiation (~100 W/m² vs 66 W/m²). Please tell me, though, how you transfer energy from the atmosphere to space by anything other than radiation. You have energy coming in from the sun, energy must leave at approximately the same rate or the energy content of the planet would rise rapidly. Since the net flow of energy is from the surface to the atmosphere, the atmosphere must radiate that energy plus the energy from the direct absorption of incoming solar radiation by the atmosphere to space.
But when a gas radiates, it radiates in all directions. So the fact that the atmosphere radiates to space means it also radiates to the surface. Since the atmosphere is not transparent in the thermal IR and the temperature decreases with altitude in the troposphere where the atmosphere absorbs/emits strongly and radiative flux is a function of temperature, the gross radiative flux from the atmosphere to the surface is higher than from the upper atmosphere where it becomes transparent enough to transmit directly to space.
Since the heat flow must be from the surface to the atmosphere, the surface must radiate more than it receives from the atmosphere. It’s effective temperature must be higher than the effective temperature of the atmosphere. So the fact that the atmosphere radiates means the surface must be warmer than it would be otherwise. This is known by the somewhat misleading name of the atmospheric greenhouse effect.
Re: Bill Illis (Oct 15 06:30),
I’m quite familiar with the effect of clouds. Clouds are practically opaque in the near IR and are completely opaque in the thermal IR. So they are effectively black bodies in the thermal IR and if you point an IR thermometer at low cloud cover, it will have a temperature about the same as the surface. Clouds are also the reason why radiation to space directly from the surface is only ~40 W/m² rather than the nearly 100 W/m² that you get under non-tropical clear sky conditions.
But it’s not so much the greenhouse effect from the cloud tops to space as it is the fact that it isn’t cloudy 100% of the time anywhere on the planet. Even Seattle.
DeWitt, think simply. What time frames are we talking about?
I will use night time as a proxy for any period where there is less incoming energy that outgoing.
At night, less solar energy is coming in, and therefore more outgoing energy leaves. If a small amount of extra CO2 was in the atmosphere, how much longer does it take for the so-called trapped energy to leave the earth?
1 second per extra ppm? 1 minute? 1 hour?
The day (or year) is not in equilibrium. There are huge windows with little or no incoming energy when there is a lot of time for energy to convect into the upper atmosphere and then radiate to space.
Dewitt: “I just went outside with an IR thermometer. The ground temperature was ~281 K, and the sky temperature was ~243 K.”
What emissivity was the IR thermometer set at? And what were you actually measuring?
Re: MarkR (Comment #83802)
October 15th, 2011 at 4:59 am
MarkR,
And see my reply, Oliver (Comment #83785), above.
Oliver, read Gerry’s paper. It explains how one can’t model climate.
DeWitt,
What definition for “thermal IR” are you using?
There is a well-known “atmospheric window” which admits about 60-80% across 8-14 µm.
DeWitt #comment-83803
The Warmers point is that warming is caused by CO2 trapping IR leaving the surface.
1 Woods experimental results show that trapping IR doesn’t matter in terms of temperature change.
2 Any IR trapping from the surface by CO2 would be done within 4 feet of Earth’s surface, because statistically the chances of IR bypassing all CO2 molecules on the way up and by that height are near zero. So none of the IR in that part of the spectrum, that originates at the surface, gets anywhere near the upper atmosphere.
3 There is no experimental evidence that says otherwise.
The talk of earth’s energy balances is all well and good, but CO2 has nothing to do with it.
Re: Oliver (Oct 15 08:25),
In wavelength, the thermal IR would be from ~5-500 μm or ~20-2,000 cm-1. The 100-1500 cm-1 range used by MODTRAN includes 93% of the total energy emitted by a gray body with an emissivity of 0.98 and a temperature of 299.7 K.
The usual definition of the window is 8-12 μm. 14 μm would put you well into the CO2 absorption band.
Re: Bruce (Oct 15 08:11),
If you know enough about IR thermometry to know about emissivity compensation, you likely know how an inexpensive IR thermometer works. If you don’t then Google is your friend.
Ever heard of Kirchhoff’s Law? If it absorbs, it emits.
I give up. You’re either hopeless or you’re a troll. I knew better when I started. Too bad killfile doesn’t work here.
Re: MarkR (Comment #83810)
October 15th, 2011 at 8:22 am
I’m guessing you don’t actually mean to claim that one can’t model climate. Clearly, one can, and people do.
So, if you’d be willing to humor me — what specifically would you like me to take from Gerry’s paper?
Dewitt, did you measure the “sky temperature” at various angles?
Say … straight up. 45 degrees. Horizontally.
“If it absorbs, it emits.”
So at 4 feet it is absorbed and then emitted and half of it does not go back to the surface. The next 4 feet, half of what is left does not go towards the surface. 4 more feet half of what is left does not go towards the surface …
Oliver, Gerry Browning and H.O. Kreiss say:
Climate Models
The updating discussed above is not possible in a climate model and because climate models use even a coarser mesh than a large-scale weather prediction model, they must use an effectively larger viscosity than a global weather prediction model. Recently (BAMS, 2004), it has been shown that a climate model also deviates from reality in a matter of hours because of the errors in the parameterizations (not unexpected based on result above) and over longer periods of time the effectively larger viscosity causes the numerical solution to produce a spectrum quite different than the real atmosphere unless forced in a nonphysical manner.
http://climateaudit.org/2006/05/15/gerry-browning-numerical-climate-models/
People model a lot of climate. The models are useless over any long time scale, and mostly contain non physical parameters to keep them within bounds. Lucia is making a career out of analysing models which she knows are useless. Or at least she should because Gerry discussed it with her at length.
DeWitt, with respect you and others should try doing an experiment that proves your point. Lot of money and lives at stake to rely on theory.
I find it amusing how people can read an abstract and a layperson article to a paper that fits a view they like, and suddenly they’ve a more detailed knowledge than people who spend their life working on a problem. I know better than to make blanket assertions like this:
Between MarkR and Bruce, this thread has turned into one dedicated to servicing the willfully ignorant, who prattle on about their favorite pet theories, totally divorced from the ability to know the degree to which, if any, there is any truth to them.
Carrick (Comment #83819) Carrick, what part of “…over longer periods of time the effectively larger viscosity causes the numerical solution to produce a spectrum quite different than the real atmosphere unless forced in a nonphysical manner.” don’t you understand?
You think it sounds good, though I doubt you understand what it means, let alone be able to derive it from Browning and Kreiss, or discuss the domain of applicability of such statements.
Why don’t you awe us by telling us where the “larger viscosity” comes from in the numerical climate models?
If you are able to answer that question correctly, you will have demonstrated that your earlier assertions about climate being unmodelable are incorrect.
So Carrick, what part of it don’t you understand?
Why you feel compelled to talk about things you’re clueless about
Hint: Browning explained the origin of the excess viscosity in his little write-up in climate audit. You over-generalized his result.
Bruce,
CO2 has a few relatively narrow absorption bands; most of the thermal radiation spectrum leaving the surface of the Earth is not absorbed by CO2. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atmosfaerisk_spredning.gif) A fair part is absorbed by neither water vapor nor CO2 (the atmospheric window). CO2 and water vapor only emit at the same wavelengths where they absorb.
.
Water vapor has a much broader absorption spectrum than CO2, but it falls rapidly in concentration with altitude (due to very low vapor pressure at low temperatures), so above the tropopause it is mostly CO2 that absorbs, and the majority of thermal infrared emission passes freely to space.
.
There are lot of things about climate models that are questionable, and some almost certainly are incorrect, like the treatment of clouds and moist convection, and others. But radiative transfer is not one of them.
The material that MarkR
parrotedquoted is accurate as far as it goes (to begin with, it applies to the 2011 “state of the art” climate models, not climates in general), but it does not prove what MarkR claims it proves.MarkR quoted the material, it seems beholden on him to demonstrate that he understands what he is quoting. Moreover, since I have no idea where his analytic ability is, I see no point in trying to speak to him as if he would understand anything I said.
The origin of the “larger viscosity” is familiar to all of us who’ve written PDE solvers, and because we know the origin of it, we also know that it isn’t a limiter in our ability to model climate in general.
It’s more of a statement about the current hardware limits.
SteveF: “radiative transfer is not one of them”
Theories are nice. Experiments disprove many of them though.
The Earth is not a perfect black body.
Bruce:
Except half of what goes back towards the surface gets absorbed by four feet, and half of that gets remitted back into space.
There is a way to calculate all of this, it’s called “radiative transfer modeling”.
Carrick, SteveF —
I admire your efforts to educate, but…
There is that story of horse, water, and drink.
DeWitt
“Ever heard of Kirchhoff’s Law? If it absorbs, it emits.” Doesn’t the collisional transfer at higher density effect that? Co2 will emit more consistently at lower densities. Do emissions at 14.7 micron increase proportionally with collisonal transfer across the full spectrum?
Amac:
I know: If the horse is thirsty, it will drink.
This may be more of a case of “you can drag a rock to water, but you can’t make it drink”. Or even “… it will never drink nor will it ever get thirsty.”
Re: Dallas (Oct 15 13:36),
The server ate my reply. In a word, yes. Collisional transfer does effect (cause) that. That being the applicability of Kirchhoff’s Law.
Re: Bruce (Oct 15 10:24),
Buy your own. They’re cheap and are generally useful.
Carrick (Comment #83825)
If you have written PDE solvers, then your wage depends on continuation of the “misunderstanding”, but you should know that “The Cauchy problem for the Laplace equation is called ill-posed or not well posed, since the solution does not depend continuously upon the data of the problem. Such ill-posed problems are not usually satisfactory for physical applications.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_differential_equation
Read up at:
http://climateaudit.org/2007/11/17/exponential-growth-in-physical-systems-3/
..where Lucia shows what she is all about.
DeWitt “effect” that. Sorry, the “that”. I was considering is conductive flux. CO2 and CH4 are used to improve conductivity in plasma applications. Small change at atmospheric pressures, as best I can tell, but maybe not negliable in a denser atmosphere.
Dewitt: “Buy your own.”
Ahhh … you already knew the answer. If you point the thermometer at the sky horizontally you get the temperature of the air near the ground, not of the sky. All you get with an IR thermometer is the average temperature of a column of air depending on the setup of the thermometer.
I always liked this carrick. “I can explain it to you but I cannot understand it for you.” which moshpit insists read like this before it was cleaned up ” you can drag facts to an idiot, but you can’t undo the lobotomy”
I especially love the people who “quote” Woods “experiment” which even if it were properly documented would be besides the point.
Hey Mosher, better late than never. What side of the Urban Heat Island debate are you on at the moment? With Professor Jones of the UEA no doubt.
And Mosher, never let a good experiment get in the way of your prejudice. Do you have money in this?
Woods didnt even document his experiment properly.
second, it does not address the fundamental claim of radiative physics.
his experiment, even if repeated as described, would not address the fundamental claims.
Hint: the claim is not that C02 traps heat.
MarkR
“Hey Mosher, better late than never. What side of the Urban Heat Island debate are you on at the moment? With Professor Jones of the UEA no doubt.”
My position has not changed over 4 years.
1. UHI is real. you can measure it in any number of ways.
2. It is likely that some UHI bias is present in the global land record.
3. The true value of that bias ( in the land record ) lies somewhere between the claim made by Jones ( small effect .05C ) and McKittrick
( perhaps 50% of the land warming from 1979 to 2000) or about .3C
Detecting the real value will require, better metadata, and more powerful approaches than those used to date. If forced to pick a number… .15C
4. The actual figure isn’t very interesting in terms of the larger debate ( at least that’s what I told gavin back in 2007 when I asked for code )
Since I base my beliefs on work that I actually do, I’ll let you know if I ever come across actual data that changes these beliefs.
papers do not count as evidence. graphs and charts made by people who dont share code and data, dont count as evidence. Some rulz for you as for Jones.
Mosher. At least Woods did an experiment. The Warmers did none and their attempt to to debunk Woods was pathetic,
So what’s in it for you?
Oh and supercilious hint, the claim is that trapping IR makes no difference to temperature.
UHI is real? So why did you encourage your poodle to rush to judgement with some analysis into Watts data on the quality of temperature measurement in the USA?
You say re Urban Heat Island effect, “The actual figure isn’t very interesting in terms of the larger debate…”
Au contraire, if the UHI effect is as the Deniers have it, then the warming that has been alleged by Climate Alarmists is non existent.
MarkR (Comment #83840)
> [To Steve Mosher] Do you have money in this?
Either a tiresome, misdirected ad hom, or very subtle humor. Which one?
Speaking of which,
Steven Mosher (Comment #83842)
> Same rulz for you as for Jones.
Mosher, rocks.
Really Woods did an experiment? Did he test any of the fundamental claims of radiative physics?
“trapping” IR is not the issue and not the claim.
Here is the claim: If you add gases that are opaque to IR to the atmosphere ( a thing which is connected at the top to a vaccum called space) then, you will raise the altitude at which the atmosphere radiates to space.
There isnt anything in radiative physics that says C02 will “trap” IR or “heat” the surface by “trapping” IR. Yes you will find people who try to “explain” radiative physics by using this sort of language. Don’t be mislead.
Increasing the opacity of the column of gases we call the atmosphere raises the altitude at which that gas re radiates to space. When it radiates from a higher altitude it radiates from a colder altitude.
As for experiments. We have all sorts of experiments that show the fundamentals of radiative transfer.
1. we know that C02 is opaque ( in varying degrees ) to IR. That has been measured and tested. We build devices based on that principle.
2. We know that raising the opacity of the atmosphere raises the effective radiating height. If we we did not know those physics your satillite imagery would be screwed.
As far as AGW goes those are the two and the only two fundamental things you need to understand..
1. GHGs retard the free escape of radiation back to space.
( you can predict and measure downwelling radiation)
2. The thicker ( more opaque ) the atmosphere, the higher the
altitude at which radiation escapes.
That’s it. Not a word about “trapping” IR. Furthermore, you cannot test these by building a greenhouse. Why? because the theory depends upon an entire column of gas that is open to space on the far end. And the thing you have to do to disprove that theory is to show that the effective radiating height does not increase as opacity increases.
The other thing you could do to disprove the theory is to measure how IR transmits through Gases. That’s been done countless times but knock yourself out.
UHI is real? So why did you encourage your poodle to rush to judgement with some analysis into Watts data on the quality of temperature measurement in the USA?
You say re Urban Heat Island effect, “The actual figure isn’t very interesting in terms of the larger debate…”
Au contraire, if the UHI effect is as the Deniers have it, then the warming that has been alleged by Climate Alarmists is non existent.
“CO2 is opaque”, but not one word about “trapping”? You’re having a laugh.
“Furthermore, you cannot test these by building a greenhouse.”
Oops, it’s called the greenhouse gas…
Catch you later. Hope you get your story straight.
Amac,
Here is a funny thing. none of the people who quote the experiment actually ever looked through the literature to see the rebuttle
http://boole.stanford.edu/Wood/AbbotReplyToWood.pdf
Vaughan tried to replicate it
http://boole.stanford.edu/WoodExpt/
In any case, the point is the experiment doesn’t test what the theory actually predicts.
MarkR:
You’ve just cut and paste wikipedia. Wonderful!
Let me guess… mouse drag (select text), control-c (copy selected text), mouse click (select window), mouse click (select text box), control-v (paste text).
Unfortunately, I could get a monkey to do that so this proves nothing.
But more to the point, this also has absolutely nothing to do with the problem I posed to you earlier:
Namely, just tell us why is it that Browning says the viscosity is increased in the climate model solvers.
That’s all.
And my claim is once you state that, it will be patently obvious to you why it is we can model climate (or if we can’t, it has nothing to do with Browning’s criticisms.)
I think MarkR and Bruce may be the same person. Or share a brain between them.
Mosher: “you can predict and measure downwelling radiation”
Which does no demonstrable work of any kind.
You can measure the temperature of a distant star, but it has no effect on climate.
Mosher: “We know that raising the opacity of the atmosphere raises the effective radiating height.”
How far per ppm of CO2? 1cm? 1m?
UHI USA: “Summer land surface temperature of cities in the Northeast were an average of 7 °C to 9 °C (13°F to 16 °F) warmer than surrounding rural areas”
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/heat-island-sprawl.html
UHI Korea: “the amount caused by urban warming is approximately 0.77 °C”
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/08/new-paper-urban-heat-island-effect.html
UHI Hong Kong: “The difference of 0.4°C per decade between temperatures in urban and rural areas may be attributed to the effects of high density urban development.”
http://www.weather.gov.hk/publica/tn/tn107.pdf
Mosher
UHI is real? So why did you encourage your poodle to rush to judgement with some analysis into Watts data on the quality of temperature measurement in the USA?
You say re Urban Heat Island effect, “The actual figure isn’t very interesting in terms of the larger debate…”
Au contraire, if the UHI effect is as the Deniers have it, then the warming that has been alleged by Climate Alarmists is non existent.
“CO2 is opaque”, but not one word about “trapping”? You’re having a laugh.
“Furthermore, you cannot test these by building a greenhouse.”
Oops, it’s called the greenhouse gas…
Catch you later. Hope you get your story straight.
And you apparently didn’t read this thread or you would have seen that it was the Warmers who didn’t read or understand that Vaughan Pratt left out an additional sheet of glass from his “rebuttle” experiment.
Carrick
“..I could get a monkey to do that..” Round of applause for that one. /sarcasm
Now, more “cut and paste” for you:
“The atmosphere (air) is suppose to behave like a hyperbolic system with small viscosity, not like molasses with large viscosity, i.e. a heat equation. It is standard practice in most fluid dynamical models (because of the limitations on computing power), to use unrealistically large viscosity so that a solution can be computed (even though it might be completely inaccurate). In the case of climate models, the NS equations are modified by the assumption of hydrostatic equilibrium and the resulting IVP is ill posed. Look up convective adjustment to see how the climate modelers arbitrarily alter the flow to maintain hydrostatic equilibrium. Then note that when using unrealistically large viscosity, the model spectrum is quite different than in reality. So the parameterizations (physical forcings) are necessarily unrealistic in order to try to make the simulation appear realistic.
It is interesting to note that NCAR fired the first scientist to advocate a solar-climate interaction.
And now suddenly they state that they see an interaction in their molasses ball.
Also note that all of our manuscripts on the bounded derivative principle used the inviscid NS equations and have shown in theory and practice to lead to improvements in initialization and understanding of balanced flow for all scales of motion everywhere on the globe.” – Jerry Browning http://climateaudit.org/2007/02/13/possible-itcz-influence/
Both Mosher and Carrick haven’t denied that they have a financial interest in maintaining their position.
Arrrgggh!
I can never get anything done quick enough.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/15/its-all-relative-superluminal-neutrino-discovery-explained/#comment-768899
This is where I was.
http://ourhydrogeneconomy.blogspot.com/2011/10/what-is-4c-thermal-boundary.html
See Lucia, it is kinda hard to explain why that equation works.
Dallas: “Arrrgggh!’ = Term of art in the navigation business?
Lunch in Marathon after Jan 1, 2012?
j ferguson m/v arcadian
If I freeze two iron bars at 1K (or any temperature lower than the temperature of downwelling IR),
.
If I put them in two different ultra-insulated boxes, one of which is top-covered with IR-opaque material, the other with IR-transparent material,
.
And if I leave them out at night,
.
Then the one with the IR-transparent cover should expand slightly faster than the other. That represents work done by downwelling IR (you can put a little mass at the top of each bar and check that one is higher than the other).
.
(I’m probably wrong, but I don’t immediately see the error. Anyone cares to correct?)
toto (Comment #83862),
.
You are right about that, but trying to sort out these kinds of bizarre misunderstandings with reasoned explanations does not appear to help.
.
Sometimes you just can’t help people get past their lack of understanding. This could be due to lack of capacity to understand, but more often it seems due to being absurdly stubborn, being unwilling to learn, or being oddly disconnected from reality. In any case, after one try or two, it’s just a waste of time to try further. I have never seen a climate blog commenter who knows nothing about radiative physics (that is, one who rejects the possibility of radiative forcing by CO2) change their mind as a result of information and explanation. It’s a rather sad commentary I think.
toto, if the iron bars were background temperature, I don’t think there would be any warming of those bars at all as long as they were insulated from any warming from outgoing thermal energy.
toto:
Let’s go even further…evacuate the air inside of the containers and suspend them from a nonconducting thin nylon cord (or get fancy, magnetize them, then suspend them magnetically). Then th only mechanism for them exchange heat energy is via radiative photon exchange.
Bruce,
“if the iron bars were background temperature”
Please explain what you mean: local ambient temperature outside the box, or the background temperature of space (2.7K).
Re: SteveF (Oct 16 10:29),
On the Willis Eschenbach Steel Greenhouse post at WUWT, one person, Anton Eagle, did change his mind and admit he had been wrong and Willis was correct. One. Now that you mention it. That’s the only one I’ve seen anywhere.
DeWitt,
Thanks, I was not aware of that. Do you think Willis might have bribed him? 😉
“local ambient temperature outside the box”
I think of my car this morning. Covered in frost. Windows iced over.
Then the sun comes up. The windshield, facing the sun, and slight tinted, defrosts first because the sun is melting the ice.
But zero melting occurs while the sun is down and 350W/m^2 of backradiation does nothing at all.
Bruce’s car had ice. QED.
Lawlz.
Maybe Bruce could sit down and calculate what the temperature would be if you didn’t have any back-radiation. For extra credit he could include latitudinal and seasonal effects.
SteveF (Comment #83864)
“I have never seen a climate blog commenter who knows nothing about radiative physics (that is, one who rejects the possibility of radiative forcing by CO2) change their mind as a result of information and explanation.”
—————————————
The perpetual stream of misinformation has been internalized: biggest hoax perpetrated on humanity, trace gas like co2 could not possibly affect climate, it has warmed before, co2 bands are saturated, liberal climate scientists seek one world government, warming is just part of natural cycles, co2 follows and does not lead temperature changes, etc, etc, etc.
Bruce,
“I think of my car this morning. Covered in frost. Windows iced over.”
What has that to do with Todo’s thought experiment?
Your car is not at all like a 1 Kelvin bar of iron in an ultra-insulated container. By the way, your car gets covered with frost because the outgoing radiation is greater than the ‘backradiation’; there is nothing surprising in that observation. The net flux of infrared radiation from the surface is almost always going to be outgoing, and nobody has ever suggested otherwise.
toto understands, and you don’t.
Owen: “co2 follows and does not lead temperature changes”
It did during the Eemian. Cold water holds more CO2 than warm.
There was no catastrophic global warming during the Eemian brought on by more CO2.
“warming is just part of natural cycles”
It is. Unless you wish to argue the LIA was man made, or all the Holocene warming and cooling were man made.
SteveF “What has that to do with Todo’s thought experiment?”
What has cooling the bars to 1K have to do with the climate?
Bruce (Comment #83877)
“Owen: “co2 follows and does not lead temperature changesâ€
It did during the Eemian. Cold water holds more CO2 than warm.
There was no catastrophic global warming during the Eemian brought on by more CO2.
“warming is just part of natural cyclesâ€
It is. Unless you wish to argue the LIA was man made, or all the Holocene warming and cooling were man made.”
———————
CO2 does indeed follow temperature increases during orbital or precessional forcings and serves thereby to amplify such forcings. Such is not the case, however, if a massive influx of CO2 is the main forcing agent.
Yes, warming is most certainly a part of natural cycles, but that’s only part of the story today – not the only story
Owen,
Sure, and exactly the same thing happens on blog sites where people are very worried about GHG driven warming. (Like:”We are destroying the Earth. Human population must be reduced to under 1 billion, or we will soon be extinct. Solving global warming requires vast redistribution of wealth. We’re driving thousands of species to extinction every year. Sea level will rise 1.5 to 3 meters in the next 90 years. Storms are increasing and becoming much more violent. Anyone who disagrees about the need for immediate action is simply a corrupt and evil den*er.”)
.
There is no shortage of imbeciles and political hacks, on both sides of this mainly political issue, who are utterly immune to rational analysis. I find it all rather depressing.
Bruce,
Yup, a troll. You will waste no more of my time.
Re: Bruce (Oct 16 11:28), Violating my own rule, but here goes anyway:
But there wasn’t 350 W/m² radiative flux. The global annual average is only ~324 W/m². That average includes the Tropics where the clear sky flux is on the order of 350 W/m² and goes up to ~420 W/m² with low cloud cover.
You get frost on an exposed surface when there is a clear sky, no wind and air temperature and humidity are low. At 278.2 K, a black body, which your windshield effectively is in the thermal IR, radiates 340 W/m². If it sees less radiation than that it will cool. As long as the wind isn’t blowing, convection and conduction won’t supply much heat from the air and a temperature inversion will form. For mid-latitude winter conditions with a surface temperature of 278 K (41 F) and a relative humidity of 60%, the downward flux should be about 222 W/m². The frost point is then -2 C (271.2 K). At which point the frost layer forming on your windshield will still be radiating 307 W/m², i.e. still more than it is seeing from the atmosphere. Frost will continue to build up limited by the rate of diffusion of water vapor to the cool surface.
Now consider how much faster your windshield would cool if it weren’t receiving any IR radiation from the atmosphere.
Oh, and as far as the apparent temperature decreasing with angle of elevation of an IR thermometer: Teach your grandmother to suck eggs, or in more modern parlance, Duh.
Lets try a different thought experiment.
2 iron bars. 14C. One has 280ppm CO2 in the box. One has 390ppm CO2.
Same amount of H2O.
Night falls.
They are bathed in the exact same amount of “backradiation”.
Which one cools faster. And are they the same temperature 8 hours later? 16?
Dewittless: “Teach your grandmother to suck eggs”
So you agree your IR thermometer isn’t measuring the sky temperature.
Dewittless: “That average includes the Tropics”
And the Arctic and Antarctica where the amount much, much lower.
http://www.srrb.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/surf_check?site=penn&mos=Most+Recent&day=&year=2011&p5=dpir&ptype=gif
Owen: “CO2 does indeed follow temperature increases during orbital or precessional forcings and serves thereby to amplify such forcings. Such is not the case, however, if a massive influx of CO2 is the main forcing agent.”
When has that ever happened with no change in other climate variables?
The 20th century saw large changes in bright sunshine and even albedo changed during the 1990s.
Re: Bruce (Oct 16 13:39),
Reduced to infantile ad hominems are we? You really are a troll. Nonetheless:
An IR thermometer doesn’t measure the temperature of the whole sky because it has a limited field of view. A pyrgeometer, OTOH, has an angular acceptance range of 180 degrees, so it sees the whole sky. The flux calculated using MODTRAN is the whole sky flux. An IR thermometer pointed straight up is going to measure an effective temperature lower than the effective temperature of the whole sky from horizon to horizon. The effective temperature of the whole sky is still going to be lower than the surface temperature for clear sky conditions. If that weren’t the case, you wouldn’t get frost at all.
Michael Tobis: New Blogging Outlet?Bruce: New Commenting Outlet?I’m visualizing one of those chess masters in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, moving from board to board to dispatch multiple hapless challengers at the same time.
In this case, only the challengers are following the rules of the game, but never mind that. A trifling detail.
Calvinball rules!
Dewittless: “Reduced to infantile ad hominems are we?”
Yes, you are … “Teach your grandmother to suck eggs, or in more modern parlance, Duh.”
Re: Bruce (Oct 16 14:35),
That is not an ad hominem. That is a statement of fact. Would you have been less offended by ‘Thank you Captain obvious?’
Nevermind.
Your juvenile alteration of my name isn’t, in fact, an ad hom. It’s just a juvenile attempt at an insult. Unfortunately it has succeeded in the continuation of your hijacking of this thread.
Bye troll.
As originally posted
MarkR (Comment #83847)
October 15th, 2011 at 6:30 pm
UHI is real? So why did you encourage your poodle to rush to judgement with some analysis into Watts data on the quality of temperature measurement in the USA?
You say re Urban Heat Island effect, “The actual figure isn’t very interesting in terms of the larger debate…â€
Au contraire, if the UHI effect is as the Deniers have it, then the warming that has been alleged by Climate Alarmists is non existent.
“CO2 is opaqueâ€, but not one word about “trappingâ€? You’re having a laugh.
“Furthermore, you cannot test these by building a greenhouse.â€
Oops, it’s called the greenhouse gas…
Catch you later. Hope you get your story straight.
Bruce–
No calling people names like “Dewittless”. It’s juvenile. I am adding “dewittless” to the list of spam words. I am moderating for the time being you so I can watch future comments for this sort of things. If you behave, I’ll take you off moderation.
Lost in the moderation queue yesterday.
Carrick
“..I could get a monkey to do that..†Round of applause for that one. /sarcasm
Now, more “cut and paste†for you:
“The atmosphere (air) is suppose to behave like a hyperbolic system with small viscosity, not like molasses with large viscosity, i.e. a heat equation. It is standard practice in most fluid dynamical models (because of the limitations on computing power), to use unrealistically large viscosity so that a solution can be computed (even though it might be completely inaccurate). In the case of climate models, the NS equations are modified by the assumption of hydrostatic equilibrium and the resulting IVP is ill posed. Look up convective adjustment to see how the climate modelers arbitrarily alter the flow to maintain hydrostatic equilibrium. Then note that when using unrealistically large viscosity, the model spectrum is quite different than in reality. So the parameterizations (physical forcings) are necessarily unrealistic in order to try to make the simulation appear realistic.
It is interesting to note that NCAR fired the first scientist to advocate a solar-climate interaction.
And now suddenly they state that they see an interaction in their molasses ball.
Also note that all of our manuscripts on the bounded derivative principle used the inviscid NS equations and have shown in theory and practice to lead to improvements in initialization and understanding of balanced flow for all scales of motion everywhere on the globe.†– Jerry Browning http://climateaudit.org/2007/0…..influence/
Both Mosher and Carrick haven’t denied that they have a financial interest in maintaining their position.
MarkR,
.
Not sure if this is an attempt at humor or intended to be serious… but either way, thanks for a good laugh! 🙂
.
By the way MarkR, both of these guys are very experienced in relevant fields (AKA, kinda old) and know quite a lot of science and technology. You, on the other hand, seem, well, a little less experienced. You might benefit from being a bit more measured in your comments.
lucia, I was sure name calling was acceptable.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/monckton-post-for-comments-on-issues-other-than-paragraph-3/#comment-82617
But I guess it depends on which side one is on …
Bruce-
1) Name calling is not acceptable.
2) I don’t read all comments.
3) People have to get pretty bad before I moderate them.
4) Even if I had, calling someone “Brucey” is not the same as calling someond “Dewittless”; if you more than 2 yo, you should know this.
You are moderated. Future comments in which you engage the topic of my decision to moderate you will not appear. The latter is a rule.
Also, your other comment in moderation is ‘argument by rhetorical question’. It’s going to spam.
SteveF (Comment #83896)
The trouble is that science has become institutionalised. If one comes up through the system, one must have accepted as true theories that are not correct. Secondly, it is a mistake to object to “tone”, or “timing” when one can’t defeat the opposing argument by reason.
Bit of a quiet Sunday night, I will wait till Mosher and Carrick speak for themselves.
MarkR (Comment #83900),
I wonder if you can appreciate how disconnected from reality that statement is. I doubt it.
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I know Carrick a bit from both email correspondence and exchanges on line. I know Mosher mostly from his comments.
In both cases, they are as far from institutional ‘conformists’ as I can imagine. There is certainly nothing that I personally have ever accepted in my scientific career that I did not see as technically correct… even when that endangered my job, as it has, more than once. I would be shocked if Carrick and Mosher did not say the same. Your suggestion that practicing scientists and engineers who are openly skeptical of the IPCC predictions of future doom from GHG warming have accepted “as true theories that are not correct” is complete nonsense.
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You have offered nothing I have seen that is even remotely similar to a reasoned refutation of anything. Please explain in your own words why you think Carrick is mistaken about how climate models treat viscosity.
Steven Mosher, IRT steven mosher (Comment #83549)
Sorry about the late response. The lovely Mrs. hunter ahd plans this weekend.
To address your points:
SM: 1. I said NOTHING about the trend in deaths
But it is reasonable to point out that deaths are not trending up, when talking about disaster impacts, I beleive.
SM2. I said nothing about loss rates
Then how do we know if we are prepared for a disaster, if we do not measure the losses from said disasters?
SM3. You might find the record good, I don’t
So what would be good? And what would we do instead of adapt and defend? Mitigate?
SM: You might think that a reduction from horrible to bad doesnt constitute a problem.
I would suggest that large numbers of people living pretty good lives in areas that were formerly too disease ridden and storm swept (like the US Gulf Coast), not to mention too hot and humid is not such a bad adaptation to climate.
SM: given your attitude, Id say plan for triple the extreme events.
If there is cause to plan for triple the nasty stuff, we may find the best adaptation is to move away.
MarkR:
Since nobody has actually *ever asked me* whether I had a financial interest, this is nothing more than a dishonest and shameful insinuation on your part. (How can I deny something that’s never previously been asserted?)
For the record, I have absolutely no any financial interest in any of this. None. Nada. Zero.
While we’re at it, in addition to having proven yourself an intellectually dishonest political hack, what you are claiming is flat wrong… so you are in the position of not even knowing what you don’t know, but still in the process of making embarrassingly wrong claims in public about things that you don’t know anything about.
You have been unable to explain the original of the artificial viscosity (which is very simple to explain and Browning even discussed this in his climateaudit post), so we can all assume at this point, just like Bruce, you are a clueless politically-motivated hack with zero motivation to sort truth from rhetoric.
As Mosher said, I can explain things for you but I can’t understand them for you.
MarkR
You have assumed that since I have not denied any financial interest in AGW that this is meaningful. ok we will assume that you are paid to object to working science until you reveal your identity. Folks who want to know what I do, are smart enough to figure it out. it’s public knowledge.
1985-1990:
classified TS/SAR . haha. nothing I can show you
1990 -1993
http://papers.sae.org/901850/
http://www.patentbuddy.com/Patent/Profile/5272652/3778979
1994-1995
http://www.allbusiness.com/technology/software-services-applications-software-makers/7080102-1.html
1995 – 2006
http://www.nvnews.net/articles/steve_mosher_interview.shtml
http://www.nvnews.net/articles/steve_mosher_cla2u.shtml
http://www.nvnews.net/articles/steve_mosher_cla2u_2.shtml
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/second-hand-smoke,review-2433-4.html
2007 -2009
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13580_3-9838993-39.html
http://www.openmoko.com/freerunner.html
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/4253095
2009-2010
http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Ben_NanoNote
2010 -2011
http://vizzeco.com/about-us/team-members/
http://www.veteransfreedomfarm.org/
http://biggovernment.com/author/smosher/
since the monktopus believes that C02 will warm the planet he must be on the dole, same with Anthony, same with Willis, same with spenser and christy and lindzen, why you cant find a published skeptic who doesn’t accept radiative physics.
But you can find trolls and nameless people who do.
SteveF (Comment #83902) There are competing beliefs re AGW. Some believe CO2 causes atmospheric warming, geologists know that CO2 volumes lag temperature by hundreds of years. Browning believes the climate models are wrong, some others believe they can model climate. I won’t list all the different theories here. However, a large number of scientists on one side of the argument or the other are going to be proved wrong. In the case of AGW, it is clear to me that the politically driven IPCC led claims of AGW are wrong. Even Mosher must know, as he has written a book on it, that temperature data has been provided by people at UEA who are “economical with the truth”. Mann is hopefully about to be dragged through the courts, and when this is all over, a lot more will follow him.
I am still waiting for anyone to provide an experiment that shows additional CO2 creates warmer atmosphere. Calculations, models and untested theories are insufficient in this case.
Carrick. Jerry G Browning says you are wrong in believing that you can model climate with the current capabilities.
MarkR:
That is nearly what Browning said, add the word “accurately” and you have it.
Of course I never said we could model accurately with current capabilities, nor do I believe we can do so.
When you said: “The point is that one can’t model climate.” You would have saved yourself a lot of trouble, if you hadn’t made that point so absolute.
Whether, given the inaccuracies in the models, there is still functional values in the modeling effort, is a point for debate. It’s important to understand that models can still provide useful information, even when they get part of the physics wrong (which is always).
Steven Mosher,
The ones who push the ‘paid schill’ lies are the most frustrating. No matter how many times they are shown to be wrong, they persist in it….almost as if they are the reality of paid schills: Knowingly, deliberately wrong, but refusing to modify their positions for reasons other than honesty.
By the way, it would appear that the climatocracy is simply going to dodge record keeping or accountability by hiding in the same cloud.
The AGW promoters are acting more and more like flat out crooks avoiding any sort of disclosure and accountability.
The believers are such fools.
MarkR,
I will add a bit to Carrick’s comment.
You said:
Actually, the situation is much more complex than that. There is no significant disagreement among scientists on basic radiative transfer and how CO2 in the atmosphere influences that transfer. The “no-feed-back” sensitivity pretty much has to be close to 1.2C increase in surface temperature for doubling CO2 in the atmosphere. There is broad agreement that doubling CO2 in the atmosphere will increase “back-radiation/forcing” by about 3.7 watts per square meter. There is broad agreement that other infrared absorbing gases (like halocarbons, N2O, ozone, etc) also add to the radiative forcing. There is also broad agreement that the increases in these gases from the 1800’s until present is roughly equivalent to adding 3.05 watts per square meter.
.
Where there is real disagreement is in the extent of “amplification” of the basic effect of forcing due to increases in water vapor at slightly warmer temperatures, the effects of changes in clouds (which give both negative and positive feed-back), the influence of man-made aerosols (historically, presently, in the future), and the influence of ocean heat accumulation in response to warming at the ocean surface. Disagreement about the credibility of climate model projections is a direct result of disagreements about the the more basic issues. Climate models embody a set of assumptions which are in many cases very, very uncertain.
.
With disagreement about the basic issues of feed-backs and amplification, it is no surprise that there are huge disagreements about the future consequences of warming, in everything from projections of sea level rise to influences on extreme weather, to droughts, species extinctions, etc, etc. (the list is long).
.
The bottom line is: virtually no scientist with basic knowledge of radiative transfer disagrees that rising GHG must cause some warming. There is huge disagreement on how much warming will take place, with estimates ranging from “who cares” to “we are doomed”. Will climate models resolve this question? Certainly not in their present form, because they are essentially unconstrained in several key areas, and can yield most any sensitivity you want, depending on the assumptions that go into them.
.
What I personally think will resolve the question of climate sensitivity is 1) better data that constrains the models in meaningful ways, and 2) how much warming actually takes place over the next two-three decades compared to what the models project. As the great statistician George E. P. Box said: “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” Which of course confirms the well known reality that some models are indeed useless. Bad models (in all fields, not just climate models) are most often GIGO, wrapped up in an impressive looking package. Case in point: the models which generated risk evaluations for bundles of home mortgage backed securities were not just ‘wrong’ but horribly destructive. Similarly, I think climate models have an enormous potential to do economic harm if political decisions are ‘informed’ by model projections of exaggerated warming. My personal view is that current model projections of warming over the next 100 years are nothing more than scientific fantasies, and these projections should be generally ignored. How well the models simulate actual atmospheric and ocean behaviors should not be ignored, since that is the only way the models can be improved to the point that they are more useful.
MarkR
Browning believes the climate models are wrong, some others believe they can model climate.
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I have been discussing directly with G.Browning during the CA discussion and after that too.
His position is much more subtle than that.
And actually I would even go sofar as to say that unless your background is mathematical Navier Stokes, PED theory and CFD, you’d better avoid G.Brownings arguments altogether because you’d only risk to misunderstand, misinterpret and otherwise mangle his papers.
.
What G.Browning is saying and has written papers about to boot is :
– the hydrostatic assumption leads to unbounded growth of solutions – bad.
– the nonhydrostatic assumption (this is Navier Stokes) leads in some important cases to a fast but bounded growth of solutions when the resolution increases
– to avoid these instabilities especially in the hydrostatic case, a large “unphysical” viscosity is needed to damp the system down
– paper shows that in that case the spectrum of the flow is incorrect what means that the dynamics are incorrect
.
From there starts then a very technical discussion whether the hydrostatic assumption used in models is “perfectly fine” or not knowing that the horizontal grid used in the models (hundreds of km) is really very far from G.Browning’s scale limit.
My experience of CFD is less than G.Browning’s so I wouldn’t dare to say very definitive things but the discussion as I remember it was not very definitive either.
.
In any case what he “attacked” was a certain practice in numerical climate modelling at the moment when he made his criticism. I do not remember him saying that in some very general way and forever, no physically relevant solution of Navier Stokes was possible for the Earth system.
I don’t think that he believes that either.
It’s only the day when the resolution of the climate models will go below 10 km and they have to give up the hydrostatic assumption that we will know if these effects kill the predictions or don’t.
We are very far from that day.
Hunter: well, if the CEI is saying it, it must be true!
SteveF (Comment #83919)
Great comment. Very well said.
I think climate models are wonderful with the minor exceptions of their being unable to account for the climate-related behavior of oceans and the atmosphere, regional climate change and their suspect tendency to over predict surface warming, sea-level rise and anything else with political and policy implications. Other than that, modeling science is great.
Re: SteveF (Oct 17 07:33),
Your #83919 is relevant to an ongoing discussion at C-a-s on the good, the bad, and the ugly of Judy Curry’s blog. My comment #103 there links back to it.
Excellent technical comments by SteveF and TomVonk, I’m just going to amplify on this a bit relating to gravity wave momentum and heat flux.
Gravity waves (internal buoyancy waves in the atmosphere that are generate e.g. by flow over mountains and by boundaries between warm and cold front, by convective storms and by the jet stream) travel in a nearly vertical direction, with the problem being that their amplitude scales approximately as $latex 1/\sqrt{\rho(z)}$: that is the amplitude grows with increasing altitude. In “real life” at a sufficiently high altitude the gravity wave amplitude becomes large enough and it “breaks”… releasing the heat energy and momentum carried by the wave. This breaking is similar to what happens to an ocean wave as it approaches shore and its amplitude builds until it breaks.
This breaking is due to a hydrodynamic nonlinearity—in order to model it you have to model the full Navier Stokes equation, and while that can be done over mesoscale weather, that is currently impossible in climate modeling.
There are climate models that don’t assume hydrostatic equilibrium, and for any such model, gravity waves are a natural consequence of the equation of the model. But because they can’t solve the full Navier-Stokes equation (which includes the nonlinearities needed to stabilize the system), nor with fine enough resolution to “capture the physics of gravity waves”, you have to add additional artificial viscosity (above the viscosity associated with a too-coarse discretitzation of the PDEs) in order to suppress gravity waves…. otherwise their amplitudes are unbounded and the climate model just blows up.
I think part of Browning’s point is that this artificial attenuation screws up the spectral content of the atmospheric-ocean coupled modes, and I believe he is absolutely right on this.
Having the models be able to accurately predict the spectral content (and how the spectral content changes over time) is critical to being able to resolve the secular (non-periodic) components of climate compared to the fluctuating part associated with waves within the atmosphere-ocean system.
Anyway, they can’t allow gravity waves to be present in the models, but they need them there, so what they do is parametrize gravity wave momentum flux. As I understand it, they remove gravity waves explicitly, screwing up “high frequency” portion of climate variability of the models in the process, then add a parametric model to try and “fix” the models to include some of the effects associated with gravity-wave transported momentum and heat energy flux.
There is a nice paper written at near the layman level you might find interesting.
We can also discuss large-scale circulation and how the models get that wrong too… in particular Hadley cell circulation and how they are limited by macroscale turbulence rather than just by equatorial-polar temperature differences given by early models of atmospheric-ocean circulation.
The problem with “skeptic” laypeople like yourself and Bruce fixating on something you think you can understand and dispute, like whether CO2 acts as a “greenhouse gas, is just generating noise.
It also disrupts further discussion of more technical (and real) problems facing global climate models, their limitations, and therefore the limitations about what can be inferred by these models. I realize laypeople like yourself aren’t going to sit down and derive the hydrodynamic equations, show the presence of Rossby and gravity waves in the models, etc.
But that doesn’t mean you should glom onto things you think you can argue about because they “look simple”. Radiative transfer is not one of those simple things, in the real atmosphere, it is very complex wrapped in a simple looking package. There are simplified versions, such as described by ScienceOf Doom, that captures the essential physics, but I’m not sure whether either you or Bruce have the analytic skills needed to follow even the modeling in SoDs “alternate universe”.
Something I can’t judge, but if you have an open mind and some math and science background, you should read—you might actually learn something new.
blech:
Bad on my part and I knew better, mesoscale models don’t solve the full Navier-Stokes equation either. Not even boundary layer models can do that, but mixed-scale mesoscale models (e.g., WLF and ECM) can model gravity waves nonetheless.
Forecasting them is another problem.
One of the problems with gravity waves is the timescales are on the order of the Väisâla-Brunt period…. typically about 5-minutes in the troposphere, so you need temporal resolutions of about 1-minute to accurately measure their presence experimentally.
Secondly their scale goes from 100s of km to 10s of meters. For gravity waves “of interest” you probably at least a 10-km resolution.
Thirdly in addition to the internal gravity waves that are believed to affect climate, there are also surface gravity waves known also as “Kelvin-Helmholtz” waves … which can look a lot like breaking ocean waves. These ride on (what look to them as) discontinuities on the surface boundary layer so their influence both on meteorology and met measurements is significant.
The AOS provides data feeds at 1-minute increments, but the resolution is still lacking to spatially resolve these waves.
The other problem for meteorology is that large-scale gravity wave pressure amplitudes are huge—they can be of the order of the weather phenomena that you’re trying to model.
As I understand it, not being able to disentangle gravity waves from normal meteorology is one of the challenges facing forecasters in trying to improve the accuracy of their models.
hunter.
I think before we go any further you need to address MarkRs concerns about me and my funding, Carrick as well.
When you spend some time correcting him, I’ll get around to what you have to say to me. Until then I’m reading carrick and Vonk. Always a good read.
Some random comments inspired by Carrick (Comment #83924 and #83926):
The comments were interesting and worthy of lots of discussion, but the responses here are not very well hashed out, so I apologize (I also don’t know how far people want to get into this, since it’s all a bit off on a tangent).
You do get gravity waves, mixed inertia-gravity, Rossby-gravity waves, etc., in hydrostatic models. They even look pretty good in a lot of cases.
I’m not sure heat energy being carried upward by a wave is the right way to think about the transport by gravity waves. The wave does carry energy and momentum upward and deposits it where and if it breaks. (It might also be retroreflected at some height). At this point, there will be some mixing of a layer which was displaced from its rest position wherever (e.g., below), producing a buoyancy (and heat) flux.
Nonlinear energy transfers really do occur within the spectrum, so that no matter how small your gridscale is, you will have an energy buildup at still smaller scales which you eventually need to damp out. You can do big viscosities to keep this under control, but that means that you damp out “real” gravity wave phenomena which you could have resolved. You can also do spectrally steep viscosities like a biharmonic, but then you may end up allowing stuff that should be damped out while you are still “brick-walling” stuff that your model resolution can’t handle.
The propagation of internal gravity waves is a really funny thing as well, as the phase lines are at some angle to the vertical (where the oscillation frequency is a function of the angle), but the energy propagation is at right angles to the phase slope! The funny geometry means you will almost always get interactions between a scale that is not resolved in the model and one that is. This also means that the nonlinear fluxes end up being incorrect even when some parts of the spectrum are well-resolved in the model.
Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities… look like breaking surf waves only as they are “overturning” (non-hydrostatic). K-H, being a shear instability, is sort of at the other end from upper atmospheric (and ocean surf) gravity wave breaking due to steepness/convective instability. Potentially more tractable in a model setting (and from previous comments I’m guessing you may have some field experience with these?).
Steve,
IRT to what Mark R said about you and Carrick, I think it is execerable- a totally bogus disgusting tactic by the believers.
MarkR’s reliance on it is no different than that of any number of AGW promters who use such transparently false tactics to dodge reasonable questions about their work.
If any of my posts have been less than clear on that, and if my position irt skeptics of any stripe- from your lukewarmness to the hardcore- has ever been less than clear on that, I am glad to finally find that out.
It is no different really than calling skeptics ‘deniers’, something I have condemned in the strongest terms that do not result in my being banned from a blog.
In my 50-something years of experience observing the human condition, I have found that in general those who squawk the loudest and most frequently about things like conspiracies and payola are often engaged in just that sort of action themselves and are in fact projecting.
While I have disagreed with you on issues from time to time, your integrity- from reading on your blog, here and elsewhere, as well as the book you co-authored- it is clear that you have integrity in your work and in your writing. Certainly if I was hiring for a complex analytical project and needed someone whose work I would have reason to trust, you would be on the list of candidates.
Steven Mosher,
The below is a possible dupliate:
Steve,
IRT to what Mark R said about you and Carrick, I think it is execerable- a totally bogus disgusting tactic by the believers.
MarkR’s reliance on it is no different than that of any number of AGW promters who use such transparently false tactics to dodge reasonable questions about their work.
If any of my posts have been less than clear on that, and if my position irt skeptics of any stripe- from your lukewarmness to the hardcore- has ever been less than clear on that, I am glad to finally find that out.
It is no different really than calling skeptics ‘deniers’, something I have condemned in the strongest terms that do not result in my being banned from a blog.
In my 50-something years of experience observing the human condition, I have found that in general those who squawk the loudest and most frequently about things like conspiracies and payola are often engaged in just that sort of action themselves and are in fact projecting.
While I have disagreed with you on issues from time to time, your integrity- from reading on your blog, here and elsewhere, as well as the book you co-authored- it is clear that you have integrity in your work and in your writing. Certainly if I was hiring for a complex analytical project and needed someone whose work I would have reason to trust, you would be on the list of candidates.
Hunter, “what Mark R said about you and Carrick, I think it is execerable- a totally bogus disgusting tactic by the believers….”
What did I say? Do tell.
Oliver:
In a truly hydrostatic model, I think you’d end up with an infinite wave speed. I usually see them in the context of the Boussinesq approximation, so maybe you’re thinking of some quasi-static approximation like that?
Maybe you could expand on that.
Regarding Kelvin-Helmholtz waves… I included the breaking waves ’cause I thought it was cool looking as well as a visually interesting illustration of “real world” gravity wave physics. I’ve got pressure data from surface boundary layer gravity waves generated by tornadogenic convective storms. I have no idea whether they were breaking at the time, they probably weren’t.
I’m not sure “what the right way to think about transport” means, but gravity waves give rise to warming in the northern hemisphere warming. It’s what I was thinking of when I mentioned heat energy in addition to momentum transport.
Also see section 2c of this reference. It gives the picture of how gravity waves are treated by global climate models that I am used to. Perhaps you could comment on this and/or point to newer references where they are resolving mesoscale waves?
Thanks for the comments in any case.
Carrick
Carrick
.
I think part of Browning’s point is that this artificial attenuation screws up the spectral content of the atmospheric-ocean coupled modes, and I believe he is absolutely right on this.
.
Yes that’s exactly the point.
G.Browning (and Kreiss for that matter) are specialised in spectral treatment of N-S. If you read (some) of their papers, you will always find a familiar setting – periodic domain, Fourrier decomposition, introduction of norms, studies of what happens with energy, momentum and enstropy for different wave numbers.
So it is actually not surprising that they focused on this (for me major) problem of what happens in models at interfaces between resolved and unresolved scales and how the results depend on resolution and/or hydrostatic assumptions.
It is already troubling in itself that results of a numerical treatment might depend on the arbitrary space step which is only dictated by mundane considerations of computer power and has nothing to do with the physics of the system.
Of course modellers will talk about “robust” results but their “metrics” (attempts to quantify the dispersion of the different runs) are far from being satisfying for a specialist of N-S mathematics like G.Browning who is used to rigorous norms in the metric space of atmospheric fields.
Carrick (Comment #83955)
The “hydrostatic approximation” ignores the vertical acceleration in the equation of motion, so that the pressure gradient is exactly balanced by gravity (buoyancy).
$latex \displaystyle \rho_0 \partial w / \partial t = -\partial p^\prime / \partial z – \rho^\prime g $
becomes
$latex \partial p^\prime / \partial z \approx – \rho^\prime g .$
This approximation still handles gravity waves if the waves are “long” $latex (k^2 + l^2 << m^2) $.
The Boussinesq approximation means you keep density changes in the buoyancy term -$latex \rho^\prime g $ but you ignore them everywhere else. Of particular interest for internal gravity waves, you can do the simplification in the w equation:
$latex \displaystyle \frac{1}{\rho_0} \frac{\partial}{\partial z} \left(\rho_0 \frac{\partial}{\partial z}\right)w \approx \frac{\partial^2 w}{\partial z^2}. $
You may have been thinking of infinite wave speed for acoustic waves. Both of these are going to suppress acoustic waves (although in the first you should be able to get horizontal acoustic waves).
They are cool-lookin’. Some turbulence guys would argue that these are turbulent phenomena and not waves (which is true) and that they have nothing to do with waves (which is not true).
Turbulence triggered by breaking internal gravity waves leads to mixing which leads to heat transport. I just wanted to emphasize that the wave itself should not be thought of as transporting heat as it propagates through the atmosphere. It does carry momentum.
That is a nice reference — thanks for the link!
My point was that gravity waves can and have been produced in hydrostatic models. A GCM with grid cells larger than the mesoscale obviously won’t resolve mesoscale waves, but if everything is working properly, mesoscale internal gravity waves should arise as soon as you shrink the grid to that scale. However, no matter how much you shrink the grid, you are still going to need some parameterization to treat interactions with the (unresolved) part of the spectrum.
Oliver:
Thanks for the comments and explanation! You’re absolutely right… it’s the acoustic waves that attains an infinite velocity here.
Yep. It is an indirect mechanism that leads to the transport of heat energy in this case. [Caveat that we can neglect higher order terms which is true certainly in the generation region of the gravity waves in this case.]
Thanks hunter.
Steven Mosher, IRT steven mosher (Comment #83549)
Sorry about the late response. The lovely Mrs. hunter ahd plans this weekend.
To address your points:
SM: 1. I said NOTHING about the trend in deaths
But it is reasonable to point out that deaths are not trending up, when talking about disaster impacts, I beleive.
####
yes it’s reasonable to point it out but its not really an answer to the point I was raising. Which is simply this. we really can do more things to make our infrastructure more resilient to disaster.
SM2. I said nothing about loss rates
Then how do we know if we are prepared for a disaster, if we do not measure the losses from said disasters?
####
I didnt say anything about not measuring the losses. I said my point had nothing to do with the rate. Lets make it easy.
Lets say we look at the data and we see a 100B loss from hurricanes last year. My point has nothing to do with wether that figure is an increase or a decrease. My point is this. Looking at that loss, you ask the question. Can we reduce it? That question is utterly divorced from the questions of rates and future increases.
You might look at 100 years of data and (adjusted for inflation) figure that the average over 100 years was 75B. Same question applies. can you spend 5B in prevention and reduce losses by 10B.
Is there low hanging fruit? utterly divorced from the AGW argument. utterly divorced from the trend argument.
SM3. You might find the record good, I don’t
So what would be good? And what would we do instead of adapt and defend? Mitigate?
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I’m suggesting that people have not studied adaption with the same vigor as mitigation.
SM: You might think that a reduction from horrible to bad doesnt constitute a problem.
I would suggest that large numbers of people living pretty good lives in areas that were formerly too disease ridden and storm swept (like the US Gulf Coast), not to mention too hot and humid is not such a bad adaptation to climate.
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yes and utterly besides the point. That some have adapted isnt the question.
SM: given your attitude, Id say plan for triple the extreme events.
If there is cause to plan for triple the nasty stuff, we may find the best adaptation is to move away.
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sorry I was being snotty
Searching on a completely different subject, I came across the newsgroup sort-of-FAQ from Tobis dated 20 years ago.
Interesting to see some of the responses at the time, perhaps useful to see how they stand up to scrutiny / if his views have changed now:
https://groups.google.com/group/sci.geo.meteorology/browse_frm/thread/2d51ada15b0b0389/cf90184e0433ea4?pli=1