Reading Judy Curry’s blog, I was alerted to the existence of a multi-author AGW skeptic book Slaying the Greenhouse Dragon. I gather the authors are interested in Judy encouraging reviewing their book and/or generating discussion of the book; Judy tells us:
I’ve read Slaying the Sky Dragon and originally intended a rebuttal, but it would be too overwhelming to attempt this and probably pointless.
That said Judy agreed to encourage discussion giving this conditional agreement
I agreed to host a discussion on Johnson’s chapters at Climate Etc., provided that the publishers of Slaying the Sky Dragon would make Johnson’s chapters publicly available on their website (which they have).
Bearing in mind that Judy found though rebuttal might be overwhelming, I thought I might give it a start.
Judy provided a link to a chapter which I downloaded (pdf). I began to read a chapter entitled “Global Climate by Navier-Stokes Equations”. The first sentence surprised me:
Thermodynamics is a funny subject.
A chapter about the Navier-Stokes equations begins with a quote discussing a physicists musings about thermodynamics?
The second paragraph ends with this:
The thermodynamics is described by the Navier-Stokes equations (NSE) of fluid dynamics, for a variable density incompressible ocean and compressible atmosphere, expressing conservation of mass, momentum and energy.
Italics mine.
This is not a promising start.
To be kind, one might say it’s rather– (what adjective should I use?)– imprecise to say that thermodynamics is described by the Navier Stokes equations.
Even Wikipedia knows that The Navier-Stokes equations are an expression of conservation of momentum in a flowing fluid. While some problems involving thermodynamics require the analyst to apply conservation of momentum, many don’t. Many students are introduced to the first and second law of thermodynamics before the learn the tiniest thing about the Navier-Stokes equations, and believe it or not, thermodynamics applies even to problems where there is no flowing fluid at all. For example: It can be used to analyze the temperature rise in a solid block of steel that is being heated or cooled. The Navier-Stokes is in no way involved in these problems.
So… no. Thermodynamics is not described by the Navier-Stokes equations.
Two misteps on the first page.
The next paragraph contains some verbiage — like “air conditioner” — that appears metaphorical. I can’t immediately say the metaphor is either right or wrong. The sentence beginning at the end of page 1 might be judge not wrong by some simple editing. I might suggest something more like this:
“The heat is transported by
the atmosphere in a combination of thermodynamics (turbulent convection and phase change in evaporation/condensation)and radiation, roughly 2/3 bythermodynamicsconvection and 1/3 by radiation.”
It seems to me that as edited, the sentence might not be dreadful. Mind you, I can’t vouch for the estimate of 2/3rds 1/3rd proportion — that may or may not be so. I’d need to look that up or do some calculations. But even if those are the correct proportions I find the original text rather unsettling because I do know that turbulent convection and phase change are not, strictly speaking “thermodynamics”.
To be sure, some people tend to use words more broadly than defined and one should try to understand the gist of the argument when reading anything new. Even so if one uses the term “thermodynamics” according to some colloquial definition that is sufficiently broad to include convection and phase change, then radiation would also be thermodynamics, in which case, 100% of the heat transport in the atmosphere is due to thermodynamics. The only argument is: Which sort of thermodynamics? Convective thermodynamics? Or radiation thermodynamics?
So my impression after reading page 1 is: The author may not know the difference between thermodynamics, heat transfer, fluid mechanics or conservation of momentum.
On to page 2: Pretty picture!
On page 3 we find what appears to be an argument by “scare quote”:
The physics of this effect is claimed to have been identified and scientifically described by Fourier[3] (1824), Tyndall[11] (1861) and Arrhenius[1] (1896). An inspection of these sources shows a very simplistic rudimentary analysis with a only a simple model for radiation and no thermodynamics, which is the origin of the message of this article: The mathematics of the Fourier-Tyndall-Arrhenius greenhouse effect is dead, and never was alive, although that the message by IPPC is that it has been revived in a modern version attributed to Manabe and Strickler [8] as radiation with â€convective adjustmentâ€.
If, by “simplistic rudimentary analysis with a only a simple model for radiation and no thermodynamics”, one means “simple 1-d analysis of heat transport by radiation that does not include the effects of convection”, then yes. The very first analysis did not include convection.
Understanding the effects of convection to leading order happen to involve recognizing that certain temperature gradients result in an unstable atmosphere. The precise nature of the instability is akin to water floating on top of oil. We all know this will overturn because water is denser than oil. But the situation is more complicated in the atmosphere because air can change density, and the density changes as a parcel of air rises or descends. The analysis to determine the criterion for stability of the atmosphere happens to involve the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and, like understanding of radiation heat transfer, those fields were also in their infancy.
It turns out that if as a first attempt to estimate the effect of CO2 on the surface temperature, you neglect the possibility of convection in the atmosphere, at some elevations, the solution for the temperature gradient corresponds to an unstable atmosphere. That solution is imperfect in a way that is understood now but not then. How do we correct this? Account for convection: That is, add a “convection adjustment” to the simple theory. Whether or not we put “convenctive adjustment” in scare quotes, incorporating the “convective adjustment” gives a better estimate of greenhouse effect. Why the estimate is better is understood.
While this can all be worded in some sort of snide way, this is just the way understanding has progressed in science and engineering. Someone comes up with a rather simple idea that gives a better description than before. People notice it’s not quite right– then someone else figures out what’s missing and add that. This is not a problem. (The only problems arise when people fail to admit that a theory or description is currently incomplete and overstate their current ability to predict or describe. But that’s not what Claes Johnson seems to be insinuating by placing words like “convective adjustment” in scare quotes.)
The discussion above is followed by a discussion of the ambiguity of the term “greenhouse effect” and then a discussion of Stefan-Boltzman’s law. Reading to the end of the page, I develop the impression that the author wishes to tell me the climate sensitivity estimate of 1C springs directly Stefan-Boltsmann’s law. Can this be true? Seems to me that the physical properties of CO2 itself must somehow also be involved, right?
Intending to review the chapter, I find myself at a loss for words. I am beginning to see why Judy characterizes a review as “overwhelming”. But I plow forward. Doing so, I find
- Sentences I cannot object to. The first appears on page 5, and reads “To follow (A) we must rid ourselves from the common misconception of thermodynamics expressed in the quote above by Sommerfeld, that it is beyond comprehension for mortals, in particular its 2nd Law.” If we limit “comprehension” to application of the laws to predict things, I agree that thermodynamics is not beyond the comprehension of mortals.
- Statements that may be correct, but seem to appear for no reason at all. For example “This corresponds to putting the horse in front of the wagon, and not the other way around which is referred to as an (unstable) inverse problem with the state u given and F the forcing being sought.” Yes. Inverse problems exist. Yes, solutions to inverse problems can sometimes be unstable. So?
- Statements that are just flat out wrong. For example: “This is the reason why climate scientists have focussed on radiation only, as something understandable, backing away from thermodynamics as something nobody can grasp.” The truth is climate scientists discuss thermodynamics frequently. Certainly the “convective adjustment” Johnson discussed on page one involves thermodynamics.
- Scientific methaphors that suggest the author’s understanding of heat transfer is simultaneously backwards and confused. Example: The pot of boiling water on page 7 whose caption reads “Figure 2: The atmosphere maintains a constant surface temperature under increasing radiative heat forcing by increasing vaporization and turbulent convection, like a boiling pot of water on a stove.”
Discussing why this metaphor is not useful is going to involve explaining the concept of resistance to heat transfer, and comparing “toy” problems involving putting a lid on the top of the pot and then adding a blanket to the top of the lid and also pointing out that at current earthly temperatures and pressures, the water in the oceans are not literally boiling.
- Mixed up terminology. Equation (2) on page 9, referred to as the 2nd law appears to be the First Law. How do I know it’s not the 2nd law? The second law should contain an inequality symbol ≤, a symbol that represents entropy (S is often used), and a symbol to represent temperature (T is a popular choice, but rebels sometimes use θ). Also, if I recall correctly, it generally contains no work term (i.e. W would not appear.)
- Confusing mathematical representations of physics. Even assuming that (1)-(3) on page 9 are intended to represent the First law and not the 2nd, looking at the equations, I can’t help but wondering whether they are supposed to apply to a fixed mass (whose volume may change) or a control volume (which would permit flow across the boundaries) In either case, why isn’t the work term a surface integral?
Maybe someone can clarify this for me, as I cannot delve into the development until I know whether this is a control volume representation, a fixed mass representation, and etc.
- Sentences that look suspiciously like typos: “We will argue that an initial lapse rate of g = 9.81C/km […]”. (Probable typo highlighted.)” This is trivial, but then again, I’m this is a book, not a blog post, comment at a blog post or even a first draft of a proposed journal article.
Having said all that, for the time being, my technical evaluation of this is that the chapter is muddled, confusing and in places I find obvious errors. With respect to supporting the main conclusions of the chapter, it appears to me these errors “matter” to the conclusions. Though I may be mistaken, I think the confusion is mostly the result of the contents, not my limitations. If someone asked me, I would suggest that the kindest diagnosis of the conclusions is they are not supported.
I would also suggest to people that when scientists say that a review is “overwhelming” or decline to review items they are invited to review, you will often find the item muddled and confused.
Future: For those wondering, I requested an e-copy of this book and Hans Schreuder kindly sent me one. I’m tempted to kill some trees, print out a few chapters and read them while strolling on the treadmill.
I think the book is unreviewable – it is such a bizzare mix of stuff. From the iron-sun stuff to more mainstream “scepticism”. I have to confess to only reading three-quarters of it before giving up.
Best treated as a collection of discrete essays on global warming from unconventional (but not consistent) perspectives. Again I’m struck by the urge to shout “stop trying to make me use strawmen arguments!” – but presumably the assorted authors knew what they were going to be published alongside with. I shouldn’t tar people with the same brush -but what if they do it themselves?
The Dragon book is not going to help either skeptics or believers.
It is useless for skeptics, becuase the science based skeptics are not going to appreciate this wordy detour into failed critiques.
It is useless for believers because they may conclude that the weakness of the Dragon means global climate disruption is a valid way to look at the climate.
hunter–
I intentionally did not read comment at Judy’s before writing this. I’m reading them now. What a hoot!
Lucia,
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Yikes. Sounds like a lot of rubbish. Aside from the apparent errors/problems with this book, any book that attempts to address all of climate science would appear to be a monumental effort. I imagine that selecting one subject area and limiting content to that would be more practical.
SteveF– I was sent 2 books. I just clicked rapidly through book 2. The over all impression is that someone assembled a bunch of essays that have, over time, been published by the group Fred Singer was affiliated with. The chapters follow no standard format. (The same could be said for pre-80s conference proceedings where authors were told to follow a particular format, but often did not.)
The chapter I read is in book 1. I’m now reading Claes Johnson’s 2nd chapter on radiation physics. Well… I’ll just skim for now. I need to go to the gym. There’s a blizzard coming, and if I don’t go today, I won’t get my 5 days a week in!
The discussion at Judy’s place is quite bizarre, but not nearly as bizarre as Chapter 2 of Claes Johnson’s opus. Enjoy!
Jonathan–
I like this from Chapter 2:
If corrected to reflect the truth about student teacher interactions, the metaphor may actually be useful.
Everyone (expect possibly Claes Johnson) knows that good teachers can learn something coherent from even the least knowledgeable of students. It’s just that a knowledgeable teacher with lots of knowledge can generally teach students more than the students teach her.
Similarly, a cold atmosphere can back radiate heat to the warmer earth. But, just as in the teacher student analogy, the warm earth radiates more heat to the cold atmosphere than the cold atmosphere radiates back.
Lucia, Johnson is responding to you over there.
Cage match. go get him tiger
Over there? At a blog with the dreaded threaded comments?
Lucia,
“Similarly, a cold atmosphere can back radiate heat to the warmer earth. But, just as in the teacher student analogy, the warm earth radiates more heat to the cold atmosphere than the cold atmosphere radiates back.”
Wow! You really believe all that radiative physics stuff? What about the second Law? 😉
SteveF–
Over there, Claes asked me
I responded:
That Claes question was just hilarious. Can we nominate it for WUWT Quote of the Week?
You are quite right about good teachers learning from students: in particular students are excellent at making clear to you that some “obvious” assumption you are taking for granted is a great deal less obvious than you thought, forcing you to clarify your own thoughts. But I’m afraid I struggle to see what I would learn from Claes, with the possible exception of the value of infinite patience.
Meh, Jonathan, Pekka points out that Claes is right there. Go look lucia; the formulation is unusual and perhaps inutile.
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I wish these people wouldn’t do this. If you are not very well versed in thermodynamics don’t write a book with it in until you have a physicist well versed in Thermodynamics on board and those goes for everything else in these books. It reads confused and gives the impression of confusion in the authors mind. Not good !!
Next time I’ll try to read more but I find it very difficult. Like wadeing through treacle. (sorry about the spelling).
It’s a bit Monctonish even though I find M a very coherent speaker.
“All aboard the Climate Gravy Train!”
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http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_aNqsrJUh2Ic/SygM-lmZdII/AAAAAAAAFJQ/176L3bnyJ74/s400/Gravy+Train+02.gif
OMG. Curry’s Sky Dragon thread may be the least-comprehensible one related to climate science that I have ever encountered. There may be insight on offer with respect to “how to decide what to spend time reading, and what to skip.”
For understanding the Tyndall gas effect — nothin’.
I admire the efforts of Fred Moolton, Steve Mosher, and assorted physicist-commenters there, but it seems to me to be in vain.
After skimming Claes Johnson’s post on why EM radiation should be treated as waves only when deriving the Planck function, I am not interested in wasting my time reading anything else he writes.
Lucia,
As I said, the ‘Dragon’ is not going to get anyone very far.
Not even the compiler of the work, since it is not going to sell well. And the compiler served no good editing function in this.
From my view, the worst outcome will be that people who would otherwise be skeptical of global climate disruption will accept it due to this very poor effort at critiquing the consensus.
It is almost as if a critique of eugenics was produced by phrenologists.
Kim– Do you mean this:
Pekka is wrong. The fact that Johnson later specified D ≥ 0 is not sufficient to turn that forumlation into the 2nd law of thermo. Thanks for alerting me to pka’s; I posted a response to that.
DeWitt– Dang! And I was tempted to invite you to comment on chapter 2!
come on dewitt. kick the puppy
OK. So Claes Johnson and company are off lost in the weeds (no surprise there).
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But the question raised by Judith and in Lucia’s last thread (some people at the Lisbon Conference looking for skeptical spokespeople to confront) does raise a real question in my mind. What do those technically trained people who are at least somewhat skeptical of the CAGW story line offer to the debate? Do we have an obligation to lay out a rational for reasonable doubt? Does that doubt need to be formalized by reduction to specific arguments?
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My guess is yes, more is needed than comments (even thoughtful comments) on blogs like this one. Odonnell et al’s refutation of the Steig Antarctica methodology is of course one extreme: become familiar enough to publish formal refutations in climate journals. In other words, become something of a climate scientist yourself. But few have the time or inclination. Is there anything short of this that would serve to advance the discussion toward consensus?
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Perhaps there is, but it would depend on climate scientists being willing to actively engage those skeptics who do have a reasonable foundation in science, and who offer more than irrelevant drivel. I know there are several of these people who frequently comment on this blog.
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So how could climate scientists be enticed to participate? Any ideas? Perhaps an invitation to climate scientists who already blog or who were at the Lisbon Conference to participate here?
Re: steven mosher (Jan 31 17:42),
Do you remember your comment about how reading someone’s bad code was like sticking needles in your eyes? Well…
While it might be fun to, as you say, kick the puppy, I’d have to suffer through actually reading the chapter first. The cost/benefit ratio is not good enough.
Is there anything short of this that would serve to advance the discussion toward consensus?
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More accurate modeling. More observations. Over time, these will eventually sway those willing to be swayed – just as they have over the last 30 years.
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Those who fidget on the margins – who want to stake a climate sensitivity at 2.2 instead of 2.5. Those who want IPCC AR5 to state that warming will be “about” 0.18C per decade rather than 0.2C per decade, those guys are already part of the consensus.
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What are the alternatives to AGW?
(a) Denial that there is global warming.
(b) The hypothesis that solar forcing dominates the warming.
(c) The hypothesis that “natural cycles” dominate the warming.
(d) The hypothesis that feedbacks will stifle the warming
(or at least fail to multiply the ‘bare’ forcings of CO2)
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Lukewarmers are part of the consensus. Acceptance that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that the observed increase in CO2 is dominated by human activity is AGW.
Since everyone seems to understand radiation physics so well, can I ask four questions:
– How much time does the energy represented by a photon from the Sun spend in the Earth system before it is lost to space?
– How many individual molecules does that energy represented by a photon from the Sun spend time in before it is lost to space?
– Why does the surface only warm by 0.017 joules/m2/second during the height of the day when the sunshine is beating down at 960.000 joules/m2/second.
– Why is there no “time” component in any of the greenhouse radiation physics equations.
well Judiths thread needs someone with the patience of Amac to track threads of the argument down.
Re: Ron Broberg (Jan 31 22:48),
As a margin fidgeter I concur with everything you said.
Ron,
The issue is not CO2 = GHG.
The issue is CO2 = global catastrophe.
Another issue I am noticing, that Pielke, Sr. has implied and others have noticed as well is the lack of predictive power of climate science for much if any significance.
Hunter: The issue is CO2 = global catastrophe
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Define “global catastrophe.” I would prefer references to IPCC AR4 WG1 which is the middle ground of ‘the consensus view’ as far as I am concerned.
Ron Broburg framing the debate? Well, what’s new?
Re: hunter (Jan 31 23:02),
hunter many of us would like to move onto the question of impacts BUT
other people are insisting that core physics is wrong.
Its like this. We discover that an asteroid 100 years away has a 10% probability of hitting us and some people insist upon challenging the laws of motion.
I don’t recall the much reviled RC making comments like that. 😉
Re: steven mosher (Feb 1 01:48),
That’s a nice comparison.
Years of following the climate wars eventually convinced me that all intelligent and well informed skeptics were in at least some sense lukewarmers. We run a spectrum from warm lukewarmers (fiddling at the margins) to cold lukewarmers (warming is real but insignificant), and in our explanations (most of the warming is data corruption; most of the warming is oceanic cycles; most of the warming is solar variations), but we all agree on accepting a few basics (thermodynamics, radiative transfer, the scientific method). Personally my best SWAG makes me a data-corruption (a lot of the pre-satellite era “warming” hasn’t actually happened) mid-lukewarmer (the climate sensitivity is non-trivial but it is probably less than 1C/doubling), but I can see how intelligent well-informed people can come to other SWAGs.
The only problem with this (otherwise completely reasonable) position is that it doesn’t give us a lot to talk about. Pretty much all lukewarmers agree that the current data isn’t good enough to say very much with real confidence, and the only thing we can do is wait. There is room for political arguments about what to do in the meantime, but frankly Pielke Jr’s blog is a better place for that than this one.
Endlessly correcting people like Claes is probably pointless and (more importantly) no fun. Endlessly bickering with Gavin is slightly more amusing, but not really more useful. Perhaps we should all go back to swapping haiku and knitting patterns?
This is funny – here we see a group claiming to hold all the answers yet for all their pretensions to be so versed in the science none seems capable of answering Bill’s questions..
– How much time does the energy represented by a photon from the Sun spend in the Earth system before it is lost to space?
– How many individual molecules does that energy represented by a photon from the Sun spend time in before it is lost to space?
– Why does the surface only warm by 0.017 joules/m2/second during the height of the day when the sunshine is beating down at 960.000 joules/m2/second.
– Why is there no “time†component in any of the greenhouse radiation physics equations.
You warmists’ with your repeated failures to answer these questions confirm that the so-called “greenhouse gas hypothesis” is pseudo-scientific waffle.
steven mosher (Comment#67704) February 1st, 2011 at 1:48 am
Or you could look at it like this. 90% of the case for the asteriod hitting us is pretty water tight, 10% is not, so some people focus with an obsession on the 10% that is not, giving us the impression that the 90% is not worth worrying about. Some people might even think that 10% is so important, they might write a book about it, since the 90% is not as important.
Bill Illis @ 67698
I note John O’Sullivan asks these same questions at Judy’s.
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re: Bill Illis (Comment#67698) and kim (Comment#67709)
I am glad someone is asking questions like that.
lulcia @ 67681
Yes, that’s it, and Pekka has answered you. I find his point, and that of others, compelling, that there is probably little fundamentally wrong with Ch. 1, though is is a novel way of approaching the problem. Pekka doesn’t think the approach is going to be useful, but I think it is just because it’s got physicists scratching their heads a little.
And, as many have pointed out, the standard radiative centric conception of the action of the atmosphere has problems.
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liza, I’d like to know why the same questions were asked by two different people.
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I’d also like to understand the questions, but that is an entirely different matter.
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Mike C: Ron Broburg framing the debate? Well, what’s new?
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Chiding me for framing an issue is like chiding me for thinking. It is an inherent part of self-consciousness, of problem-solving.
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SteveF wrote CAGW. Hunter wrote The issue is CO2 = global catastrophe. These are also attempts to frame the debate. I’ve asked for a definition of “catastrophe.” We’ll see if these framers can define their frame.
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On the other hand, attempting to mock me is simply avoiding answering SteveF’s question and avoiding thinking about my answer. If mine is unpalatable, do you have an alternative to offer?
John O’Sullivan
Sorry your 5:34 am post was moderated;that’s automatic for first time posters. (It’s to control spam.)
As for your concern that no-one answered Bill Illis’s comment posted at January 31st, 2011 at 10:52 pm: has it occurred to you that when someone posts at 10:52 pm, many people are asleep and won’t reply until at least until they wake up? They also may not reply if
a) they end up not seeing the comment or
b) they judge those comments unimportant to the issue.
Of course, you may be correct that some people don’t know the answer and don’t reply for that reason.
I would suggest though that if you think those questions are important, you answer them. I don’t happen to think bothering to answer those specific questions will tell us who knows what about radiative physics. If you think the those specific questions are important, you might explain why you think they are important. Then, tell us the answer and explain it.
BTW– Any response to the main blog post?
kim (Comment#67713) February 1st, 2011 at 6:53 am
I always like the questions that point to or ask about a real planet participating in a solar system. 😉
Ron Broberg (Comment#67696),
Thanks for your comments. I would only offer a couple of points for you to consider.
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“More accurate modeling. More observations. Over time, these will eventually sway those willing to be swayed – just as they have over the last 30 years.”
Sure, if the data are solid. I hope you recognize that blade cuts in both directions. James Hansen’s 1988 model estimate of 4+ degrees per doubling of CO2 is now (for the GISS model at least) about 2.85 degrees per doubling (and it would take >100 years to approach that level of warming following a doubling). Perhaps more data will lead to substantially lower estimates of climate sensitivity, perhaps not. But it remains a possibility.
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“Those who fidget on the margins – who want to stake a climate sensitivity at 2.2 instead of 2.5.”
I’m not sure that is an accurate description. Based on the IPCC’s uncertainty range in aerosol forcing, and assuming that current measurements of ocean heat accumulation are reasonably accurate, any sensitivity between about 1.4C per doubling and >6C per doubling appears credible. I certainly do not fidget about 2.2C versus 2.5C. There remains vast uncertainty, if you accept at face value the IPCC’s aerosol estimates, and that uncertainty makes me strongly disinclined (at least for now) to make costly changes in energy production.
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‘Those who want IPCC AR5 to state that warming will be “about†0.18C per decade rather than 0.2C per decade, those guys are already part of the consensus.
Maybe AR5 should state “about 0.16C per decade”. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/plot/wti/trend
I don’t know if that includes me in the consensus, but I don’t much care if it does or not. I do care that people not discard measured data in favor of projections from very much less than certain climate models.
kim @ 67714
OK, I think I understand that these are Bill’s questions, not John’s, but they are still under John’s imprimatur over at Judy’s and still unaddressed.
lucia, Claes has linked from Judy’s to his own blog. He sounds wounded and defiant. I don’t think his objections to the standard model are answered yet.
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Steven Mosher
How do you discover and prove that an asteroid has a 90 percent chance of hitting earth?
Computer modelling?
My guess is that there is no way a 90 percent prediction could be made.
The more I read the more I know that some scientists are so big headed as to believe that they know everything,but know nothing about predicting exactly where an earthquake will hit days in advance or the trajectory of an asteroid,be good if they could tell us exactly when and where a hurricane will hit,but they know all about CO2 and its role in heating the atmosphere.Funny that.
Could we please take away all the money funding so-called climate science and channel it into medical research and agriculture?Here and now benefits.Or maybe we can waste billions on predicting an asteroid strike and how to prevent it happening 90 years into the future.
“The more I read the more I know that some scientists are so big headed as to believe that they know everything”
Noelene,
Steven Mosher is the Climate Science equivalent of a drug pusher.
He doesn’t care that what he pushes is bad for you. He just wants you to buy.
Andrew
Noelene (Comment#67720)
February 1st, 2011 at 8:33 am
Steven Mosher
How do you discover and prove that an asteroid has a 90 percent chance of hitting earth?
Computer modelling?
YES. Newtonian physics. Once discovered (seen) an asteroid can be followed for a day or two and then that movement used to plot it’s trajectory for ever (except in the instant that it is deflected either by gravity of by collision). It really is fairly simple mathematics as I remember, though it was a very long time ago 🙂
John O’Sullivan (Comment#67707)
OK John, I was not planning to reply to Bill’s questions, for some of the reasons Lucia stated. But since you seem concerned, here is a brief reply:
“– How much time does the energy represented by a photon from the Sun spend in the Earth system before it is lost to space?”
That depends. If a photon is reflected from a cloud (or other surface) back into space, then the time is a small fraction of a millisecond. If it is absorbed (converted to thermal energy), then the question strikes me as meaningless, since thermal energy is fungible… you can’t say what specific photos contributed to the heat content of anything on Earth.
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“- How many individual molecules does that energy represented by a photon from the Sun spend time in before it is lost to space?”
The time is indeterminate and meaningless, for the reasons outlined above.
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“- Why does the surface only warm by 0.017 joules/m2/second during the height of the day when the sunshine is beating down at 960.000 joules/m2/second.”
If I understand the question correctly (and I am not sure if I do), the net heat accumulation in any system is the energy inflow minus energy outflow. If the surface energy balance is close to zero, it just means inflow and outflow are close to balanced… over whatever the period of measurement is.
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“- Why is there no “time†component in any of the greenhouse radiation physics equations.”
Yikes! No idea what this question means.
Sadly, the Climate cannot be modeled using Newtonian physics. Worse still, many climate scientist (eg. Gavin S who I believe claims to be a climate scientist but maybe a computer programmer) seem to mix both quantum and Newtonian physics in their attempts to describe how the planet functions. NO-ONE not anyone has produce a viable physical model of the planet with any demonstrable capability to predict all it’s machinations without regular and frequent intervention in the model’s activity.
Of course, if you know of one please enlighten us. ALL the percentage figures quoted for uncertaintenty are doigt à la fesse numbers. I would absolutely love to have some sort of solid mathematical model, verified, validated and falsified that could do all this BUT THERE ISN’T ONE.
Newtonian physics can predict an eclipse of the sun 100s of years ahead but that is not climate physics. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME AND SHOULD NOT BE USED TO EXPLIAN EACH OTHERS PROBABILITIES.
People have for too long given % certainties without basis.
Re: stephen richards (Feb 1 08:43),
Not forever. The solar system is actually chaotic. You can’t predict orbits past about 5 million years. It’s an initial value problem, I think.
Here’s a fun animation of the orbits of the inner planets for the last 3 My. It’s 12 MB, btw. Note how stable the Earth’s orbit is compared to the other planets.
DeWitt,
“The solar system is actually chaotic.”
Yes, as is the universe. Determinism is an approximation confined to only a certain combination of size scale and time scale. Outside that region, it does not exist, even if we might wish it did.
Re: Bill Illis (Jan 31 22:52),
Tell me why you want to know the answers to those questions. I don’t see their relevance to anything important. Also please don’t play Socratic method games by asking questions to which you think you already know the answers. As far as I’m concerned, Socrates got off easy.
The residence time question might have an answer if you knew the absolute heat content of the planet. We can calculate changes in heat content from a reference temperature, but generally avoid dealing with absolute values.
Steve, you should not have tried to answer these questions. None of them is worded well enough to elicite a single answer.
Resident times and absorptions of photons is an awfully complex piece of quantum physics. It is worthy of note that light and a photo is not the same thing. Light consists of many photons of different energies giving us the rainbow. It’s quantum absorption is therefore also not simple. Resident time in the atmosphere is equally complex and here my memory of QPhys is faded but you would have to take account of the probability of encountering an atom, molecule or particle as it entered our atmosphere. This probability will vary both with distance into the atmosphere as well as density. The way in which the photon is absorped will be dependent on it’s energy h.nu. It’s velocity is of course c speed of light (at first in a vacuum) in the medium. It’s resident time, after it has been absorped, can be calculated as a probability from equations founded in QPhys (and I cannot remember them). All molecules/atoms have a need to be at ground state and will drop to ground state as fast as possible causing the photo to be re-emmited (radioactivity)
Why does the surface only warm by 0.017 joules/m2/second during the height of the day when the sunshine is beating down at 960.000 joules/m2/second.â€
This is just a horribly worded question and I would not have bothered to respond without serious clarification. Does he mean global surface temp, season, latitude; It is impossible to do anything other than guess what he meant and that is not appropriate.
EG If he means global temps tham it appears simple. The oceans!! but who knows.
DeWitt Payne (Comment#67725)
February 1st, 2011 at 9:04 am
Re: stephen richards (Feb 1 08:43),
Not forever. The solar system is actually chaotic. You can’t predict orbits past about 5 million years. It’s an initial value problem, I think.
Not strictly chaotic. You missed my caveat. The universe is gravitationally very complex but not chaotic. The dominant force of the universe is gravity that is different to systems defined in chaos theory as ‘chaotic’.
SteveF, I agree. And your counterpoints are noted. BUT …
.
… you have framed your answer within the framework of AGW. While you maintain a wider view of uncertainty than I indicated, you are not arguing about the basic methodolgy. Modeling. Forcings. Feedbacks. Observations. You seem to agree with approach.
.
Your disagreement was intitially framed by the term “Catastrophic” – the C in CAGW. Your reply indicates that you disagree with certain policies formulated as a response to AGW. Do you think that the climate science rises or falls on the basis of the policy responses to it? Is the “anti-consensus” a reaction to the policies formulated in response to AGW more than the reaction to the basic theory?
Ron Broberg,
The use of “C” is to differentiate the science from the politics. Science should not carry water for politics, but in the case of climate science, I think it has… a lot, and for much too long. The reality of climate, and the validity of the scientific description of that reality, is of course in no way connected to the politics, but many have tried to use global warming as an excuse to force major political changes. Political changes that those individuals want for philosophical and political reasons, independent of global warming. I see no reason to think this is going to change.
.
A secondary, but still important, concern is the explicit policy advocacy by many climate scientists themselves. The thing I found most disturbing in the UEA emails was the “we are on a holy crusade to save the Earth” mentality. My experience is that anybody who feels that strongly is more likely to shade the data (even if unconsciously), discount data that conflicts with their beliefs, and in general, not be sufficiently ‘skeptical’. I do not know for certain the political inclinations of Lindzen, Christy, Spencer, Mann, Schmidt, and Jones… but I suspect that their politics can be accurately guessed based on their evaluation of climate sensitivity. I do not think this is a good thing.
Re: stephen richards (Feb 1 09:22),
I’m trusting Tom Vonk, who knows a lot more about chaotic systems than I do, on this. He says that the solar system has a positive Lyupanov exponent which makes it chaotic by definition. Here’s the exact quote and reference:
http://climateaudit.org/2007/11/17/exponential-growth-in-physical-systems-3/
Why is there an assumption that AGW = CAGW?
Looking back through history, warming has been associated with the rise of human civilization, and cooling has been associated with the fall of civilization.
Is it not more reasonable to assume that:
AGW = BAGW (beneficial)
That the most likely result of AGW will be increased evaporation from the oceans, leading to increased precipition. Coupled with increased CO2 fertilization, this will lead to increased food supply.
Food supply being the limiting factor in human population, where according to the UN, 58% of all deaths worldwide in 2006 were caused by malnutrition.
In other words, more people die each year from malnutrition than die from all other causes combined, including old age.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malnutrition
Re: stephen richards (Comment#67729)
The solar system is chaotic. In fact, it is where “deterministic chaos” was first discovered (by Poincare,100 years ago).
Do a quick google search or just look here:
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.astro.39.1.581?journalCode=astro
Why is it that everyone misspells IPCC as IPPC?
With respect to the ‘4 questions’ why would an express time component matter?
Designated archenemies of The Consensus such as Richard Lindzen and John Christie don’t dispute the basis mechanics of greenhouse warming as far as I know. The issue has always been how does the climate system (water in particular) respond to that warming–does it act to dissipate the heat or amplify it, how much and under what conditions? That is the whole ballgame, as I understand it.
With respect to Steve Mosher’s asteroid, mocking the largely irrelevant guys who deny the laws of motion may serve to divert us from noticing that the projections about the asteroid’s size are routinely overstated by people who want government funding for new observatories and who also somehow systematically minimize or exclude equally probable harmless projectile paths from their models.
And nobody cares about the asteroid…because for over a century now, ideologues and bored intellectuals have hyped every crisis real and imagined to try to create new forms of centralized government power. Mosher’s asteroid guys are the just the latest in a long line. So even if they are not crying “Wolf” nobody listens anymore. They are crisis-ed out.
Zeke– The only mispelling I find in my quote of Claes. I rarely add [sic] after spelling errors.
There are lots of typos in that manuscript. The specific example I quoted (“an initial lapse rate of g = 9.81C/km […]”) bugs me more than the others. After all the acceleration due to gravity on the earth’s surface is g=9.81m/s^2. So, I found more distracting than the more mundane typos.
Zeke,
Maybe because the type too fast and don’t check. 🙂
Zeke,
On second thought, maybe IPPC stands for “International Panel on Political Correctness”….
RE: Noelene (Comment#67720) February 1st, 2011 at 8:33 am
Actually collision impacts can be made with very high accuracy. The math involved in orbital physics is far simpler than the complexities of climate science with far fewer uncertainties:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker-Levy_9
Re: Julio (Feb 1 10:18),
Somewhat pedantic and largely irrelevant side note:
That the solar system is chaotic doesn’t mean Velikovsky was correct about the origin of Venus.
Lucia, it appears that the book in question on this thread has not gotten much attention. You have some posters here who I have come to trust on their views on these matters, such as a review of a book, that at this point I do not want to waste time on unless it has something new to say on the issues of AGW and its mitigation. It appears that the book does not pass the physics smell test, but since you are multi-tasking in reading at least parts of it could you give a summary of what the book has to say in more general terms.
I know that the lead author, Tim Ball, appeared to create some tension with SteveM when he posted at CA. Would it be fair to compare this book with that of Al Gore’s on the same topic? Did these authors go further into the science of the matter and by doing so more clearly expose their need for science assistance then perhaps Al Gore’s book did?
I have mixed feelings about the threads going off topic, but I must say that DeWitt Payne’s links to the inner planet orbits movements and the discussion of chaotic orbits makes at least some of it worthwhile. I also enjoy it when someone pulls DeWitt’s chain with an attempt at Socratic questioning and he gets to say that Socrates got off easy. It’s heresy at its best.
Lucia:
I usually use Γ = g/cp for the lapse rate. Of course g = 9.8 m/s^2 and cp ≈ 1000 J/(kg•K), which gives us our 9.8 K/km number.
So I can see the source of the confusion, but it does point out to the level of expertise of the author that he conflates symbols in this manner. (Of course he’s free to use g instead of Γ, so technically what he wrote wasn’t an error, as far as I can see, though it takes quite a bit of imagination to believe he didn’t conflate symbols.)
.. Not to mention that this is only the dry adiabatic rate. The average environmental lapse rate is close to 6.5 K/km, of course.
Carrick,
The symbol substitution does give one pause.
Re: DeWitt Payne (Comment#67742)
Right… actually, looking more carefully at the abstract of that paper I linked above, I notice that it predicts that Mercury may have a “close encounter” with Venus in 1 trillion years, but that obviously does not take into account the fact that Mercury is not likely to be around that long (since in about 7 billion years the sun will go red giant, and expand past Mercury’s orbit).
(Also irrelevant, but just to keep everything straight!)
Re: ivp0 (Feb 1 10:56),
yes, However you will note that some people insisted on taking my analogy (‘its like) literally. Even then they fail to get things right. its like they have to disagree because they are on the internet.
Julio,
.
I suggest we start the ‘red giant society’ and begin planing humanity’s escape now. Maybe we could get government funding?
Kenneth–
My opinion is they did. Also, my impression googling around the web is that Claes Johnson believes that he has a brandnew formulation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
DeWitt’s comments on Socrates are similar to some I have made in the past. One of the official and sometimes enforced rules at this blog is that “Though shalt not argue by endless rhetorical questions or assigning quizzes”. Exceptions are:
1) You can ask a rhetorical question if you answer it fairly promptly.
2) It’s ok to sometimes ask rhetorical questions and assign some very simple quizzes– provided you don’t make it a bad habit and are willing to answer before trying to insist someone else answers your question.
3) I get to do anything I want (but commenter are permitted to make snide remarks if they catch me arguing by rhetorical questions that I will not answer myself.)
People who frequently try to argue by posing rhetorical questions deserve to be forced to drink hemlock.
Disclamer: I’m planning on massively violating my rule about quizzes and rhetorical questions in my next formal post. You are permitted to give me grief.
Re: Carrick,
Maybe. But matches gravity to three sig figs? It may only be a typo, or he may be using g for something other than gravity. But it’s either a typo or choice of notation that is bound to give readers pause.
Lucia,
Re my comment #67693. Please tell me if you think this comment is inappropriate, or worse, meriting a dose of hemlock.
Ron B.
“More accurate modeling. More observations. Over time, these will eventually sway those willing to be swayed – just as they have over the last 30 years.â€
In Lisbon Nick stokes made a nice little diagram about two guys arguing about what the state of nature is. And his point was basically that in the end nature settles the debate. Of course old guys like me have less at stake. For me that means I have to be more responsible in my skepticism. Nothing is more unseemly than old farts who demand more certainty about predictions covering events they wont be here to face.
Personally, I’d give up on the drive to control c02 globally and work on local adaptation to extreme events. just saying.
Kenneth–
This is the sort of painfully wrong stuff in Ball’s section:
Sorry, but pointing a heater or light toward an already warm object will “brighten” it a finite amount. Depending on the radiating temperature of the spotlight and it’s size, the amount the glowing object brightens may be small — but it’s not zero. If the glowing object is already very bright– possibly so bright looking at it would damage your eyes– you may need to use instruments to detect it, but it will brighten.
The stupid is just endless.
Re: John O’Sullivan (Feb 1 05:34),
“You warmists’ with your repeated failures to answer these questions confirm that the so-called “greenhouse gas hypothesis†is pseudo-scientific waffle.”
Logic fail. The issue is the mistakes in Johnson’s work. No conclusion, no logical conclusion, can be drawn from people refusing to answer these other questions.
you asked for a forum to debate Johnsons work. Monckton told you that Johnsons work was wrong. Now you have your forum and Johnson cant defend his work.Typical lawyer
Mosh,
“Of course old guys like me have less at stake. For me that means I have to be more responsible in my skepticism. Nothing is more unseemly than old farts who demand more certainty about predictions covering events they wont be here to face.’
.
Speaking as an old guy myself, does the fact that I have the future of 6 children to consider mean that I can be less responsible in my skepticism? The truth is, even young tykes like Zeke will never personally face the consequences of climate change in 2100. Maybe I just tend to give people more benefit of the doubt than you do.
SteveF–
What you did was fine. Refer to exception 1 which says rhetorical questions are permitted if you answer your own promptly.
In your comment, you have things like this:
So, you are asking, then giving your answer. This is permitted because it this case, the rhetorical question is merely a style of communication and you are putting your own notion out in public where people can understand your point and criticize or agree.
What is not permitted is behaving as if you get to ask all questions but never give your own answers. So, for example, this is not permitted:
Post by A: A “rhetorical” question as if that question left unanswered appears to make some point.
Person B: Answers “rhetorical” questions– sometimes at length.
Reply by A: Another rhetorical question– which seems intended to make another point (which may or may not be similar to the one implied by the previous rhetorical question.)
Person B: Answers “rhetorical questions– often rebutting implied point that seemed to be communicated by rhetorical question, showing that the implied point was idiotic.
Reply by A: Snidely says they never meant to make that idiotic point. Then tries to make a point yet another rhetorical question.
In this case, A deserves death by Hemlock. Andrew_KY used to do that. Worse, he put smiley faces and winks after his rhetorical questions. I moderated him until he behaved a bit better.
Lucia,
At 0°C, yes. 😉 cp = 1003.5 J/(kg•K) at 0°K. [edit note: fixed units]
It’s silly to quote it to three decimal places, because cp varies with height by more than that, and anyway, it’s the wrong lapse rate.
That’s the bigger error to me.
Of course, he’s not the only one who makes that error. That silly rabett has been known to do the same thing (and anyway the real atmospheric lapse rate is only approximately adiabatic, the deviation from adiabaticity could be as high as 30%, if I remember right).
Mosher–
Wow! Do you have a link?
Because if you do, we may be able to achieve almost universal consensus on something. In fact, if even Monckton thinks it’s wrong, we can create a petition about some point, we might be able to get Monckton, Gavin, and me all to agree that some particular things is wrong!!
Lucia:
And for that… we thank you.
I still love Mr. Winky! 😛
( 😉 )
Andrew
Re: SteveF (Comment#67749)
According to this site
http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Lectures/vistas97.html
there is an even more imminent crisis looming a mere 1.1 billion years from now, and it involves a greenhouse effect, so federal funding may not be out of the question :-):
“Sun will be 10% brighter than today.
Extra solar energy causes a Moist Greenhouse Effect.
The Earth’s atmosphere will dry out as water vapor is lost to space. Such a situation will probably spell the end of large surface life on Earth.”
Re: lucia (Feb 1 11:32),
> a brand new formulation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
… in order to have a discussion about AGW. In that case, ow, my head hurts. I recall Steve Mosher explaining in these pages a while back, that RTEs have historically been adequate to allow engineers to design in-atmosphere and above-atmosphere sensors. Were the RTE-based calculations insufficiently precise or accurate, the sensors wouldn’t work. But they do.
If that’s evidence for the non-urgency of tossing that piece of applied physics — I think it is — then perhaps we should stick with the 2nd law for now as well.
.
Ron Broberg,
As a lukewarmer, I am glad to be called a part of the scientific consensus on AGW. Frankly, I’ve always felt that way (as I define the concept). I fear that other people will continue to see matters rather differently.
As I’ve mentioned before, the issue for me is largely one of trust. Scientists (or advocates) who want to reap the benefits of being trusted scientists (or advocates) have to develop a track record of acting in a trustworthy fashion. This is where climatology has fallen short of the ideal, and continues to fall short (and I’ll concede the Oreskian But-Ma-he-hit-me-first rebuttal so we don’t have to discuss it).
In that regard, last week’s Friday round-up at the pre-eminent pro-AGW-Consensus blog RealClimate.org begins with this item.
I’ve only kept the one link, because it directs the reader to the RC post of 3 Sept. 2008 that begins,
Unwary readers are unlikely to realized that they have been pwned, if they take that “ever-growing” link at face value.
As long as the climatology Establishment is content to be represented to the scientifically-engaged public by scientist/advocates who play by these rules, it will continue to forfeit the trust of a sizable fraction of that public. As it should.
Julio,
“an even more imminent crisis looming a mere 1.1 billion years from now”
That’s one I had not heard of. We are going to need to mount a lot of mirrors on the Earth’s surface to buy a few billion extra years of habitability. Or maybe in space.
Lucia, if you think that chapter is bad, look at the other one.
It’s called “Computational blackbody radiation”, though it contains no computation.
He complains that backradiation would lead to blowup.
He then invents an equation (4) that has a very obvious blowup in it!
AMac,
“As long as the climatology Establishment is content to be represented to the scientifically-engaged public by scientist/advocates who play by these rules, it will continue to forfeit the trust of a sizable fraction of that public.”
.
I thought that post was particularly bogus as well. When you present only data favorable to your position, you are acting as an advocate. RC is primarily an advocacy site dedicated to reducing CO2 emissions. I used to get worked up about RC, but now I just accept it for what it is. I also feel a bit sorry for them. They are like Bret Farve: too long past their peak to be doing much good as advocates.
Claes Johnson’s blog is here: claesjohnson.blogspot.com/2011/01/power-of-language-refrigerator-effect.html
Re: Paul,
He complains that backradiation would lead to blowup.
He then invents an equation (4) that has a very obvious blowup in it!
I’m trying to figure out how one even applies (4) to simple engineering problems?
So wait… is this a 2-volume text? Over at WUWT and Climate Change Dispatch that’s what is suggested, that there are actually 24 authors with Oliver Manuel being one of them (and some related sordid personal details).
Quite an ambitious production. Is Tim Ball some sort of lead author or editor? If so he still seems to be in fine publishing form.
I wonder how he would model a game of ping-pong?
Zajko–
I was sent two volumes.
Are these the sordid details:
http://mominer.mst.edu/2006/08/30/dr-oliver-manuel-arrested-for-multiple-counts-of-rape-and-sodomy-of-his-children/
Lucia,
I figured the spelling error was from the original rather than your reproduction per se. Its just a pet peeve of mine since it is such a frequent error on various blogs.
On an unrelated note, that “do you know thermodynamics” line was indeed a hoot. 😛
Fritsch: I know that the lead author, Tim Ball, appeared to create some tension with SteveM when he posted at CA
.
I’ve run into his stuff before. He is a crank. Even if he is one with a degree behind his name. Most recently, via a third party reference at Middleton’s flawed analysis.
http://debunkhouse.wordpress.com/2010/12/25/co2-ice-cores-vs-plant-stomata-wuwt/
.
Looks like we can expect more astonishing things from this group.
re: Kenneth Fritsch (Comment#67743)
“could you give a summary of what the book has to say in more general terms.”
The book is basically in two halfs (I have the kindle version so I can’t give page numbers and it doesn’t have a table of contents). Each half starts with a longish essay by Tim Ball that sets out a political history of global warming science – more rhetorical than technical.
The first half starts with Tim Ball and then is followed by Oliver Manuel – this is the “iron sun” guy (the comments at Watts Up With That cover this http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/29/new-book-slaying-the-sky-dragon/ ). After that are short more technical essays by Allen Siddons – these introduce what seems to be the main theme of the book. Somehow climate science isn’t using thermodynamics properly, or too simplistically or maybe thermodynamics is all wrong (more 2nd half of book). These chapters are probably what most casual readers will make sense of and what might shape some people’s ideas.
The second half starts off with Ball again and the usual hockeystickclimategateCRUPhilJones stuff. This is followed by essays which mix anecdotes and pet theories and lots of equations. There is a story about some people swimming topless, which, for the life of me I still don’t see the relevance of – climate scepticism is like topless bathing?
Thomas Khun gets mentioned a fair bit, as does Eisenhower hockey sticks and climate gates and there is lots of maths. Lots of maths should be a good thing but somehow it isn’t. People use the “sky dragon” metaphor a fair bit to mean the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis and to frame a pet theory. The dragon gets slaid a lot.
Great if you think the Sun isn’t made of hydrogen and that quantum mechanics is dubious and are prepared to wander down garden-path cul-de-sacs of mathematics.
Zeke–
It appears that Claes Johnson has reinvented thermodyanmics, and his second law no longer requires entropy. Also, he has reinvented radiative heat transfer.
So, I suppose if you accept that his reinvention of both the 2nd law of thermodynamics and radiative heat transfer are both correct, then you might conclude that the fundamental greenhouse effect is poorly supported. After its based 2nd law and laws of radiative heat transfer that appear in engineering textbooks. These seem to work just fine when designing coal fired power plants, cars, insulation, air conditioners, predicting the speed of sound, predicting pressure drop across shock waves, why gases choke at the throat of nozzles, as well as many and sundry super sonic flows.
I’m sure the chemists, metallurgists and others on the list can provide examples of things they can only explain if they draw on the 2nd law.
Claes convincing engineers that we need to replace the well known 2nd law with his formulation will require him writing a text book showing how his formulation correctly explains a variety of rather simple things (e.g. shock waves, speed of sound) and with luck a few things that are previously unexplained.
>>but pointing a heater or light toward an already warm object will “brighten†it a finite amount.<<
Doesn't this lead to a problem. Imagine a hot body surrounded by a selective insulator that blocks photons only at the same energy or higher as the hot body, while allowing lower energy photons to pass. Would this not then selectively capture the photons from the surrounding cooler objects, further heating the already hot object and further cooling the cold objects? Could we then not use this to build heaters and refrigerators that needed no power source? Would this not then allow engines to connect the heaters and refrigerators to create perpetual motion machines?
Isn't GHG a selective insulator? Could it be that Trenberth’s missing heat solves the problem of perpetual motion?
ge0050–
It appears you are trying to argue by rhetorical question. Please refer to the discussion above, including #67750 and 67757.
I think the short answer to all your questions is “no”.
I will no implement the type of response to your rhetorical response recommended by Blackboard policies for rhetorical questions:
Please propose a design for your heater or refrigerator requiring no power source.
Please propose a design to create the perpetual motion machine based on the usual formulations of the 2nd law, and involving back-radiation.
Ok.. I’m going to violate my recommended practic and answer this one. One might use that metaphor. Like all metaphors, it has its strengths and weakness.
Please explain how you think Trenberth’s missing heat would solve the problem of perpetual motion.
While you are at it:
Please suggest an insulator that could block photons only at the same energy or higher as that of the hot body, while allowing lower energy photos to pass so I can have a clue what this material is supposed to be. I’m not familiar with insulators whose physical properties depend on the temperature of the body they insulate. But if you suggest materials, maybe I will have a clue what you are suggesting.
Re: ge0050 (Feb 1 13:05),
If you formulate your selective insulator as a partial reflector that reflects high energy photons but transmits low energy photons, you still have an energy leak and the system will cool. The reflected high energy photons will be absorbed, but because of the lack of low energy photons, the total energy being absorbed will be less than the amount emitted.
Re: lucia (Feb 1 11:54), if you look at Claes Johnson’s blog you can find the statement
which pretty much suggests that the whole world (TM) disagrees with him.
Re: Julio (Feb 1 12:14),
That’s the Main Sequence argument. Stars on the main sequence get brighter with age until they leave it and do things like become red giants, white dwarfs, supernovae or black holes. The corollary of this is that 500 Mya, the sun was 5% dimmer. 5% is a big number and it gets difficult to explain why the Earth wasn’t a ball of ice. Maybe the atmosphere was more massive then.
And on another irrelevant astronomical note, it appears that dark matter, assuming it really exists, doesn’t participate in the formation of galactic center black holes. This is concluded from the observation that the size of a black hole in the center of a galaxy is not correlated to the amount of dark matter in a galaxy.
Lucia, about those details, ad hominem arguments aren’t my style and the iron sun theory should be judged on its own merit (or lack thereof), but going through Missouri’s public court records has left a bad taste in my mouth. Looks like case# 08BA-CR00444 wrapped up after being transferred to Boone County in 2008 with a guilty plea, fines, five years probation, and sex offender treatment/conditions. Just in case anyone is curious – I don’t know if anyone has looked this up before.
“Imagine a hot body surrounded by a selective insulator that blocks photons only at the same energy or higher as the hot body, while allowing lower energy photons to pass.”
Isn’t this like Maxwell’s Demon – which I thought was a classic thought experiment, but which nobody had the technology to implement?
Zajko–
Out of curiosity– are we sure that these to Oliver K Manuels are the same person? I know that’s the scurrilous stuff– but do we know they are the same person? That’s not clear to me.
That said, I agree that accusations of child molestation and sodomy are irrelevant to evaluation of the Iron Sun theory.
Re: Zeke (Feb 1 12:48),
EliRabett has a memorable line at Pielke, Jr.’s in the comments (#9) in this thread:
Re: RickA (Feb 1 14:23),
Maxwell’s demon separated molecules with different kinetic energies. Photons of different energies have different wavelengths and wavelength selective filters are not forbidden.
Amac: I still fail to see the “pwning”.
.
The link goes to a 2008 RC post that contains the famous “spaghetti graph” of reconstuctions (including Moberg’s and Esper’s), which do look a lot like hockey-sticks to me. Hell, the least hockey-stickish of all is Mann’s (EIV). If there is anything improper in talking about a “growing list” of hockey stick-like reconstructions, it’s not immediately obvious to me.
.
The one problem I would have with the presentation in RC is that this latest “hockey stick” is apparently much more local than the others. I could see SteveM makin a fuss about that, but apparently this is not your point.
RE: ge0050 (Comment#67776)
Imagine a relatively coollight source – say an LED torch. Imagine the temeprature at the surface of the plastic casing of that LED. Warm a room so the ambient tmeperature of the room is the same. Put a literally black object in the room. Let it warm up to the room’s temperature but without the LED shining on it. LED, room and object are all at the same temperature.
Now point the LED at the object so that light shines on it.
Some of the light is relflected directly and we will see a bright spot on the object – but some isn’t. Where does the energy go?
If the LED doesn’t have a net warming effect on the black object then there is a mystery. If it does warm the object then the mystery is solved.
Lucia,
I did make sure of that. Frankly the guy’s writings and blog comments are more at issue here than anything. In the last week or so I’ve realized how happy I am not to have a climate blog of my own to moderate.
DeWitt,
Wind is there when needed for peak demand?
I think not. During the coldest December in the UK for 90 years wind managed to supply around 1% of the country’s electricity needs.
Re: Dave Andrews (Feb 1 14:36),
Which is, of course, why the line is so memorable.
DeWitt Payne (Comment#67785)
Thanks DeWitt. I just thought they sounded somewhat similiar.
There is something to the solar power/peak demand point, though. Air conditioning on sunny afternoons. And yes, nukes for base load.
What? Me contending that the Bunny is two thirds right? What a long strange trip it’s been.
===============
Re: RickA (Feb 1 14:23), Maxwell’s demon cannot really work for reasons that have been quite well understood for some time, essentially coming down to the minimum energy cost required to clear its memory, but take a look at http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.5287 for something reasonably close to an implementation.
I don’t know anything about this book. I would highly recommend to everyone “State of Fear” by Michael Crichton. It is an excellent book because the story is very entertaining and fast paced. Crichton’s ability to mix in hard facts with a fictional story is impressive. Concerning Claes Johnson, I would be interested to look at his climate predictions. I wonder how long he has been in the game because we could look at his predictions and conclude his calculations are right or wrong or more or less correct than some of the global warming scientists. I’m not a math genius so a lot of this conversation is flying over my head. What I will say is that it is pretty obvious there are some flawed calculations being used by the grand dragons of the movement because they predicted more warming.
Maxwell has a thoughtful answer to Bill Illis’s questions over at Judy’s. Check it out.
===============
Drat here, too; his answer is deep in the nested comments. Basically Maxwell thinks that study of energy dynamics in the time transients of climate systems might be useful to explain observations.
That’s why there are units of time in Bill’s questions. Forgive me if I misunderstand Maxwell. I do find it interesting that he likes Bill’s questions but is scathing about Claes Anderson’s work.
==================
Shoosh–
Claes’s novel claims are not limited to climate but to radiative physics itself. If his claims about radiative physics are correct, then engineers have been relying on utterly bogus equation to predict heat transfer in very simple configurations. It’s a miracle we’ve even managed to predict heat transfer in anything!
Sorry I was away and couldn’t put up the answers.
– the energy represented by a solar photon spends an average 43 hours in the Earth system before it is lost to space. Some spend a millisecond as SteveF noted above while a very, very tiny percentage might get absorbed in the deep ocean and spend a thousand years on Earth or longer. In essence, the Earth has accumulated 1.9 days worth of solar energy. If the Sun did not come up tomorrow, it would take around 86 hours for at least the land temperature to fall to -270C.
– the energy represented by a solar photon spends time in 5 billion individual molecules before it escapes to space. That means it is bouncing around from molecule to molecule to molecule almost continuously. The IR emitted by the surface is not skipping Nitrogen and Oxygen molecules and preferentially seeking out CO2 and H20 only. Every molecule on Earth and in the atmosphere is participating in this process and does so continuously.
– The surface accumulates almost none of the solar energy which hits the surface during the height of the day. 960.000 joules/m2/second is coming in and 959.083 joules/m2/second is moving up and away from the surface. At night, virtually no energy is coming in and only 0.001 joules/m2/second is flowing up and out to space. That is not consistent at all with the greenhouse theory and the back-radiation theory. It is more consistent with energy flowing from hot to cold continously and flowing faster the more there is a differential between that hot and cold.
– We need a time perspective on radiation physics because it is happening at the speed of light and at the miniscule amount of time that a molecule absorbs that energy before passing it on through emission or collisional exchange. 43 hours, 86 hours, doubled CO2 means 43.016 hours, CO2 holds onto an absorbed IR photons for 0.000005 seconds before it is emitted or passed onto another molecule, Every atmospheric molecule hits another atmospheric molecule every 0.00000000015 seconds, an emitted IR photon from the surface could escape the atmosphere in 0.000016 seconds at the speed of light – yet it actually takes 40 hours to make the journey. In the Sun, the average photon takes 200,000 years to make it out. How could these type of time elements not be very important in understanding these issues.
I asked Ray Ladbury, a pro-warming atmospheric physicist with NASA, the first question once. He guessed 12 hours or so. So, this is a perspective that is not taken into account in the education that an atmospheric physicist gets.
Heh, look, liza, what I found. It gleams and the blue ones are rare.
==============
Yay, got a second verse, now.
I think I’ve never heard so loud
The quiet message in a cloud.
And it would be, what are the odds?
The raucous laughter of the Gods.
=========================
What do you need climate scientists for discussions as an amateur? The obvious solution is to engage with other amateurs who see things differently, who have “a reasonable foundation in science” but are not working climate scientists themselves.
The time of any trained scientist is a precious resource, and full of debates within the scientific literature. They should be free to do that. If you think amateur “skeptics” have a contribution to make to the discussion, then shouldn’t you make use of amateurs who agree with mainstream climatology? Don’t they have something to contribute as well?
Bill @ 67807
Fred Moolton has answered your questions at Judy’s and he and Maxwell have a very productive discussion going, with Maxwell supporting you. Please look for it.
================
Re: Bill Illis (Comment#67807)
I am not sure why you think all this matters so much, but I’m going to take exception to (or at least try to qualify) the following:
Nitrogen and oxygen are very far from resonance for, say, a 15 micron photon. Under those conditions, you may say that there is a “virtual” interaction between the photon and the molecule which lasts for a very short time, of the order of magnitude of the inverse of the frequency difference. This should be about a tenth of a picosecond, much smaller than any of the other timescales you quote, and therefore, for almost all practical purposes, entirely negligible. (The only practical consequence of all these virtual interactions is that the index of refraction of air is 1.0003 instead of exactly 1.)
Given this, it is clear that a 15 micron photon, emitted upwards by the earth, for instance, hardly spends any time at all in the atmosphere. After traveling by about a meter (a few nanoseconds) without interacting substantially with anything, it will be absorbed by a CO2 molecule and reemitted shortly thereafter. There is a 50-50 chance it will be reemitted downwards, where it will be absorbed by the earth again after another few nanoseconds. If it happens to go upwards, instead, it will again have a 50-50 chance to be resent downwards after about another few nanoseconds, and so on. This does not add up to a substantial lifetime.
kim (Comment#67809),
🙂 🙂
Re: toto (Feb 1 14:32) —
In #67763, I noted that a recent roound-up at RC began with
The link at “ever-growing” directed the reader to an RC post from 3 Sept. 2008 that celebrated the publication of the latest Mann et al paleotemperature reconstruction (PNAS, 2008). Gavin introduced it by noting, “with time scientists can actually make progress on problems, they don’t just get stuck in an endless back and forth of the same talking points.” Which was certainly true, albeit not at all in the way he meant.
As far as, “I still fail to see the ‘pwning’†— the unwary will not realize that the cited Mann08 reconstructions have been conceded to be largely invalid, by the standards that Prof. Mann and his advocates have claimed are the correct ones. Conceded… by one of the authors of last Friday’s RC post.
That’s pwnage, in my view.
julio,
“of the order of magnitude of the inverse of the frequency difference.”
I never thought of it that way, but it sure makes sense. The refractive index of a material does look like an inverse function when the wavelength approaches the resonant absorption frequency.
.
I need to think about this a bit more. Resonant absorption and the variable time delay due to the “virtual” interaction really are closely related (and lead to spectral dispersion, Abbe number, etc.).
Thanks for all the comments on the book. I get the idea that it is worst than I thought so I will take a pass on skimming it.
Steve,
Well, as you know, it is pretty hard to tell what a quantum particle is doing when no one is watching. Even when you are watching, the answer you get depends on the question you ask. So I would take this picture with caution, but I do not think it should lead you astray, when used properly…
Re: Bill Illis (Feb 1 18:41),
Oh, it would take a lot longer than 86 hours. Take the surface of the moon. When the moon is on the opposite side of the planet from the sun, the dark side spends about 2 weeks without sunlight exposed to deep space. It only gets down to -233 C and there’s no atmosphere to transfer heat or water with its high heat capacity and the thermal conductivity of the surface is low. Radiated power is α T^4. At -233 C or 40 K, the surface is only radiating 0.07 W/m2. That’s not going to cool very fast.
For the Earth, it would take 19 days for the first 100 meters of the ocean to cool by one degree.
Assuming that all the radiation came from the atmosphere, the initial cooling rate would be ~0.1 degree/hour (255/(10E6*3600)). That rate, of course, would slow as the atmosphere cooled. As long as the atmosphere is warm, the surface area won’t cool very fast either.
You’ve underestimated the heat content of the planet by many orders of magnitude.
You’ve also failed to demonstrate why this is important for anything other than diurnal and seasonal temperature variation.
DeWitt Payne (Comment#67831)
February 1st, 2011 at 10:50 pm
—————————————-
The surface energy level falls from 418 w/m2 at the temperature height of the day to 364 w/m2 at the sunrise morning low temperature. Or from 20C to 10C. It is falling at a reasonably consistent 4.2 w/m2 per hour.
Temperature and energy are logarithmic. The temperature is declining by only 0.7C in the first hour, but reaches 1.2C/hour by the 24th hour and then the decline accelerates even faster.
The rate that energy leaves if the Sun doesn’t come up tomorrow probably also has a logarithmic distribution, slowing down as the energy level falls. But then noone has ever measured it that I am aware of.
If the dark side of the moon reaches -223C within 2 weeks, that is probably a good enough measure although the Earth would probably cool down slower due to the oceans and the atmosphere. But then, many of the gasses in the atmosphere would freeze out and form a nice ice layer on everything in a short enough period of time.
The point is, the greenhouse effect is fleeting. It is a function measured in hours. Every molecule is participating in it and it has a flow up, down, sideways, up and then down again but, on average, it is constantly flowing out to the cold space and it is flowing out fast.
Re: Bill Illis (Feb 2 06:48),
That’s the surface layer. If you turned the sun off, you would get rapid cooling near the surface, but only for a little while. The acceleration doesn’t continue. At some point heat transfer from the bulk of the atmosphere would slow the temperature loss to a crawl. The poles don’t see the sun for six months. The South Pole gets colder than the North Pole because it’s at higher altitude. The minimum recorded temperature at the SP is 190 K. That’s 74.4 W/m2.
Bill Illis,
The assumption of a linear decrease in radiated power doesn’t make physical sense. Take for example the case of the last hour. The initial radiative power is 4.2 W/m2 which corresponds to a temperature of 90 K. If I take a 100 kg block of copper with a surface area of 1 m2 and a thickness of 0.0112 m, the heat capacity at 90 K will be approximately 40% of the 25 C value of ~400 J/kgK or 160 J/kgK. At 4.2 W/m2, the initial cooling rate will then be ~0.01 deg/hour. Obviously, the block will not be at 270 K in one hour.
If I assume that the loss of power is a constant 1%/hour, I still get the same initial cooling rate, but the temperature loss rate doesn’t accelerate, which is more physically realistic. Instead it decays exponentially. For radiated power, the time constant is, of course, 100 hours, for temperature, it’s 400 hours. In reality, it’s unlikely to be even that fast.
After reading more on the problems of the Dragon, I would like to modify my view on it:
It will damage skeptics by the Dragon being used as a prop to equate the Dragon to all skeptics.
Not pretty.
Julio, “Given this, it is clear that a 15 micron photon, emitted upwards by the earth, for instance, hardly spends any time at all in the atmosphere. After traveling by about a meter (a few nanoseconds) without interacting substantially with anything, it will be absorbed by a CO2 molecule and reemitted shortly thereafter. There is a 50-50 chance it will be reemitted downwards, where it will be absorbed by the earth again after another few nanoseconds. If it happens to go upwards, instead, it will again have a 50-50 chance to be resent downwards after about another few nanoseconds, and so on. This does not add up to a substantial lifetime.”
Won’t the energy of that 15 micron photon that is absorbed by CO2 be immediately lost by collisional deactivation to N2 and O2, thus incrementally warming the atmosphere in the vicinity of the absorbing molecule. Thermal emission from CO2 molecules can then occur but at a temperature characteristic of the atmosphere at that location. No?
DeWitt Payne (Comment#67778) February 1st, 2011 at 1:33 pm
Re: ge0050 (Feb 1 13:05),
If you formulate your selective insulator as a partial reflector that reflects high energy photons but transmits low energy photons, you still have an energy leak and the system will cool. The reflected high energy photons will be absorbed, but because of the lack of low energy photons, the total energy being absorbed will be less than the amount emitted.
You can buy light bulbs based on this, the glass envelope is treated with a dichroic coating which reflects IR (low energy) back into the bulb while the visible (high energy) is allowed to to leave. Thus heating up the bulb filament and producing hotter light, efficiency is improved by ~30% iirc.
Re: Phil. (Feb 2 23:08),
They use a low pass coating on the dome of the EPLAB pyrgeometer that transmits 3.5-50 μm and reflects shorter wavelength radiation to discriminate against sunlight.
Re: Owen (Comment#67906)
Processes like this are certainly possible, but, of course, they do not need a photon to trigger them. A cooler CO2 molecule could also be hit by a warmer O2 or N2 and gain the energy necessary to emit a photon, and the result would be a net cooling of the matter system. Presumably both this cooling process and the warming one you describe are going on all the time, at rates determined by the local temperature.
IOW, I do not think (although I could be mistaken) that back radiation plays an important role in warming the atmosphere directly. Within the air column, I see all these processes as balancing each other out in a way that just preserves the lapse rate. Where they make a difference is at the boundaries: the radiation that returns to the earth reduces its cooling rate, and the radiation lost to space at the top of the atmosphere, of course, is the “heat exhaust” for the whole system.
Certainly. Of course, over the typical distances a 15 micron photon will travel in between absorption/reemission events (a few meters at most, IIRC), these temperature variations are more random than systematic, and not large enough to make an appreciable difference, for an individual photon. You would only notice a systematic bias if you collected many photons over a sufficiently large volume.
Julio,
FYI, this description by Raymond Pierrehumbert in Physics Today (see http://climateclash.com/2011/01/15/g6-infrared-radiation-and-planetary-temperature/):
“An IR photon absorbed by a molecule knocks the molecule into a higher-energy quantum state. Those states have very long lifetimes, characterized by the spectroscopically measurable Einstein A coefficient. For example, for the CO2 transitions that are most significant in the thermal IR, the lifetimes tend to range from a few milliseconds to a few tenths of a second. In contrast, the typical time between collisions for, say, a nitrogen-dominated atmosphere at a pressure of 104 Pa and temperature of 250 K is well under 10−7 s. Therefore, the energy of the photon will almost always be assimilated by collisions into the general energy pool of the matter and establish a new Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution at a slightly higher temperature. That is how radiation heats matter in the LTE limit.”
What’s this commenting too fast thing. I know it took me longer than two minutes to compose my last post, which just got eaten. Am I going to have to copy everything before posting?
I’ll try again.
I’ve decided that pins in the eyes was not an adequate description of the pain of reading Claes Johnson. Here’s a literary example.
Horror fantasy writers have been creating fictional books which will drive readers mad or worse since at least H.P.Lovecraft’s Necronomicon. A recent example is P.C.Hodgell’s Book Bound in Pale Leather. From her novel God Stalk, here is a description of the effect that reading it had on one character:
Some things shouldn’t be read by anyone.
The title of the book is appropriate however, as the global warming acolytes have indeed become grand dragons of the environmental movement.
Re: Owen (Comment#67959)
Thanks. That paper has been on my “to read” list for a while. I do not think it necessarily contradicts what I said earlier, though. The next paragraph goes on to explain the cooling mechanism I discussed earlier, and the rest of that section discusses the balance between the two sorts of processes that I mentioned one would expect to find in steady state. Since that balance depends on the local temperature (through the function B(v,T) in the article), and T is fixed by the surface temperature and the lapse rate, any direct heating of the atmosphere by upwelling (or downwelling!) IR has to be locally compensated by a cooling emission of IR from that same packet of air.
IOW, inside the air column all the various emission and absorption processes merely serve to maintain the local thermodynamic equilibrium, that is, the lapse rate. That equilibrium could in principle be established by collisions alone (conduction and convection). Radiation helps but is not essential.
The way I see it, the heating effect of IR absorption is indirect; basically, the atmosphere eventually sends back to the earth all the 15 micron photons that it tries to send out, and so it effectively closes that spectral window. This results in a higher equilibrium temperature for the earth, and thus, ultimately, for everything else.
Re: Julio (Feb 3 15:04),
I wouldn’t say closed completely. While the surface does see about the same flux of 15 μm photons as it emits, space also sees 15μm photons from the atmosphere. It’s just not as many as the surface emits. That deficit has to be made up by more emission at other wavelengths.
Re: DeWitt Payne (Comment#67978)
That’s true, of course. But then the question is where does that heat come from. According to the old Kiehl and Trenberth picture (http://miskolczi.webs.com/Kiehl-Trenberth-1997-color.JPG), only a little bit of it comes from upwelling IR; some comes from direct absorption of solar IR, and some from convection and evaporation. So I would say that the IR radiation from the top of the atmosphere amounts to an additional cooling channel for the surface, which, from the surface’s perspective, is primarily a nonradiative one.
Julio (Comment#67972) February 3rd, 2011 at 3:04 pm
In principle, an equilibrium (a stably stratified atmosphere) could be established without radiative effects. The point is that such an equilibrium would not be the one which we observe.
In any case, the paragraph quoted by owen at Comment#67959 does show that my “random walk” model of what may happen to a 15 micron photon emitted upwards from the earth (at Comment#67818) was not correct. The absorption of a photon by a CO2 molecule in some layer of the atmosphere does not, in general, directly cause the emission of another photon by the same or another molecule in the same layer, so there is no reason to think of the emitted photons as “re-emitted”, in general…
it might be, if your link said what you claim it says . . . instead you link to yourself doing your usual whine about the Tiljander proxies. Which, after many months and many thousands of words, you have yet to make any substansive case against, beyond the cautions Mann himself offered in the paper. Which is no doubt why people are so sick of your rhetorical diarrhea on the subject that you resort to what can charitably be called psuedoscientist rickrolling, or, less delicately, lying.
Speaking of lying, AMac has lied by falsely attributing statements to Gavin Schmidt that bear no relationship to what he said. His own awareness of this dishonesty is suggested by his failure to link to the comment he “paraphrases.” What was actually said:
Gavin does not “concede” much of anything here, certainly he does not “concede” that the reconstructions are “largely invalid.” That’s just a flat-out lie.
Way to take the high road as usual Robert. I’m sure you’ll win many friends and influence many people.
(In Robert’s twisted little universe, if you disagree with his interpretation, you’re just a liar apparently.)
Carrick,
.
The weird thing about the Tiljander lake varve proxies is that they are so obviously wrong as used by Mann et al. The other group that used them ‘upside down’ immediately issued a correction…. and nobody now pesters after them. I have never understood why Mann et all simply could not have said: “these are obviously not not valid temperature proxies, so we have redone our reconstruction without them”; end of discussion. The weaseling about, the never really admitting an error, is what is weird. I mean, come on, it was a stupid error, and one that had only a modest impact on their analysis.
Robert says (#68028 (Feb 4 17:13),
What statements do you think I have falsely attributed to Gavin?
Robert calls me “dishonest” for paraphrasing Gavin’s response to pjclarke in the comments at RealClimate (#525, 31 Jul 2010 @ 5:36 AM). That is the source of the text Robert blockquoted in his #68028.
I did not paraphrase those remarks of Gavin’s. I am puzzled that he believes otherwise.
It’s easy to find the text I was referring to in Comment #67821, by following the provided link to Comment #64987 in another Blackboard thread. There, I linked and correctly quoted Gavin’s responses at RealClimate to Judith Curry (#414, 28 Jul 2010 @ 11:29 AM), and to Nicholas Nierenberg (#529, 31 Jul 2010 @ 10:35 AM).
I hope that helps.
“I have never understood why Mann et all simply could not have said: “these are obviously not not valid temperature proxies, so we have redone our reconstruction without themâ€; end of discussion. The weaseling about, the never really admitting an error, is what is weird.”
Would not this reaction by Mann, and perhaps other coauthors, but particularly Mann, have much to do with what I think even Mann is aware of and that is the dual roles he attempts to play as scientist and advocate. The scientist would surely want to get out ahead of any criticism make corrections for the sake of the science and as a good scientist, while the advocate has to think in terms of the public relations hit he might take. If you read closely what Mann – or at least his authored papers say – about the progression of events from the first Mann HS reconstruction up through Mann et al. (2008), he is always indicating that he can show improvements in the methods but that the results obtained from the old methods still very much hold. I say Mann (2008) has problems, but take away the instrumental record tacked onto the end of the reconstruction and the HS shape has surely faded a lot.
I also wonder what effect the constant hammering of SteveM’s and others analyses have had on Mann et al, the advocates, in being so stubborn in even having an inkling of making an error or using a sub optimum method.
Another prime example of that stubborn reaction has to be Eric Steig’s claiming that RyanO’s Antarctic paper differed little in results with his earlier paper. Although some of that stubbornness might also stem more from RyanO and his coauthors not being climate scientists.
Kenneth Fritsch,
.
You may be right abut the influence of advocacy. A few Weeks back (in the middle of a long thread) Micheal Tobis essentially stated that advocacy by scientists restricts some of the normal options/actions they would otherwise have, since being an advocate they must consider more than just science.
.
Still, I remain puzzled. Is it not illogical to dig your heels in over a small issue like the Tiljander varve proxies? Seems to me 100% counterproductive, and a terrible distraction. IMO, there is more to be gained in terms of credibility by being forthright and admitting small errors than to seem more than a bit crazed by refusing to admit obvious mistakes.
Kennith Fritsch,
What would have been the right comment by Eric Steig?
” O’Donnell et al helped advance the science by pointing out that more PC’s should have been included in the Steig et al reconstruction, in order to preserve more of the spacial information. There remains considerable uncertainty in the details of the reconstruction, no matter what choices are made, mainly because the data is very sparse. I am not sure that all of O’Donnell et al’s choices are optimal, and I think some other alternatives might give more robust results. In any case, further study may help to clarify regional temperature trends in the Antarctic, especially in West Antarctica outside of the Peninsula region.”
.
What is the exactly wrong comment by Eric Steig?
What he actually posted on Real Climate.
SteveF (Comment#68032) February 4th, 2011 at 6:32 pm
A negative correlation is still a correlation, a statisical process can quite easily account for either.
Bugs, maybe you’ve stumbled onto the problem here.
Sorta like warming causes cooling.
bugs:
It was still wrong to flip the sign in this case. We know on physical grounds what the correlation between the varves should be. You keep missing that.
You can’t just wave a magic wand of statistic and make it better. And using correlations to establish causality (as Mann is trying to do) is a an abuse of statistics, period.
If you want to use correlation to pick out proxies to study and model, that’s fine. Just using correlation is no substitute for the hard work of establishing causality and building a physical model relating the proxy to temperature, it’s just what lazy people do.
Just because it correlates during the training period tells you nothing about whether there is an underlying causal relationship, especially when you have an arbitrarily large number of proxies to choose from.
Hah, Robert claims Gavin concedes nothing, then quotes him conceding everything: “Since the no-dendro CPS version only validates to 1500 AD…”
==================
Hi bugs,
To my mind there are three issues involved here.
First is the question of whether the varves were contaminated during the period of overlap with the instrumental record. If they were as, stated by Tiljander, then any observed correlation would be suspect as the varves might be responding to something other than temperature. No doubt there is room for a genuine difference of opinion about this but surely it is incumbent on Mann to make his case for a competing interpretation.
Secondly, there is the matter of the sign of the correlation. Mann did not blindly accept the correlations found but checked that they were consistent with those expected for the particular proxy type. For reasons that I have not seen explained, these particular proxies were checked against a sign that was the opposite to the sign to that Tiljander had assigned. Had the signs of the suspect correlations been checked against the the sign expected by Tiljander they would have been rejected by the Mann methodology.
The third point is that the Tiljander varves were a crucial part of the claims for the validation of the no dendro reconstruction further back than 1500AD.
I do not think any of these are trivial matters. Until the question of contamination is properly explained and the reason why the suspect correlation signs were not checked against those given by Tiljander is answered I will continue to think the use of these varves was an error.
Re: bugs (Feb 4 21:28),
You continue to fail to grasp that the apparent correlation to temperature changes sign between the calibration period and the reconstruction period for the Tiljander proxies. That’s because during the calibration period, the varve thickness variation isn’t being caused by variation in temperature but by things like construction and agriculture. So, in fact, by using the sign of the correlation from the reconstruction period for the entire record Mann did use them upside down during the reconstruction compared to other proxies. The obvious result was a reduction of variation during the reconstruction.
bugs (Comment#68039) ,
“A negative correlation is still a correlation, a statistical process can quite easily account for either.”
Please try to understand what DeWitt (and others) are trying to explain to you. If what DeWitt explained above is not clear, then I hope you will ask for clarification.
.
From a purely technical perspective, the Tiljander varves have obvious cause/effect problems, independent of the more general issues with Mann’s “search for correlations” methodology that Carrick critiques above. You have been saying the same incorrect things about the Tiljander varves for a very long time; you could do yourself (and everyone else) a favor by trying to learn the basic technical issues with the Tiljander varves well enough to stop saying things that only demonstrate how little you know about this.
.
When you reach that point, you can work on understanding the separate and more important issue of true causation versus random correlation, and the inherent “loss of variance” expected for the proxy weighting methodology used in Mann98 and several other correlation based reconstruction efforts.
SteveF, I’ll give you the following:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/antarctic-trends-graphics-and-discussion/
“[Response: Yes. I never said otherwise. The point very simply is that Antarctica is not cooling, no matter how much some people try to make it so.-eric]
That answer seems a bit over simplified in my eyes. Not statistically significant cooling does not imply statistically significant warming. Better and more in line with a disinterested scientist (not an advocate) might be something like if we use thus and thus data and methods we see statistically significant warming for 1957-2006, but if one comes forward approximately a decade we see no significant warming. Then the disinterested scientist would point to the O’Donnell data and note that others have found the warming by method A to be 0.06 +/-0.08 and by method B to be 0.04 +/-0.06 which shows that there has been no statistically significant warming in the Antarctica continent over the period 1957-2006. At that point, if he disagreed with the O’Donnell results, he could show where they went wrong – and would not merely continue to say that the Antarctica has warmed.”
Steig made claims in S(09) that the Antarctica was warming as a whole and that West Antarctica was warming as fast as the Peninsula. I have not bothered looking up his exact comments, but he and his defenders were certainly stating that the conclusion of O(10) did not refute any of the conclusions of S (09). O(10) went to great lengths to show the statistical tests for any statistically significant trends in the Antarctica as a whole and the three regions.
I do not appreciate Steig and his defenders playing at the margins with carefully couched comments attempting to gloss over any differences in results from the two papers.
S(09) totally had it wrong about the lack of Peninsula warming, but Steig has never addressed that that warming got methodologically transferred to West Antarctica. In S(09 the introduction points to their new and different findings that show this heretofore yet to be discovered warming in the West Antarctica and the lesser warming found in the Peninsula. The authors provided deniability by noting late in the paper that the Peninsula variations might be underestimated due to the methodology used, but that was OK because the warming of the Peninsula was well measured instrumentally.
I find these side steps to full disclosure to be disingenuous and not something to be ignored or smoothed over by pointing to carefully worded statements that in fact say very little about the methodologies or the results.
The advocate will tend to be vague while the true scientist will get to point and actually relish the differences.
PS: Let us not forget the very weak rationale that Steig used for retaining only 3 PCs. That seems to get lost in the discussion of differences between S(09) and O(10). To be brutally frank about what apparently occurred is that retention of 3 PCs gave the hoped for result and the scientist’s inclination to look further into this matter was shut off. S(09) knew that the Peninsula trends were probably wrong by way of the methodologies and (arbitrary?) selections made.
From Eric Steig at RC here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/02/west-antarctica-still-warming-2/
“In summary, even if their results are taken at face value, O’Donnell et al. 2010 doesn’t change any of the conclusions reached in Steig et al. In West Antarctica where there is disagreement, Steig et al, 2009 is in better agreement with independent data, and O’Donnell et al.’s results appear to be adversely affected by using procedures known to underestimate trends. Thus while their results may represent an improved estimate for the trends in data rich regions — East Antarctica and the Peninsula — it is virtually certain that they are an underestimate for West Antarctica. This probably means going back to the drawing board to write up another paper, taking into account those suggestions of O’Donnell et al. that are valid, but hopefully avoiding their mistakes.”
From TAV, here:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/dot-earth-on-o10/#more-11126
“I do wonder what it means when a paper with half the calculated warming trend agrees with another but I’m just an engineer. The column marked S09 below is Steig’s result for comparison to the two primary methods demonstrated in O10. You can see the “all of West Antarctica†comment is interesting when the EW version came up with statistically insignificant trends. RLS though is probably more correct but compared to S09′s very high trend of 0.2C/decade or 2C per century it’s quite a bit lower. What it means though is that we can barely tell if any real warming happened at all vs the certainty of S09′s 0.2 +/- 0.09.”
Region RLS C/Dec E-W C/Dec S09 C/Dec
Continent 0.06 ± 0.08 0.04 ± 0.06 0.12 ± 0.09
East Antarctica 0.03 ± 0.09 0.02 ± 0.07 0.10 ± 0.10
West Antarctica0.10 ± 0.09 0.06 ± 0.07 0.20 ± 0.09
Peninsula 0.35 ± 0.11 0.32 ± 0.09 0.13 ± 0.05
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the fact that the cover of this ‘book’ would lead one to think it was the latest in the Harry Potter series. That in itself, along with the breathless title, “Slaying the Sky Dragon” should have been enough to alert any serious investigator that this tome was definitely not to be taken seriously.
just sayin’