APS and the Global Warming Scam

[merjet]

7 hours ago, william.scherk said:

After your read and initial consideration, Merlin, what are your thoughts?

I have not delved very deeply into the issue. I believe it is an extremely complicated one. I don’t believe I know enough about it to have a well- informed scientific opinion about it. And I’ll contrast that with the view of many other people who have an opinion that’s less scientific than mine, yet are very convinced their opinion is correct and are willing to assent to coercing others justified by their questionable opinion.

One perspective I have about it is a mathematical one. Any claim to catastrophic consequences decades into the future must be based on some mathematical model that is extrapolated from past years. A huge question is how many past years? Different starting points can yield wildly different extrapolated results. Also, analysis is often done with different inputs to test the sensitivity of the future consequences, with final judgment based on some blend of the different consequences.

There is also chaos theory, which is sometimes introduced in climate science dialogues or arguments. A prominent characteristic of chaotic systems is their sensitivity to initial conditions. That’s another way of saying that extrapolation is a risky undertaking.

Lastly, related to Anderson’s points about funding, I add the following.

Client: What is the answer?

Consultant: What do you want it to be?  

 

7 hours ago, william.scherk said:

So, yeah a political term or analogy to a kind of will, willful decision-making. Not in itself a bad thing to use now and again. Do we have a consensus?  Jury Foreman: I cain't say we do ...

I believe the question in the title of Anderson’s post pertains to the alarmists' claim that there is a scientific consensus.

[BaalChatzaf]

9 hours ago, william.scherk said:

I'd like to know who he argues with, or rather, who he has last been arguing with, or even better, where he has had an online "conversation" with peers (other physicists and critics).

I got tired of his political declamations in the blog post, and was disappointed there were no references in depth. I read at  a number of science-oriented climate blogs on both 'sides,' and on a few sites on the other side of the issue from Anderson,  'challenges to the orthodoxy' are given a close, physical look -- either when they appear in journals or when they are widely read and cited. I don't know the readership at his blog, and I don't know what online debates he might follow. He doesn't name his opponents, so to speak.

I'll ask him if he has participated in any of that kind of discussion (ie, that like at And Then There's Physics). There are a handful of folks who give thorough critical attention in a fairly civil and constructive manner.  If he isn't prickly, he will find some critical comment welcome. 

After your read and initial consideration, Merlin, what are your thoughts?

What does consensus mean?  (I don't generally appeal to consensus, but to authorities whom I have come to trust in fields beyond my ken)

I always associated consensus with decision-making. Is there a consensus in the room. Not a majority/minority, but a general agreement to action x or policy f. If there is consensus, it is usually the result of a deadline and a long preceding period of discussion. So, I think the science communicators or propagandists used consensus beyond its metaphor as broad agreement -- as a tool of persuasion.  It wasn't effective especially since they tried to quantize it. It for me smacked a bit of humanistic overreach.  A teaching moment, or a ploy to convince via analogy. 

But, strip the word of its propaganda value in what we might call "Climate Wars" ... it isn't in itself a dirty word or concept.

At the very least it means agreement, and at a stretch proportion of agreement.  A consensus of scholars, a consensus of supreme court justices, a consensus of the Constitutional Assembly. Canada's double failure to amend our constitution during the Mulroney years showed the lack of consensus.

So, yeah a political term or analogy to a kind of will, willful decision-making. Not in itself a bad thing to use now and again. Do we have a consensus?  Jury Foreman: I cain't say we do ...

Stretching ... It can also mean the overlap between what say climate scientist Judith Curry says is the current state of knowledge in sub-issue X and what corresponding climate scientist Isaac Held says it is -- and similarly on the broad strokes of climatology. Overlapping check marks for the work of Fourier, Tyndall, Arrhenius, subsequent validations and corrections, and so on. Check marks against a suite of scientific work that followed, subsequent validations and corrections. Overwhelming overlapping check marks for a bulk of the work up until article X,  at some point divergence ...

And I think that if we are able to section out the spectrum of agreement, the gradations from 'Warmer' to 'Lukewarmer' to 'Skeptic,' then we can see -- if only in abstract -- that there is a body of knowledge built on physics, agreed-upon climate physics, that those closer to the Warmer/Lukewarmer position can both consider more or less solid.  This is where the 'sides' meet. 

The devil is in the details of the disagreements at that edge, then. I mean, for me, that is the interesting edge, where the most central remaining issues are respectfully disputed by folks who know each other's shit backwards and forwards. That is why I found the transcription of the APS meeting of minds on that edge so interesting.  They worked each other hard, to understand the other, to explain to the other. They may diverge today (eg The Uncertainty Monster) but they are still in the game with each other, at least in the field. 

Bob, can you give Anderson some consideration? -- he has seemingly disproved the whole idea that CO2 can possibly do what lukewarmers say it does. Your reward is more automated railway action. The headways are tight at the central stations: every 75 seconds a train whooshes in. 

Here's two sections from the Anderson article.

 

Anderson is dead on right about the neo-Lysenko pall that has  fallen upon the issue.  If you look at collections of dissent statements you will find the academics  who contribute  are almost all to a person,  emeritus  (i.e. retired).  Once they are out from under academic tyranny they can speak or write more freely.

As to "climate science"  climate studies are -derivative-.  The flow out of  1. Thermodynamics first and foremost  and 2.  atomic and radiation physics.  The main source of energy for our planet is the Sun.  So all sciences pertaining to the Sun as a radiating body  flow into climate studies. Of particular importance are solar magentics.  The magnetic  field generation controls sunspots which are closely related to the energy output of the Sun.  The basic fact about the Sun as far as its radiation is concerned  is that the Sun is a black-body with surface temperature about 6000 K.  Don't let the black in black-body confuse  you. A black body is a physical body that absorbs all radiation that falls on it  and re-emits it so that all energy received is energy re-emitted.  The major fact about black bodies is the emit radiation with intensity proportional to the 4 th power of their temperature  (Stephan-Boltzmann Law).  What that says is a body that absorbs radiant energy cannot get infinitely hot.  The higher its temperature the faster it radiate energy outward so that its total energy remains more or less constant.  

Once again: there is NO  climate science as a basic science. It is totally derivative from other fields of physics.

The Earth is an very complicated thermodynamic system.  The air and sea redistribute the energy that falls from the Sun primarily onto the equatorial portions of the earth.  Weather is a sense is the cooling of the equatorial regions; i.e. heat is redistributed from the tropic north and south toward the polar regions. This motion is complicated by the fact that  the earth rotates so the the Coriolis Force must be reckoned.   In addition  the waters of the ocean have a very large heat capacity,  so that the seas sop up a great deal of the energy delivered by the Sun.  That is why the periodic ocean processes like El Ninyo and La Ninya affect weather so much.

I speak to  you as a lukewarmer.  Yes, CO2 and CH4  do retard the re-radiation of energy received from the sun.  They act somewhat like a blanket. The blanket you put over your body on a cold night does not create energy.  It retards the radiation of energy from you body because (being warmblooded) you generate lots of heat internally which is radiated out.  The air trapped in your blanket slows the outward transport of energy,  but because of the Stephan Boltzmann law we know that heat cannot build up infinitely. The hotter (higher temperature) the planet gets the faster it will radiate out the energy as a heat transfer to the cold environs of outer space which as a black body temperature of 2.3 K.  

I find that the notion that the outrageously complicated  thermodynamic behavior of our planets (complicated because of the interactions of land, sea and air) can be reduced to just one number --   the CO2 atmospheric concentration is patently absurd.

In our deep past the CO2 concentration has been as high as 5000 ppm (parts per million) and life on earth has flourished. 

The alarmists  some of who are scientific ignoramuses  like Al Gore (who "invented" the internet) are full of shit.  No, Battery Park in Manhattan will not be under ten feet of water at low tide any time this century or even the next. 

Unfortunately the climatarati   have not properly modeled cloud formation.  Clouds are the most potent regulator of  how much energy from the Sun makes it to the ground.  They are the Venetian Blinds of the planet.  If the Earth were completely clouded over, the albido (reflectance) would go sky high (literally) and much of the energy of the Sun would not even reach the ground.  The is evidence that some 600,000,000 years ago the oceans of the earth froze solid. This is the "snowball Earth"  theory. We have temperatures that permit complex plants to flourish precisely because of the "greenhouse gasses".  Without CO2 not only would plants be unable to live (CO2 is the primary food of plants along with sunlight)  but the Earth would be below the freezing point of water.  In a word, we need some CO2 in the atmosphere to survive. 

Lukewarm me  believes that the Earth will not turn into Venus (tipping point) any time soon,  but we should be cautious about how much CO2 we add to the atmosphere. CO2 does slow the cooling of the earth down and too much CO2 in the atmosphere might trigger the release of more CH4 (methane) which is even a more potent greenhouse gas.  CO2 does require looking after and we should not overload our atmosphere with too much.  It were well if we start generating electricity without the CO2 overload which we can do.  Use nuclear fission to generate the heat that boils water, makes steam which turns the turbines which generate the electrical power we need. 

I totally disagree with the alarmists,  not in the thermodynamic basics, but in the speed and extent of the effects of CO2.  If we stopped adding CO2 to the atmosphere tomorrow the earth would probably continue to warm a bit  for the next hundred  years (maybe more)  and eventually we will have a return of the ice age.  Strictly speaking we are in an interglacial period of the last ice age.  An ice age exists when there is permanent ice at the poles all year around.  In a word we never -left- the last ice age, but we have enjoyed a 15,000 year interglacial period with mostly moderate climate.  It is during this interglacial that the culture and science of mankind has flourished.   Living just one step ahead of freezing to death is not conducive to great advances in civilization....

[william.scherk]

consensus as broad agreement -- as a tool of persuasion -- humanistic overreach -- propaganda -- science communication -- alarmism -- catastrophism -- model 'skill' and predictive ability -- greenhouse theory 'refutations'

4 hours ago, merjet said:

11 hours ago, william.scherk said:

After your read and initial consideration, Merlin, what are your thoughts?

I have not delved very deeply into the issue. I believe it is an extremely complicated one. 

You wrote that Anderson's posting deserved our consideration, so I wondered what resulted from your consideration -- why you recommended it.  I recommend the website version of Spencer Weart's The Discovery of Global Warming because it gives history -- because it goes back in time to foundational work on what we now call the GHE (Greenhouse Effect). 

On my first go at Anderson's article, I realized that he was denying any but negligible GHE in the Earth's atmosphere. For me that put him in that part of the spectrum called "dragon slayers" -- those who claim to have disproved or refuted or falsified some central physics at issue. (That nomenclature comes from the book "Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory.")

I've noted the three 'warm' physicists and three 'lukewarm' physicists at the APS expert workshop, Richard Lindzen, Judith Curry, William Collins, Ben Santer, John Christy and Isaac Held. None of them dispute the 'foundational' GHE. That is not where their disagreements lie.

Back to recommending Anderson and his refutation of the GHE. Anderson is one of the authors of the Sky Dragon book, and a founding member of Principia Scientific International.

Curry, while just over the edge into skeptic from a lukewarm opinion, is impatient with the dragon slayers of PSI.  Here is what she had to say following a guest post "Letter to the dragon slayers."

Quote

JC comment.  Grant was unaware of the previous skydragon threads at Climate Etc.  The skydragons continue to expect me to debate them, their preferred forum is a radio debate.  While I will never shut the door on skeptical challenges to the science and encourage contributions from those from different areas of expertise, this group beggars belief.   I will continue to (barely) follow Claes Johnson’s work to see if he is able to come with anything interesting or publishable.  IMO, this group has damaged the credibility of skepticism about climate change and provides a convenient target when people want to refer to “deniers” and crackpots.  So thank you Grant Petty for your engagement and independent assessment of this group.

This is just to point out that there is a fringe of ultra-skeptical opinion that does not readily accept a GHE -- and that major climate skeptic sites (starting with Watts Up With That) have set aside the supposed refutations as unsound, invalid, and in some cases ridiculous. 

Back to persuasion, propaganda, metaphor and agreement.  The edge of disagreement is over 'sensitivity' and 'uncertainty' -- I mean where I personally find interesting disputes. The dragon-slaying Death of CO2 Warming Theory gents are on a different plane of understanding and mostly irrelevant to these disputes -- the real disputes as I see them. Some skeptical opinion (who do reject alarmism, IPCC shenanigans, leaky models, unjustified policy recommendations, 'consensus science') describe the Anderson wing of GHE-denying authors as inimical to an anti-AGWAlarmism agenda -- "they give alarmists a tool to bash skeptics"**)

I'll try to entice my few physicist/scientist/climatologist online acquaintances to give consideration to the Anderson article.

1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Bob, can you give Anderson some consideration? -- he has seemingly disproved the whole idea that CO2 can possibly do what lukewarmers say it does.

I speak to  you as a lukewarmer.  Yes, CO2 and CH4  do retard the re-radiation of energy received from the sun.  They act somewhat like a blanket. 

Yeahbut. Anderson says that is all wrong. And he has equations!  He says any additional CO2 emissions will cool the earth. "As I discussed in Do IR-Absorbing Gases Warm or Cool the Earth’s Surface? the effect of carbon dioxide and methane is a net cooling effect, not a warming effect." 

...............................

** from the Amazon link to the "Skydragon book," from the top and bottom of the most recommended reader review:

Quote

Summary

This is a book that purports to discredit the hypothesis of man-made global warming due to carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels. However, it contains much of what I would term "crackpot science" and so the book cannot be taken seriously. Worse than that, it is seriously misleading if used as a source of scientific information. Finally, it enables CAGW believers to say "Deniers are talking nonsense as usual".
[...]

Conclusion

I've taken just two snippets from two chapters. It's too bad that the book is filled with scientific nonsense like this, as there is plenty of global warming pseudo-science that needs to be debunked.

But you cannot debunk global warming pseudo-science with gobbledegook science. Worse, it enables The Faithful to say "There you are, you see? Deniers talk nonsense".

[BaalChatzaf]

33 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

 

[BaalChatzaf]

15 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Then Anderson is wrong on that point.  The retardation of radiation produced by CO2 was shown by John Tyndall in the late 19th century.  CO2 does absorb radiation in the IR frequency range.  

Why don't you read this:  http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/ees/climate/lectures/radiation/ 

which is a nice little outline of  the radiation retarding  properties of CO2 and other gases (H2O - vapor, CH4) 

Very little math is required.  CO2 does not trap heat permanently.  It slows down the rate at which heat is given up to space. 

 

You will also need these figures: 

If the CO2 and CH4 were absent from our atmosphere  the average temperature of Earth would be about 33 deg  Celsius cooler.  Well below the freezing point of water.  

This is basic thermodynamics and radiation physics we are talking about. 

The real flaw of the IPCC sponsored models is that they do not deal properly with cloud formation,  ocean temperature cycles  and negative climatic feedbacks. For purely ideological reasons they have fiddle their models to deal only with CO2 concentrations and they ignore the possibility of negative feedbacks which would mitigate the warming effect of the "greenhouse"  gases.  

And this diagram which shows the primary energy input from the sun.

[Charles R. Anderson]

The post on my blog to which Merlin referred offers a number of physics arguments undercutting some of the more common theories offered for substantial to catastrophic warming effects of infra-red active gases on the Earth's surface temperature.  Many of those arguments are completely laid out in this post and are hence available for anyone's reasoned evaluation.  No one here has yet made such comments.  There have been a number of comments that my viewpoint is not a consensus viewpoint, which is indeed the case.  Nonetheless, there are many scientists who agree with me on many major criticisms of the UN IPCC viewpoint.  Some of those who so agree have made their arguments public and some radiation experts have only been willing to tell me privately that they agree with me.  

In the end, I leave it to the reader of the referred to post or to another longer post on the basic physics to evaluate my arguments.  I do not like the idea of convincing people as an authority despite my using radiation physics daily in my laboratory to characterize materials and to solve problems in the utilization of materials.  I tend to use few links, because their use might well just be cherry-picking opinions that suit me.  I want my intelligent and diligent readers to use the massive searching power of the internet to check out the issues that they believe should be checked themselves.  You should not accept my arguments until you understand them fully.  You also should not use the force of government to impose restrictions on the exercise of individual freedom to save the planet from catastrophic man-made global warming when you do not understand the physics that purports to be the basis of that alarm.  I put a heavy intellectual burden on those who would prevent the exercise of individual rights with the use of force.

I made it very clear that what does not exist is a scientific consensus.  One may argue plausibly for a limited political consensus, but not for a scientific consensus.  One may say that most scientists believe that CO2 warms the Earth, but you cannot say that most scientists understand the basic physics that causes such a warming and are in agreement about what that physics is.  The former case is a political consensus, while the latter is a scientific consensus.  Of course, even a scientific consensus can be wrong.  As Albert Einstein once said about the book "One Hundred Authors Against Einstein": “Why one hundred? If I were wrong, one would be enough.”  I am one of a few at least who provide rational reasons for the fundamental error of the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis.

In December 2010, I submitted an article to a group putting together a book called Slaying the Sky Dragon.  In doing so, I was not endorsing all of the other articles in that book.  Indeed, I had not read them and was busy at the time moving my laboratory into a larger and improved facility.  Because of my article, when PSI was set up, I was listed as a founding member of PSI, though I really had nothing to do with setting the group up.  A few of my blog posts have been re-posted there since it was set up.  Some of the people who have posted there have provided me with good information and have helped to expand my knowledge of the complex field of climate science, however, there are also things published there that I do not agree with.  If I submit an opinion piece to the Washington Post, am I saddled with endorsing all or most of what the Washington Post publishes?  Now there have been cases in which some of the "Dragon Slayers" have been excessively derisive of lukewarmers who I do not think deserved such treatment, but there are also many cases in which some lukewarmers and many alarmists have been very inclined to call those who do not agree with them nasty names.  I have always been respectful in my interactions with such people as Judith Curry, Richard Lindzen, and Roy Spencer.  However, I have no use for James Hansen, Gavin Schmidt, or Michael Mann.

The effect of CO2 is very small.  It does very slightly reduce the power emitted through the atmospheric window, which is a warming effect.  On the other hand, it slightly increases the absorption of solar insolation in the atmosphere before it can reach the surface, which is a cooling effect.  Because the mean free path length for radiation emitted from the surface into the air is very short and it remains very short throughout the lower troposphere, and because the gas molecule collision rate is very high in the lower troposphere, almost all of the radiant energy that either water vapor or CO2 can absorb is converted into kinetic energy in non-radiating nitrogen, oxygen, and argon gases.  That energy is transported by convection which is slow.  To the degree that a small fraction of the energy in a CO2 or water molecule is emitted as infra-red, that effect transports energy instead at the speed of light over a short distance, which is a cooling effect.  Also, adding water vapor or carbon dioxide to rising thermal currents increases the heat they carry upward due to their high heat capacity compared to nitrogen, oxygen, and argon gases.  These last two effects are cooling effects.  There is a great deal of data documenting the cooling effect of water vapor in these ways.  All of these effects are small and not one of them can produce catastrophic results.  The sum of the effects are also small and there is some very reasonable question as to whether the sum is very slightly warming or very slightly cooling.  I have been leaning more and more toward a very slight cooling effect.

One of the mistakes that is very clear is the idea that infra-red active (so-called greenhouse) gases are responsible for about a 33K warming of the surface of the Earth.  This is the so-called greenhouse effect and it is nonsense, as the article Merlin referred to shows.  The Earth's gravitational field provides about 29K of the temperature difference between the Earth's surface and the effective temperature providing the net radiative power of the Earth into space.  The direct solar insolation incident upon and absorbed by the Earth's surface and all other effects only need to provide another 4K of warming.  The difference between scaling "greenhouse gas" effects to 33K and to some fraction of 4K is huge.  Since there are other minor warming mechanisms, the effect of all infra-red active gases may well be negative or may be close enough to zero that the effect of CO2 may never prove measurable.

 

[BaalChatzaf]

9 minutes ago, Charles R. Anderson said:

The post on my blog to which Merlin referred offers a number of physics arguments undercutting some of the more common theories offered for substantial to catastrophic warming effects of infra-red active gases on the Earth's surface temperature.  Many of those arguments are completely laid out in this post and are hence available for anyone's reasoned evaluation.  No one here has yet made such comments.  There have been a number of comments that my viewpoint is not a consensus viewpoint, which is indeed the case.  Nonetheless, there are many scientists who agree with me on many major criticisms of the UN IPCC viewpoint.  Some of those who so agree have made their arguments public and some radiation experts have only been willing to tell me privately that they agree with me.  

In the end, I leave it to the reader of the referred to post or to another longer post on the basic physics to evaluate my arguments.  I do not like the idea of convincing people as an authority despite my using radiation physics daily in my laboratory to characterize materials and to solve problems in the utilization of materials.  I tend to use few links, because their use might well just be cherry-picking opinions that suit me.  I want my intelligent and diligent readers to use the massive searching power of the internet to check out the issues that they believe should be checked themselves.  You should not accept my arguments until you understand them fully.  You also should not use the force of government to impose restrictions on the exercise of individual freedom to save the planet from catastrophic man-made global warming when you do not understand the physics that purports to be the basis of that alarm.  I put a heavy intellectual burden on those who would prevent the exercise of individual rights with the use of force.

I made it very clear that what does not exist is a scientific consensus.  One may argue plausibly for a limited political consensus, but not for a scientific consensus.  One may say that most scientists believe that CO2 warms the Earth, but you cannot say that most scientists understand the basic physics that causes such a warming and are in agreement about what that physics is.  The former case is a political consensus, while the latter is a scientific consensus.  Of course, even a scientific consensus can be wrong.  As Albert Einstein once said about the book "One Hundred Authors Against Einstein": “Why one hundred? If I were wrong, one would be enough.”  I am one of a few at least who provide rational reasons for the fundamental error of the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis.

In December 2010, I submitted an article to a group putting together a book called Slaying the Sky Dragon.  In doing so, I was not endorsing all of the other articles in that book.  Indeed, I had not read them and was busy at the time moving my laboratory into a larger and improved facility.  Because of my article, when PSI was set up, I was listed as a founding member of PSI, though I really had nothing to do with setting the group up.  A few of my blog posts have been re-posted there since it was set up.  Some of the people who have posted there have provided me with good information and have helped to expand my knowledge of the complex field of climate science, however, there are also things published there that I do not agree with.  If I submit an opinion piece to the Washington Post, am I saddled with endorsing all or most of what the Washington Post publishes?  Now there have been cases in which some of the "Dragon Slayers" have been excessively derisive of lukewarmers who I do not think deserved such treatment, but there are also many cases in which some lukewarmers and many alarmists have been very inclined to call those who do not agree with them nasty names.  I have always been respectful in my interactions with such people as Judith Curry, Richard Lindzen, and Roy Spencer.  However, I have no use for James Hansen, Gavin Schmidt, or Michael Mann.

The effect of CO2 is very small.  It does very slightly reduce the power emitted through the atmospheric window, which is a warming effect.  On the other hand, it slightly increases the absorption of solar insolation in the atmosphere before it can reach the surface, which is a cooling effect.  Because the mean free path length for radiation emitted from the surface into the air is very short and it remains very short throughout the lower troposphere, and because the gas molecule collision rate is very high in the lower troposphere, almost all of the radiant energy that either water vapor or CO2 can absorb is converted into kinetic energy in non-radiating nitrogen, oxygen, and argon gases.  That energy is transported by convection which is slow.  To the degree that a small fraction of the energy in a CO2 or water molecule is emitted as infra-red, that effect transports energy instead at the speed of light over a short distance, which is a cooling effect.  Also, adding water vapor or carbon dioxide to rising thermal currents increases the heat they carry upward due to their high heat capacity compared to nitrogen, oxygen, and argon gases.  These last two effects are cooling effects.  There is a great deal of data documenting the cooling effect of water vapor in these ways.  All of these effects are small and not one of them can produce catastrophic results.  The sum of the effects are also small and there is some very reasonable question as to whether the sum is very slightly warming or very slightly cooling.  I have been leaning more and more toward a very slight cooling effect.

One of the mistakes that is very clear is the idea that infra-red active (so-called greenhouse) gases are responsible for about a 33K warming of the surface of the Earth.  This is the so-called greenhouse effect and it is nonsense, as the article Merlin referred to shows.  The Earth's gravitational field provides about 29K of the temperature difference between the Earth's surface and the effective temperature providing the net radiative power of the Earth into space.  The direct solar insolation incident upon and absorbed by the Earth's surface and all other effects only need to provide another 4K of warming.  The difference between scaling "greenhouse gas" effects to 33K and to some fraction of 4K is huge.  Since there are other minor warming mechanisms, the effect of all infra-red active gases may well be negative or may be close enough to zero that the effect of CO2 may never prove measurable.

 

I agree to this extent.  The effect of the CO2 is much less than the alarmists claim.   But CO2 does retard the radiation of heat from the surface slightly. 

Here is some interesting comparisons between the blackbody temperature of the planets and their observed surface temperature

Let us test Stefan-Boltzmann's Black Body Radiation Law  Q = c T^4 = cTTTT on the planets in the Solar system assuming similar absorption and emission. The radius of the Sun is about 2.3 light seconds. The radiation from the Sun is diluted at a distance of R (light seconds) with the factor (r)^2 where r = R/2.3. Taking into account that the area of a disc is 1/4 of a that of a sphere with the same radius, the radiation from the Sun reaching a planet at distance R is diluted  by the factor 4 r^2, which determines the effective temperature T_P of the planet  by the relation

 

                                  4r^2 = (T_S/T_P)^4

 

where T_S = 5778 K is the effective temperature of the Sun. We get

1. Earth: distance D = 500 light seconds = 1 AU, r =220, T_P= 5778/21 = 275 K (288 K)
2. Mars: D =1.5, r = 330,  T_P = 275 / 1.22 = 229 K (232 K)
3. Jupiter: D = 5.2, T_P = 275/2.28 = 120 K ( 134 K)
4. Saturn: D = 9.5, T_P = 275/3.08 = 90 K (103 K)
5. Uranus: D = 19.2, T_P = 63 K ( 73 K)
6. Neptune: D = 30.1, T_P = 48 K ( 63 K)
7. Venus: D = 0.72, T_P = 312 K (465 K)
8. Mercury: D = 0.39, T_P = 443 K ( 400 K)

 

Look at Mars.  The blackbody average temperature of Mars is 229K and the observed temperature is 232K.  That additional 3K is due to the fact Mars atmosphere is 96 percent CO2.  The CO2 is keeping Mars (on the sun side)  at a higher temperature than it would be without an atmosphere.

Have a look at this: http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov/towhnall/question/10982/how-cold-does-the-dark-side-of-mars-get

On the dark side  Mars is -62 degrees C  which shows that the thin layer of almost pure CO2 does not stop Mars from radiating its heat to space.  At most it slows the radiation a bit. On the sunny side the temperature can get as high as 25 degrees C  in direct sunlight at Mars noon. 

As Tyndall proved about 155 years ago, CO2  is a blanket that slows the radiation of heat to space. 

 

 

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 12/29/2016 at 7:24 PM, Charles R. Anderson said:

I made it very clear that what does not exist is a scientific consensus.  One may argue plausibly for a limited political consensus, but not for a scientific consensus.

Charles,

But... but... but... President Obama says the science is settled, thus we need the government to increase its power to protect everyone from the destruction of the planet by evil oil companies and deadly cow farts.

Thanks for stopping by. Great to see you again.

 

Happy New Year.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

26 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Charles,

But... but... but... President Obama says the science is settled, thus we need the government to increase its power to protect everyone from the destruction of the planet by evil oil companies and deadly cow farts.

Thanks for stopping by. Great to see you again.

 

Happy New Year.

Michael

Science is never settled. Ever. Why?  Because we cannot prove for certain that a new fact falsifying our best loved theories cannot happen.  We never  have the last fact so we can never say a scientific theory  is -proved- to be correct.  The best we can say is, despite rigorous testing it has not yet been falsified. 

[Brant Gaede]

I suspect Dennis May who started this thread is deceased.

He posted nine times April 17 and 18, 2014 and disappeared.

There is an obit for a Dennis May, 67, who died in hospice Nov. 14 that year in Iowa.

--Brant

and I wonder what happened to Selene (I once had his real name but made no note of it)

[Edit]: Adam Selene seems to be now posting on Facebook

Edited December 31, 2016 by Brant Gaede

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

42 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

[Edit]: Adam Selene seems to be now posting on Facebook

Brant,

I've only seen this. People are posting on his timeline, but he isn't. In fact, one lady who is a registered nurse at a senior living place posted several times saying how much she misses him. Also, she finally finished Atlas Shrugged (she liked it).

I can't say anything with certainty, but it doesn't look good--unless he's stopped posting for his own private reasons (which is the alternative I hope is true).

His real name is Allen Cappellazzi, and I give that in the open because it has been stated on OL several times.

I know he was accused in a court case in 2010 (there was a kerfuffle here on OL because Phil Coates made a stink about it and wanted me to ban him), but I don't know if the case was ever decided. Obviously, I didn't ban him.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

How about Twitter?

https://twitter.com/lunashallbefree

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

The Twitter activity doesn't feel like him.

Also, there's no Rand stuff.

It's mostly conservative-conservative.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

sigh

He wouldn't be so vigorous on T and let the other stuff slide.

--Brant

[anthony]

13 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Science is never settled. Ever. Why?  Because we cannot prove for certain that a new fact falsifying our best loved theories cannot happen.  We never  have the last fact so we can never say a scientific theory  is -proved- to be correct.  The best we can say is, despite rigorous testing it has not yet been falsified. 

That's all fine, that the special discipline of science doesn't rest on its laurels, is as it should be. Don't sound so pleased about such lack of full certainty, though. That's science's limitations, not ours. "How" man knows, precedes "what" man knows.  If one should allow the scientists' method of reasonable doubt to encroach into one's own life and mind and dominate one's own apprehension of knowledge, the effect has to be detrimental. (It has tainted contemporary thought and been imperceptibly distancing men from reality, I think).

Is one's life a controlled experiment taking place under laboratory conditions? is existence "falsifiable"? (Is the mind "a best loved theory"?) Try to falsify the absolute which is your life and see how far you go...

"I am, therefore I'll think". AR

Happy 2017!

[BaalChatzaf]

8 hours ago, anthony said:

That's all fine, that the special discipline of science doesn't rest on its laurels, is as it should be. Don't sound so pleased about such lack of full certainty, though. That's science's limitations, not ours. "How" man knows, precedes "what" man knows.  If one should allow the scientists' method of reasonable doubt to encroach into one's own life and mind and dominate one's own apprehension of knowledge, the effect has to be detrimental. (It has tainted contemporary thought and been imperceptibly distancing men from reality, I think).

Is one's life a controlled experiment taking place under laboratory conditions? is existence "falsifiable"? (Is the mind "a best loved theory"?) Try to falsify the absolute which is your life and see how far you go...

"I am, therefore I'll think". AR

Happy 2017!

Science is one of the things people do.  It is an activity. The activities and the protocols of physical science  have done more to overcome very, very natural observers bias than just about anything else.  The closest follow up  is  legal evidential procedures for validating physical evidence and human testimony in court. 

If one is alive than one is alive. That is a fact,  not a proposition to be affirmed or falsified. I assume I am communicating with a live human at the other end and I assume that he assumes the same thing about me.  So we are (or very recently were) alive.

[Brant Gaede]

32 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Science is one of the things people do.  It is an activity. The activities and the protocols of physical science  have done more to overcome very, very natural observers bias than just about anything else.  The closest follow up  is  legal evidential procedures for validating physical evidence and human testimony in court. 

If one is alive than one is alive. That is a fact,  not a proposition to be affirmed or falsified. I assume I am communicating with a live human at the other end and I assume that he assumes the same thing about me.  So we are (or very recently were) alive.

Science's controversies are mostly confined to mathematical physics and "climate." In biology it's evolution and where did DNA come from? The great advances in astronomy came from observational data followed by better theory. (The orbits of planetary objects, the expanding universe, the existence of galaxies other than our own.) Chemistry has its laboratories and obtained its proper head of steam in the late 18th Century. In geology it's plate tectonics. Medicine has the germ theory of disease. Etc. Honest physics means stripping out most of the math and acknowledging ignorance that the math covers up. The math is justified by resultant technological advances only. Until then it's brain games and undeserved scientific priesthoodism and mythology capitalized by politics.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

12 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Science's controversies are mostly confined to mathematical physics and "climate." In biology it's evolution and where did DNA come from? The great advances in astronomy came from observational data followed by better theory. (The orbits of planetary objects, the expanding universe, the existence of galaxies other than our own.) Chemistry has its laboratories and obtained its proper head of steam in the late 18th Century. In geology it's plate tectonics. Medicine has the germ theory of disease. Etc. Honest physics means stripping out most of the math and acknowledging ignorance that the math covers up. The math is justified by resultant technological advances only. Until then it's brain games and undeserved scientific priesthoodism and mythology capitalized by politics.

--Brant

Scientifically speaking, climate change and evolution are not the least bit controversial.  Climate has been changing for 4.25 billion years or so and evolution (meaning the significant variation of species genome) is an established fact.  The only thing controversial about them are political and religious reactions to these facts.  Tyndall established (by experiment, and many replications have followed) in 1879 that CO2 gas absorbs heat (IR radiation).  There was never any doubt about that.  The climatic effects of CO2 are not completely understood, even today,  temperature variation is driven by a number of natural drivers, plus, there are several feedbacks that take place which affect climate in general and temperature in particular. The real "controversy" in climatic matters is how sensitive the average temperature is  to CO2 level.  This is not at all clear.  The climate models, at best, are crude approximations to temperature of air and sea.  The formation of clouds is not completely understood.  Clouds are the venetian blinds of earth. You can keep your house cooler even in summer by shutting the blinds and keeping the sunlight out of the inside of your house.  The full effect of oceanic temperature oscillations are not fully understood yet. So the question of which has more effect,  human produced CO2 or the natural drivers  is still open. The science is not "settled" at all.  The catastrophe people believe that the earth will turn into Venus by the next century.  Al Gore (the inventor of the Internet) thinks the polar bears will all be drowned by then.

As to evolution, change in species genome is an established fact.  We can observe evolution in real time by studying how microbes mutate. Microbes have such a short regeneration span that we can see it as it happens.  The religious controversy is centered around two things:  1.  Is the creation story in Genesis true?  (No, not facturally) and 2.  Is man special or does he evolve and change even as do other complex animals and plants.  Some religions insist on special creation to account for humans.  There is the "controversy" . 

[BaalChatzaf]

25 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Science's controversies are mostly confined to mathematical physics and "climate." In biology it's evolution and where did DNA come from? The great advances in astronomy came from observational data followed by better theory. (The orbits of planetary objects, the expanding universe, the existence of galaxies other than our own.) Chemistry has its laboratories and obtained its proper head of steam in the late 18th Century. In geology it's plate tectonics. Medicine has the germ theory of disease. Etc. Honest physics means stripping out most of the math and acknowledging ignorance that the math covers up. The math is justified by resultant technological advances only. Until then it's brain games and undeserved scientific priesthoodism and mythology capitalized by politics.

--Brant

No math, no physics.  It is as simple as that.  Newton invented calculus to account for motion.  Much of the math used was formulated in order to do the physics.  And even purely abstract mathematics has turned out to be of use to physicists. 

[Brant Gaede]

18 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

No math, no physics.  It is as simple as that.  Newton invented calculus to account for motion.  Much of the math used was formulated in order to do the physics.  And even purely abstract mathematics has turned out to be of use to physicists. 

But the calculus did not discover motion. It was already observed--by everybody. 

Yes--"of use to physicists." But math is not physics; it's just math. 

It can lead to discovery, but Einstein used math as confirmation--no? Confirmation of what he visualized. Then, by your own statement, when a new observation came on board he had to rejigger his previous jiggering and there is still more jiggering, as yet unidentified, to come--hopefully. Seems to me that physics needs another theory the way observational data of planetary orbits once did and thus came the famous "Revolution." (Pun not intended.)

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

6 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

But the calculus did not discover motion. It was already observed--by everybody. 

Yes--"of use to physicists." But math is not physics; it's just math. 

It can lead to discovery, but Einstein used math as confirmation--no? Confirmation of what he visualized. Then, by your own statement, when a new observation came on board he had to rejigger his previous jiggering and there is still more jiggering, as yet unidentified, to come--hopefully. Seems to me that physics needs another theory the way observational data of planetary orbits once did and thus came the famous "Revolution." (Pun not intended.)

--Brant

Richard Feynman  distinguished between Babylonian mathematics and Greek mathematics.  Babylonian mathematics  regards mathematics as a tool.  Greek mathematics regards  mathematics as an end in itself. Feynman points out the physicists do Babylonian mathematics.  But  most of the new and useful mathematics  is produced by people doing Greek mathematics.

Historically mathematics arose out of practical needs. In Egypt it was land surveying so the land and crop yield could be taxed and land boundaries re-established after the Nile flooded everything.  In Babylon mathematics arose out of astronomy so that the priests and the rulers could keep the calendar and order when sowing and reaping of the crops  should be done.  In Europe, mathematics became the chief tool for mechanics,  navigation and astronomy.

In more modern times  a breakthrough in formal mathematics  and the mathematical formation of logic began in the mid 19 th century. The high point was Godel's  incompleteness theorems showing the limits of mathematical formalism. With the advent of computers have come a flourishing of experimental mathematics  featuring  non-linear structures  such as fractals  and chaotic dynamics.  The four color conjecture was resolved with the use of computers, for example. 

[Peter]

Brant wrote: I suspect Dennis May who started this thread is deceased. He posted nine times April 17 and 18, 2014 and disappeared. There is an obit for a Dennis May, 67, who died in hospice Nov. 14 that year in Iowa. end quote

I sent a message just now to his old Conagra address and it came back as undeliverable. I may look up some other addresses he has used.

Peter

[william.scherk]

On 12/29/2016 at 1:04 PM, william.scherk said:

I've noted the three 'warm' physicists and three 'lukewarm' physicists at the APS expert workshop, Richard Lindzen, Judith Curry, William Collins, Ben Santer, John Christy and Isaac Held. None of them dispute the 'foundational' GHE. That is not where their disagreements lie.[...]

Curry, while just over the edge into skeptic from a lukewarm opinion, is impatient with the dragon slayers of PSI. [...] "Letter to the dragon slayers."

I have been lost at sea  -- at Judith Curry's website, in discussions about 'dragon slayers.'  There were interesting and compelling disagreements between Skeptics/Lukewarmers and Dragon Slayers. I note several threads, some of which have upwards of a thousand comments, where there was some real thrashing done. I mean thrashing out  errors and misunderstandings.

On 12/29/2016 at 5:24 PM, Charles R. Anderson said:

I tend to use few links, because their use might well just be cherry-picking opinions that suit me.  I want my intelligent and diligent readers to use the massive searching power of the internet to check out the issues that they believe should be checked themselves.  You should not accept my arguments until you understand them fully.

I was expecting to see you promote and defend your opinions in these threads at Climate, Etc.  I see you were active in at least the first part.

The massive searching power of the internet brought me to that dense discussion at Climate, Etc -- and found you in discussion!

Not giving references or cites in your blog posting might tend to isolate that page from a broader discourse. If you don't refer to the work  of named people, their work is isolated from that page.

On 12/29/2016 at 5:24 PM, Charles R. Anderson said:

Now there have been cases in which some of the "Dragon Slayers" have been excessively derisive of lukewarmers who I do not think deserved such treatment, but there are also many cases in which some lukewarmers and many alarmists have been very inclined to call those who do not agree with them nasty names.  I have always been respectful in my interactions with such people as Judith Curry, Richard Lindzen, and Roy Spencer.

Respectful interactions are always nice; one Dragon Slayer was especially small with Dr Curry (John O'Sullivan). Claes Johnson went almost feral at times.  The whole point of 'debating' the existence of the 'Tyndall gas effect' was to fully expose (almost every) refutation by such as Postma and Johnson (and yours) of the Dragon Slayers to the light of inquiry.  Some fine debating and persuasion resulted despite excursions into crabbiness, from my POV at least.

 

On 12/29/2016 at 5:24 PM, Charles R. Anderson said:

The Earth's gravitational field provides about 29K of the temperature difference between the Earth's surface and the effective temperature providing the net radiative power of the Earth into space.

Can you expand on "The Earth's gravitational field provides ~29K"?  Perhaps by first explaining to readers what the 'effective temperature' means in this context.  Without any expansion or explanation my question would be How?  How does the Earth's gravitational field "provide" -- by what mechanism?  

6 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

The real "controversy" in climatic matters is how sensitive the average temperature is  to CO2 level.  

That's where I see the edge of interesting disagreement. The threads concerned with Dragon Slayers provided for me an understanding of what the pan-spectrum opinion holds as pretty solid as a basis for disagreement.

6 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

The catastrophe people believe that the earth will turn into Venus by the next century.

"The catastrophe people" need to be educated. How many of them are here?

Weather porn!

.....................................

** I cut and paste Curry's own introduction -- it cuts through at the joints, then her summary at Part III:

Quote

Slaying a greenhouse dragon

Posted on January 31, 2011 | 2,518 Comments

by Judith Curry

On the Pierrehumbert thread, I stated:

So, if you have followed the Climate Etc. threads, the numerous threads on this topic at Scienceofdoom, and read Pierrehumbert’s article, is anyone still unconvinced about the Tyndall gas effect and its role in maintaining planetary temperatures?   I’ve read Slaying the Sky Dragon and originally intended a rubuttal, but it would be too overwhelming to attempt this and probably pointless.

 

I was hoping to put to rest any skeptical debate about the basic physics of gaseous infrared radiative transfer.  There are plenty of things to be skeptical about, but IMO this isn’t one of them.

Well, my statement has riled the authors of Slaying the Sky Dragon.   I have been involved in extensive email discussion with the authors plus an additional 10 or so other individuals (skeptics).  Several of these individuals  on John O’Sullivan’s email list actually agree with my assessment, even though they regard themselves as staunch AGW skeptics.

One of the authors, Claes Johnson, along with John O’Sullivan, expects a serious critique from the climate community.  Johnson says he intends to submit his papers to a peer reviewed journal.  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).

Johnson’s first chapter is entitled “Climate Thermodynamics,” which presents an energy budget for the earth and its atmosphere that does not include infrared radiation.   The second chapter is entitled “Computational Black Body Radiation,”  which seeks to overturn the last 100 years of modern physics  and concludes that “back radiation is unphysical.”

For background info:

• Claes Johnson’s website is here
• Johnson’s blog is here, see specifically these posts ( here and here)
• John O’Sullivan’s advert for the debate at Climate Etc. (note Monckton and Costella are in  my “corner” in criticizing the book and Johnson’s chapters).

I suspect that many undergrad physics or atmospheric science majors at Georgia Tech could effectively refute these chapters.  I’m opening up this discussion at Climate Etc. since

• the Denizens seem to like threads on greenhouse physics
• I’m hoping we can slay the greenhouse dragon that is trying to refute the Tyndall gas effect once and for all.

It will be interesting to see how this goes.  Claes Johnson has said that he will participate in the discussion.

Note: this is a technical thread, please keep your comments focused on Johnson’s arguments, or other aspects of Slaying the Sky Dragon.   General comments about the greenhouse effect should continue on the Pierrehumbert thread.

Lurkers!

Quote

Slaying a greenhouse dragon. Part III: discussion

Posted on February 4, 2011 | 333 Comments

By Judith Curry

In Part I, we critiqued Claes Johnson’s chapters in the book Slaying the Sky Dragon.   In Part II, I have posted a published article by Martin Hertzberg, who authored a chapter in the Dragon book.   My original motivation for doing these threads is to try to lay to rest the debate over the fundamental physics of infrared radiative emission of gases such as CO2 and H2O.

 

Rather than critique the papers myself (I merely provided an opinion, rather than a substantive critique), I decided to see if “crowd sourcing” the critique would work.  This would only work if very knowledgeable experts showed up and made substantive contributions.  In Part I, the contributions of experts such as maxwell, Pekka Perilla, Tomas Milanovic, Dave N., Eli, and several others were particularly illuminating, and they did a much better job that I would have been able to do myself.  Lets see how Part II turns out.

Claes Johnson engaged in Part I with a large number of comments, although nearly everyone whom he replied to seemed to think that his comments were not responsive to the criticisms (some of which were quite devastating to his argument).  Ken Coffman (publisher of the Dragon book) also engaged, and by the end of the thread, he seemed to develop a respect for some of the experts and was seeking to learn from them.  I view this as a good sign.

I am hoping that Johnson  learns from this that if he wants his scientific arguments to be taken seriously, that publishing them  in a politically motivated book  does not help his credibility and does not motivate people to take his arguments seriously.

I am hoping that Ken Coffman is learning that some discrimination and quality control might be needed in the writings that he publishes if his publishing house is to have any continuing credibility regarding science books.  I am hoping that John O’Sullivan will find better scientific horses to back in his quest to debunk AGW (or better yet, just fight the policies he doesn’t like and stay out of the science).

I am especially looking to hear the reactions to these threads from the “lurkers.” Part I has received a very large number of hits (one of the greatest “hits” ever at Climate Etc.), so it seems a large number of lurkers have been reading this.  Did you change your mind about anything?  Did you learn anything?  Who was convincing, who wasn’t?  Etc.

I am also interested in reactions from Claes Johnson, Ken Coffman, John O’Sullivan.   John and Claes asked for this; did it meet your expectations?  I’m not sure that anyone who has followed this closely regards Claes’ arguments as having survived this scrutiny, do you view it this way?

Sent via email:

Here is one comment that I have received via email, that I have permission to post:

It is exasperating that results easily demonstrable by simple laboratory experiment continue to be challenged by some members of this group. However superficially ingenious their arguments, they fly in the face of experiments that even children can perform with readily-available materials, as well as contradicting proven results in astrophysical theory. I do not propose to contribute further to this group: it is not a sensible deployment of my time. –

Monckton of Brenchley

 

[BaalChatzaf]

9 hours ago, william.scherk said:

 

[Peter]

On ‎12‎/‎31‎/‎2016 at 3:59 PM, Brant Gaede said:

I suspect Dennis May who started this thread is deceased.

He is alive.

Peter