"I have had one contributor attempting to refute this by referring to the effects of albedo on just one of these bodies, ie Venus. Harry Huffman disputes this argument much better than I in the following post from his blog"

Well, there are several bits to his reply of greater or lesser relevance. It could do with a bit more trimming, in my view.

The first part is about his claim that the lapse rate doesn't rely on convection but is derived instead from the hydrostatic condition. This is wrong. The hydrostatic condition relates pressure to density and height. There's a deal of work to be done to get temperature out of that. And the adiabatic lapse rate's effect is to set a lower limit on stability against convection - vertical thermal gradients steeper than the adiabatic lapse rate disappear rapidly through convection, gradients below it are stable, so convection drives any pre-existing gradient up against the adiabatic limit and stops there. It doesn't create the pre-existing gradient (it can only level such inequalities out, not create them), and it doesn't work if convection is suppressed by other means (as in a solar pond).

The adiabatic lapse rate is a lot like the boiling point of water. It sets a limit that means that any excess heat is allowed to escape by boiling/convection, and if driven in that direction by some other effect will control the temperature by holding it to that limit. (If you turn the gas up, it just boils more vigorously but the temperature stays at 100 C.) But water doesn't boil on its own, and the effect doesn't apply if it's not boiling. Likewise, the adiabatic limit does nothing to create the temperature gradient in the first place.

Harry's next argument isn't clear. He seems to acknowledge that he's missed a lot of stuff out, like albedo and clouds, but his argument seems to be that he got precisely the right answer anyway so the calculation must therefore be right. I'm not entirely clear if that's what he meant, but it's the best I can pick out of that mess. He suggests that the albedo only applies to visible light, and IR is absorbed by the atmosphere directly. He's wrong on the first part if he thinks the albedo is only the fraction of the visible energy spectrum being reflected (i.e. the numerator might be just the visible part but the denominator is all of it), although obviously the atmosphere can indeed absorb IR directly precisely because it's a greenhouse gas.

And the rest of it seems to be complaining about the politics, and about how not even other sceptics pay any attention to his arguments and theories. Well that's all right. He doesn't pay any attention to anyone else's.

Jun 7, 2014 at 5:09 PM | RKS

So surely GCM's will get Venus badly wrong. One issue though is that there are still loads of parameters to tweak essentially randomly to get you to the 'right' result.

RKS - I was not sure whether those were your words or Huffman's.

Much of his writing comes over as a rant that is difficult to make sense of. I think that his words probably won't convince BH readers of anything much.

"I didn't feel that received the attention it deserved, let alone an answer. But what do I know?"

There are several interlocking issues and interests here - political, scientific, and moral.

First, there is the political fight about expensive and totalitarian measures being taken on climate change. Climate sceptics are excluded and derided, and it would help a lot if the opposition was more united in its message, more credible scientifically, gave clearer explanations, won all the debates, and at the same time were seen as reasonable, rational, and more pleasant people by the public. We're ahead on some of that, but not all, and not all the time. My personal view is that the public have developed some very effective BS detectors over the years, so the tabloid political marketing campaign waged by the more political operators (Morano and Monckton, for example) is something I'm dubious about, especially for the long run. But in the short term there's no doubt it has an effect and attracts attention and awareness. For somebody simply interested in winning that fight, it would help a lot if the more 'outlier' sceptics views would keep quiet.

But there is an opposing political issue centred around free speech and inclusivity, which personally I think is more important. The political operation run by the alarmists has tried to shut down the debate and exclude alternative views. That's illiberal and in my view immoral, and we shouldn't be doing that. People with alternative views should be able to have their say, even if they're wrong, and people should at least listen and consider their ideas, and whether they might be right. It's extremely dangerous to shut out heresy - almost always one's own arguments descend into dogma and error. Standing up for the principle helps get our own views heard - sceptics having been excluded in the same way. It's required to be consistent with our opposition to the alarmist proponents of totalitarianism. It attracts support from classic liberals and libertarians. And it's their world, too. In a democracy, they have a right to have their say.

It's important from a scientific point of view, too. Science is built on scepticism, and there are no sacred theories that cannot be challenged. Anyone can argue against anything. Having sceptics motivated to challenge our pet theories is incredibly useful - essential even - because we are all human, we all have our own cognitive blindspots and biases, and we need people with different biases to look into them and tell us what we are missing. Systematic and principled scepticism is the immune system of science. And as a source of ideas and as a constant exercise of our own arguments and understanding, maverick views are very useful.

We should all remember that not everyone has the same aim, here. Some are fighting to stop climate change policies being enacted for their expense. Some care more about liberty. Some are just interested in understanding it scientifically, and some have invested a good part of their self-image in their own pet theory, and are frustrated that it's not taking off in the way they think it deserves to, and put winning that particular argument ahead of both the politics and the science. It's a free country - they can if they like.

Regarding people who run blogs blocking or excluding discussion of these particular ideas, the main issue in most cases is a slightly different one, which is the obsessive tendency of a few people to carpet bomb every single thread with diversions into this same old topic, and then argue endlessly and with not an inch of ground surrendered, even though it annoys everybody else, stops other useful discussions happening, and causes us all credibility problems. I think it's essential to discuss it every now and then - if nothing else, we need to make sure people who have read about these ideas and found them convincing know about the counterarguments too - but I do think it's reasonable to stop people taking over every single thread. I personally quite enjoy the occasional 'GHE basics' argument, but I don't want to have to do it all the time. It hugely increases the noise level, and eventually gets tedious when you see the same half-dozen ideas and papers run out again and again. That said, I'm more tolerant of it than some for all the above reasons.

I'm also perhaps more patient because when I first started with the lapse rate argument, I often got treated the same way. Even though I was getting the theory straight from the mainstream literature, many who had absorbed the back radiation argument just saw it as some other sort of Skydragon argument and dismissed it without thinking. I remember when it seemed to be just me and Leonard Weinstein saying it, and I can certainly understand the frustration. (While at the same time being annoyed at the Skydragons for having put me in that position.) But I was generally careful only to bring it up if somebody else did first - especially a blog host - and to try to listen to and respond to the counter-arguments and misunderstandings. These have over the years given me much better insight into the physics, and some much improved analogies and examples. I'm grateful for that. I can't tell you how pleased I am to see it now gaining a little wider acceptance.

And that wouldn't have been possible if sceptics had shut down the debate entirely.

A fully open debate definitely has a political cost, but I think it's one well worth paying.

Re. Jun 7, 2014 at 12:16 AM | Nullius in Verba

Thanks all for this thread.

I want to sort out cause and effect with surface temperature vis a vis the ERL, Effective Radiating Level. We know that where surface temps are low, eg polar regions, the ERL is also low, close to the surface; at the equator both temps and ERL are high.

It seems that higher surface temps cause higher ERL, and not the other way around. This is different than what. Martin A and his source are saying.

"Lukewarmers" like Spencer and Watts are stymied by their unswerving belief in the radiative transfer theory. My Venus/Earth demonstration of the absolute absence of a greenhouse effect--as I define it, and as it is sold to the public--implies the radiative transfer theory is also wrong, physically; but I am not about arguing theories, and I don't feel any need to put forward a better one to replace theirs. I only insist that the Venus/Earth temperature ratio is the definitive evidence that denies their theory. Contrary to Spencer's insistence heretofore, the onus is on defenders of the consensus greenhouse theory to demonstrate quantitatively, that the observed Venus/Earth constant temperature ratio--needing nothing but the ratio of their solar distances to explain--arises naturally from their theories. I have already demanded you put up or shut up, many times over the last two and a half years. Instead, you go on about how you "observe" the greenhouse effect (but not the one that counts), without confronting the definitive evidence that denies that effect's existence (specifically, in the atmospheres of Venus and Earth). How lukewarmers can fight against the alarmists, and often give evidence that the global warming "greenhouse effect" must be very small, nevertheless are dogmatically set against admitting that effect is zero, is all that separates you from the "Slayers", in the end. (And no, I am not one of them; they like to say carbon dioxide is a coolant, but my Venus/Earth comparison says that is no more correct than that it is a heater. It is a "heat lubricant", whose increase only speeds up heat transfer--by radiation--within the atmosphere, without changing either the lapse rate or the surface mean temperature; it neither traps nor slows down heat).

Harry Dale Huffman

Just as incompetent climate scientists, acting as political activists, have been trying to suppress debate and the definitive evidence against their theory for the last 20 years or more, so incompetent evolutionists like Matt Ridley, acting as political activists, have been trying to suppress debate and the definitive evidence against their theory, since the time of Darwin--who was an amateur, who considered only one childish hypothesis: Either undirected evolution of all life occurred, over many millions of years, or all life was created at one and the same time, by God. Evolution, or one-time creation; that was all Darwin considered, as readers of "The Origin of Species" can easily verify for themselves. The truth is that everything was designed, land and life alike, but not all at once. The real formative history of Earth was undoubtedly one of design, the last, revolutionary chapter of which (as uncovered and verified by me) involved a wholesale re-formation, not just of the Earth's landmasses, but the entire solar system, a re-formation that gave rise to all the myths--in fact all of the earliest and longest-lasting intellectual ideas and religious obsessions--among men. Darwin was a foolish amateur, who has misdirected the world of science for over a century and a half. And Matt Ridley is just one of a legion now of Darwin's dogmatic intellectual offspring--puppets of a long-running, false dogma in science, against any competent consideration and recognition of design in the "natural" world.

Harry Dale Huffman

"You're the one showering praise on NiV, perhaps because he [I assume he is a he, as I am] concurs with your viewpoints on stifling what you regard as unhelpful posts."

I thought I'd made it clear that I regarded such discussions as essential? What I object to is people obsessively diverting every thread into yet another endless sterile debate on the same topic, where it's not relevant.

"He claims the Venus example is wrong but why should his views be of greater importance than those of other qualified physicist, Huffman being only one of those putting forward the argument. He doesn't even try to address the coincidence that the temperature of eight atmospheric bodies are shown to be the result of pressure and insolation, but simply obfuscates by making ad hom attacks on Huffman"

I haven't made any ad hominem attacks on Huffman. All I did was observe that he doesn't listen.

I only commented on the Earth-Venus bit you quoted, and I did so in a hurry and somewhat carelessly. However, on looking further, I see that other people have made the same observation about how he ignored the albedo, and I also note that his response does indeed appear to be to say that the coincidence is too great for it to be wrong; and so he uses that to work his own reasoning backwards to conclude that both Earth and Venus must both absorb the same proportion of sunlight directly! He's saying their albedo must actually the same so that his calculation will work! I am genuinely amazed!

I pointed out several scientific issues with the claims you quoted, which are sufficient to cast doubt on them. I'm not going to spend my time chasing link and wading through long and turgid treatises filled with complaints about how nobody appreciates the writer's greatness or the dire incompetence of his enemies. (Big hint: it reads a lot better if you leave the editorial asides out.) You ought to concentrate instead on condensing the essential argument down to a pithy summary, that any physicist can follow, and present and discuss that. No editorials. Pay attention to the counterarguments, and if somebody presents a valid counter to some point (or at least something that makes it difficult and complicated to explain) - drop it from your summary. You need to construct a short, clear, and unarguable presentation. If it requires a long diversion to explain properly, it's of no use to you. If it takes more than a few minutes to read, it's of no use. Cut out absolutely everything non-essential, and try to make the logic of every step crystal clear.

"The truth is that everything was designed, land and life alike, but not all at once. The real formative history of Earth was undoubtedly one of design, the last, revolutionary chapter of which (as uncovered and verified by me) involved a..."

And quoting this sort of thing emphatically does not help your case!! Are you serious?

NiV

First, thank you for your answers to points I've raised here. Having declared that I am no physicist ('O' level and took it no further) I have to resort first to any powers of logic and intuition I may possess. My motivation for my overall interest in this subject is indeed political - freedom of the individual. My motivation for interest in the science came from my first introduction to GE as explained by the Trenberth diagram: intuitively, back radiation was nonsense, I looked for evidence to support that conclusion and found it. I've posted my engineering version up-thread.

Being emboldened by that, I wondered where the 33 C GE claim came from and found it could be characterised by the S-B radiating temperature and lapse rate and concluded that GE is a characteristic of a radiative atmosphere and the 33 C BoA a measure of Earth's. I do not see that characteristic mentioned in popular climate science which, as far as I have encountered, calculates the GE from and to be a purely radiative effect. Here, I get stuck and struggle for a more accurate/understandable (should there be one) definition. Without radiation there would be no lapse rate and therefore radiation causes it but would that be: energy from radiation drives the effective radiating height away from the surface; energy from radiation supports the lapse rate; the lapse rate is coincident with radiative GE but irrelevant to it; .........? I'm pondering your answers to that.

But that is the equilibrium situation, so what of the future? We are told to expect that the benign BoA that we inhabit to become malevolent by our (and by extension, me as a free man) causing extremely small changes in atmospheric composition which are significantly upsetting the equilibrium. Why would the change be other than equally small? We are told that a doubling of CO2 will increase surface temperatures by 1 C, (or is it 1 F, I don't remember). By ratios of radiative gasses that would appear to be an over-large product of a calculation based upon them. We are also told that the equilibrium radiative balance at ToA will be upset by the changing atmospheric composition without an explanation (or measurements to support it as far as I can find) as to why the effects won't be immediate and the balance retained. And all of this is before we get to feedbacks and sensitivity.

So, I don't have a pet theory or the abilities to generate one and certainly no ambition to do so but do have legitimate questions, sometimes stated aggressively, which I confine to discussion/on-topic threads. Does this damage the sceptic case? I see all sceptics on a personal journey, there is, unfortunately, no Sceptic Central (IPCC – Huh). The sceptic, however far into his journey, is condemned to Groundhog Days because of that lack.

RKS

The"17 year pause" meme only works if you cherry pick the 1997/1998 El Nino temperature peak as a starting point.

If, as you suggest, you average over longer periods, the GISS 5 year averages show a 0.15C rise since 1998. That is 0.9C/decade, comparable with the overall rate of rise over the 20th century.

Martin A

Agreed, a proper statiatical analysis of warming rates would be more sophisticated than my simple inspection methods. I' m also quite happy with a flat graph by inspection since 2002.

Please hold RKS and other "17 year pause" sceptics to the same high standard.

There is also the problem that net ice melt from glaciers and ice sheets continues, while ARGO data continues to indicate increasing ocean heat content. While sea and land surface temperatures have stagnated in recent years the climate system continues to gain energy.

Perhaps Roger Pielke jnr is right and we should change over from a global surface temperature metric to a total energy metric. It would be harder to calculate and less intuitive for the layman, but might be a better indicator of how the system is behaving overall.

Martin A

For increased tropospheric temperatures and ToA radiative balance there has to be stratospheric cooling. It's been suggested that geometry and curvature and density take care of that (I can't find the link but it is easy to visualise).

A decreasing trend has been detected;

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v491/n7426/fig_tab/nature11579_F1.html

Link is to image, article paywalled. Article title: The Mystery of Stratospheric Temperature Trends :/

Another suggestion has been because of ozone depletion via less absorption.

Richard, i am surprised that you did not know of Clive Best's site. It is revelatory.

I agree with Rhoda.

Though it is implicit in the above discussions, the bottom line is: Infrared transparency in earth’s atmosphere depends upon pressure, not the composition of gases. CO2 is the agent of cooling in the stratosphere. The bulk gases, O2 and N2, under pressure delay the surface from cooling and our mild surface temperatures are the result.