Discussion > Does Climate Science Exist?
SandyS
Sorry to neglect you. While you wait, try researching Tambora and The Year Without a Summer.
You might also enjoy this, on the effect of past eruptions.
PS Mrs EM is home and recovering.😀 wecan all be rude to each other again.
Entropic man
…the greenhouse effect is an intrinsic property of an atmosphere.Is it? How can you be so sure? Oh – lots of scientists say it is, so it must be so! Lots of scientists also said that the Sun revolves around the Earth, and that there were no moons around Jupiter; lots of scientists said that Einstein was wrong, and that Piltdown Man was real. Just because lots of people you may admire say something, this does not make it true.
Consider Venus, an Earth-sized planet with an atmosphere that is about 99% CO2 – the “greenhouse effect” must be enormous, eh? “It is!” you will ejaculate, pointing out that the surface temperature is way above that of Earth’s, perhaps missing that the surface pressure is also way above that of Earth’s. Rise up the atmosphere to where the pressure is that of Earth’s, and – lo! – the temperature is about that which the Earth’s would be, if in a similar orbit (approx. 66°C – or 339K, if you prefer). Which is odd, should you bother to think about it, as the CO2 concentration is over 11 “doublings” of the Earth’s present concentration. So, why is the temperature not 11 x “environmental sensitivity” (anything from 1K to 8K, depending upon which scientists you choose to listen to) higher (i.e. anything from 77°C to 154°C)?
Sorry, but I have my doubts about the veracity of the “greenhouse effect”.
Increase the greenhouse gases… More energy is incoming than outgoing… iincreasing [sic] temperature.Except, is more energy incoming than outgoing, as erm, temperatures are NOT increasing?
Radical Rodent
What conflicts do my concepts have with existing science? Do surfaces heat up in sunlight, the degree of heat dependent upon the angle of incidence of the sunlight? Do hot surfaces heat air in contact with them? Does it get warmer in the tropics than at higher latitudes? Does warm air rise, and mingle with other air? Does rising air cool adiabatically (i.e. ignoring all other factors, as the pressure of the air reduces, so the temperature reduces – who knows, perhaps there might be a law about that!)? Is there transfer of heat between atmospheric particles? Are nitrogen and oxygen effectively invisible to visible light? Do bodies that are poor absorbers of radiation tend to be poor emitters of radiation?
If any of the answers to the above is, “No,” then please enlighten me (and others). Otherwise, other than question the claimed effectiveness of “greenhouse gasses”, where have I conflicted with science? As many, many others also question the effectiveness of “greenhouse gasses”, your points should have read:
1) Radical Rodent and many, many others are wrong.
2) Everyone and everything (?) might be mistaken (or, as might well be the case for a lot of politicians and businessmenpeople, have another agenda to foist upon us).
My (perhaps biased) opinion is that (2) is the more likely.
Radical Rodent
TOA radiation imbalance has to be 'determined' by using models.
That may be so but CERES is considered pretty accurate at detecting changes in radiation if way out in its absolute measurement. it is the former that is precisely the measurement we need as we increase atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. It is the dynamic situation that we are observing and climate science states that outgoing radiation will be declining as the imbalance continues to grow. What do we observe in the CERES data?
A constant: as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increase there is no change at TOA. Climate science has proven what was previously a hypothesis in physics.
Can we all return to normality now?
ssat
"In practice, both the radiative imbalance and resistance are derived parameters which help us understand the behaviour of a system. Neither has real, hold in the hand, existance. Both are perceived as affecting the flow of energy in their respective."
I'm assuming you really don't understand physical laws and are confusing yourself. What Ohm's Law says is that a circuit with a voltage V and a resistance R will, in all circumstances, produce a current, I which will be equal to V/R. This has indeed been proved to be correct in all circumstances. Everybody already recognises that the resistance could vary, and that manufacturing processes will give rise to tolerances, even that V varies, but the fact remains that whatever values V and R take will give a current of I=V/R. Hence the massive improvements in our society.
As for your brother's resistance needing tuning when it got warm I can't speak for his engineering skills, but I can tell you that for copper it would take an increase in temperature of 100C to increase the resistance by 10%, which is the tolerance of the resistors. FYI R(final) = R(initial)(1 + Temp Coefficient of Resistance (T(final) - T (initial)).
Your either having a larf, or in need of some engineering training.
Still glad to see what must be a "long suffering" Mrs. EM back in action.
geronimo
One final point, EM: what makes a person “competent to judge”? (Obviously, you consider yourself one with such competence, so you should know the answer.)
Radical Rodent
EM,
The analogy of atmosphere with resistors is good....if you can accept that the atmosphere is vastly less sensitive to CO2 than small electronics.
hunter
EM Jul 9, 2015 at 12:39 PM - I myself have no problem with the notion of the greenhouse effect.
What I find surprising - astounding even - is that there does not seem to be a technical explanation available of any more detail or reality than the extremely crude "Earth as a spherical black body at uniform temperature, surrounded by a thin dense shell of greenhouse gas". According to Judith Curry, who I imagine would know, there is nothing between that and full blown digital simulations.
The explanation that I like (though I am not wholly convinced by) is that increased greenhouse gas concentration will cause the final radiation to space to occur at a higher (mean) level. So the temperature at that level will rise to restore equilibrium. "The lapse rate being constant" will ensure that the surface temp rises accordingly. I have never come across a detailed and convincing presentation of this argument. If such exists, then it is being well hidden. If it does not exist, then again I find it astounding.
Another cornerstone of Climate Science (the greenhouse effect). But lacking an accessible explanation other than the "the back radiation warms the surface" nonsense or the over-simplified Earth as a spherical black body. Something very bizarre there.
Martin A
EM: "Mrs EM is home and recovering."
Glad to hear it! Best wishes for a quick return to health.
HaroldW
… "the back radiation warms the surface"…A point I have contested for quite some time, having witnessed one morning in the Arabian Gulf, with ice on the surface while the completely still air above was comfortable. The energy from the surface had radiated, unhindered, to space, while that in the air above did not, thus supporting my hypothesis that N2 and O2 do not absorb nor radiate the relevant energy; as the air had been unusually still, with no movement at all, the air had little chance of mingling with the layer that had cooled by conduction on the cold surface. The ONLY thing missing from the atmosphere that I could discern was water – apart from the ice (from a leaking tap) it was a particularly dry night/morning.
Radical Rodent
Ssat
Alas, it is not quite so straightforward. What is important for warming is the increasing DIFFERENCE between OLR and black body radiation.
As temperatures increase, the black body radiation increases. As CO2 increasses the difference between OLR and black body radiation is expected to increase.
This does not even require either to decrease.
It can occur if OLR remains constant while black body radiation inxreases. It can even occur if both increase, but back body radiation increases faster than the OLR.
Entropic man
Radical Rodent
You've been busy. I will answer what I can.
"How can you be so sure? Oh – lots of scientists say it is, so it must be so!"
Not quite. Lots of scientists have MEASURED the properties of CO2 in the lab and in the field. They have calculated and measured the consequences for surface radiation and OLR. Theory and observation match.
"Just because lots of people you may admire say something, this does not make it true."
This is why we have a little passion killer called evidence. You may hold a different view to everybody else, but no one who understands the science will accept it without evidence that you can predict values and trends for OLR and temperature at least as well as the current paradigm. Do you have numbers? Nothing like good numbers to convince scientists.
Before you mention Galileo, I remind you that Galileo had correct science and evidence. to back it up. This could be checked by anyone with a telescope. The church's denial was based on the political and theological.implications.The parallel between the church then, and the Republican Party now, is striking.
In your 2.20 post everything in the upper half is correct. The problem comes when you put them all together. They are insufficient to produce a global average temperature comparable to today's or even a glacial period. For the extra heat content greenhouse gases are necessary and sufficient.
"what makes a person “competent to judge”?"
In order of preference.
1) Ideally professional training in the relevant areas of physics.
2) Next would be training in another science. This prorams you with the scientific method and the associated rules of evidence, and trains you to minimise your own bias.
3) Statistics 101. Climate is a complex area of study in which it is difficult to get complete information or include proper controls. Experience in another area with similar problems , such as ecology, helps.
Statistical methods allow you to measure the reliability of your data and your conclusions. It also allows you to quantify the size and the boundaries of your uncertainty.Beware the fallacy of regarding uncertainty as an all-or-nothing thiing. Uncertainly is a continuous variable.
4) Ironically, engineering training does not help. It trains you to operate in an environment in which you have complete information and complete control. The science you use is mature and all the controversy and uncertainty has been resolved before it reached you.
Engineers tend to demand standards of measurement and completeness of information impossible to achieve in the field, while lacking the statistical awareness to judge anything less.
I have 2) and 3). How about you?
"The back radiation warms the surface"
This is where loose language can get you confused. Like a mylar space blanket the greenhouse effect cannot generate energy. All it can do is redirect part of the energy radiating FROM the surface back TOWARDS the surface. The surface still cools at night, but it cools at a slower rate than if there was no greenhouse effect.
Your Arabian experience involved a cold surface which had been radiating all night and was below 0C, hence the ice. The low temperature meant minimal radiation and hence minimal back radiation.
The dry air meant no water vapour greenhouse effect, so most of the IR spectrum was escaping. The only back radiation was from CO2. This is why deserts have such a high temperature range.
You have rightly identified an environment in which the greenhouse effect was as low as it gets outside polar latitudes. However, it is not typical of most of the planet most of the time.
Entropic man
EM
Thanks for that response. I like to think that you and I are in something of a unique situation at the moment, termed The Pause. During the last 18 years or thereabouts, temperatures have not been increasing and so, OLR could be considered as being constant. At the same time, CO2 has been increasing. We have had a period when only one of the critical variables (as defined by Cli Sci) has been changing and with the complete good fortune to have measurement devices in place. Result, nada. Additional CO2 has not caused a decrease in outgoing radiation. Measurement of that mirrors exactly the slope of the temperature graph. At this point, the dawning relevance of that within Cli Sci caused, not a careful re-examination of the hypothesis, but a frantic search for energy hiding from view.
ssat
Martin A
Detailed mathematical analysis of the greenhouse effect is way above my mathematical capabilities, so it is not something I have researched.
Such analysis would most likely be found in a recent undergraduate or postgraduate textbook. Are you near a university bookshop?
The most common use of such mathematical analysis would be as a component of weather and climate models.
I doubt such data would be sitting around at the top of a website. While not exactly hidden, it would be of little interest to the public.It would be several clicks in.Look on the websites for NOAA, NASA GISS or the Hadley centre. You are looking for the supplementary information intended for those using the computer models. GISS has an open access model.. I am afraid you will need to do your own digging on this one.
Dr Roy Spencer has a simple climate model on his website. An email to him might be productive, especially as one sceptic to another. He wrote this post on the greenhouse effect recently, which you might find of interest.
One other possibility I can suggest is this history of the greenhouse effect science. While not itself mathematical, the reference list includes most of the major papers. You might find paydirt among them.
Let me know if you find anything. I can bookmark it for anyone else interested.
Entropic man
Entropic Mann: as usual, you cherry-pick your answers, and, as usual, apply your arrogant pomposity with a metaphorical trowel. Please tell us what conflicts my concepts have with science, other than doubt about the “greenhouse effect” (which I am not alone in, despite your assurances). Also, please note that the surface on which the ice formed was untouchable during the day; all its heat was lost at night. Yes, there was a notable lack of water in the atmosphere; whether there was any of the dreaded CO2 to do its nefarious business is anyone’s guess, to tell the truth.
Now, can you be sure that the water vapour acts as a “greenhouse gas”, or could it act in other ways – i.e. it is known that water does have a rather high level of “energy storage” (i.e. latent heat – roughly 4.2j/g/°C, for liquid water, if my school-day physics is correct; I cannot remember the latent heat of vaporisation/condensation), and is reluctant to give it up too quickly; is it not possible that this could be as much a factor as the much-acclaimed (yet fully proven? I doubt it) “greenhouse effect”?
I can have only the uttermost respect for the likes of Martin A and Ssat for their patience in intercourse with you, as you claim to be open-minded, yet blatantly display a mind more tightly shut than a Gringott’s vault. You are convinced that CO2 is the only culprit in this scenario, and nothing, but nothing – no amount of evidence, nor lack of it – will deviate you from this belief.
Funny you should raise Galileo; if you were more fully conversant with history (and not with the myth), you will know that Galileo had NO evidence! The theories of Copernicus caught his imagination and his intuitive understanding; when he presented the idea to his friends at the Vatican, the response was, “Can you prove it?” That kind of flattened his argument.
Radical Rodent
Ssat
The pause, if it was real, showed in the combined land and surface temperature datasets, and mostly in the sea surface data.Neither the BEST or GISS land data showed a pause.
In fact, the energy content of the climate system continued to increase throughout the noughties, at a rate consistent with the ongoing radiative imbalance. Most of this went into increasing the ocean heat content.
GISS gives an anomaly temperature for 1998 of 0.62 C. 2010 was 0.67C, 2014 was 0.68C and so far 2015 is showing 0.77C
I am rather disappointed to see you spouting the standard sceptic rhettoric at this point.
In 2009 talk of a pause might have been almost reasonable. In July 2015 talk of an ongoing pauae makes you sound like a denier.
Entropic man
Radical Rodent
Galileo saw mountains on the Moon, moons around Jupiter, and phases on Venus. These were visible to any telescope user but contradicted church doctrine about the perfection of. the heavens, which was the root cause of the conflict. The phases of Venus also showed that Venus orbited the Sun, and not the Earth, evidence for the Copernican view.
I have had great patience with you. I gave you straight answers in good faith and got abuse back.
Entropic man
Ooops, wrong link. This is what happens when watching a vid while typing. This is the correct link.
Radical Rodent
You still have not told me what conflicts with science my concepts have; you still have not given me any straight answers to my simple questions. Oh, and view the corrected link, above, to appraise yourself about the Galileo affair.
I am sorry if I appear abusive to you – I like to consider myself as “abrupt” or, perhaps, “blunt”. For some reason, other people call it “rude”, though, for the life of me, I cannot see why. The only contact I have had with you is on this site, and, based on the limited information that you have revealed to us, the conclusion I have reached is that you are arrogant and you are pompous. You must have been a barrel of laughs for your students. Oh, yes – and being a teacher, even in a science subject, does not necessarily make you “scientifically trained”; indeed, your arrogance and your pomposity is a good indication that perhaps you are not as scientific as you obviously like to think, so perhaps we could cross (2) off your list.
Radical Rodent
EM - No, university bookshops are rare in rural France. Although I have several fattish books on my shelves on my shelves (Pierrehumbert, Grant Petty, Salby,...).
The point I was trying to make but clearly did not make clearly enough is that I find it weird that there does not seem to be available (so far as I know) a mathematical analysis of the GHE other than the hugely oversimplified "Earth as a uniform temperature black body surrounded by a thin greenhouse gas shell".
If climate science existed, I'd have thought that its graduate level texts would include such models - not for weather forecasting but to explain what is going on for educational purposes.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
The more I look at it, the greater is my impression that what happens between ground level and TOA is a mystery, understood by nobody, with energy/heat being transported upwards, downwards, and sideways by convection, latent heat, and radiation in unknown proportions. The only thing that seems to be understood is what happens at the final stage, as IR photons make their getaway.
Martin A
Jul 9, 2015 at 11:57 PM | Martin A
Everyone knows that heat rises, that is school level Physics...
Obviously a slight simplification but anyone who has witnessed any weather
can plainly see it's true. Had some amazing thunderstorms the last few
weeks. Literally multiple flashes of lightning a second for 2 hours. Lots of
energy going on there.
Rob Burton
EM - I take it that my response to your questions about Ohm's law relative to 5.35ln(C/C0) provided the clarifications you sought since you did not respond further.
"Dr Roy Spencer has a simple climate model on his website. An email to him might be productive, especially as one sceptic to another. He wrote this post on the greenhouse effect recently, which you might find of interest."
Jul 9, 2015 at 9:58 PM Entropic man
I looked at the Spencer link you gave. Did you read it yourself? It is nothing but generalised waffle plus confusing and dubious statements - plenty of words but a lack of useful information and clear explanation.
So far as I can see, understanding of the greenhouse effect is at best qualitative, in the absence of a mathematical analysis of anything more realistic than the "Earth as uniform temperature black body surrounded by a thin shell of greenhouse gas".
"4) Ironically, engineering training does not help. It trains you to operate in an environment in which you have complete information and complete control. The science you use is mature and all the controversy and uncertainty has been resolved before it reached you.
Engineers tend to demand standards of measurement and completeness of information impossible to achieve in the field, while lacking the statistical awareness to judge anything less."
Jul 9, 2015 at 8:50 PM Entropic man
Gosh EM - the world that you have made up in your imagination really has become your reality, hasn't it?
Martin A
EM,
Congrats on Mrs. EM coming home. I hope all goes well for her continued recovery.
The pause has not finished it seems.
Speaking of it in the past tense is an odd way of looking at something that is ongoing and the subject of more than a few studies seeking to explain it.
Lysenko was a trained scientist and pushed his theory in his area of specialty, by the way.
hunter
Martin A, for your entertainment: Back in 2012 when Entropic Man and I used to meet at the BBC, Tallbloke posted an article about gravito-thermal effects in fluid columns, and the recent work of one Roderick Graeff . I offer(ed) no opinion on Graeff and his predictions, but brought up Tallbloke's words on the matter which were:
“Graeff’s results matched his predictions, which ultimately derive from the theoretical work done by Johan Josef Loschmidt in the 1870’s. Maxwell rebutted Loschmidt through reference to his own formulation of the second law, a circular argument by assertion. Boltzmann attempted several proofs, but admitted none of them was satisfactory. Loschmidt gained support from Laplace and Lagrange. The issue was never settled because experimental equipment of the necessary sensitivity was not available.”
Notwithstanding Loschmidt, Maxwell, Boltzmann, Laplace, Lagrange and inadequate data, Entropic Man had resolved the matter for me in less than an hour. Slightly tongue in cheek, I think I said words to the effect that he must have been a fantastic teacher.
michael hart
Radical Rodent
The problem with your concepts are that they disagree with too much existing science and do not match observed reality.
The behaviour of greenhouae gases is one minor aspect of thermodynamics and atomic physics ultimately based on quantum theory. The predictions of this theory match measured reality across the whole of small scale physics, and are the foundatiion off numerous technologies, including electronics.
There are two choices
1) Radical Rodent is wrong.
2) Everyone and everything else are wrong.
Given this choice I, and the vast majority of those competent to judge, would choose 1).