Discussion > Does Climate Science Exist?
Martin A
Still see no validation. All I see is that Ohm observed a relationship between I, E and some intangible factor he called R. Since then electricians have used this and found that it works sometimes.
Where is the underlying physics?
What properties of a conductor confer resistance?
Can you predict the resistance of a material from first principles, and if so, how?
This is what I mean by validation.
Entropic man
Hunter
What evidence do you have that the pause is ongoing?
Entropic man
" Where is the underlying physics?
What properties of a conductor confer resistance?
Can you predict the resistance of a material from first principles, and if so, how?"
Jul 10, 2015 at 9:21 PM | Entropic man
EM If you are still asking those questions, then I think that you cannot have read (or taken in) what I wrote, which either answers them or at least tells you that the answers are available.
Please carefully re-read my 10:12 July 8 comment which I wrote doing my best to answer your questions succinctly but clearly.
[A] Ohm's law is not merely an empirical relation between voltage and current. The reason why Ohm's law applies to metallic resistors is understood fundamentally. The linearity of metallic resistors comes from the way an electric field within a metal induces a drift velocity on the movement of the electrons within it, with the drift velocity being proportional to the strength of the electric field. It's all well (and precisely) understood at the fundamental level and the mechanism is essentially simple.
Jul 8, 2015 at 10:12 PM Martin A
It's standard physics of solids/metals. There are probably dozens of graduate level textbooks covering it.
Martin A
Martin A
Thank you.
Take a look at this graphic from WUWT.
It illustrates the processes involved in the greenhouse effect. Emission from the surface, excitation, reemission, emission to space, reabsorption by other molecules, reabsorption by the ground. It also include excitation by kinetic energy, which tends to be neglected.
Entropic man
A very pretty presentation of how phlogiston works. Thank you.
Radical Rodent
Entropic Mann: have you never wondered how convenient it is that the ONLY part of the atmosphere over which humans MIGHT have some control just so happens to be the ONLY part of the atmosphere that is causing all this “runaway” global warming (ha ha) and climate change?
It is that dissonance that helped to converted me to a full-time sceptic, and it would take an incredible amount of outright proof to re-convert me; as there has yet to be a scintilla of believable evidence, I am not going to hold my breath on that one.
Meanwhile, you argue about whether or not Ohm really knew what he was talking about, and how he has obviously fooled every other scientist and engineer since, and isn’t it lucky for the world that you have come along to expose this fraud. Well, fan me with a kipper!
Radical Rodent
Radical Rodent
With a Kipper after that record heat and heat waves in the UK - are you mad?
SandyS
SandyS: is that a rhetorical question?
grrrrrr... just noticed a major typo! Oh, no, so many are going to laugh at me, now... I shall have to converted them, too.
Radical Rodent
It also include excitation by kinetic energy, which tends to be neglected.
Jul 11, 2015 at 9:34 AM Entropic man
Well since direct exchange of kinetic energy is the only way for greenhouse gases to exchange energy with non greenhouse gases, neglecting such exchanges can't give a realistic description of the greenhouse effect so it needs to be included in any reasonable explanation of the ghe.
Martin A
EM - here are a couple of things that would keep you busy for a while if you chose to undertake them. And the results might be interesting to a range of people.
1. Estimate Earth's surface emission of IR energy
I was appalled when the paper you pointed to lead to Earth's Annual Global Mean Energy Budget J. T. Kiehl and Kevin E. Trenberth
They said
b. Longwave radiation
We must rely on model calculations to determine
the surface radiative fluxes. As described above,
longwave radiation emitted from the surface is ab-
sorbed and reemitted by greenhouse gases and clouds
throughout the earth\u2019s atmosphere. The transfer of
longwave radiation depends on both the local tem-
perature of the gaseous absorber and the efficiency of
the gases to absorb radiation at a given wavelength...(etc etc etc)
The figure for convection ("thermals") in Earth's energy budget always seemed low to me.
EM, why don't you have a go at making an estimate of the Earths surface emission of IR energy (per second, per square metre and averaged spacially over the Earth's surface and temporally over one year).
For a very simple estimate, you could assume a representative temperature and a representative emissivity.
Rather than just come up with a single number, you might try to get estimates of its precision by taking upper and lower limits for temperature (and for emissivity too perhaps)
For more precise estimate, you might divide the Earth's surface into zones where the temperature could be represented less approximately (polar, temperate and tropical?)
__________________________________________________________________________________________
2. Assess what Harry Dale Huffman is on about
Harry Dale Huffman seems to have spotted something that seems too close to be coincidence. But to make sense of what he subsequently says, in between rants about how just about everybody (but him) is incompetent, is hard. Not helped by his coming across as somewhat unhinged. Maybe there is an assessment of what he said out there but if so I have not seen it (perhaps for lack of looking).
1. Is his observation about the atmospheres of Venus and Earth having the same profile (after allowing for various things) correct?
2. Summarise (in no more than four lines) how he argues from his observation to arrive at his conclusion that the greenhouse effect does not exist.
3. What is the explanation for Harry Dale's observation? That's just how it is? That the ghe does not exist? That is exactly the result you'd expect from the ghe?
Martin A
If you fancy a convection calculation I found some useful information here. Look particularly at Section 4.3.
Your maths is better than mine. Solve the Stefan Boltzmann calculation for a surface temperature of 288K. If the generated total IR agrees with Trenberth's 350Wm-2 then I am quite happy to go along with it. If it comes out differently, you have ammunition.
I once did a Trenberth's style energy budget diagram for Venus. Michael hart might be able to find it at tallbloke's. I forget the exact numbers, but a few things stood out. The albedo was very high, so the amount of absorbed energy, and the OLR were both lower than for Earth. Those figures came from an orbiter.
Surface temperature was measured by a lander as 733K, atmosphere 95% CO2 at 90 bar.
I could not separate convection and surface radiation. Their combined value was about 16,600Wm-2, of which about 16300 returned to the surface. Presumably this was as DLR and reflected radiation from the sulphuric acid clouds.
Comparing lapse rate graphs, Venus goes into temperature and pressure regions way outside terrestrial limits at the surface. At the top of the atmosphere the radiating level would be higher and colder than Earth due to the extra CO2. That would give a greater pressure difference between TOA and Earth surface pressure equivalent altitude., giving a greater temperature difference.
I tried the "what if it were Earth with 95% CO2" fag packet calculation and got 5.35ln(950,000/400)=41.6Wm-2. Divide through by 3.7 to get a temperature increase of 11.C over the~ 15C on Earth; 26C. Huffman reckons 66C, but I would like to see independent confirmation given the poor quality of his other reasoning.
I see no a priori reason why that level on Venus should not be somewhat warmer than on Earth under conventional greenhouse effect theory.
Huffman does all his numbers by calculation and ignores actual measurements for albedo, aerosols and other factors. I have no idea of the validity of his calculations, but since he neglects albedo and therefore wildly overestimated the energy absorbed by the atmosphere I see no reason for confidence in the rest of it.
Entropic man
the pause continues, except for desperate deniers of reality.
http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/04/06/global-warming-pause-continues-temperature-standstill-lengthens-to-18-years-4-months/
And a recent paper explaining why the pause is happening:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/07/08/science.aaa4521.abstract
The question to ask is why are you so afraid to admit the pause exists and is on going?
All the real scientists admit its happening.
hunter
EM - if you assume that half of the Earth's surface is constant at 30°C and half at 0°C, with emissivity = 1.000, my unchecked calculation says you get their figure (396W/m²) as average.
Thanks for the comments on H.D. Huffman. People, like organisations, tend to be consistent, Huffman too by the look of it.
Martin A
Huffman reckons 66C, but I would like to see independent confirmation given the poor quality of his other reasoning.This only goes to show that you might have read Huffman, but you have absolutely no understanding of what he wrote – or, more likely, you just skimmed over it, and used your imagination to fill in the bits you missed. The “66C” figure that you quote from Huffman is what the Earth’s surface temperature would be if it were as close to the Sun as Venus. It is also the temperature in the Venusian atmosphere (C.96.5% CO2 – i.e. more than 11 “doublings” of Earth’s levels) where the pressure is the same as Earth’s surface pressure (1 bar); in other words - there is no such thing as “greenhouse effect”! (A concept that I know you will be utterly unable to accept.)
If you truly had read Huffman, you would know that he did not ignore albedo or aerosols; he considered them and discounted them. What makes Huffman so different is that he not only gives you figures that are easily verifiable, but he also shows his calculations, enabling you to try to prove him wrong. The comments section show that others have tried, and (so far) have not succeeded. Why don’t you have a go?
Radical Rodent
What evidence do you have that the pause is ongoing?
Jul 10, 2015 at 9:23 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man
One line of evidence (™Climate Science) that it is ongoing is that papers continue to appear attempting to explain it.
[I deleted my essay on when statistical tests can and cannot be used and why applying statistical tests to that question is an exercise in BS. It was too long and boring - but it was correct nonetheless.]
Martin A
Martin A
I envy you. You can do much better fag packet calculations than me!
As a purely amateur physicist I can only do basic crosschecks, but it helps filter out the absurdities. May we agree that Trenberth's estimate of surface radiation is not unreasonable?
Martin A, hunter
We will probably argue endlessly about the pause. I think of it as a temporary reduction in the long term rate of temperature change, which will catch up in due course. You may see it as the permanent end of warming,
You can see lots of such short term pauses even in the 135 year temperature record. .
Look at the 5-year averages
Only the first pause is long enough or different enough from the long term trend to show statistical significance. There is a long pause from 1940 to the early 1970s, another around 1983, ,another from 1991-94 and finally from 2002 to 2010.
This is internal variation and papers have been published studying it, with vulcanism, pollution and a weaker solar cycle producing enough reduction in forcing to explain the observed changes in the noughties. I am quite happy to accept the presence of such pauses.
What I am sceptical of , is your assumption that such short term internal variations have anything to say about the long term upward trend.
Did you look at Figure 3 in Monkton,s post? He is comparing Land/ocean temperatures with the RSS troposphere temperatures and is suprpised when they differ!
For a better comparison try this. In passing, the monthly figures for 2015 are matching the upper limit of the Met Office 2015 forecast ( the green bar).
Radical Rodent
The albedo of Venus is higher than on Earth, high enough that Venus absorbs less energy than Earth, and reradiates less IR.
The problem is explaining that Venus has a surface temperature of 733K on an energy budget smaller than Earth's.
The main differences between them are that Venus has more CO2, more aerosols and a denser atmosphere.
You reject CO2 as a possibility, and therefore must explain the high surface temperatures and the temperature profile using lapse rate and aerosols alone and a smaller energy budget.
I may be stupid, but I fail to see how Huffman has done either. Perhaps you could explain in terms which even a biologist might understand.
Entropic man
Entropic Mann: you have quite a remarkable inability to see what is in front of your very nose.
Despite Martin A’s constant rebuttal of most of what Trenberth says, and his obvious contempt for the man as a “scientist”, you come out with, “May we agree that Trenberth's estimate of surface radiation is not unreasonable?” I would not blame Martin A for leaping up and down, screaming and tearing his hair out at your intransigence.
Neither Martin A nor hunter (nor, indeed, myself, nor anyone else on this site, that I have noticed) are saying that the “pause” (or “hiatus”; I prefer the term “plateau”) is a permanent end to warming – that is why it is referred to as a “pause”! We accept that it is a pause, a hiatus or a plateau; it may resume its upward climb, it may go down. Who knows? The significance of the pause is not that it exists at all, but that it was not predicted / projected in any of the models! You, however, remain in denial of its very existence, thus keeping your precious models sacrosanct.
Did you look at Figure 3 in Monkton,s post? He is comparing Land/ocean temperatures with the RSS troposphere temperatures and is suprpised when they differ! [sic]Perhaps we are looking at a different picture, or a different paper; the one I am looking at has this associated with Figure 3:
Figure 3. Predicted temperature change, January 2005 to March 2015, at a rate equivalent to 1.7 [1.0, 2.3] Cº/century (orange zone with thick red best-estimate trend line), compared with the near-zero observed anomalies (dark blue) and real-world trend (bright blue), taken as the mean of the RSS and UAH satellite lower-troposphere temperature anomalies.Where is there any comparison between two different measurements, and where is the surprise?The Technical Note has now been much expanded to take account of the fact that the oceans, according to the ARGO bathythermograph data, are scarcely warming.
Mr Huffman has explained in great detail his figures, their origin, and his use of them. Many of his commenters have expanded upon them, or questioned them, or applied their own logic, and Mr Huffman has quite politely answered each and every one of them. Perhaps it might be an idea to open your mind for a while, and read what is being written rather than interpreting what you think a person might be saying based upon your own prejudices. Indeed, he might even had someone like you in mind, when he states: “…the premise of incompetent critics, that my findings were invalid because I had not "corrected for albedo"…” Yes, he had considered albedo, but had determined it to be irrelevant.
The reason I doubt that CO2 has any significance is that I have yet to see any evidence that convinces me that it has. I am also highly suspicious of the convenient claim that the only element of the atmosphere over which human might have some perceived control over just so happens to be the key element in climatic control. Like, yeah, right…
Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof; they do not just need to be shouted louder and louder.
Radical Rodent
Radical Rodent
The generally accepted albedo for Venus is 0.75. Huffman assumes that Venus absorbs all its insolation, instead of 25%. His calculations are based on an energy input four times higher than the planet actually receives.
They are therefore meaningless.
You are free to hold whatever beliefs you wish about the greenhouse effect, free to quote fringe sources like Monkton and Huffman in support, and free to reject any source which disagrees with you. Just don't expect anyone outside this echo chamber to take you seriously.
Entropic man
Radical Rodent
Regarding Monkton. This is the man who thinks that the 0.02C temperature rise recorded by Argos is small.
The ocean volume is 1.35 billion cubic kilometres. To warm that volume by 0.02C takes 3* 10^22 Joules/year.
That accounts for most of the 0.6Wm-2 imbalance Martin A and I have been discussing.
As I said, such unrealistic views as yours cannot be taken seriously. .
Entropic man
It is nice to see that you can allow me to have views differing from your own. How sweet. Though whether Martin A feels he is actually having a discussion with you, does have to be a moot point. I suspect that he might be grinding his teeth down to bony pads, and be going prematurely bald.
It would carry a little more weight, though, if you could give us some evidence that you are actually reading the articles that you hold such derision for; the evidence presented, so far, indicates that you might not be. As Mr Huffman has come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as “greenhouse effect”, and has so helpfully provided us with the figures, their derivation and the means of calculation for anyone to leap in and prove him wrong, then the albedo effect is totally and utterly irrelevant to the calculation. Quite why you, trained scientist as you claim to be, cannot see beyond your own personal prejudice and realise that, if there is no greenhouse effect, then albedo effect can have no relevance, is a mystery to me.
I suspect that it is not so much that Lord Monckton thinks 0.02°C is small but that he has doubts that it is actually measurable. Are there any field thermometers that have that degree of accuracy? Most liquid-in-glass thermometers have an acceptable +/-0.2°C allowed; from what I have gathered, reading about the ARGO buoys, is that the accuracy of their thermometers is very much open to question, and is nowhere near 0.2°C.
That you cleave to such unrealistic levels of accuracy for as-yet not fully proven technology has to make one wonder whether anyone should be taking your views seriously.
Radical Rodent
Radical Rodent
The ARGO floats are calibrated to an accuracy of +/-0.002C and a measurement precision of +/-0.005C. Over an operating lifetime they show a calibration drif around 0.0003C.
That is quite sufficient to detect a 0.02C/ decade trend in the global average.
Entropic man
I envy you. You can do much better fag packet calculations than me!
Not smoking is the key.
Maybe I'm a bit cynical (as well as a bit sceptical) but I wonder why Trenberth and Wotisname said
b. Longwave radiation
We must rely on model calculations to determine
the surface radiative fluxes. As described above,
longwave radiation emitted from the surface is ab-
sorbed and reemitted by greenhouse gases and clouds
throughout the earth’s atmosphere. The transfer of
longwave radiation depends on both the local tem-
perature of the gaseous absorber and the efficiency of
the gases to absorb radiation at a given wavelength.
This absorption efficiency varies with wavelength. It
is also important to note that different gases can ab-
sorb radiation at the same wavelengths; this is called
the overlap effect. In the presence of clouds, the trans-
fer of radiation depends on the amount of cloud, the
efficiency with which clouds absorb and reemit
longwave radiation, that is, the cloud emissivity, and
on the cloud top and base temperatures. We employ
a narrowband Malkmus model (see Kiehl and
Ramanathan 1983; Kiehl 1983) to represent the above
physical properties of longwave radiative transfer. (blah blah blah)
rather than just saying "We simply used the standard Stefan–Boltzmann formula to estimate the radiation from the surface..." ? The former sounds more impressive?
EM - I had been hoping you'd provide some explanation of what Huffman had found.
I think he said:
[A] The temperature profile of the atmosphere of Venus is almost precisely the same as that of Earth if you allow for their different distances from the Sun.
[B] Therefore the greenhouse effect does not exist.
I find [A] really remarkable and requiring an explanation. If you have one, I'll be interested to hear it. Likewise if you think it is just pure coincidence, I'd be interest in that. (But I don't see how [B] follows.)
I would be inclined to say:.
The fact that the temperature profiles match suggests that there could be some as yet undiscovered mechanism that renders the greenhouse effect virtually independent of the actual concentrations of greenhouse gases.
It would be interesting if it were true, wouldn't it?
Martin A
Martin A
I suspect that "we used a model" is modern scientist,-speak for "we calculated it". Certainly it sounds more impressive☺They do mention trying to correct for cloud cover and overlap effects, so their calculation is a bit more complex than yours.
Remind me to ask Richard Betts next time he comes here.
This would be better done by physicists doing the numbers, but I'll try and think it through.
The lapse rate is measured as a temperature profile, but is a function of pressure and gravity. The gravity of Venus is 8.9 ms^-2 , compared with 9.8ms-2 for Earth. The two planets are of similar size so the gravity gradient is similar.It would not be surprising that the temperature and pressure profile for altitudes above the 1000 millibar altitude is similar for both planets.
As I said earlier, with the effective TOA higher than Earth due to the extra CO2, temperatures at the 1000millibar level would also probably be higher. The exact calculation is above my pay grade. This is not helpful. Both Huffman's hypothesis and the greenhouse effect predict this relative warmth, though they would disagree on the value.
With twice the Earth's albedo and 1.9 times the insolation, the incoming absorbed energy is also comparable.With the high albedo cancelling the higher insolation, the overall TOA energy budget is comparable to Earth.
The 1000millibar level is within the cloud deck and there is no surface at that level to absorb radiation and drive convection.Effects unknown.
The similarity may not be coincidence.The same mechanisms controlling the behaviour of Earth's atmosphere and the upper atmosphere of Venus seem to be functioning under comparable conditions and producing comparable results. I must confess that I see no need for extra mechanisms. New mechanisms would be fun, but unnecessary.
Finally, at the 95% Venus concentration the temperature IS independent of CO2 concentration. Running CO2 up or down by a few % would make very little difference to the temperatures.
Entropic man
Of course, comparable is relative. Etremophile archaea would be comfortable at the 1000millibar level on Venus. For an Englishman it would be like sitting in a dry sauna, wearing an oxygen mask and watching your skin dissolve.
Entropic man
Martin A
Still see no validation. All I see is that Ohm observed a relationship between I, E and some intangible factor he called R. Since then electricians have used this and found that it works sometimes.
Where is the underlying physics?
What properties of a conductor confer resistance?
Can you predict the resistance of a material from first principles, and if so, how?
This is what I mean by validation.