I have not studied the Dragon Slayers’ claims for a number of years and the last time I did I found some credible claims and some incredible ones. I think that most of the sceptical websites have banned them partly to avoid being labelled as cranks and partly to get on with mainstream scepticism. Did they throw out the baby with the bathwater?

Now it seems that the Slayers have lined up behind N&Z or have N&Z put some scientific calculations behind the slayers?

Either way, it will explode a few heads on both sides.

I think that one of the disputed claims was that radiation could not pass energy to a warmer body because it would breach the laws of thermodynamics. I think they have got that wrong. A radiant body cannot know what is in the path of its radiation. The receiving body receives the radiation but every body then radiates in accordance with its temperature and this is where any body that received extra heat will get rid of it until it reaches equilibrium with its environment.

I look forward to a proper assessment of N&Z’s paper so the more publicity the better. We can’t afford to have sceptics refuse to discuss a paper that claims the GHE is wrong.

I’m a bit worried that the comments by Judith Curry look cherry picked and out of context. Hopefully she will clarify her position.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/08/20/a-consensus-of-convenience/

Aug 20, 2017 at 10:47 AM | Schrodinger's Cat

Is the "50 metre depth" for the penetration of the sun's energy used as a standard "average" or "maximum" for all the waters of the world? I appreciate that in murky waters energy from the sun will be intercepted at shallower depths.

If I lowered a thermometer into Lake Superior, Lake Tanganyika and Loch Ness, would they all reach 4°C at the same depth at any time of year?

Aug 20, 2017 at 3:08 PM | Radical Rodent

Having decided Manmade CO2 was to blame, without any record of how that decision was made, it would be an Unprecedented disaster for consensus Climate Scientists to consider they were anything less than 100% right.

Scientific Faith in Mann's Hockey Stick is Unsustainable, audiences for Gore's latest film suggest it is not Renewable either.

If:

"Climate sensitivity is a metric used to characterise the response of the global system to a given forcing. It is broadly defined as the equilibrium global mean surface temperature change following a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration..."

"8.6 Climate Sensitivity and Feedbacks - AR4 WGI Chapter 8 .. ..."

is not quite what it is cranked up to be, by consensus Climate Scientists, then they are the cranks.

Golf Charlie, 50 metres is a figure that comes up in the literature. I guess that the depth of penetration depends on a number of things such as latitude, season, cloudiness, intensity (energy) of light, water turbidity, surface roughness, suspended solids, chemical composition, phytoplankton content and salinity to name a few, so the answer to your question is No.

I think the key points are that light penetrates to some depth but this is effectively a modest depth compared with the depth of the oceans. Temperature mixing is very minor between the heated layer and the colder, deep water. The greatest heating will take place in the tropics. Lateral circulation transports warm water to other latitudes.

Blue light penetrates well below 50 metres in clear seawater. I once dove in a submarine off north Jamaica and there was still some illumination (very dark purple) at around 100 m. Just as important is the direction of the sunlight. Too shallow and most is reflected; steeper and much is refracted into the sea. This is why the sea looks dark or dirty around much of the UK, but clear and inviting in the Med, even though the latter may be more polluted.

There are several aspects of GHG theory that we have not touched upon. There is feedback feedback, especially alleged amplification of warming by water vapour. There is the question of whether CO2 does create an an effective opacity to long wave radiation in the presence of a much higher concentration of water vapour, not to mention convection.

Taking the first of these, the so-called tipping point involves the warming causing evaporation of water to vapour, more GHG giving more warming, more evaporation, etc. There are arguments against such as lack of increased humidity, no hotspot and no evidence of positive feedback.

Supertroll - yes, that was my thinking behind including latitude which doesn't just affect intensity but also the angle of incidence and hence the proportions of reflection and transmission.

The sub dive must have been a great experience.

SC. The sub dive was scary. The main turret seal had failed before our scheduled dive and had to be replaced (so we were testing it), and our pilot was an amateur. We bashed and crashed all the way down (500m). To add to my concerns, the company I worked for refused to insure me, although every other oil company had covered their employees. Still the sight of living crinoids, looking like those from the Palaeozoic that formed limestones I had worked upon was a definite thrill.

Your comment about limestones has reminded me that I spent the last couple of days with a retired geologist relative. When showing him around an ancient church he spent more time looking at the entrance wall than anything else. The stone was apparently full of shells and he called it Shelly Limestone.

I picked his brains about global warming. He doesn't follow it. However, he knew that the climate changes a lot and we have been as warm and warmer in the past. He also asked if the warming contribution from the mantle had been factored in. I told him that I didn't think it had. That was bad, and a "mistake that Kelvin had made." was his response.

SC. Kelvin attempted to determine the age of the Earth by using basic physics of cooling bodies. He assumed the Earth was once completely molten and came up with a rather short time period. This was in conflict with all sorts of geological evidence (some provided by Darwin with his geological hat on). What your relative referred to was that Kelvin knew nothing about radioactivity. That within the mantle has kept the Earth hot for much longer than Kelvin's estimate. I'm sorry to say that internal heat plays no part in climate. The geothermal heat flux, except atop volcanoes,is a tiny tiny fraction of the Sun's input.

You can always spot geologists by their fascination with building stones and the fact that they carry hand lenses. I'm constantly embarrassing my wife.

Aug 23, 2017 at 8:17 PM | Supertroll

Tree rings record good v bad growing seasons, without proving the cause. Limestone strata record a variety of prevailing and/or dying ecosystems,. Is it possible to determine possible or probable cause for the changes?

Aug 23, 2017 at 3:53 PM | Schrodinger's Cat

Water is nature's way of storing, transferring and moving heat. Mankind has been engineering with heated water since discovering boiled vegetables were more digestible than raw ones.

In the UK, hottest AND coldest temperatures occur when there is no cloud.

Measuring the Earth's average humidity would be about as meaningless as average temperature.

Using satellites, is it possible to produce "average cloud cover" to establish whether cloud cover is the temperature control knob mechanism for the Earth?

I agree that water is the key to our climate. The oceans heat the atmosphere but at the same time prevent extremes of hot and cold. Phase changes consume or release large amounts of energy.

Clouds also act as a buffer, preventing heat loss at night and reducing warming by day. I strongly suspect that cloud cover is the missing link between solar cycles and our climate. Svensmark’s cosmic ray theory is clever but is not the whole answer. Perhaps the solar wind, the solar magnetic field or changes in UV interact with our atmosphere in ways we haven’t yet discovered.

Cloud cover measurements are being made but I don’t know how reliable they are. Models cannot cope with clouds because model resolutions are far too coarse and the computing power required is vast.

I should have added that every day in the tropics you can see the thermostat in action. The sun blazes down, evaporating the sea water which then rises as water vapour until the cooler air at higher altitude causes condensation, releasing the latent heat and then the water falls as rain and everything feels cooler. I've watched this happen very few hours.

More CO2 will just increase the rate of evaporation, particularly as the infamous DWIR we have debated so much concentrates its heating on the surface molecules of the sea water.

Cloud cover measurements are being made but I don’t know how reliable they are. Models cannot cope with clouds because model resolutions are far too coarse and the computing power required is vast.

Aug 30, 2017 at 6:21 PM | Schrodinger's Cat

Thank you for the response. Climate Science has wasted billions on invisible CO2 hypothetical modelling alone, but can't get to grips with water vapour visible from space, from all those satellites.

If Climate Scientists had spent more time staring at clouds seeking inspiration, weather forecasting might have improved more rapidly.

Climate science always makes me visualise a boffin sitting at his computer. The computer model has convinced him that the planet is burning up due to AGW. Meanwhile, the window just behind him is showing a winter blizzard scene.

Cat. On the wall beside the computer, in a position of prominence, resides the superior weather predictor much trusted by climate scientists - a length of Fucus vesiculosus (bladder wrack).

Supertroll, Fucus vesiculosus is highly sensitive to changes in atmospheric moisture content. Climate Scientists have yet to develop this skill.

Fucus vesiculosus shows no sensitivity to insignificant changes in atmospheric CO2 content.

Fucus vesiculosus is free, and should not be relied on, for climate predictions, however Climate Scientists cost the Earth, and should not be relied on, for climate predictions.

My mistake. I was looking for the science thread.

My mistake. I was looking for the science thread.

Aug 31, 2017 at 2:20 PM | Entropic man

Do you have any information from Climate Scientists about the effects of moisture content versus CO2 as a temperature control knob for the Earth, or was all debate silenced once Climate Scientists decided CO2 was the only variable?

Surely there must have been some scientific research prior to reaching a conclusion, and commissioning Mann's Hockey Stick as proof?

This thread was started to reassess all lines of scientific evidence available now. Having accepted Mann's Hockey Stick because everyone else did, I admit to a personal bias in wondering about the "conclusive" scientific evidence available 20+ years ago. Where was the "Science" then?

Aug 31, 2017 at 9:24 AM | Unregistered CommenterSchrodinger's Cat

What is also interesting in the tropics (say Singapore as a classic example) is that you get an effect where the max temperature buts up about a degree a day from say 32C to 36C before an almighty thunderstorm cools it all down again and the cycle might start again. Just looking now and the highest temp ever is 37C and the lowest is 19C.This just shows the really strong negative feedback that the water cycle has to a place on the equator itself.

Aug 30, 2017 at 4:26 PM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

There is quite a bit of evidence that it was less cloudy at the end of 20th century. Googling now has some papers from Spain and Krakow that seem to show this and I know there are some other studies. Cloudiness has long been measured at weather stations so it should not be too difficult to get some kind of history going back to the 19th century. Satellites can obviously do it now pretty accurately.

1-2% cloud cover decrease could account for all global warming.and there was a decrease during the warming period.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/20/spencers-cloud-hypothesis-confirmed/