All pipes lead to Space
Inexorably, energy is headed for the coldest vacuum. It’s just a question of how long and what path it takes to get there. On Earth there are four main “pipes” to space — the CO2, water vapor, cloud tops, and surface pipes (see post 6). The basic establishment model treats “trapped” heat as if it were “adding heat” (see post 9). But partially blocking one exit pipe out of four is not the same as adding energy to the incoming pipe. Adding more energy on the incoming side means the total outflow must be higher. But merely slowing the outflow in one pipe means the total outflow remains the same, it just redistributes itself among the four outflow pipes.
David is proposing a paradigm shift in how a basic climate model is organized. This post is a road-map for building an alternative model.
The current paradigm starts from the assumption that reducing the outflow in one pipe is equivalent to the effect of increasing the inflow on the single incoming pipe — it is a radiation balance, where all imbalances are equivalent regardless of origin. Doubling CO2 is “equal” to 2% more sunlight. (So sayeth Hansen 1984.) The feedbacks all work through this same paradigm — all radiation imbalances are equivalent to more sunlight, the sun heats the surface, and therefore the feedbacks need only respond to surface warming. But if something else warms the atmosphere instead, there are no “feedbacks” in the conventional basic model — the model is blind. If one of the feedbacks to atmospheric warming by CO2 was to increase the flow through the cloud tops or water vapor pipes, the current climate models could not show that, could not even “think” it.
Getting the language right from the start: Any conversation about climate models pretty much leaps straight into quicksand. The paradigm shift needs to begin with the language, and the establishment mucked up both terms: “forcings” and “feedbacks”. “Forcings” doesn’t refer to any old force that affects the Earth’s climate, rather it refers to things assumed to have the same effect as more sunlight. “Feedbacks” doesn’t mean any feedback, in establishment language it only means things that happen in response to surface warming. By definition, the limiting language sets everyone up to get stuck in a dead-end, to think only long the lines of the current architecture.
David explains that his alternate model is a shift from adding radiation imbalances due to the various things that influence the climate (which means establishment defined “forcings”), to instead adding temperature perturbations caused by any kind of warming factor. Where the current models adds up forcings and applies the same feedbacks to the bundle, David’s model will treat each force on the climate separately and allow different feedbacks for different forces.
Solving the big-one… climate sensitivity: Any climate model is essentially one big complicated equation. In this case, the sum-of-warmings model ends up with two crucial unknowns in the one equation, so it can’t be solved. But David builds a second model on the outgoing radiation, an OLR model. Now with two equations and two variables, it can be solved, at least enough to put an upper bound on the climate’s sensitivity to CO2.
Below, David lays out the plan for assembling the new basic climate model (the “zero-D” one, not the GCMs). Remember, the point of the basic model is that it is the simple application of basic physics that gives climate scientists implacable confidence that they are basically right. They are so convinced they can’t even imagine how it could be any other way, which is why government funded science is never going to get out of this rut unless someone outside the paradigm shakes them out.
— Jo
“Dunno”, says the Minister of Dams, “We blocked off part of that pipe, but the dam is hardly getting any fuller?”
11. An Alternative Modeling Strategy
Dr David Evans, 14 October 2015, David Evans’ Basic Climate Models Home, Intro, Previous, Next, Nomenclature.
This post discusses the strategy used to develop an alternative model, one which fixes or ameliorates all the aforementioned problems with the conventional basic climate model — namely applying the solar response to non-solar climate influences (post 9), omission of feedbacks that respond to climate drivers directly rather than to surface warming (post 5 and post 7), and heavy reliance on unverifiable partial derivatives (post 4). The improvements come at the cost of requiring more climate data.
A New Organizing Principle
The conventional basic climate model is organized around a radiation balance: it adds the radiation imbalance (“forcing”) caused by each climate driver, to produce a total radiation imbalance. Due to the conventional interchangeability of climate drivers (post 9), this total radiation imbalance is equivalent, before feedbacks, to a net increase in absorbed solar radiation (ASR). The surface warming is then calculated, as that required under the Planck conditions* to eliminate this imbalance with a net increase in outgoing longwave radiation (OLR), after feedbacks are applied. This leads to the architecture shown in Fig. 2 of post 3 or, equivalently, Fig. 2 of post 9 — its nub is the adder (or summation node) shown as a big purple circle in either of those diagrams, which sums the radiation imbalances due to the various climate drivers.
That is, the essence of the conventional model is that it sums the radiation imbalances (forcings) due to the various climate influences.
The alternative model is going to use a different organizing principle: it instead adds the perturbation in surface temperature (“warming”) due to each climate driver, to produce a total surface warming. Its nub will be a sum of warmings. The climate is widely assumed to be linear for the small temperature perturbations involved in global warming, so the temperature perturbations due to the various climate drivers are independent and superpose — that is, we can work out the warming due to each driver independently of what else is happening, and the total warming is just the sum of the individual warmings. By the assumed linearity, the effects of one climate driver on other drivers are only second order.
That is, the essence of the alternative model is that it sums the temperature perturbations (warmings) due to the various climate influences.
For example, suppose we are considering two climate drivers: an increase in total solar irradiance (TSI) and/or externally driven albedo (EDA), and an increase in CO2. Quite independently of each other, we compute the two warmings:
- The increases in TSI and EDA are combined to compute the increase in ASR (pre-surface-feedbacks, ΔANF). The solar response is applied to this — thereby computing the surface warming due to ASR. (The solar response is the surface warming per increase in ASR, in °C per W/m2.)
- The increase in CO2 concentration is converted to a radiation imbalance by a logarithm and appropriate scaling. The CO2 response is applied to this — thereby computing the surface warming due to CO2. (The CO2 response is the surface warming per increase in CO2 forcing, in °C per W/m2.)
The surface warming due to ASR is then added to the surface warming due to CO2, to obtain the total surface warming. (To complete the computation, there is also some extra ASR due to albedo feedbacks to surface warming, etc., in a feedback loop.)
Put simply, if there is increasing CO2 and increasing ASR, then:
- The conventional model adds the radiation imbalances caused by each, then computes the surface warming from that combined radiation imbalance (as if it were all extra ASR).
- The alternative model computes the surface warming due to each, independently, and adds them to give the total surface warming.
The change from the conventional model to the alternative model might qualify as a paradigm shift (though that terms is much overused).
Sum-of-Warmings Model
The major advantage of the sum-of-warmings approach is that it allows tailored responses to different climate influences — a response specifically for CO2 is applied to the influence of CO2, while the solar response is still applied to the increase in ASR. In contrast, the conventional sum-of-forcings approach problematically applies the solar response to all climate drivers — one size fits all, see post 9.
The sum-of-warmings approach fixes both major flaws with the conventional architecture:
- It applies a specific CO2 sensitivity to the influence of CO2, instead of applying the Planck or Stefan-Boltzmann sensitivities (which are suitable only for a solar response — see post 9).
- It can contain specific CO2 feedbacks, which respond to increasing CO2 rather than to surface warming (see post 5 and post 7).
It is important to note that the climate responses to extra ASR and to extra CO2 are fundamentally different:
- Increased ASR causes increased OLR.
- Increased CO2 leaves OLR constant (neglecting minor changes due to albedo feedbacks to surface warming). It merely redistributes the OLR between the pipes — less through the CO2 pipe, so more through the other pipes.
Radiation Balance
Energy must balance between steady states (Eq. (1) in post 2), so the alternative model also applies a radiation balance constraint.
The radiation in the sum-of-warmings model is balanced simply by setting the increase in ASR in the model equal to the increase in OLR. (Which is why the alternative basic climate model, like the conventional basic climate model, can only be applied between steady states.)
Solvability
The sum-of-warmings model results in one equation, in which the sum of the warmings due to the individual drivers is equated to the total surface warming.
It is assumed that the surface warming caused by increasing CO2 is proportional to the radiation imbalance caused by the increasing CO2, at least over the range of interest. Let us call that proportionality constant the “CO2 sensitivity” λC, and let it include the effect of CO2-specific feedbacks. The surface warming due to increasing CO2 is thus equal to λC times the radiation imbalance due to that increasing CO2. Thus the sum-of-warmings equation includes a single parameter that expresses the CO2 response.
Suppose the climate drivers in our model include the externally-driven albedo (EDA, post 10). The change in EDA over the last few decades is unknown; therefore the change in ASR is unknown. Happily, the radiation balance constraint equated the increase in ASR to the increase in OLR, so we do not need to know the change in ASR — but we do need to know the change in OLR.
So the single equation from the sum-of-warmings model, over an observed period in the last few decades, contains two unknown quantities:
- The increase in OLR.
- The CO2 sensitivity, λC.
With two unknowns, the equation is not solvable. We need another equation.
OLR Model
We can estimate the increase in OLR over an observed period, using an OLR model. The alternative model includes an OLR model that estimates the increase in OLR from changes in the physical emissions layers:
- Surface warming (which affects OLR from the surface, and, for a given lapse rate and heights, the temperatures of the other emissions layers).
- Increase in the CO2 concentration (which, allied with spectroscopy, tells us the corresponding decrease in OLR from the CO2 molecules).
- Changes in the heights of the emissions layers (which affects their temperatures).
- Changes in the lapse rate (which affects the temperatures of the non-surface emission layers).
- Changes in the cloudiness fraction (which affects the split between surface and cloud-top OLR).
This drags a lot more data into the calculation of the sensitivity to CO2, but it is perhaps the simplest way of determining the actual OLR, or at least bounding it.
Why don’t we use the OLR datasets directly? Basically the data isn’t good enough for our purpose. The first OLR dataset is the one at NOAA, from 1974 to 2013, perhaps most easily viewed at KNMI (set latitude -90 to 90, longitude -180 to 180, press “Make time series”). The data before 1979 is unusual and has a break, so like most satellite data more properly begins in 1979. The absolute values read low, around 232 W/m2, while the true value is probably around 239 W/m2. The data is gridded and interpolated, and to construct a sufficiently sensitive global mean might require the assistance of the people who originally managed the dataset — to make best use of only the actual data, and knowing the sizes of the grid cells (the Earth is not quite spherical) — but they do not seem to have provided a global mean (KNMI presumably adds the gridded data, giving equal weight to interpolated and observed data, and treating the Earth as a sphere). The second dataset is the CERES global OLR, which starts in 2000 — see here (Fig. 2) and here (Fig.3 ) — so unfortunately the period is too short. We use some short recent observation periods, for which the CERES OLR figures are agreeable. A major advantage to using the OLR model, however, is that it gives a lot of insight into what is going on.
Alternative Model
Combining the sum-of-warmings model with the OLR model gives the alternative model. We join them by plugging the increase in OLR from the OLR model into the sum-of-warmings model, yielding a single equation in which the only unknown over a period of observations is λC. So we can estimate λC, and the model is complete. The model can then be used to estimate surface warming from changes in the climate drivers between steady states, and thus the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS).
Unfortunately the climate data is not good enough to form an estimate of the increase in OLR over the last few decades. However it is good enough to bound the increase on OLR, which is enough to put meaningful bounds on the estimated ECS. Essentially the emission-layer data puts a lower bound on the increase in OLR, which by energy balance puts a lower bound on the increase in ASR, which puts a lower bound on the component of surface warming due to the solar response (the ASR drive the solar response), which (given the observed surface warming) puts an upper bound on the surface warming due to extra CO2, which puts an upper bound on the ECS.
(In contrast, the conventional basic climate model attempts to compute the ECS while ignoring the increases in EDA, ASR, and OLR over any observed period. It just applies the solar response to the radiation imbalance caused by a doubling of CO2. Very simple, but what if the CO2 response and the solar response turn out to have quite different strengths?)
Comparison
The conventional model is based solely on a radiation balance. It calculates the ECS via a simplistic and problematic analysis primarily using laboratory physics — the Stefan-Boltzmann law (with minor modification for the difference between the Planck and Stefan-Boltzmann sensitivities), the reduction in OLR from CO2 molecules due to a doubling of CO2 (spectroscopy), and the estimated feedbacks to surface warming (which are mainly from the properties of moist air).
The alternative model is based on a sum-of-warmings model and an OLR model. Radiation balance is used to equate the changes in OLR and ASR, then these two models are combined into a joint model, from which the CO2 response can be estimated over observed periods. The ECS can then be estimated as the CO2 response to a doubling of CO2. Thus it calculates the ECS using a mix of laboratory physics and observed climate data.
Over the next few posts we’ll present the sum-of-warmings model, then the OLR model, then the joint model.
*Planck conditions (see post 9): All else besides tropospheric temperatures and OLR are held constant — there are no feedbacks, all tropospheric temperatures (including the surface temperature) change in unison, and stratospheric temperatures are unchanged (Soden & Held, 2006, pp. 3355-56). These are the conditions under which the Planck feedback or sensitivity applies.
Normally I wouldn’t comment here but your cartoon is just TOO, TOO priceless to ignore Jo.
What determines the flow through a pipe? The pressure at the entrance to the pipe and the pressure loss through the pipe.
How do you increase the flow through a pipe if you can’t change the structure of the pipe and thus the pressure loss? You increase the pressure at the entrance to the pipe.
If the flow through your remaining 3 pipes is going to increase to compensate for the loss of flow in the ‘CO2’ pipe, what has to happen? The pressure at the entrance to the other 3 pipes has to increase. No pressure increase, no increased flow. Basic Fluid Mechanics.
If you have a dam and want to increase the flow rate through these outlet pipes, how do you raise the pressure at the entrance to the pipes? Raise the level of the dam!
If the level of the dam hasn’t risen, the flow through the other 3 pipes hasn’t changed. Cannot change!
So basically Jo, your cartoon and it’s caption violates conservation of mass and basic hydrostatics.
If the level of the dam hasn’t risen, the flow out the other 3 pipes cannot rise.
But that’s OK, restricting the flow in the CO2 pipe means that more energy will accumulate, ‘raising the dam’, so flow can increase in the other ‘pipes’. But only because the amount of ‘water’ in the dam has increased.
Gee, since your dam is an energy dam, maybe that means there is more energy behind the dam. Maybe higher temperatures.
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Glenn, obviously in the dam analogy the water level has to rise a little to increase the flow out the other pipes. [I’ve added the word “hardly” to Joanne’s caption.]
Likewise, increasing CO2 raises temperatures throughout the troposphere. But, as suggested by the dam analogy, temperatures might not have to rise very much if the heat blocked from going out the CO2 pipe is easily accommodated by the other pipes.
In the conventional climate models, water vapor amplification (the strongly positive feedback) means that when the flow in the CO2 pipe is reduced by increased CO2 then the flow in the water vapor pipe is also reduced. So in the establishment view, impeding the CO2 pipe also impedes the water vapor pipe, thereby causing the surface pipe to carry even more OLR. But the amount of OLR flowing in the surface pipe increases with increasing surface temperature — so there is a relatively large surface warming.
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Obviously electronic technicians view climate model theory a little different to cartoon critics. I assumed the pipe analogy was developed to show 4 independent radiation path ways to space not little invisible tunnels that had structure.
I wonder if people who display such pedantry do so due to a lack of understanding or simply to discredit?
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I agree with you crakar24. The pipes are just an analogy. Next we will be arguing about the concrete mix used in the dam wall!
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Lol
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Yes but has the concrete fully cured yet?…..dam pedants.
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Well I can tell you ( and David ) that the pipes and the dam walls aren’t made of concrete, they’re made of cheesecloth!
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The Mighty Glenn Tamblyn has spoken and this is the best he has to show us?
He’s stolen the coveted first post slot and now knocked the discussion off track. I vote that it’s an attempt to discredit.
It’s also that he just likes to hear himself blab on.
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The Grate Glenn Tamblyn from SkS… :lol
https://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/another-alarmist-author-admits-spreading-greenhouse-gas-theory-bunkum/
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Mark
“To problematize something, to put it through the process of “problematicization,” is to pick nits about tiny things which are themselves of sub-nit dimension in hopes of sparking a class consciousness and hopefully that left-wing revolution Marxists pray for.”
From
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2015/10/problematize.html#comments
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David. I am glad you corrected the comment. The dam does not have to raise, it is the water in the reservoir that has to rise not raise the level of the dam.
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David
“Likewise, increasing CO2 raises temperatures throughout the troposphere. But, as suggested by the dam analogy, temperatures might not have to rise very much if the heat blocked from going out the CO2 pipe is easily accommodated by the other pipes.’
Unfortunately, using vague terms like ‘not very much’ doesn’t cut it. Equally phrases such as ‘easily accommodated’ are equally nebulous and unquantitative. Not very helpful.
What you need to do is show what the magnitude of this accommodation is and particularly, what drives it. Flow out your other ‘pipes’ can’t increase without a temperature increase – the equivalent of the dam level rising.
So aren’t you actually describing exactly the process included in all the major models – energy flow to space is restricted by more CO2, the atmosphere warms as a result and energy flow to space grows as a result of that warming, restoring equilibrium. Your ‘pipes’ analogy is just an imprecise way of expressing this. There is no ‘other’ mechanism at play here – you are describing the standard mechanism.
“In the conventional climate models, water vapor amplification (the strongly positive feedback) means that when the flow in the CO2 pipe is reduced by increased CO2 then the flow in the water vapor pipe is also reduced. So in the establishment view, impeding the CO2 pipe also impedes the water vapor pipe, thereby causing the surface pipe to carry even more OLR. But the amount of OLR flowing in the surface pipe increases with increasing surface temperature — so there is a relatively large surface warming.”
Here David you seem to be completely misunderstanding the water vapour feedback. Yes emissions from water vapour are impeded slightly in those bands where the increased CO2 concentration now overwhelms the H2O emissions. This doesn’t apply where CO2 is already the dominant factor or where CO2 is completely insignificant. But this isn’t the water vapour feedback!
As for causing ‘the surface pipe’ to increase, all the ‘pipes’ increase due to atmospheric warming. But this isn’t the water vapour feedback!
The water vapour feedback occurs because with a warmer atmosphere, the water vapour content of the atmosphere must increase to maintain the hydrological cycle. With warmer air it requires more water vapour in the atmosphere to maintain the same level of cloud formation and thus precipitation to balance evaporation. With more water vapour present, the effective height of emissions to space from water vapour increases, moving the source of emissions into colder higher air, reducing the emissions from water vapour. Your H2O ‘pipe’ becomes constricted.
If this were the only change then there would be equal warming all the way up the air column (at least to the Tropopause).
However, with warmer temperatures, there is also increased evaporation, and thus increased condensation at higher altitude. This changes the Lapse Rate by adjusting the balance between the proportion of parcels of air that undergo Dry Adiabitic cooling as they rise and parcels that undergo moist Adiabatic cooling with condensation as they rise. This is a negative feedback.
So the net effect of water vapour is a positive feedback due to the standard water vapour feedback and a smaller negative feedback due to Lapse Rate change due to increased evaporation.
And the effects of this is propagated through the whole atmosphere, from the surface to the Tropopause.
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Bizarre Glenn.
You misunderstand my “misunderstanding” because you criticize me while agreeing with what I say.
Congratulations for describing the water vapor feedback Glenn. This is hardly news to readers of this series, as it has been mentioned several times before and will be examined in some detail ahead. As you say, the water vapor pipe “becomes constricted” when CO2 increases — as I was saying in the section you quoted from me. You have confirmed what I said. (So your quote for the propaganda machine that “David you seem to be completely misunderstanding” is undermined by the typical spell-out-the-basics-for-the-rubes-on-the-skeptic-blog that follows.)
You say I use vague terms, but you are doing vague reading. Read the first sentence of the post (maybe the rest too ;)). This is part of a series; the numbers are coming.
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Glenn Tamblyn October 15, 2015 at 12:50 pm ·
David
(“Likewise, increasing CO2 raises temperatures throughout the troposphere. But, as suggested by the dam analogy, temperatures might not have to rise very much if the heat blocked from going out the CO2 pipe is easily accommodated by the other pipes.’)
“Unfortunately, using vague terms like ‘not very much’ doesn’t cut it. Equally phrases such as ‘easily accommodated’ are equally nebulous and unquantitative. Not very helpful.”
WOW all must read and do whatever the pendant demands, as though this was written for some twit such as Glenn Tamblyn! 🙁
“What you need to do is show what the magnitude of this accommodation is and particularly, what drives it. Flow out your other ‘pipes’ can’t increase without a temperature increase – the equivalent of the dam level rising.”
Atmospheric temperature is always dependent on what powers it!! This is not surface radiative exitance! Twit.
“So aren’t you actually describing exactly the process included in all the major models – energy flow to space is restricted by more CO2, the atmosphere warms as a result..”
This is one of the major flaws in all the models, as is being carefully described by David, for his readers.
“In the conventional climate models, water vapor amplification (the strongly positive feedback) means that when the flow in the CO2 pipe is reduced by increased CO2 then the flow in the water vapor pipe is also reduced. So in the establishment view, impeding the CO2 pipe also impedes the water vapor pipe”
Thank you so very much for pointing out the other major reason the Clueless Climate Clown (CCC) models, all of them, can never work. By your statements you clearly indicate no comprehension of how this atmosphere may actually work. 🙁
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David, you say:
Does it indeed?
https://okulaer.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/tlt-vs-olr.png
Here is what happens in the real world: The troposphere warms, OLR goes up. The troposphere cools, OLR goes down. The troposphere temps trend flat, OLR trends flat.
The AGW hypothesis seeks to turn this pretty trivial reality on its head by claiming that OLR at the ToA somehow controls tropospheric temps. The opposite is of course the actual case.* We have no empirical evidence from the real Earth system suggesting otherwise.
It’s all a conjecture. And that’s it …
*Bear in mind that the total tropospheric content of both CO2 and H2O (water vapour and clouds) has increased significantly since 2000. And so the plot above (according to the AGW hypothesis as simplistically stated) should have shown a flat OLR curve and a resulting rising temp curve. Instead what we see is a flat temp curve and a resulting flat OLR curve. In other words, the temps are clearly the cause, the OLR the effect. Not the other way around.
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Kristian October 16, 2015 at 1:45 am · Reply
(David, you say: (…) increasing CO2 raises temperatures throughout the troposphere.)
“Does it indeed?
Here is what happens in the real world: The troposphere warms, OLR goes up. The troposphere cools, OLR goes down. The troposphere temps trend flat, OLR trends flat.”
That is precisely correct! CO2 never changes the tropospheric temperature at all. There simply is NO surface exitance in the absorption bands of CO2. Sunside the lowest 2 meters of atmosphere are radiating in the direction of the surface as, at those times, this atmosphere has a higher temperature than the surface.
Even with WV surface exitance is so small that only convection and latent heat interacting with the 6 minute time constant for rethermalizing the gravity induced lapse rate affects tropospheric temperature.
The evaporation of airborne water condensate prevents the lower troposphere from increasing temperature sunside, while the condensation of that WV nightside maintains that temperature and greatly increases the radiant exitance at night.
All the best! -will-
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Kristian: I didn’t say how much the rise was — the context of that comment was explaining the dam analogy, and conceding that there needs to be some warming to initiate changes. In a few posts we’ll be dealing with how much warming, what water vapor is doing, and the OLR, in the real world, quantitatively.
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David, you say:
My point is, there won’t be any tropospheric warming if CO2_atm goes up. And so there won’t be any surface warming either. Because that’s merely an assumption based on no actual empirical evidence from the real world whatsoever, only on a failed and simplistic theoretical interpretation (a guess) of how the Earth system should function.
Have you had a look at what the CERES EBAF data is saying about what’s been going on with the Earth’s radiative regime since 2000, as atmospheric CO2 and H2O (WV & clouds) have both gone up significantly? It is devastating news to the AGW hypothesis. The “enhanced rGHE” is nowhere to be seen. The OPPOSITE is happening! I’d be happy to provide some plots.
Being a lukewarmer, David, is not the way to go, I’m sorry.
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Kristian, You might be interested to see how this plays out when we stick the data into the alternative model. It is indeed hard to find direct empirical evidence that CO2 causes surface warming, and the case against CO2 is indeed theoretical, centered historically on the basic model. Provide your plots in the later posts.
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I am interested 🙂
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Kristain,
Please be interested and learn! David does not claim answers. His concepts do indeed show what is so terribly wrong with the claimed answers!
Kick back, hug one you truly like, have a beer, watch black kitten practice crossing paths,in time for Halloween! Send money to Jonova.
All the best! -will-
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In Jo’s illustration the pipes are large capacity and are not full to the top. Hence the flow rate can increase with no increase in pressure and only a very small rise in water level (like a sewer pipe under normal conditions).
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Glenn Tamblyn October 14, 2015 at 4:52 pm · Reply
“Normally I wouldn’t comment here but your cartoon is just TOO, TOO priceless to ignore Jo.
What determines the flow through a pipe? The pressure at the entrance to the pipe and the pressure loss through the pipe.”
Good observation! In the Case of EMR and most everything else is constrained by any opposing pressure. When the opposing pressure is equal there is no flow! To space atmospheric EMR pressure loss is a constant 377 ohms impedance to flow with no opposing pressure, (T^4). From the Earth’s surface the local atmosphere’s (T^4) pressure limits the flow through any size pipe.
Please, I hate to use the fluid ‘pressure” analogy for EMR flux as it gives an incorrect impression of what EMR flux actually is (as far as anyone knows). The concept, however, remains valid until you get to the details.Then it gets really weird!
“How do you increase the flow through a pipe if you can’t change the structure of the pipe and thus the pressure loss? You increase the pressure at the entrance to the pipe.”
This atmosphere changes the structure of the pipe everywhere, on a second by second time interval.
“So basically Jo, your cartoon and it’s caption violates conservation of mass and basic hydrostatics.”
All mass, and all hydro-anything are not at all affected. Power (flux) in equals power (flux) out, or your water level must change. The actual change is immeasurable. How dey do dat? Not one, or all, of the academic Clueless Climate Clowns (CCC) has any idea! What good are the models?
“If the level of the dam hasn’t risen, the flow out the other 3 pipes cannot rise.”
Except for all of the unknown! How do you know?
All the best! -will-
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Hey Glenn, since we are already down to science-by-cartoon-analogy, ponder that the pipes to space in the atmosphere are not made of concrete.
You surely are not suggesting that all the atmospheric “pipes” are loaded to the hilt, fully saturated and unable to take a bigger load? We both know those pipes to space are elastic.
And if the dam level represents energy at the surface (meaning temperature) — then if the “water” or energy can reroute via the atmosphere (like having a drop catchment shared pool like this dam) then No — the dam doesn’t have to rise. You can’t see that catchment, it’s hidden by the Dam wall. But I know it’s there. I drew it. 😉
I did think about all these issues whilst sketching…
Since you are here, perhaps you’d like to comment on the actual stuff in the post that matters?
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Yes, Jo.
Brave try but you’re cartoon is misleading, and it’s a pity we’re stuck on discussing it.
The ‘pipes’ analogy, and the cartoon especially, lead us to jump to conclusions that the flow through the pipe is limited by its diameter, so for David’s schema to be appropriate either the pressure has to increase, which affects all pipes including the ‘CO2 pipe’ and doesn’t demonstrate the point at hand, or the diameter of the nozzle(s) has to increase. For nozzle, perhaps read ‘iris’. I guess that’s where this is going.
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“or the diameter of the nozzle(s) has to increase”
That is where changes in the lapse rate slope come in. The volume and location of the pipes for emission of radiation to space vary with atmospheric density and variations in the lapse rate slope (by virtue of the gas laws) simply reflect density variations in the vertical column.
Gravity determines the basic rate of decline of density with height but radiatively active molecules are capable of distorting it.
The resulting density variations change the local emission heights because emission heights are related to density.
Although David has helpfully limited the main emission pipes to 4 and is dealing with averages the fact is that every radiatively active particle in an atmosphere will have its own individual emissions height which will be determined by its temperature relative to the dry adiabatic lapse rate slope AND the density of the air around and above it.
In reality, the points at which emissions are released to space are constantly coming and going and moving about in three dimensions depending upon the density variations within the atmosphere.
One can liken the locations of radiative emissions to space to clouds coming and going, forming and dissipating constantly.
So, GHGs alter lapse rate slopes. Those alterations induce convective adjustments, those convective adjustments change the density distributions, those changes in density distributions adjust radiative emissions to space and, voila, one has a stable atmosphere with no change in surface temperature.
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Mothcatcher, the atmosphere is more complicated than a cartoon. Who-would-have-thought?
Besides — what you can’t see 😉
Mothercatcher: “it’s a pity we’re stuck on discussing it.” Your choice. Perhaps you’ll think of something to say on the topic that matters?
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A pregnant horse is called a dam…….in hindsight perhaps you should have drawn one of them to avoid confusion
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Actually a pregnant horse is called a broodmare. After she has the foal she is called the foal’s dam aka mother.
(Ain’t getting the language correct a real pain in the rump?)
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I stand corrected gai, based on this new information Jo should have drawn a big horse and a little horse standing next to each other to demonstrate there is a dam floating up in the sky. The four pipes could have been represented by 4 feeding troughs with the heads of the pendantic little shits that frequent here hidden within them.
40
Just like old times………..let me change one word to avoid moderation
I stand corrected gai, based on this new information Jo should have drawn a big horse and a little horse standing next to each other to demonstrate there is a dam floating up in the sky. The four pipes could have been represented by 4 feeding troughs with the heads of the pendantic little people that frequent here hidden within them.
——————————————————————————–
40
crakar24, Jo does not even have to draw the illustration.
http://www.unicornjorge.com/Gallery16/loneangel_(c)_pegasus_mare_and_foal.jpg
Or perhaps this illustration is more appropriate:
http://s145.photobucket.com/user/omgz_dinoz0r/media/unicorn.jpg.html
10
Why did i not think of that……….dam(n)
00
Jo, really, this ad-hoc reasoning is just compounding the problem. With that 2nd diagram the T_surf is no longer affected by a continuous function of the atmospheric temperature, but responds to atmospheric temperature only after some threshold is crossed. That is totally unrealistic.
The first one wasn’t too bad. This second one is a cartoon so misleading that Cook would be proud of it.
The dam has done enough damage already. It’s time to release the bouncing bombs.
Ich bin ein Berliner, Ms Nova, please take down this (2nd) wall!
71
Agree.
30
I’m winking guys. There’s satire here.
We could go on and on adding complexity to a cartoon, building in feedbacks from pipe to pipe, from atmosphere to surface, or … we could talk about actual climate models. (Hint)
Warning: The cartoon is not a diagram.
251
The cartoon in the intro does make one point well: Increasing sunlight increases OLR, but increasing CO2 merely causes a redistribution of OLR while leaving the amount of OLR constant (ignoring the minor surface albedo feedbacks).
And it’s nicely drawn, thank you 🙂
291
Andrew
“but responds to atmospheric temperature only after some threshold is crossed. That is totally unrealistic.”
This half wave recification of waves seems to highlight the little ice age as a flow stopper instead of the cooling being caused by lack of heat retention.
When Jo says “I’m winking guys. There’s satire here.” It could have something to do with too many things being held constant.
Relax. “Worlds best pracice” homogenisation of the dam wall can solve even the problem of speed boat waves in an upside down dam.
31
Jo, I am not a physicist, electrical engineer or any other kind of “climate scientist”. But I thought that your cartoon explained what David is on about in a wonderfully simple way. I showed it to my wife (who is a sympathiser but does not follow the science) and she understood it immediately. Yes, I know that it may not follow all the rules of physics exactly, but, gee, it does explain David’s “four pipes” in a very simple way. Well done both of you, and thank you.
30
No one is “stuck” on discussing the cartoon except the people not willing or unable to discuss the material. You go where your mind takes you by choice.
170
🙂
40
mothcatcher,
Fluid flow and heat flow aren’t the same thing. The former is only a rough analog for illustrating the latter. The term pressure means
a loteverything in fluid dynamics and nothing at all when considering thermodynamics.80
“The term pressure means a lot everything in fluid dynamics and nothing at all when considering thermodynamics.”
What crap! Pressure differential and function of temperature^(some_power) differential, the potential differences are all there is of thermodynamics. Even the EMR part. Without these potential differences, there is no dynamic whatsoever. The Clueless Climate Clowns (CCC) try to have the gullible think that one temperature is independent of all others. Nowhere is this true !! 🙁
88
Will,
I have accepted that you and I think in different terms and I’ve no quarrel with that.
But pressure has a very specific definition: unit of force per (divided by) unit of area over which the force is applied. Its units are mechanical force and physical surface area, pounds per square inch, etc. And I cannot remember seeing the term pressure used in any discussion of thermodynamics, not in college and not on this blog. I’ve used a mental picture of electric circuits in which the term pressure (= voltage) helped me understand what goes on (I was a teenager at the time). But it’s just an analogy, pure and simple.
Heat can move in both directions between bodies at different temperatures simultaneously or even 2 bodies at the same temperature. No fluid can flow in both directions between positions having different pressures and fluids do not move between positions at the same pressure. So I don’t understand what you’re talking about.
10
Roy Hogue
October 16, 2015 at 3:14 am · Reply
“And I cannot remember seeing the term pressure used in any discussion of thermodynamics, not in college and not on this blog.”
Ever notice things like steam engines, jet engines, internal combustion engines, heat engines. All of these are thermodynamics, and all have pressure not heat as the motive force. Thermodynamics has little to do with temperature except that higher is more efficient.
“Heat can move in both directions between bodies at different temperatures simultaneously or even 2 bodies at the same temperature.”
Have you even one physical example of such? No heat flux shall spontaneously exhibit in a direction of higher potential (temperature). The second law of thermodynamics as per Rudy Clausius! Another law via observation as are all physical LAWS.
“No fluid can flow in both directions between positions having different pressures and fluids do not move between positions at the same pressure.”
That is the very same 2LTD as above! But water, air, and heat, pumps all make it reverse with a little work.
Oceans have a very large pressure gradient but that gradient is not expressed for the ocean water itself. The same with this atmosphere. The whole thing is isopotential although it has definite density, pressure, and temperature gradients with altitude. Both fluid bodies exhibit neutral buoyancy of the fluid itself. Although compressible, incompressible fluids work differently if this self-buoyancy were not so the fluids in this gravitational field would not act at all like they actually do. So I don’t understand what you’re talking about. -will-
14
Roy Hogue October 16, 2015 at 3:14 am ·
I tried doing this a bit ago but that went to moderation.
Please stop nit picking David for details of what you do not understand, please. ie
Roy Hogue October 16, 2015 at 5:02 am
He is up to his ears with folk like Appel and KR tring to only derail this! Ask of others!
“And I cannot remember seeing the term pressure used in any discussion of thermodynamics, not in college and not on this blog.”
Ever notice things like steam engines, jet engines, internal combustion engines, heat engines. All of these are thermodynamics, and all have pressure not heat as the motive force. Thermodynamics has little to do with temperature except that higher is more efficient.
“Heat can move in both directions between bodies at different temperatures simultaneously or even 2 bodies at the same temperature.”
Have you even one physical example of such? No heat flux shall spontaneously exhibit in a direction of higher potential (temperature). The second law of thermodynamics as per Rudy Clausius! Another law via observation as are all physical LAWS.
“No fluid can flow in both directions between positions having different pressures and fluids do not move between positions at the same pressure.”
That is the very same 2LTD as above! But water, air, and heat, pumps all make it reverse with a little work.
Oceans have a very large pressure gradient but that gradient is not expressed for the ocean water itself. The same with this atmosphere. The whole thing is isopotential although it has definite density, pressure, and temperature gradients with altitude. Both fluid bodies exhibit neutral buoyancy of the fluid itself. Although compressible, incompressible fluids work differently if this self-buoyancy were not so the fluids in this gravitational field would not act at all like they actually do. So I don’t understand what you’re talking about. -will-
05
So you now speak for David Evans???
David is capable of speaking for himself if he wants to. And our exchange didn’t involve him, so where is your complaint? Hung out to dry, I think.
10
Tamblyn has missed the point of Jo’s carton that there are alternative pipes for the outgoing radiation whereas the convention climate models assume there is only the CO2 pipe. Jo is endeavouring to communicate complex issues using simple analogies like cartoons to convey a message to an audience with a non science background where as smart alecs like Tamblyn try to smoke people with non science backgrounds with scientific jargon and his mate John Cookies 97% consensus. It is clear from Tamblyn’s comments he doesn’t have any understanding of fluid dynamics as he hasn’t mentioned the word turbulence once.
30
Agreed. See my comment above.
20
Joanne Nova October 14, 2015 at 6:52 pm
Hey Glenn,
“I did think about all these issues whilst sketching…
Since you are here, perhaps you’d like to comment on the actual stuff in the post that matters?”
I think your sketch shows exactly the principle that David is correctly explaining. Very precise! Thank you! That the (CCC) cannot recognize their own folly, likely means no folly, but instead deliberate planned deception.
All the best! -will-
15
I am not sure a fluid dynamics model is a good analogy. Flow wise, I think the closest model is a ducted airconditioner system. Total inflow remains the same until all registers are either restricted or some are turned off until the remaining registers achieve maximum flow. With all registers balanced for flow, total inflow equals total outflow with all registers flowing identical numbers. Adjust one register and all other register flow figures will change according to where they are along the duct. The furthest will show the least change, the closest to the inlet will show the greatest…it is a balancing act with the total inflow constant.
The dam is a bit of a problem. The water is set in its volume flow rate. If you turn off a pipe in the wall or restrict it. The water level will increase because the water AT THAT level will only flow x litres of water a second through any one pipe. The water will increase in potential until the new flow balances at y litres a second in each remaining pipe. The total flow remains the same but with three pipes instead of four…the water level in the dam has to increase to get the level high enough in the pipe to increase the volume flow. Pipes or V flow gauges. A cross section of the pipe at an initial flow calculates at so many cubic metres a second flowing through the pipe. Combined rate gives total cubic metres per second. Reduce one pipe means the total flow will remain the same. However, to attain the aggregate flow through the remaining three pipes you must either lower the pipes in the dam wall so they then get the required individual cubic flow rate at a static dam level or raise the dam level.
41
In a sense, what I am trying to say…a constant pressure model is a better argument than a volume flow model.
40
How about, none of the earthling models can ever work for this Earth! 😉
1211
Don’t forget the FOURTH POWER of the radius of the pipe: it makes an enormous effect on the flow.
Poiseuille’s Law: In the case of smooth flow (laminar flow), the volume flowrate is given by the pressure difference divided by the viscous resistance. This resistance depends linearly upon the viscosity and the length, but the fourth power dependence upon the radius is dramatically different.
30
Interesting! Do you really think fourspace applies to this wee bit of mud?
312
………. and disappeared up his own radius in a blinding blue flash of light ”””
I think that the Reynolds number is far more relevant in this situation because at some point in its contact with the
containing pipe, the fluid flow will cease to be laminar and become turbulent.
Then again, this is only an analogy about radiative transfer of energy; not fluid flow.
Damn
KK
40
But wait there’s more, not to forget the pipe radius but the pipe wall friction and the static drag this has on the fluid being moved, in vehicle exhaust design the trick is to match how many pipes after the headers to maintain constant gas velocity with 0 delta pressure for effective exhaust scavenging, one smaller volume pipe can outflow two larger volume pipes simply from less wall surface area and thus less drag on the same gas being moved.
30
“Don’t forget the FOURTH POWER of the radius of the pipe: it makes an enormous effect on the flow. Poiseuille’s Law:”
NOT Provost’s corpuscular theory of radiant heat emission again please!!! The flow in this case is radiative exitance from the atmosphere to elsewhere/when! The impedance for such is a constant 377 Ohms, quite independent of geometry!
02
You seem to be missing the point, The IPCC claims that closing off one pipe reduces the flow from the other pipes!!!
100
No closing one pipe leads to a buildup of radiation energy which raises the temp of the emission layer in order to release more radiation. No other pipes are affected however they then pretend this increase in energy it from the sun and therefore pretend the surface warms.
Note: No pipes concrete or otherwise were harmed in butchering of Davids theory
100
“No closing one pipe leads to a buildup of radiation energy which raises the temp of the emission layer in order to release more radiation. No other pipes are affected however they then pretend this increase in energy it from the sun and therefore pretend the surface warms.”
More unsubstantiated (CCC) crap! David can use a layer as a substitute for an effective radiation temperature for purposes of illustration. Every molecule in this atmosphere radiates all it can to space.No layers. H2O in all its forms determine the magnitude of both the insolation and of the total radiant exitance to space. 😉
78
Will how is your crap substantiated?
71
crackar
Will’s “crap” can sometimes be all over the place but when you put it together it often makes sense.
🙂
KK
25
“Will how is your crap substantiated?”
Such is substantiated by the 35 year long results of the CCC models! I was there when this nonsense started. 🙁
13
Will,
I dont consider your presense in a room when this nonsense started as being acceptable substantiation.
I do find it a travesty that you were not present in a room when they discovered manners and an even greater tradgety when they discovered humour.
In my mind your comment (not your attack on me) is a reinforcement of what David is saying but yet you have spent the better part of two days violently agreeing. Perhaps you are just pissed off that David beat you to the punch?
10
crakar24 October 16, 2015 at 12:19 pm
“In my mind your comment (not your attack on me) is a reinforcement of what David is saying but yet you have spent the better part of two days violently agreeing. Perhaps you are just pissed off that David beat you to the punch?”
Why don’t you go ask David about that?? 😉
00
Will,
Ask David if you are violently agreeing or if he beat you to the punch?
10
crakar24 October 16, 2015 at 1:11 pm
“Will, Ask David if you are violently agreeing or if he beat you to the punch?”
Whatever!! You seem to remain against something! Do you have a point?
David remains extremely courteous to those that wish harm, for good reason. -will-
00
Will,
I dont have time for circular arguments.
cheers
20
Will, I think you miss what craker24 is saying. Cracker is describing what the IPCC models simulate, “Every molecule in this atmosphere radiates all it can to space” is exactly what David saying also.
10
Glad that some folk notice, and are forced to think!
All the best! -will-
10
Good glad to see you now understand, maybe next time you wont call it unsubstantiated crap.
Cheers
10
Glen, the other pipes have flexible radii !!
60
And what actually happens, seeing the whole system is actually a pressurised system, is that the other pipes do actually have more output even if they don’t change in area.
I think that is the error in the cartoon. it should be a tank filled from the top with four outlets at the bottom. You block one, the others increase output.
And yes, it does matter what the roughness of the pipes are, Rollo 😉
40
The whole point of the analogy is HOW MUCH the pressure needs to increase. Considerably less if the remaining three pipes increase flow to compensate for a reduction through the CO2 pipe than if they all reduce flow in sympathy with it.
30
Hi Gavin
I think a lot of those commenting here have something in mind that has not been spelt out.
Namely, that there is a constant dribble of water into the dam which has to be dealt with on a 24 hour basis.
So if one pipe is blocked water levels (energy available) will increase and add a corresponding pressure to normalise the flow rate in total.
🙂 KK
30
I fully understand that. All analogies break down at some point so cannot be used to make an argument but that doesn’t mean they have no value. Dr. Evans has indicated that his model is likely to suggest a lower value for ECS than the conventional GCMs. The analogy holds in so far that a compensatory increase in flow through the other three pipes would lead to a smaller rise in level/pressure /temperature than decreased flow through all four pipes. It’s only a cartoon.
30
Glenn Tamblyn,
Judging from the debate you sparked, perhaps you shouldn’t have?
90
It’s a cartoon dude…
81
I wonder if Glenn is busy drafting a response to the cartoon in the newspaper right now. I am sure he has something to say about how cats don’t talk and they don’t eat lasagne.
80
I thought he had a café to run. !
31
My kitten Shadow do! She is currently out practicing crossing paths for Halloween. 😉
10
More comments on the cartoon than the maths!
Relax. The water level is such that the pipes are nowhere near full. Blocking one will have a negligible effect on water level. Perfect example of David’s point. Its not that CO2 does nothing.
40
Sorry to get into this so late because I notice that the first thing that has to be addressed with the cartoon is the size of the pipes. And we all know that size does matter. How about redoing the cartoon with the pipes shown at the correct size for flow and don’t start going on about Co2 can flow faster in the same size pipe as water and all that cra#. I would illustrate as the percentage cause ratio. This is after-all a very basic illustration.
30
That is a BRILLIANT refinement Ron.
The two CO2 pipes, one for Human origin CO2 and the other for Natural Origin CO2 in contrast with the water pipe will graphically display the whole thing.
It may not even be necessary to do any partial derivatives of some items to get the message across and the public may see the whole story in the pipe SIZES as you suggest..
KK
00
Kinda like putting a straw next to a mains water pipe?
10
Glenn,
no, even the claim that CO2 is blocking a “pipe” is wrong. Adding radiative gases to our radiatively cooled atmosphere will not reduce its radiative cooling ability. Nor will it reduce our radiatively cooled atmospheres ability to cool the solar heated surface of our planet.
513
Konrad, an increasing concentration of CO2 reduces the amount of OLR emitted by CO2 molecules, by thickening the CO2 blanket and, at certain wavelengths in the wings of the 15 micron well, pushing the emission layer to a higher and thus cooler place in the troposphere — a cooler emission layer emits less OLR. The IPCC figure is that a doubling of CO2 reduces the OLR in the CO2 pipe by about 3.7 W/m2, which I accept (see post 2).
142
”an increasing concentration of CO2 reduces the amount of OLR emitted by CO2 molecules, by thickening the CO2 blanket and, at certain wavelengths in the wings of the 15 micron well, pushing the emission layer to a higher and thus cooler place in the troposphere — a cooler emission layer emits less OLR.”
David this is the old ERL argument. It can be proved wrong with one question – “How much OLR would the atmosphere be emitting in the 15 micron band if there were no CO2 in the atmosphere?”
The ERL argument can be translated as – “adding radiative gases to the atmosphere reduces the atmospheres radiative cooling ability”. This is clearly false as the atmosphere would have no radiative cooling ability without radiative gases/liquids such as water H2O and the far weaker gas CO2.
You are right about the “pipes”. Jo also hit the nail on the head, pointing out the pipes could be considered elastic or only half full.
If you are accepting the IPCC claims, you should recheck their physics. For radiative gases in the atmosphere, over 66% of the energy they are radiating to space was not acquired by interception of surface LWIR”. Most of the energy being radiated to space from our atmosphere was acquired by surface conduction and the release of latent heat of evaporation.
David, if your modelling shows our radiatively cooled atmosphere warming the surface of our planet, you have gotten something wrong. I’m not poking at you because I think you are way off the mark, but because you are one of those so close to the right answer.
413
Konrad, adding more CO2 to the atmosphere just redistributes the OLR between the pipes. Less can go out the CO2 pipe, because the Co2 blanket is thicker (mixed analogies?), so more must go out the other pipes.
“How much OLR would the atmosphere be emitting in the 15 micron band if there were no CO2 in the atmosphere?” Lots — the 15 micron OLR would come from the surface (or near surface, from the water vapor continuum), like at other wavelengths of the atmospheric window. You just eliminated the CO2 pipe altogether, so the OLR all goes out the other three pipes, and none through the CO2 pipe.
Presumably you are noting that removing CO2 altogether and increasing CO2 both decrease the amount of OLR in the CO2 pipe. Ok, but the amount of OLR in the CO2 pipe as a function of CO2 concentration is not a straight line or even monotonic. There is an optimal CO2 concentration that maximizes the amount of OLR in the CO2 pipe, which I would guess is when the CO2 emissions layer is mostly (as a function of wavelength) but barely off the ground and thus as hot as possible — from there, as the CO2 concentration grows, the emission layer moves higher and lit emits less OLR, though the width of emission wavelengths also grows, which is complicating.
The ERL argument (never heard that term before — what is “ERL”?) can be translated as – “adding radiative gases to the atmosphere reduces the atmosphere’s radiative cooling ability”. Assuming it is CO2 being added (simplifies answer): Yes, on the absorption wavelengths of the CO2, and provided the CO2 concentration is already more than the concentration for the maximal amount of OLR in the CO2 pipe.
152
”adding more CO2 to the atmosphere just redistributes the OLR between the pipes. Less can go out the CO2 pipe, because the Co2 blanket is thicker (mixed analogies?), so more must go out the other pipes. […] You just eliminated the CO2 pipe altogether, so the OLR all goes out the other three pipes, and none through the CO2 pipe.”
David, no. The question wasn’t how much 15 micron LWIR the planet would emit if CO2 was eliminated, the question was how much the atmosphere would emit. The point is that if radiative gases are eliminated from the atmosphere, the atmosphere would have no effective cooling mechanism.
”Presumably you are noting that removing CO2 altogether and increasing CO2 both decrease the amount of OLR in the CO2 pipe.”
No, what I am saying is increasing concentrations of radiative gases in the atmosphere always increase the atmosphere’s radiative cooling ability.
”but the amount of OLR in the CO2 pipe as a function of CO2 concentration is not a straight line or even monotonic. There is an optimal CO2 concentration that maximizes the amount of OLR in the CO2 pipe, which I would guess is when the CO2 emissions layer is mostly (as a function of wavelength) but barely off the ground and thus as hot as possible — from there, as the CO2 concentration grows, the emission layer moves higher and lit emits less OLR, though the width of emission wavelengths also grows, which is complicating.“
David, this is just a variant of Ray Pierriehumbert’s 1995 “choked radiator” argument. A loose translation – “Well, um, err, initially adding radiative gases to an atmosphere allows radiative cooling, but then, err, the unicorn to rainbow ratio goes negative and additional radiative gases cause atmospheric warming!”
These are the knots you get tied in if you try mathematically modelling “steady state” then altering radiative gas concentration. You end up ignoring physical process. That “optimal concentration” of CO2 to maximise OLR” is a mathematical fiction. Radiative gases act to cool the atmosphere at all concentrations above 0.0ppm. There is no magical “tipping point” at which their cooling ability starts to fall.
You can find the right answer by deriving from first principals, asking the right questions and empirical experiment –
Can conduction back to the surface cool a non-radiative atmosphere as effectively as surface conduction can heat it? (remember diurnal cycles, don’t use average surface temperature).
How hot could the surface get without cooling by our radiately cooled atmosphere? (it’s higher than current surface temperature).
Can surface incident LWIR slow the cooling rate of water free to evaporatively cool? (why are the oceans hotter than theoretical blackbody?).
“The ERL argument (never heard that term before — what is “ERL”?)”
ERL or effective radiating level is the modern name for Pierriehumbert’s 1995 “choked radiator” display of flappy hands.
49
Konrad, yes sorry, you’re right, I answered the wrong question. I should have said: If there were no CO2, there would be more emissions at 15 microns than there are now, and they would come from a mix of the surface itself and the water vapor near the surface (the water vapor continuum), just like at other wavelengths in the atmospheric window. There would still be water vapor and cloud tops to cool the atmosphere presumably, firing off OLR from heights of several kilometers.
The maximum OLR from CO2 is when the Co2 emission layer is just above the surface and thus as hot as possible (ignoring the spreading of the CO2 emissions that occurs as the CO2 concentration increases). No unicorns required.
From there, as the CO2 concentration increases, the CO2 emissions layer lifts to higher and colder air so less OLR is emitted from the CO2 emissions layer. But the total OLR is equal to ASR, which is presumably not affected (much), so increasingly other pipes would have to emit more. Which is consistent with what we are saying about the change in CO2 going on presently.
Normally I only focus on deviations from the current Earth, and don’t get involved in discussions about no atmosphere or funny atmospheres — too hypothetical and unverifiable 🙂
102
”Normally I only focus on deviations from the current Earth”
David, the problem is you are not modelling the current earth. You are modelling a fictional planet where the net effect of the radiatively cooled atmosphere over the solar heated oceans is to slow their cooling rate rather than accelerate their cooling rate.
”The maximum OLR from CO2 is when the Co2 emission layer is just above the surface and thus as hot as possible”
Again with the “layers”! Yes I know it’s easier to model, but it’s wrong. Go out an measure the sky with an LWIR detector. Right now where I am, humid sky background is -25C but mid level cloud is 5C. Clouds are the strongest radiators in the atmosphere, and during and for a period after formation they are warmer than the atmosphere at their altitude.
Layers is the wrong approach as it leads to the ERL mathematical fiction. The reality is the atmosphere is a better radiator than the surface. A radiative atmosphere is improving the cooling ability of the surface. The surface is a 2D radiator, the atmosphere being LWIR translucent is a 3D radiating volume.
”[I] don’t get involved in discussions about no atmosphere or funny atmospheres — too hypothetical and unverifiable”
First, modelling an atmosphere radiating from a layer is modelling a funny atmosphere. Second quantifying “average surface temperature without radiative atmosphere” is the simplest way to falsify the AGW hypothesis. Would it be higher or lower than our current 288K? Empirical experiment indicates 312K is how hot the surface could average for an average of 240 w/m2 ASR. Therefore the net effect of our radiatively cooled atmosphere is surface cooling.
PS. I am in full agreement with part 12 on ASR vs OLR. But while you can quantify the relationship and lag with this approach, it still doesn’t give the mechanism for ASR variation. Cloud cover or solar spectral variance?
27
Dr.Evans,
If this were true, then the opposite would also be true:
IOW, as CO2 is reduced, less OLR goes out the other pipes!
But . . .
IOW, if CO2 is removed completely lots of OLR would go through the other pipes.
So, if we accept the radiative transfer theory, as you’ve described it, then as you lower CO2, less OLR goes through the other pipes. That is, until you remove CO2 completely. Then, suddenly, lots of OLR goes through the other pipes!
Huh?
How do you not see the contradiction in your own statements?
Abe
18
Abe, no contradiction. See the two replies to Konrad: Comment 1.14.1.1.1 and Comment 1.14.1.1.1 (same number apparently?).
Yes, I reckon “removing CO2 from the atmosphere just redistributes the OLR between the pipes. More can go out the CO2 pipe, because the CO2 blanket is thinner (mixed analogies?), so less must go out the other pipes.” Until the point where the CO2 concentration gets so low that the CO2 emission layer starts running into the surface at many wavelengths — which is the concentration of maximum OLR from CO2 — whereupon the trend rapidly reverses, and as more CO2 is removed the CO2 emits less and less OLR as its concentration falls to zero. No contradiction.
71
Dr. Evans,
Please do not get the wrong idea from my comments regarding the radiative transfer theory of atmospheric temperatures.
Your analysis of the basic climate model was excellent. The errors you pointed to are real and your description is clear enough so that anyone interested in getting at the truth can understand how these flaws can lead the unsuspecting reader astray.
You have my gratitude and the utmost respect for that work and especially for the presentation. This includes the analogy to a dam with the outgoing pipes and the cartoons that depict the analogy. The analogy is spot on and the cartoons accurately portray that analogy.
What I’m unable to fathom is how a person can be so astute as to find those errors in the basic climate model, understands the physics, but can’t seem to accept that radiative transfer does not, nor will it ever, regulate atmospheric temperatures.
Abe
38
Konrad,
The greenhouse was just an analogy. When that analogy didn’t work to convince rational people of the farse, they brought in the blanket analogy. That didn’t work either so they refined it by using thermal blankets. But that too failed to convince those of us that subscribe to the use of logic and reason.
We now have the dam pipes.
Same argument, different analogy.
This analogy is much better at communicating the false idea that temperature, a measure of kinetic activity can be directly affected by radiative transfer without taking into account the kinetic nature of temperature. By the same token, because it’s so much better as an analogy of the empirically false hypothesis that radiative transfer controls the temperature of our atmosphere, it’s also much better at revealing the flaws.
That’s why when you or anyone else point out those flaws they say well it’s only an analogy, a cartoon. But if you fall for the ploy, and agree with the now falsified hypothesis, then they all agree that it’s a great analogy and the cartoon is brilliant.
In a nutshell. They simply ignore or underplay the kinetic effects and put all the focus on radiative transfer.
This is how they can say that cold can flow to warm, actually be convinced of the inherent contradiction, and still keep a straight face.
Abe
29
Konrad,
Wholeheartedly agree. The evidence to your statement is where . . .
Yes, a cooler(higher) emission layer emits less OLR, and a warmer(lower) emission layer emits more OLR. The temperature/height of the emission layer determines the amount of OLR, not the other way around.
Abe
28
How about you do better.
What can’t be shown here are the pipe-to-pipe effects, the effect that reducing the CO2 pipe size results in the other pipes INCREASING IN SIZE or CHANGING IN COMPOSITION (EG reducing hydrostatic losses). Hard to show in a cartoon. Given the limitations though the Cartoon is intuitive enough.
Perhaps John Cook, the cartoonist can give us a hand? or maybe not!
50
The dam analogy holds to a point.
Note for this particular dam it is raining at a constant rate every day.
The four pipes were apparently coping well with that flow, and the level remained constant.
The partial blocking of one outlet results in a fractional change in level and a resultant increased flow through the other pipes, as per the theory David Evans is trying to demonstrate.
The level must then stabilize.
For the level to continue to rise, and for that rise to accelerate as per IPCC climate theory, all the pipes would have to be at full capacity, and there must then also be some other added source of water to explain the acceleration.
50
You beat me to it Mark
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/10/new-science-11-an-alternative-modeling-strategy/#comment-1754320
10
Glenn Tamblyn
In grammar school I was shown a cartoon of the human circulatory system wherein the heart was a pump connected to metal tubing. Even at that young age I was no fool. Obviously we could not survive with all that metal in our chests. Since then I have steadfastly maintained that blood does not circulate.
Eugene WR Gallun
ATTACK THE CARTOON NOT THE SCIENCE!
50
Sigh — to my previous post I should have liked to have added as a PS — All autopsies have conclusively shown that the blood does not circulate.
20
Forgive me — I need to rewrite what I have previously written.
In grammar school I was shown a cartoon of the human circulatory system wherein the heart was a pump connected to metal tubing. Even at that young age I was no fool. Obviously we could not survive with all that metal in our chests. Since then I have steadfastly maintained that blood does not circulate — AND ALL AUTOPSIES HAVE CONCLUSIVELY SHOWN THAT TO BE TRUE!
ATTACK THE CARTOON NOT THE SCIENCE!
Eugene WR Gallun
50
And of course if you knew ANYTHING about CO2 absorption in the atmosphere, you would realise that the CO2 pipe was already blocked to a tiny trickle even before the boards were put in front, so they don’t block anything.
But you are from SKS.. so you probably don’t know anything.
21
Andy
It is good to keep reminding them
KK
01
Glen Tamblyn.
“Gee, since your dam is an energy dam, maybe that means there is more energy behind the dam. Maybe higher temperatures.”
Correct.
02
The difference between the dam analogy and the atmosphere is that within the water held back within the dam there is nothing comparable to the lapse rate in the vertical plane of an atmosphere.
By altering lapse rates one can increase the flow to space without necessarily involving the surface in any temperature rise at all.
As regards pressure, it is true that the compensating reaction within the body of water behind a dam does require an increase in pressure but for an atmosphere with a fixed mass held within a steady gravity field there can be no increase in overall average surface pressure whether one blocks one pipe or all of them and however much the atmosphere expands or contracts.
By virtue of the gas laws, the absence of the possibility of a surface pressure increase and the near zero resistance to atmospheric expansion presented at the boundary with space it follows that if one simply alters the lapse rate slope between surface and space then the volume/density of the atmosphere can change differently at different locations along the altered lapse rate slope instead of the surface needing to warm up.
I have an article in hand which shows exactly how it could work by applying well established meteorological principles that the mainstream climate establishment appears to have overlooked.
2519
Interesting that my posts start to attract positive responses and then various unidentifiable individuals pile in with negative responses.
It seems that there are those who find my propositions irritating but do not have any science based counterpoints.
2416
Don’t discount all those Climate Science wannabees, who are half way through their degree, and can feel it all going to mush.
Where else can they get a degree, by just learning all the appropriate rituals and incantations?
2314
Rereke Whakaaro
“Where else can they get a degree by just learning all the appropriate rituals and incantations?”
Art History
Eugene WR Gallun
20
They will have to do a 1 year graduate diploma in some thing practical so that they can get a job.
They end up in conversations like…
“Yeah I was studying Climate science communications, but then all the jobs dried up, so I did a graduate diploma in hospitality – by the way, do you want fries with that?”
41
Eugene WR Gallun
That is very funny but not recursive enough.
GeeANGRY
00
Stephen,
Like you, I get tempted to call out the red thumb bombers. So for what it’s worth, you have my sympathy.
Every time I do it I end up wishing I hadn’t spent the energy and time it took to make the comment. But the temptation can be very hard to ignore.
132
That’s when you know your arguments are hurting them, SW 🙂
85
Stephen Wilde,
No various individuals – it’s probably Harry Twatter, aka Svante Callender aka Art Vandalay aka Sock Puppet logging on in various guises.
Alternatively the climate-baggers may be in such a panic they are ‘red bombing’ all the scary comments – you know – to intimidate posters in their inevitable lather against independent thought and rubber bed sheets.
Way to go bed-wetters. Red thumbs are a Climate Panic Gauge – keep those red thumbs coming – show us just how afraid of the truth you really are.
188
SW,
They view the ratio between green and red thumbs as some sort of consensus, if a comment has more red thumbs than green then it is bad (dont read this comment, type thing).
Your everyday run of the mill eco tard does not have the capacity to understand the content of your comment but they are not color blind. The red/green thumb system may be a crude and rudimentary form of communication i agree but thats why they do it.
Hope this clears things up
cheers
55
That was harsh Crackar.
But enjoyable to read.
KK
14
Stephen, maybe you are getting the thumbs down because although the points are accurate, they aren’t germane to the article itself? Now that would be a good reason to hit the red button to me, and no, I didn’t hit the red button.
103
Tom O,
Strange, they look pretty germane to me.
Or at least germane to the specific comments which I responded to.
Still, I’m glad you consider my points to be accurate 🙂
Do you see that my points support David and pretty much demolish the radiative gases theory?
2115
Stephen, I have found your posts in general to be some of the most informative and illuminating. I don’t normally thumbs up or down posts. But I did add thumbs up. I also just read where you posted “Do you see that my points support David and pretty much demolish the radiative gases theory?”
I cannot see how gases radiate much of anything. I believe 90% plus or higher of the reradiation of intercepted OLR at H20 and CO2 wavelenghts come from aerosols in clear air. Then a large part is reradiated from aerosol ice and water vapor droplets. At some point one could define some density of aerosol ice and water vapor droplets as clouds. But in dry places like deserts OLR from the air comes from aerosols.
So I donot see the CO2 and H20 gases as pipes. But the idea tweaking the models with the additional pipes concept will I believe lead to a better set of curve fit equations to the observed data.
I believe I followed one of your links and looked at nimbus measured OLR spectrum. There was a page with 4 spectrum of different locations. From looking at the spectra my reading of how it really works fits my ideas and also fit David’s I suppose.
My reasoning is that transition of phase occur at sharp bondaries and the collision of somewhat not round gas molecules will seldom create a energy transition spike. Where as sever dozen atoms in a solid will be more likely to take the energy of colliding molecules and add it up to an energy transition spike. Also all the linked atoms have their collective mass being pulled by gravity.
Anyway thank you for your posts.
411
Thanks, Tom.
GHGs do absorb and do radiate but only as a consequence of the thermal profile created by mass, gravity and insolation.
Convective adjustments neutralise their thermal effect as per established science to be found here:
http://www.public.asu.edu/~hhuang38/mae578_lecture_06.pdf
Radiative theorists have mistaken the effect for the cause as has previously been said by MS at the HockeySchtick site. They know nothing about non radiative thermal properties of atmospheres and nothing about basic meteorology.
1213
I would like to see the info but
watson@xen1[1828]nslookup public.asu.edu
Server: 91.121.113.58
Address: 91.121.113.58#53
Non-authoritative answer:
*** Can’t find public.asu.edu: No answer
So I cannot see the pdf at present. I know GHGs do absorb and do radiate. But I believe the vast majority of what they absorb is conducted to other 9996 molecules or aerosols they hang with. I expect the CO2 has an exceptionally low emissivity and when the CO2 does a little emitting that photon gets bagged by another CO2 or H20 molecule near by. Then finally as the space betwix get larger and larger some photons get out. But most of the CO2 wavelength photons that do escape likely originated from aerosols where air density is low.
This is my gut of how it really works.
411
The link worked when I just tested it so hopefully you will get it at some point.
Your emphasis on conduction is fine by me and aerosols are no doubt a factor.
50
While climate science is not my own scientific area of qualification, I applaud David’s and Jo’s work to offer substance to challenge the wave of sheer populism about CAGW that purports to be scientifically based.
In this helter-skelter rush by rent-seekers in the lead-up to the IPPC Paris meeting in December, the essential weakness of the CAGW proposition remains that it lacks empirical data to withstand robust scientific challenge and debate.
Thank you David and Jo for providing a medium (via Jo’s blog) through which science-qualified skeptics can continue to express their open willingness to be convinced scientifically by CAGW proponents.
380
mmxx
“skeptics can continue to express their open willingness to be convinced scientifically by CAGW proponents”.
They aren’t doing too well so far.
The CAGW proponents that is.
KK
60
KK,
I guess you didn’t watch last night’s Democrat candidate’s debate. To hear them tell it it’s still a done deal and no more debate is possible. So CAGW is still alive and well and living in the good old USA if nowhere else.
70
Need I add that they’re so obviously addled about the whole thing that none of them could make a coherent statement about it except that it’s the most terrifying problem we face to several of them and from there on down to a major problem to the rest? My wife wanted to throw something at the TV in frustration. Can’t say I blame her.
111
Roy,
That’s sad. Obama dropped the bundle on Putin, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, has diminished America’s world leadership standing, has divided the country by race and religion, and is now hell bent on disarming the population because climate change is the greatest crisis the world has ever faced, along with Julia Gillard, he is a failed social experiment.
Now if I remember my American history – the second amendment is for the protection of a free state by its citizens.
182
The scary thing Ray and James is that Hillary is almost Belief for Belief, Bias for Bias, Lie for Lie a Gillard clone. You have seen what happens for yourself when such a zealot gains access to the Treasury. Just look at the Gillard Government in Australia. Scary stuff….
The lies/flips in particular, Climate change alarmism, the Email server, Bengazi, the repudiation of the TPP she helped create, the backflips and accommodations in order to satisfy the demands of union masters – we’ve seen it all before in Oz… Unprincipled is a good description. I worry for the USA.
100
Hillary unprincipled? Certainly. But Bob, I’ve watched her for a long time and I would call her power hungry and having an unprecedented sense of entitlement. I can see no other way to explain her being so unprincipled and so unafraid to let it show for so long. The progressive left “is entitled to succeed” in their minds, regardless of constitutions, laws, voters and anything else, with Hillary, being a woman, as the pinnacle of that entitlement pyramid. And now they’ve come closer than ever before to achieving a takeover but they fear the awakening American voter (witness Donald Trump’s popularity) and they are desperate to secure their entitlement. Hillary but extends that sense of entitlement into everything she does, “Nuts to the rules, I’m Hillary.” She is the consummate product of the last hundred plus years. She didn’t give a flying fig about her responsibility as Secretary of State or any other responsibility. She cares only about becoming the most powerful woman in the world. Would that she were worthy of that power. But she isn’t.
50
Sounds like Julia to me!
10
According to the writings of our founders, a more accurate statement would be, the second amendment is for the protection of the citizens from their government and to protect their homes and property from the ever present criminal, intent on stealing or worse. Having gotten out from under the boots of King George only a few short years before, they knew very well how power corrupts and what its effects are.
The Federal Government has the power to raise an army and levy taxes to support it and in spite of Thomas Jefferson who said he feared a central bank even more than a standing army — implying considerable fear of a standing army — I see no way the citizens of any country can defend their state as armed individuals. So a powerful enough military force to keep anyone else around the world from messing with you seems like an imperative to me. And it was that way even when the Constitution was written. I would not want to see even China or Russia without enough military force to make that statement true for them. You disarm at your very great peril.
Now, with government in possession of so much military power (times have changed greatly) it would be impossible for armed individuals to do much defending against the government. At best we could take some of the government down with us as we go if it should ever come to that. If the voters are foolish we get into trouble. If they are wise, we stay free and safe. We haven’t been very wise lately and the damage will be hard to undo, if we can undo it at all.
20
An important subject they don’t understand would be pretty terrifying.
00
Damn…did my dam post make it or not?
30
I am always talking about my dam pump, now I gotta worry about the dam pipes as well
10
The gas isoprene has just been found to be produced in the boundary layer of the oceans in quantities that are significant in terms of the models. Isoprene is a cooling feedback and hence I guess can be accommodated by your approach?
111
Kevin, isoprene may play a part in the notch-delay mechanism, discussed later in the series.
161
At 540Tg/yr natural production…that is a lot of ozone forming hydrocarbon. Now, I am interested how this could be your notch delay. A product of photosynthesis, especially hot clear sunny days. Is there any graphs showing atmospheric concentration?
00
Assuming it has an influence it must be quite steady. The isoprene can’t explain the 20th century warming or The Pause according to my reasoning outlined Friday of last week.
40
Andrew
“The ultraviolet spectrum of isoprene (Fig. 2.4) shows a broad absorption band in
the region 210-240 nm.”
Click Here
Your chart of spectoral irradiance is only from 2004 to 2007. This was during a weird and abnormal solar sunspot decline.
“Since 2004: 813 days
Typical Solar Min: 486 days”
http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=14&month=10&year=2010
Also while you consider formation what about UV enhanced break down of isoprene leading to LESS clouds! This could have caused both the warming and the ozone holes and now be in reverse!
Here is a different irradiance variation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63AbaX1dE7I&feature=youtu.be&t=25m1s
Notice that most of these wavelengths are absorbed so as the isoprene goes up higher the change in solar cycle UV will matter more. As he says I think you may have the sign wrong!
11
What is the explanation of “the missing heat” in David Evan’s model?
40
2dogs: It didn’t stick around on Earth, but left long ago. Probably rerouted out to space — maybe via the rerouting feedback.
181
As someone said recently, and I paraphrase:
todays “missing heat” will be out at Alpha Centauri in about 4 and a third years and will just keep going!!!!!!!!!!!!
KK
140
There IS NO missing heat, the gap can be explained by increased photosythesis alone, remembering that since about 1990 photosynthesis is up about 7 percent and that it’s an ENDOTHERMIC process.
It’s all gone in the losses I harp on about, OLR does not have to EQUAL ASR. It’s the fifth pipe hidden in the reeds leading to the adjacent farm that done it.
51
I would agree with you Bob and I think on several occasions in the past I have said that it is not sensible to try and balance Incoming EMR with Outgoing.
10
David,
Is there even any missing heat in the first place? Or did everyone fail to recognize it because of flawed assumptions?
41
Roy: The “missing heat” is the heat thought to have been trapped over the last couple of decades by the increasing CO2 levels.
However, that presupposes an ECS of around 3C (the IPCC central number) — the temperature should be rising if the ECS is 3C, yet we have the pause. Hence the excuse that, while the heat is surely trapped by the increasing CO2 levels, the heat must be somewhere where it has not yet affected the surface temperatures — it is “missing”. No one can find it.
In this blog series, the alternative basic climate model finds the ECS is 0.5C or lower. Hence there never was extra much trapped heat over the last two decades, and hence the pause doesn’t imply that there is any trapped but undetectable heat.
The obvious answer is probably correct: there is no “missing heat” because the IPCC overestimated the ECS.
201
David what about the lagged response from the heat accumulated in the oceans?
10
Basic models don’t deal with that, they are better at shorter time scales between steady states, maybe decadel time scales.
20
Further, don’t forget that “accumulated heat” in the oceans has been exaggerated.
We know that that there is no “missing heat” in the deep oceans, as best our instruments and calculations are able to show.
In response, Karl et al. attempted to show that there has been more warming of the surface ocean than really exists, by adjusting instrumental records upward in a way that was very clearly improper.
They’re trying to adjust their facts to fit their preconceptions. There is no other rational explanation.
91
Anne, I was not talking about Karl et al. ‘missing heat’ but about the heat accumulated in the ocean from the radiation from the sun. Since the oceans are not solid ice and since we see El Ninos every few years, I look at the problem as Energy in = Energy out plus Energy accumulated on earth.
The Energy accumulated varies and the oceans act sort of like a capacitor with the El Ninos as the discharge phase.
Dr Shaviv sort of gets into the concept:
The oceans as a calorimeter
10
Thank you. I thought that must be the answer.
51
David,
Would I be correct to sum up your answer and the missing heat “problem” as, a wild theory that never could support itself with sound science or evidence?
Sorry, sometimes I have to see things in really low level bruit force terms to be sure of my understanding, in this case that there never was any missing heat, it was all assumed and never actually in evidence, etc.
11
Well Roy you’d be putting words like “wild” in my mouth. But yes, “there never was any missing heat, it was all assumed and never actually in evidence, etc.”.
00
For some time I have browsed through David’s Posts just happy that someone at last had the front to challenge
the, so called, models of the Warmerati.
With this post I am finally drawn in.
The opening line TOLD Me that there was a plan for this model, something which had not been evident in the Warmerati Models.
The first line:
“Inexorably, energy is headed for the coldest vacuum. It’s just a question of how long and what path it takes to get there”
Obviously there IS an intention to chase all of the pressure points in the system and QUANTIFY them.
This is what modelling is about.
I don’t need to see equations, I am confident that David can handle the maths,
what has always bothered me before is the lack of coherent overview for models.
Now it is here.
Congratulations David.
KK
312
Well said KK. Thanks.
51
Except KK, that David has made no provision for non radiative losses, he is accepting the view that the climate is a perpetual motion machine.
22
Hi Bob
I did agree up thread that doing a full energy/heat balance is very very hard and accept the issue you raised.
That said, Davids models have to be an improvement on i p c c c models.
Heard about a Russian attempt at modelling which had forty factors.
A good start.
The main issue is human CO2 Vs big T. Unlikely of solution in my lifetime.
KK
20
It is a perpetual motion machine.
The sun perpetualy adds energy and the machine perpeturaly circulates water.
20
And despite all that circulating going on (extracting energy) we somehow accept that the energy going out will still equal the energy in rather than
energy in = circulation energy + outgoing energy.
30
Hey bobl, I’m not sure if I understand what you are saying. Ultimately the only way for energy to get on and off the planet is by radiation. As you say there is a large amount of energy tied up in moving water and air, but wouldn’t this be roughly constant with some cyclic variation? All of the kinetic energy contained in the seas and atmosphere is like a big flywheel which is kept in motion by the sun and which was set in motion billions of years ago. Given the relatively constant nature of this “internal” energy wouldn’t radiation in match radiation out?
20
You just can’t say, you have a bunch of water molecules constantly in motion causing friction, and the source of the energy for most of it is the moon, if just 0.1% of it gets converted to heat through friction then that’s 36 W / sq m.
Yes it is kept in motion by the moon but it does damp down to calm rather quickly say, after a cyclone, so There IS lots of damping – energy coming out. The damping mechanism can’t distinguish storm waves from moon waves.
Throw a brick in your swimming pool, how long do the waves last? Where does the energy go?
Clearly the loss is more than 0.1% – where does it go?
20
I’ll concede that I forgot about the influence of gravitational effects, such as tides and I was considering the sun as the sole energy source, but I still don’t understand your point about missing energy. If the sun, moon and other planets suddenly disappeared the energy held in the sea, atmosphere and elsewhere would leave the planet as radiation and eventually all movement would cease as temps approached absolute zero.
10
Hi Rollo
Best way to imagine it is through work done.
Go to the neach.
Waves roll up the sand ; probably on occasion there would be 3 tonnes of water roaring up the sand.
How would you feel if you had top bucket the same amount of water up the sand to the same level/
Lot of work?
That work energy has to come from somewhere.
Maybe it is partly from Moon gravitation effect but a lot of it , wave chop etc, comes from solar energy transformed to a physical effect.
eg moving air ; you would be surprised at how much air actually weighs and it has to be set in motion and then stopped.
Friction losses etc.
ALL DEDUCTED FROM INCOMInG EMR>
KK
00
Rollo, you are missing the point.
The swimming pool experiment shows that energy added to slosh water around is continually being dissipated, the energy to keep the sea in motion pours in from the moon and sun’s (and solar system) gravitation along with the momentum of the earth spinning on its axis. (This causes the jet streams too). The swimming pool experiment shows that for a steady state ocean the same amount of kinetic energy is pouring out (on average) ( otherwise the ocean couldn’t calm).
So all the energy that pours in must pour out to have the ocean in equilibrium, where did it go in the swimming pool, where does it go from the ocean.
These are rhetorical questions, since I know the answer.
Some of this gravitationally driven energy comes out as heat of friction. Much of it goes into resisting the earth’s momentum, slowing the earth’s rotation, so maybe not much of that gravitationally driven kinetic energy emerges as heat after all….
Now the kicker, wind also drives waves, the wind comes from thermally driven pressure differences in the atmosphere, so if wave energy goes out the earth’s momentum plug hole, so does the thermally sourced energy that went into producing wind driven waves and thermally driven water currents? How much thermal energy gets converted to wind energy, then wave energy and gets lost down that plug hole? No-one knows.
Secondly, the wind has the same effect as the ocean only less, the atmosphere is a drag on the rotation of the earth, some wind energy goes into slowing the earths rotation, how much, if that’s thermally sourced wind then that’s thermal energy converted to wind then exiting via the same momentum plug hole.
Consider rain, water is evaporated, goes to a height and condenses, it falls striking the earth, because energy is conserved, in this inelastic collision the (earth+rain) is pushed slightly in the direction of the rain such that 1/2 m(rain) v(rain) = 1/2 m m(earth+rain) delta v(earth+rain) The rain energy (that started as heat evaporating the oceans) is dissipated in moving the earth+rain mass slightly in it’s orbit. This heat energy so lost is never coming back.
Follow?
Consider lightning, the thermal (wind driven) agitation of air/water molecules causes static charges to build up, lightning flashes across the sky releasing vast amounts of energy as Heat, Light, sound and electricity. The heat is added back in sure, but the shortwave light goes to space, and the electricity dissipates into the planet maybe to come back as heat or maybe not.
Then there’s biochemistry, photosynthesis, entropy, phase change, ionisation… you name it.
Energy can’t be created or destroyed, just transformed from one form to another, how many transformations occur, and what is the energy cost from thermally sourced energy.
20
Ooops (v squared) not v….
10
sorry bobl, i commented again without seeing your 7.2.2.1.3. I should refresh before commenting!
00
And David, energy input from the earth core may have feedbacks, for example the albedo effect of aerosols clouds and settled ash from volcanoes. Ash also has a vegetation feedback.
The aerosols while shading the earth might also assist in radiating OLR from covected or conducted surface heat.
Can you say it doesn’t? Doesn’t this have different equations from solar heat and deserve separate treatment?
Please think like an engineer, not a climate scientist. Nothing has 99.95% effiency
00
Oh btw, there are plenty of ways for energy to leave or be locked up other than OLR, one of the main ways is the damping of the earth’s momentum, expressed as the odd leap second. Another is orbital position, and speed.
20
KK and bobl. I think we may be arguing at cross purposes here, or maybe I’m missing some obvious point, but as I said earlier..
OK a lot of work is being done by the wind and waves. Some of this work may be converted to heat, resulting in radiation, which may then give energy of motion to something else or if it’s very lucky it may escape the planet. There may be sand being piled up, changing kinetic energy to potential energy and vica-versa when the sand bar is subsequently eroded. When bobl throws a brick in his pool the waves will hit the sides and then travel through the ground (perhaps to be detected by a seismograph). Wouldn’t the level of energy held in wind, waves, clouds etc be pretty much a constant, with any losses (to space) topped up by incoming sunlight?
00
Another assumption. We know that the oceans do have a springiness due to gravity (a flywheel effect) but it is flow that’s important here, the magnitude of the waves might be high, but what are the losses and what are exactly the inputs needed to balance that and sustain the equilibrium the 36kW/sq m. We know from the swimming pool that the wave energy in you own words paraphrased, “Flows into the earth”. So how can we say anything about outgoing OLR if we are ignorant of the rate at which that wave energy is converted to heat of friction or conversely how much of the thermally driven wave energy “flows into the earth”
00
Rollo
I admire your persistence.
The problem is that energy can only get weaker.
The quality or virtue of energy is always lowered after each “activity”.
It can NEVER become more intense or powerful again.
Unlikely any of that KE of motion will ever transform to anything much and can’t escape.
The exception may be a lightning bolt.
KK
00
By the way and this applies to David too, especially David because he is an engineer and should know better.
The Energy is supposed to come in and heat the surface (predominately the ocean) but also the atmosphere and then flows to the poles, via hadley circulation and ocean currents. There are a lot of fluids in motion, and in all this motion, less than 0.06% of that energy is ever lost 99.94% of that motion is retained or converted back into heat!. If the energy conversions to currents and winds and back again are that efficient, they how come the gravitationally driven winds currents and waves don’t find their way into that mechanism too – there is a paradox here. ASR can’t be the sole cause of OLR – it’s just a coincidence.
I am an engineer, I can’t accept losses as low as that, the real world isn’t like that. Clearly there is heat being added from somewhere else balancing the losses from the radiant heat pipes.
10
Bob, I am assuming that all the incoming energy to the climate system is as ASR (i.e. radiation) and all the outgoing energy is as OLR (also radiation). The climate system is the atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere, and a thin layer of earth and rock. The main way that assumption is in error of course is from the heat from the Earth’s center also entering the climate system, but for the purpose of this series (see post 1) I’m assuming it is insignificant.
So if energy can only enter and leave the climate system as radiation through space, it doesn’t particularly matter what the energy does when in the climate system. The modeling is mainly just an accounting system checking off inflows against outflows. Any heat losses in the climate system are still in the climate system somewhere, as heat.
00
Are you not talking about energy taken from the kinetic energy in the Earth’s rotation? Back in the past somewhere I remember reading that ocean currents and wind both end up literally slowing the planet’s rotation from the friction involved.
Since there’s friction, heat must be generated and will surely leave Earth as radiated energy if it doesn’t enter into some other process first. Is this what you’re talking about or at least a part of it?
I’m a bit out of my league here so (Will Janoschka’s complaint above notwithstanding) someone enlighten me, am I right or wrong?
10
KK says
QUOTE”The problem is that energy can only get weaker.”
If I heat one side of a lump of metal and put it in an insulated container the temperature will become uniform. The total energy remains the same. When you say weaker do you mean more diffuse? The total energy is the same.
QUOTE”It can NEVER become more intense or powerful again.”
In a closed system it can never become more intense or powerful again, but the earth is not closed as there is a constant river(or dam) of energy from the sun to tap into. For example, we can use the dilute energy of sunlight and wind, concentrating it with solar panels, windmills and clever electronics to make electricity. (Only fools attempt this on a large scale).
QUOTE”Unlikely any of that KE of motion will ever transform to anything much and can’t escape.”
Repeating myself here.If the sun, moon and other planets suddenly disappeared the kinetic energy held in the sea, atmosphere and elsewhere would leave the planet as radiation and eventually all movement would cease as the temp approached absolute zero. Someone once said that at absolute zero the atmosphere would collapse to less than 1mm !
I’m punching above my weight here, but I’ll keep trying.
00
Rollo
You have answered your own question.
“we can use the dilute energy of sunlight and wind, concentrating it with solar panels, windmills and clever electronics to make electricity”
nature doesn’t have these contraptions.
We give very high frequency EMR from the Sun (powerful)
It finds its way through the atmosphere to ground.
It may re-radiate to space as very low frequency (weak) EMR.
It doesn’t matter how much of that weak LWIR you collect it can NEVER recreate the intensity or power of the incoming SWUV.
KK
00
In a word Roy , yes. That’s what I’m talking about,
David, you are not entitled to assume that ALL energy enters and leaves via radiation (now by you own admission). So just add a second input pipe and a fifth output one and reformulate your equations to account for the losses and gains. Energy from the earth’s core is but one mechanism – rather than neglect it and be always wrong cater for it and be more correct as time goes on.
I challenge you again to fix this flaw and firmly cast the cat among the pigeons. We can argue How much these pipes carry later.
00
Bob, for basic modeling, we’re just going with the main ones, because more pipes make it more complicated and to get the main point acorns I want to keep it as simple as possible:
Geothermal is insignificant, about 0.087 W/m2, or about 0.036% of the 239 W/m2 of average absorbed solar radiation.
Energy production from fossil fuels and nuclear is about 0.028 W/m2
Tidal might be as high as 0.01 W/m2 (about 5.8 TW).
10
Bobl October 18, 2015 at 2:47 pm
“I challenge you again to fix this flaw and firmly cast the cat among the pigeons. We can argue How much these pipes carry later.”
Casting cats indeed, troll. You demand something “is” a flaw, when there is no flaw.
Then you demand that some other fix your non flaw.
Where is your explanation as to how you think things work? You have no way of demonstrating that what you falsely claim is significant in any way!
You keep mentioning efficiency! None is needed. Atmospheric exitance to space is always spontaneous and is always powered by the entropy of the cold atmosphere. 🙁
01
Will,
I demand it’s a flaw because it is. David caters for just 4 energy loss mechanisms which in post 1 or 2 he claims comprises “Most” of the loss of thermal energy in the system. Well in my models “Most” isn’t good enough, a term allowing for “Unknown losses” is usually added to describe those energies that are not directly transformed to the desired form. Ie in a transformer say, magnetic flux loss, eddy current loss and copper losses.
David doesn’t want to complicate his life to get it right, and I’m simply trying to get him to see sense. Probably the biggest argument in climate science is the gap between OLR and ASR ie the 0.6 Watts per sq metre. Adding the losses allows his model to properly account for that dealing with the “Missing heat” issue.
Also David is assuming other energy sources are negligible – in a future post I show that gravitational forcing of the ocean is 930W per square metre! Three times insolation forcings. That’s NOT insignificant.
00
At this point, it would be good to have links to all the model posts and the nomenclature page on the side panel. It’s a good ways back to model post 3.
40
The project home page is at http://sciencespeak.com/climate-basic.html, where there are summaries and links to the posts. There is a link to this project home page beside my name near the top of each blog post.
Joanne also set up an index entry on this blog, at http://joannenova.com.au/tag/climate-research-2015/.
60
I’ve simply collected my own set of bookmarks to everything. Easy to do and keep organized with any browser.
40
Instant backward accessibility.
30
After four and a half billion years, the surface is no longer molten. Not only that, even the seas are well below boiling. So there has been no energy balance – ever.
No need for pipes, models, or any new age physics – normal physics will suffice. At any given time, half the Earth’s surface faces the Sun, half doesn’t.
As Fourier pointed out, parts of the Earth heated during the day, cool down at night. Fairly obviously, the inclination of the Earth and the elliptical orbit will result in the seasons, and the non equality of such between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
At present the Earth loses energy at a rate of around 44 TW. As radioactive elements with shorter half lives have been largely exhausted during some four and a half billion years, the rate of heat loss decreases, due to a reduction in heat from radioactive decay processes, and a reduction in the geothermal gradient. At present, measurements by real scientists indicate a rate of cooling of around two millionths of a degree per year.
But all this, the result of real science, verifiable, reproducible, and supported by both theory and experiment, provides no guide as to the future of weather, or its average, climate.
Burning lots of anything generates heat. Heat, contrary to Warmist opinion, can warm anything. Gases, liquids, solids – even thermometers! Is it surprising that heat generated in large quantities by humans can be detected by thermometers?
Is it surprising that increasing heat arising from increasing population, combined with ever increasing energy production, day and night, shows up as increasing temperatures?
And still, the highest and lowest recorded temperatures occur in places well away from concentration of humans. Antarctica, Death Valley, the Libyan Desert – ain’t Nature grand?
Whether we like it or not, this big blob of molten goop on which we reside is cooling – albeit too slowly to measure with the finest thermometers (even Warmist ones of unequalled and surpassing accuracy). Don’t worry, the rate of cooling should be asymptotic, so we won’t freeze anytime soon.
And now, I must resume my quiet enjoyment of life. It doesn’t seem to have any negative side effects, as far as I can see. Feel free to join in.
1312
Mike,
Forgive my questioning your statement. But…
Overall you may be right. But I don’t see how just this as you’ve stated it will help to understand how our climate is affected by various influences. You said as much yourself. And that is the problem we face and the whole point of what David is doing.
So to what possible end…? …and I can’t see any.
60
Roy,
I suspect that Mike is a, “Nothing to see here, folks. Move along, now”, type of guy. “Ignore the alternate explainations, and go back to believing everything that authority endorses”.
I am getting lots of, “The science is settled!”, indicators in the build up to December. All of the pidgeons were happily pecking away, until David threw in the cat.
No charge for the extra metaphor.
91
David’s little pussy cat:
http://www.freeanimalspictures.com/wp-content/uploads/Animal-image/2011/05/0536349ku.jpg
40
Always glad to hear there’s no extra charge. 🙂
December is a wild card, at least to me. It seems most likely to end with the same toothless tiger agreement that Hillary Clinton boasted about achieving in Copenhagen during last night’s debate. But I never count my chickens before they hatch.
Added metaphor also at no extra charge 😉
20
Rereke,
See my response to Roy.
CO2 induced global warming is nonsense, pure and simple.
67
OK! With that I can agree. No matter if CO2 can do something or not, whatever it can do is simply lost in the measurement noise and makes no difference. I’ve thought that for years, even wondering if it could do as theory says it can.
Unfortunately though, we now fight man made CO2 induced global warming of unprecedented degree and grave consequences to this planet. It’s embedded in popular culture and now a big part of the race here for the White House. It’s a fact by repetition of the appeal to authority fallacy, if you understand what I mean.
I challenged David when he said what he’s doing would make a difference. He answered me back and we still stand a little bit at odds over the point because of what I just said. But nevertheless, I think we do need an alternative theory that, if it holds up, will give us real ammunition against climate change alarmism, not just lack of supporting evidence from the AGW pushers.
01
Roy: The conventional basic model is the application of “basic physics” to climate change.
Showing it to be wrong is a necessary though not sufficient condition for defeating AGW.
Many warmers believe mainly because of the basic model, so they know the contradictory data is wrong. Meanwhile the conviction they are right fuels the science establishment and consequently the politics. While AGW holds the high ground of “basic physics”, nothing short of plunging temperatures can defeat it.
12
Maybe I should clarify — I agree with that statement.
I’ve been saying for years that global warming is a political problem and not scientific. My fear is not even the politicians acceptance of it anymore but the obvious acceptance by so much of the public at large. I get several solicitations a day by email and several through the mail slot every week and they all appeal to two things, save some money, a couple of hundred dollars a year (which hardly justifies the initial investment) and save the planet from global warming. And this stuff sells. Half a dozen or more companies are making money from global warming right here locally.
It’s that invasion of popular culture that sends shivers up and down my spine when I think about it. The science isn’t in doubt. They have no case. If they had, they could support it with real empirical evidence.
01
Roy,
I’m trying to point out that “climate science” is an oxymoron. Climate is no more than the average of weather. I would be amazed if you could point to just one benefit which has come from the billions of dollars poured into this nonsense.
If the money wasted on “climate research” had instead been spent on research on say, “weather research”, I would have little objection.
I note you say “Overall you may be right.” You might care to point out where I have erred in fact. I change my thinking if someone brings new facts to my attention. Warmists appear to ignore fact, in favour of fantasy.
As to the “problem” you say we face, there isn’t one. Weather is unpredictable, in any real sense. You may be aware that the BBC has ditched the British Met Office as basically a waste of money. The Australian BOM models can’t even forecast the past with any accuracy, let alone the future.
Their brilliant solution for fact refusing to fit their fantasy model results? Easy. Declare all temperature records prior to 1910 “unreliable”! So “climate research” is now based on a little over a century of heavily massaged and adjusted human observations.
Not laughing yet? Oh well.
Want to peer into the future? You will probably do just as well consulting a fortune teller!
You might get the impression that I don’t believe in the greenhouse effect. You would be right. The Earth has quite obviously cooled. CO2 warming has never been demonstrated.
Colour me a non believer – I don’t believe in phlogiston or the luminiferous ether, either.
Have fun.
810
I would have to answer you with the only too obvious fact that our atmosphere does protect us from rather unpleasant extremes of temperature. Actual measured lunar surface temperatures go from fatally cold to fatally hot through each lunar day. So whether you call it greenhouse or something else, the atmosphere, by some mechanism, provides protection from high and low temperatures we could not survive.
But having seen your answer to Rereke I think we’re in agreement far to closely to need debating any further.
00
David says:
You just finished a major kerfuffle over whether dG/dT can be computed on dependent variables and claimed conventional climate models have an error in their PDEs that makes them empirically unfalsifiable. Now you’re claiming to have model which does not suffer from that problem but the new model ignores Henry’s Law and assumes Temperature does not alter the CO2 (or any temperature influence can only be a secondary effect from altering CO2).
You are entitled to make approximations if that’s the sacrifice that must be made on the altar of forward progress. But are you saying this model avoids the error of uncomputable partial derivatives of dependent variables by simply omitting the real world relation from the model, and NOT saying that the model computes these mutually-dependent processes correctly?
What what what?
Are you saying this model will, by design, be unable to model transient states? So all of this drumroll and buildup and it won’t even be able to draw a chart of temperature changing over time? Or as they say in social media, “
o_O Srsly?”I guess that isn’t relevant to determining ECS, given the E in ECS means… what it means.
And it does sidestep the devilish problem of natural variability.
And it also means the model does not require supercomputers to run it.
Actually the more I think about this “bug” the more it sounds like a feature. 🙂
What about the parameters for all the other drivers and feedbacks? What happened to ∑{ ∂G/∂U_i . dU_i } ?
The albedo response to temperature, the CO2 response to temperature, etc? For a linear system with many interdependent variables of state there should be a whole matrix of coefficients lurking in here somewhere. How is the model “complete” knowing only λ_c ?
60
Andrew:
The new architecture does not solve the problem of unverifiable partial derivatives in the basic model, it only lessens the problem — by replacing the Planck sensitivity with the Stefan Boltzmann sensitivity (see post 8). I claimed only that the alternative model solves the other two problems identified with the conventional basic model — omitting feedbacks other than to surface warming, and applying the solar response to non-solar climate influences. Hence the wording in the first sentence of my part of the post, “fixes or ameliorates”: the pd problem is ameliorated, the two architectural problems are fixed.
The conventional basic model “ignores Henry’s Law and assumes Temperature does not alter the CO2”, as does the alternative model. That feedback is easily added to either basic model, but is not a major factor. Please read post 1 to be reminded of why the conventional basic model is so important. Basic models never seem to bother with a feedback path from surface temperature to the CO2 concentration.
The conventional and the alternative basic model are both only good for computing moves between steady states — as noted near the beginning of post 2, in the section titled “Steady State”. All basic models rely at some stage on setting the change in ASR equal to the change in OLR. It is generally assumed for basic models that, on decadal timescales, the world stays more or less near steady state.
Yep, pretty basic, but that is all a basic model does — give you a rough idea of the ECS. It’s a simple application of basic physics.
In this series I claim the conventional basic model is too simple (“Everything should be as simple as possible, but not more so” – A. Einstein). I highlighted the pd problem and two architectural problems. The alternative model is just one level more sophisticated than the conventional basic model – which fixes the two architectural problems, but not the pd problem (which is probably insoluble at basic level). The alternative model finds a much lower ECS.
This process has obvious implications for the GCMs (because they share the two architectural problems, to first order), but GCMs are not the subject of this series and I mention that only in passing.
“What happened to ∑{ ∂G/∂U_i . dU_i } ?” We accept all the feedbacks to surface warming in AR5, so they are still there. But they only apply to the solar response. For the CO2 response, we wrap the CO2 sensitivity and the feedbacks specific to increasing CO2 (such as the rerouting feedback of post 7) into a single parameter, λ_c, then use the process described in the post above to estimate λ_c.
Finally, a smaller ECS leaves the recent warming of the last few decades unexplained, which is not due to an increase in TSI either. In the third part of the series we will examine the role of EDA, which is omitted from conventional models but which is at least twice as significant as changes in TSI (as shown in post 10).
110
It’s a hard pill to swallow, I know what you are doing but it is STILL WRONG. Why you want to embark on an expedition that gives no valid insight is beyond me.
You assume that the chaotic climate “function”… is A linear, B. Not Saturated, C.has No Hysteresis, and D. Has no poles, none of which are ACTUALLY TRUE. Fact is that the dynamic response of the climate to any disturbance in the force(ings) could kick the climate into a different strange attractor with a different climate outcome from that suggested by such a steady state assumption. The climate doesn’t have a steady-state, it’s at the very least a random walk, the integral is no more stationary than the function.
10
Bobl,
When you say the climate does not have a steady state what do you consider as steady?
I would consider 100Ky of ice age as a pretty long staedy state and the short 12 ish Ky interglacial as a steady state but suspect your idea of steady state is different to mine?
cheers
10
Crakar, if you come back, by steady state I mean at static equilibrium.
00
Bob, please see Comment 20.2 and Comment 19.3 in reply.
10
Well, yes. Mine didn’t either. 😀 Even a basic model is a lot of work.
Someone linked the GREB Simple Climate Model hosted at Monash the other day. Perhaps reworking the innards of that might make a good transient model.
Looks like most of my questions were answered in previous posts, sorry. I did read them all but clearly the retention wasn’t 100%.
Regarding paradigm shifts, I would have thought switching the summation quantity from irradiance to Fluid Boundary Layer Heat Content would be a greater paradigm shift – the total number of Joules of heat in the air below the tropopause and the ocean above 300m. A bit late to change tack now I guess. But that leads to an appraisal of the new
paradigmclimate metric.The advantage I see to the surface temperature as the diagnostic climate metric is that it reformulates the model to be a closer match to the problem that everyone is so worried about – CAGW. For the purists I can understand the contrary concern, that an OLR metric is defined over a virtual surface that encompasses more of the earth and is also meaningful as an average, whereas temperature is defined at a point and so has no meaningful average. But I do not see a problem with building the right tool for the job, and that means biasing the structure of the model towards the definition of the problem, surface temperature. (I did the same.)
In my model I supposed a 0.01 reduction in total albedo for each 100 sunspots. Have you found a sensitivity range for solar-driven EDA which includes that figure, or must we wait for all details to be revealed in the next post?
20
Andrew asked “Have you found a sensitivity range for solar-driven EDA…?”
Sort of. The sensitivity is expressed as °C of surface warming per W/m2 change in TSI. We could convert that to change in albedo per change in average sunspot levels over a solar cycle, I think.
10
Amazing how some people get so distracted. Fancy inviting an argument over a cartoon analogy…anyway, I look forward to the issue at hand.
50
If all they have is the cartoon strawman to tilt with then they do not have anything useful to counter what Dr Evans is saying.
I figure it is a very good sign.
81
Here’s a question for you and I’m not even sure it’s sensible given time-dependent factors but if all known hydrocarbon were burned, what is the maximum anthropogenic load of CO2 you could get in the atmosphere (it is less than 3.5% now)? Say you burned an equal amount every day for a year until there was none left. I am just trying to think of the worst possible scenario and whether it could get to historic high levels like 7000 ppm.
21
As I remember, we have already burnt about half of it, and after finishing all we will stay around 700 ppm. But I’m not really sure.
30
David
I think that there might be a lot of lawns to mow and trees to lop.
🙂
KK
10
Keith,
When I first investigated AGW some 20 years ago (found it wanting and became a d….r) one of the things I would regularly say is that the only bad effect of CO2 is that I will have to mow the lawn and weed the garden so much more.
41
It’s funny how the critics here are so interested in the details of your dam analogy, when they have been so blind to detail in the past about such things as the appropriateness of tree-ring measurement to forensic temperature analysis. Or their own comics strips showing the statue of liberty in new your harbor with just the torch showing.
We are about to have another of our election circi in the US. “climate change” will be a big deal, and I doubt the conversation will approach even the sophistication of debate about a cartoon. Nonetheless, Dr. Evan’s maths are gibberish to 99% of us, so Jo’s cartoon is little but an attempt to help us understand. It is certainly no less appropriate than the fraudulent hockey stick at the origin of much of this mess. Or the analogy of a greenhouse in the phrase “greenhouse gas”. Talk about misleading…..
So as much as I appreciate real science, I like most others, including the critics, often need the help of relatively simple analogies to understand things. Thanks for the help, Jo, and ignore the carping. Most of us can discriminate between an honest effort to explain and an effort to deceive. A clue is that explainers will accept donations (Paypal) but deceivers demand them.
152
Yep. Ditto’s my intended point at #11. Pathetic, eh?
10
David,
You didn’t say it directly in this post but even I, without anything even close to your understanding of this climate change debate, can see that this is an impossible condition. The highlighted portion alone is never going to be true.
I wonder if the global warming fans can appreciate this point.
I’m eagerly awaiting the rest of this series.
20
Roy, this is an example of the point made in post 4 about partial derivatives. The conventional basic climate model, the simple application of “basic physics” that has the word convinced increasing CO2 is very dangerous, relies on the Planck feedback/sensitivity, which is the partial derivative under the Planck conditions you quote.
Judging by their silence on the Planck conditions, I’d guess that those disputing the partial derivative complaint in post 4 have not fully grappled with it yet.
The theorists in the establishment have thought about it carefully, and they came up with the Planck conditions. They would say that the GCMs do not depend on the partial derivatives described in post 4, such as the Planck feedback/sensitivity, and thus do not depend on the Planck conditions. They would also assert that while the Planck feedback/sensitivity has some problems, it is a valid quantity and is probably approximately correct. (But really, how can one be sure?)
However as Rud and others have noted, maybe there are similar problems with partial derivatives inside the GCMs.
70
Yes, indeed
As Andy Lacis replied when I asked him that question on Judith Curry’s website: “Near enough is good enough”
The retort to the question: “How can you be sure ?” is simple – the Precautionary Principle, in all its’ pristine glory
30
Reminds me of this run in Monckton was having with Lucia about Plancks
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/04/monckton-walks-the-planck/
and prompting this explanation
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/27/monckton-on-pulling-planck-out-of-a-hat/
30
Off topic, but tonight (Wed 14th October) here in the UK we have a programme on the ITV channel entitled ‘In the Land of the Midnight Sun’. It’s the first of four, and presenter Alexander Armstrong will take (and I quote) “an 8000 mile journey halfway around the Arctic Circle in winter, a spectacular but deadly time of year to see the unforgiving, ice-bound region. Tonight sees Alexander begin in Scandinavia and head towards Iceland, as he swims with locals in the ocean, faces the worst storm in 25 years, and goes down the world’s first major tunnel to be built into the heart of a glacier.”
Built into the heart of a glacier? This one’s not melted due to mankind’s CO2 emissions, then!
51
I used to think that WUWT was the most interesting climate site on the web. No More! Since your first post on the Notch Theory I have been hooked on this site! Good luck Dr. Evans this site EXPLORES the science rather than summarizing it. My partner and I are looking forward to Saturday went we start our visit the eastern and northern parts of Australia as well as New Zealand.
101
Thanks CC Reader. I think you are on target.
30
The warmists MUST silence any dissent – especially a French meteorologist.
See here
The natives are getting restless – can’t have anyone questioning the meme can we now.
Cheers,
31
“Mr Verdier told France 5: “Making these revelations in the book, which I absolutely have the right to do, can pose problems for my employer given that the government (which funds France 2) is organising COP”.
Says it all. I think he knew very well what to expect. Still, to see his expectations take hold so quickly and lose his job overnight would have been a shock to the system.
11
Mr Verdier, losing his job because he refused to allow the government to censor him I hope has some major repercussion in the minds of the French Public.
Americans are generally a lot more gullible and we have become much more cynical about our government and the MSM. I think and I hope this all out pushing CAGW down out throats will have some serious repercussions as people wake up to an awareness of the UN controlled propaganda machine.
32
O/t but David and Jo now have a friend in France
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11931645/Frances-top-weatherman-sparks-storm-over-book-questioning-climate-change.html
31
France’s Top Weatheyrman fired for speaking out about climate of coercion
“He said he decided to write the book in June 2014 when Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, summoned the country’s main weather presenters and urged them to mention “climate chaos” in their forecasts.
“I was horrified by this discourse,” Mr Verdier told Les Inrockuptibles magazine. Eight days later, Mr Fabius appeared on the front cover of a magazine posing as a weatherman above the headline: “500 days to save the planet.””
61
Monsieur Verdier, means ‘Greenfinch’. Chirps nicely http://www.oiseaux.net/oiseaux/verdier.d.europe.html
30
No, No, No!
This is not true! This would be a thermal perpetual motion machine, even the most brilliant minds on the planet haven’t made one of those yet.
There ARE losses and you DO need to cater for them. Without doing so the Alternative Model will be WRONG, and quite possibly VERY WRONG.
A=R is the wrong basis for your model, it doesn’t hold for Venus, it doesn’t hold for Earth, and it certainly doesn’t hold for Jupiter or the Sun itself. There are Gravitational and momentum sources and sinks, chemical sources and sinks, Nuclear sources, and other EM sources and sinks (eg lightning, Atmospheric Voltage gradient, ionospheric effects and even magnetic effects. To create a model of the earth’s thermal balance you MUST account for them. You are modelling the equivalent of a motor’s electricity in to Motion out without accounting for friction, B Losses or vibration. The model might work or IT MIGHT NOT depending on the magnitude of the losses and contributions from “Unknown sources”.
You NEED a fifth pipe for the losses, and a second incoming pipe for the non solar sources
Here’s your challenge David, Tell me why I am wrong?
34
Hi Bob
I personally don’t believe it is possible to “Model” Human origin CO2 against its’ effect on Earth Atmospheric Temperature and get an answer that is at all sane.
David is just showing areas where improvement over the old systems can be seen.
In doing this it highlights the Faults in the old computer simulations that were passed off as models.
As for the No No No, I think the original statement just related to any energy, not a particular amount or bundle.
KK
🙂
31
Thanks Bobl. you have basically wrapped up many of the problems with conventional modelling into a neat package and explained how complicated it is to include them all.
I totally agree with you, not only is it basically impossible to account for all these factors, but to then assume you can tease out human contributions of a single gas and use it to account for all output variations is pretty laughable.
Well done and here I was thinking you weren’t a skeptic.
51
Me, not a sceptic? Wow, how can anyone think THAT! I’m Sceptical of EVERYTHING, particularly so when those things are used as a pipe, pipes leading OUT of my wallet!
That should be the model here, show the climate pipes leading into and out of our wallets.
40
Im skeptical of your claims of being skeptical of everything 😉
20
Bob, you are right that A is not quite equal to R because of the sources you mention, but A is very close to R when averaged over some years because those sources are insignificant compared to the amount of sunlight pouring in. Basically Earth is warmed almost entirely by that huge ball of fire nearby, and the particulars of how we shed that heat determines largely conditions here at the surface.
Anyway, the aim of this exercise, as noted in the intro post, is merely to improve on the basic model that started and sustains the CO2 scare. Essentially all of today’s theorizing is just going to result in one reconnection in the diagram of the basic model (fig 2 of post 3 or fig 2 of post 9), but it is that connection that makes all the difference. This will make sense in a couple of posts.
30
Ok so (Energy In) almost equals (Energy Out). What could account for the descrepency?
1. I imagine the warmth of the oceans would be a heat absorber/buffer.
2. I accept that plants use sunlight directly in photosynthises to grow (would love an idea of the proportion of the total this accounts for).
I’m out of ideas. Are there any more?
00
How about the creation of momentum in moving objects.
Energy absorbed in providing animal life on Earth. eg someone mentioned termites how many tonnes?
00
The solar wind, Ionisation, UV warming, jet stream friction, wind, friction, ocean waves, currents and tides, earths electric and magnetic fields (and particularly perturbations in them), bending energies (bend a wire repeatedly in the same place and it gets hot) the earth is bent internally repeatedly over 1.3km of compression by gravity.
Greg, the energy in the momentum of the earths rotation is 100,000 times the ANNUAL total insolation of earth 100,000 times, it is 100 million times the annual imbalance of 0.6W per square meter we are seeing. The energy of the earths rotation around the sun is 400 Billion times ANNUAL insolation or 700 Trillion times the annual effect of OLR imbalance. These energies are huge – so huge they wouldn’t miss 0.6W per square metre
10
David,
With respect you don’t know that – that’s an assumption a mere speculation. For pretty much no other planetary body in the solar system is outgoing OLR remotely equal to ASR yet we accept that Earth is somehow different.
What if the approximate equivalence of ASR to OLR is just a coincidence.
For example
Lets consider 2 sources and 2 sinks,
S1 (Incoming SW) = 1000
O1 (Outgoing OLR) = -1000
S2 (Unknown source) 5,000,000
O2 (Unknown sink) -5,000,000
Therefore OLR =
1000 + 5,000,000 – 5,000,000 = 1000;
OLR APPEARS to equal ASR but does it,
In the above example where did the OLR on the RHS come from? Is the physics of that channel the same as solar (unlikely)
Because you don’t actually know that this relation holds you MUST add in terms for non radiative inputs and outputs in the model even if later they prove to be near zero because it leaves a place in the model to accommodate them
Further, let’s say S2 and O2 are say 10% of S1 then you still can’t say which source O1 (OLR) comes from. The physics of this source could be completely different.
From the model point of view, adding in the non radiative gains and losses as a second input and fifth output pipe create a more correct picture – science can argue about what energy goes in the second input pipe and what energies leak out output pipe 5, the debate gets extended to properly consider the non radiative gains and losses – the climate scientists will be forced to justify that these pipes are negligible.
It’s important to justify this and just by catering for the possibility you facilitate the debate
20
David,
Just a point in support of this idea, ocean wave energy is about 36kW per square meter for a not too unusual 2m swell, this is 100 times the average insolation of the same piece of surface. So where does this wave energy come from? Where does it go?
It’s normally assumed that kinetic energy like this eventually dissipates as friction (even though that’s not really true) but if it did, then this is an input of 36kW/sq metre 100 times insolation – where does it go?
20
Bob: Many people, including skeptics, have measured or studied all the source and sinks. They are all insignificant compared to the heat pouring in from the Sun. And if OLR wasn’t equal to ASR, the planet would soon cool or heat. So yes, for Earth A=R is a very good approximation. It’s also approximately true for most of the planetary bodies in the solar system (but obviously not for the Sun), AFAIK.
In any case the people who believe in the conventional basic climate model believe it applies to Earth, so we are going with it.
10
That’s an argument from Authority, the non radiative sources and sinks have not been investigated, we know because there are few/no papers on this for example photosythesis alone I have estimated costs about 3Watts per square meter. Change in photosythesis alone is comparable to the gap between OLR and ASR. Losses/Gains through gravitation are not even considered.
How come ocean wave energy is 100 times insolation and yet doesn’t affect OLR?
10
What happened to my n from photosynthesis
10
🙂
00
A comprehensive summery bobl. I think I’m on bobl’s side more than David’s on this one. It’s too cheep just to discard so many influences and say they don’t matter. They need to be evaluated and quantified before being “not included in the model for brevity”. Judith said it well with “It’s a wicked problem”. It is complex, it is comprehensive, and without knowing what exactly is not included in the models, we(society in general) can never know if the models represent reality, or are simply a tuned and complex imperical machine.
10
It is quite possible that although this “lost” energy is substantial compared to incoming EMR
it may in fact be relatively constant in which case it may be possible to say that
INCOMING EMR IS PROPORTIONAL to outgoing EMR but not equal to it.
The other thing that confuses people who do not have a thermodynamic background is that energy can NEVER be more powerful than it was originally.
There is a constant degradation of the POWER of EMR activity. Perhaps lightning bolts are the exception.
Warmers say that because energy is held back at some point by gas activity then it must collect and revisit the Earth’s surface.
That energy can’t go against the flow and so the only possible time for that to occur is at night and I’m not to sure about that.
KK
00
Back several years ago somebody (I think on Jo’s blog) did a calculation of how long it takes for a single photon to travel from the Earth’s surface to open space. Taking into account collisions with atoms and the bouncing around, his result was 5 micro seconds.
Nobody contested his calculated. I’ve remembered this little factoid because (to me) it makes a mockery of the heat retention properties of CO2.
A question for you KK.
How long does it take for atmosphiric heat to balance? And what about the tropopause where the upper atmosphere never mixes with the lower atmosphere. I ask because I don’t know 🙂
10
5 micro seconds? Thats quick, i understand what bobl is saying but i dont have any answers. If i veiw the system without what bobl talks about it makes more sense but is wrong.
If the energy from the sun enters the planet and that energy is stored and reaches a certain level, once at this level it leaves as fast as it enters (well it takes 5 micro seconds to leave) the energy level of the planet remains the same.
In theory if we add some CO2 it now might take 6 micro seconds which mens the energy level of the planet will go up a little. The question is how much which seems to be dependant on why it takes 5/6 micro seconds to leave in the first place. The IPCC think it will bounce around causing mayhem whilst David believes it does not hence the large temp difference in co2 doubling.
A question for bobl, where did the energy generated by orbital velocities and what not come from in the first place? If there was never a sun or it turned off would the planet still rotate? would it slow down and stop?
Does/did the sun provide this energy in the first place……….are we looking too deep here or are we looking in the right place? This is the bit i dont understand too much.
10
Hello Greg
You have some questions.
You got the wrong person for those about the structure of the atmosphere because my experience there is limited to going up in passenger liners to 10 km altitude.
As to the question of how long EMR takes to go from earth’s surface to space; yes I can have a go at that.
Light travels at 186,000 miles per second.
Depending on what we set as “space” we may be happy with 10 miles (16 km roughly) or 100 miles (160 km approx).
For radiation to escape to 10 mile space the MINIMUM time needed from ground level is 53.76 micro seconds where 1 microsecond is a millionth of a sec.
Obviously to go to 100 mile space it is 538 microseconds (ie 0.000538 seconds).
In the 5 microseconds quoted before the EMR would have traveled (without collision) a max distance of about 0.93 miles or 1488 metres.
There appears to be an order of magnitude difference (times 10) between my 10 mile time and the time quoted.
To work out how long it takes for atmospheric heat to balance; well thats another thing.
Somebody recently wrote here about being in the desert at night after a hot day.
there is no water and so no cloud in a desert area, so.
The ground energy stored in the sand moves to the 10 mile space in the time given above. basically unimpeded.
As somebody else here, more qualified in the physics of the atmosphere said, the Tropics are a whole nother ball game.
EMR may go from water level and get caught up in clouds and turbulence and held up for who knows how long.
KK
00
Whoa, more
The climate is widely assumed to be linear for the small temperature perturbations involved in global warming, so the temperature perturbations due to the various climate drivers are independent and superpose
Again you make an assertion without testing it’s truth, what if for arguments sake warming is saturated, in equatorial regions and summer elsewhere, over water IT IS. Additional surface warming causes a tipping point that results in a thunderstorm and massive cooling, warming in this case causes (later) cooling it in essence becomes oscillatory one of the reasons you can’t use a scalar model, certainly you can’t assume that the function between the source of the warming and the warming itself is the same for all sources! You need to rethink this bit to take account of the possibility that warmings don’t direct superpose and to take account of oscillatory behaviours.
I personally don’t believe a scalar model will work at all.
51
Good comment Bob
The storm formation outline is a good reminder of two boundary condition at work in our biosphere:
1. The boiling point of water
2. The freezing point of water.
Both give lots of scope for heat exchange and transfer and in doing so help hold the system within livable limits.
KK
30
They are hysterical…. Ok That’s a joke (for the humorless red thumbers). The boiling point and freezing points of not just water, but everything ( another important stabilising force is fats and waxes) introduce an energy lag where the temperature remains the same but the embodied energy changes greatly. That is there is a range of energy states where the temperature is totally unrelated to the forcing. This causes hysteresis, that is the energy state for a given temperature is dependent on the direction you approach it from!
0 deg approached from below has a much lower energy state than zero degrees approached from above, when water is present. This sort of hysteresis is present in for example low altitude clouds which are a heterogeneous mix of ice, water and vapour. You can’t in fact ever know the energy state of that cloud.
60
I remember that word.
hysteresis.
Long ago, about 5 decades worth in some chemistry or physics lecture after work.
KK
00
Bob, any analogue system, such as one described by differential equations, is linear for sufficiently small perturbations. The question mainly revolves around “how small” and “how linear”.
The climate perturbations of the last century seem to be linear for the global parameters in basic models, as far as anyone can tell, which is probably the basis for the widespread assertion that for the sort of temperature excursions in global warming the climate system is essentially linear. Obviously the climate system is highly non-linear, in numerous ways, with transitions to and from ice ages presumably being a noted non-linearity. Even something as non-linear as T^4 can be quite linear over relevant operating regions — e.g. see fig 1 post 8.
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David,
Not trying to pick an argument, but Edward Lorenz showed that arbitrarily small changes to a chaotic system could result in completely unpredictable outcomes.
“Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.” – copied from Wikipedia – supposedly said by Lorenz.
The Wikipedia article on chaos is fairly inclusive. It seems to have been edited somewhat over the past couple of years. I commend it to you. Maybe you will rethink a few things – or maybe not.
Have fun anyway!
07
Fair point Mike. While weather is chaotic, climate involves huge aggregates such as the global surface temperature, which are apparently not chaotic. Anyway, what else can one do? So we proceed as if climate is not chaotic and is mainly linear in many important respects over the typical small excursions we have observed.
30
Exact point I was failing to make, you assume Linearity but you cant prove it, weather is demonstrably chaotic and the integral of a chaotic system is chaotic.
I take your point on d/dt of a function being approximately linear for small enough dt, but d/dt of each “Pipe” is different and possibly interdependent. I don’t think its reasonable to assume you can just add them up. However for the sake of refactoring the model I’ll allow you to get away with it.
It IS an assumption that may prove to be unreliable.
01
Oh, and if there is hysteresis (which is likely) then the result can be dependent on the sign of d/dt
01
Then front up with something better yourself instead of bagging others having a fair crack at solving unknowns.
00
David asked in post #1 to be challenged, and I am honoring his request, it actually is rather trivial to do what I asked and add a second input pipe and a fifth output one. Call them Non radiative gain/loss and then set them to be approximately zero. The resulting equations will have terms for this channel but it won’t affect his result until he decides to make an estimate of their effect. For example we know that pipe 5 carries at least Photosynthesis of about -6W per sq m and that d/dt of it is about 0.06W for each 2 PPM.
00
Trivial but complicating Bob. Add a pipe here or there for one person, soon there’ll be pipes all over. Just trying to keep it as simple as possible while getting the main effect, without worrying too much about smaller details that (hopefully) don’t have much effect. Only a basic model 🙂
00
But David you are too simple, take all those extra pipes and bundle them into one input and output stream and then you architecture is correct because you have sufficient complexity to represent the general case, including what science doesn’t know about yet.
At the moment you have one input and 4 output channel representing just part ( perhaps the main part) of the energy balance but no non specific pipes to represent what’s left over. What’s left over after the 4 main channels may be the most important discovery to come.
00
David,
Weather is chaotic. Averaging historical weather and calling it climate achieves nothing of use that I can see. The Warmists claim climate change affects weather – more extreme weather events and so on. Rubbish. Climate is the average of weather, and not the originator. The climate changes as a result of the weather averaged over a period, not the other way round.
Averages, in any case, are quite often useless, in practical terms. Knowing that a fair coin will come down 50% heads or tails is quite useless if you’re betting on the outcome, unless you run into the “genius” who will offer you better than even money after several occurences of say, heads, in a row. Unfortunately, the coin has no memory. Even it has come up heads 20 times in succession, the chance of another head is still 50%.
Weather averages can be fatal. A SAS group, Bravo Two Zero from memory, was inserted into a desert region in Iraq equipped for the local “average temperature”. At least one soldier died of hypothermia when temperatures dropped below freezing, and it started snowing. Temperatures in the area range from below zero to 45C or so, giving a nice comfortable average temperature, except the average is misleading, and was deadly, at least to one member.
Feel free to tell me to bugger off, but this whole climate nonsense is not only pointless, but also horrendously expensive. To paraphrase Winston Churchill – “never in the field of human stupidity was so much wasted by so many to achieve so little!”
Augury comes at a cost, and the only ones who benefit are the augurs.
If I’m right (and of course am LOL!) then you may be wasting your time. Your choice, I guess.
Have fun.
08
I agree 90% with you Mike. Trying to model the climate and pretending it’s not weather, is like trying to simplify turbulent fluid flows into a single averaged velocity. It’s useful, but it’s not accurate and it leaves a lot of important details out.
However, I do think David is spending his time well in this case, simply because the establishment needs a sound voice in opposition. We need David’s voice to confound the conformists and bring sanity back to science.
03
Um, what about 1/x as x-> 0, or nice familiar one
Lambda x log2(C/C0) as C ->0 ?
01
bobl.. everything in nature is driven by “differences”
And in most cases, the rate of change is proportional to the difference.
That means that changes are NOT linear.
11
ABC is pushing some new modelling also this morning. Amazingly (I know this will surprise you) the new model predicts catastrophic and irreversible sea level rises and a collapse of Antarctic ice.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-15/antarctic-ice-shelf-sea-level-rise-warning/6853780
51
Then this is a perfect time for David and others to address my earlier question regarding the ice and sea levels.
Let’s keep it simple and consider a fictional worst case scenario:
1. all ice melts simultaneously and is tranported directly to the oceans with no diversion to other points.
2. There is no affect/effect on the earth’s crust and landforms, including no rebounding.
3. there are no losses to atmosphere etc due to evaporation.
4. there is no temperature effect etc.
Based on those assumptions; what is the affect on sea levels of the world’s oceans?
00
TOOOO hypothetical Bill
Why analyze the most unlikely event to be conceived by Warmerism???
The u n would be better advised to spend our forced donations to get going on stopping existing wars and preventing the next.
KK
10
Because THEY are the ones making the silly out of this world claims. So, let’s address them with science and math, demonstrating that they are not only fools, but completely misled to boot. Hence, by comments yesterday about unicorn farts and star trek transporters/force fieldstractor beams…
But, yes, the UN could/should be doing what it is supposed to be doing under the UN charter instead of this nonsense.
01
But Bill
Every real scientist knows that water levels will DROP again b about 130 metres inside the next 10,000 years when the next glaciation starts.
That is the reality NOT the hypothetical you provide.
KK
21
KK there is a good possibility that drop in sea level will start within the next couple of decades given the amount of snow dumped on the Northern Hemisphere the last couple of winters and the fact we are past the peak of Solar cycle 24. (Amazing how none of this information ever makes it into the Mainstream propaganda broadcasts isn’t it?)
GISP2 Ice Core Temperature and Snow Accumulation Data Alley, R.B. 2000
(wwwDOT)ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/alley2000/alley2000.gif
This graph shows the long term gradual drop in temperature and increase in snow up to year 2000.
Northern Hemisphere October-March Snow Cover At Record High Levels (June 2015)
https://i1.wp.com/realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ScreenHunter_2301-Jun.-07-09.15.gif
(Data from Rutgers University Global Snow Lab)
………
Scotland was one of the areas covered by an ice sheet during the Wisconsin Ice Age. The Scottish snowpatch survey:
https://weatheraction.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/wpid-scottish_snow_patches_20150827t140213.jpg
It was hovering around 35 then increased to 72 in 2012, 81 in 2013, jumped to 281 in 2014 and jumped again to 630 in 2015.
Google translation of Icelandic
Greenland: As of today,10/14/2015 (image may change), Greenland is gaining ice/snow compared to 1990 to 2013 average.
http://beta.dmi.dk/uploads/tx_dmidatastore/webservice/b/m/s/y/a/todaysmb.png
Left: Map of the surface mass balance today (in mm water equivalent per day). Right: The average surface mass balance for today’s calendar date over the period 1990-2013.
2011: Record snowfall in Himachal this year has revived more than 2,000 glaciers.
timesofindia(DOT)indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/Record-snowfall-in-HP-revives-2000-glaciers/articleshow/7512964.cms?referral=PM
Normally The Times of India has articles like “Research claims glaciers melting at a faster rate” However there has been unusual cold and snow in India for the last few years. (SEE: iceagenow(dot)info/?s=India)
20
Yes Gai
What has happened in the Northern Hemisphere over the last few years has been “unprecedented”.
Cold, inconvenient, frustrating etc
And then it is fobbed off by the Warmerati is irrelevant.
KK
00
Yes, but we are addressing the myth, not reality.
00
My comment, in case the ABC mod squad “moderates” it:
92
I love how the ABC closed comments on that thread after I wrote a long rebuttal to the inane remarks to my comment. The stupidity reigns at the ABC.
51
If you want to make people believe propaganda you can not allow any other voices to be heard. Therefore censorship and the punishment of dissenters is a must. This characteristic is all that is needed to tell you that CAGW is NOT SCIENCE but propaganda needed to force a political agenda.
Too bad the Sheeple can’t see the obvious truth that when censorship or worse is applied, the government is sharpening the clippers for shearing the sheep.
11
David and Jo,
You have been doing a great service to humanity. Especially you Jo, you little bon wit. Somehow through my not-to-bright internet meanders, I found some of your posts back to 2009. You were so ahead of the curve.
David, your investigations into partial derivatives has been criticized by Lucia, so you need to answer, or let her criticisms stand. You need to talk to her (off the blogs) and see what is creating differences, and then if you’re wrong admit it, if she’s wrong she admits it, then report.
The thing that most pewople do not understand is that “scientists”, great, good, okay or bad, don’t give the world authoritative pronouncements out of their own minds. They do research that funders pay for. Go back to the Middle Ages and Renaissance. And even before, There have always been money-paying sponsors of scientists. Because without sponsors, the scientists could not do their thinking and investigations and reporting their ideas and experimental findings.
Einstein came up with ideas. He was paid by the Swiss government. He wash not paid to upturn Newtonian physics. But he was allowed to examine new findings, and paid to do it by the Swiss government.
Newton didn’t do his work while employed to do mechanics’ work. He had sponsors who enabled him to think. As did Galileo, he didm”t do his researches getting paid as a physician to treat patients.
Modern physics, as we know it, was funded by government payments.
Now,if we take catastrophic anthropognenic global warming, with 97% of scientists agreeing with it, where did this spring from? It could not possibly have arisen from self-funding scientists all reaching this conclusion. Why not? Because they did not have self-funding to create this paradigm. Somebody foisted money, seeking people who would accept the money, and advance the payers’ agenda. The payers were scientists.
Let’s take Paul Ehrlich. Somebody paid him to write “The Population Bomb”. He was an entomologist. How did he morph into a prophet of doom? Whopaid him?
James Hanson, not a good enough high school student to get into Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Caltech, Berkeley , Chicago, or Cornell. Or Wisconsin-Madison, or Illinois Champaigne-Urbana. Sn Iowa third-rater. Then for PhD, also not good enough to get into the first tier. Not even the second tier. PhD, U Iowa, third tier.
Then Michael Mann, groundbreaking hockey stick paper published from third-tier U Mass. Not Yale, (second tier in geology/geophysics) because he didn’t come up with the hockey stick with a Yale research supervisor. Now he’s a professor at third-rate Penn State University. Check back, JHe’s not teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. My cousin is a tenured Asso Prof at U Penn. Penn and PSU are on different planes.
WE could talk about the Climategate persons in the UK. not Oxford or Cambridge graduates. This tier “scientists” get to control “peer review”, and who gets to be editors on journals.
Thenif you look at how it happened, high school educated Maurice Strong,spearheaded things, UNEP. and funding for “human-caused global warming”, you really need to put your faith in high school graduate and third-tier scientists who glommed onto funding that paid them more than they could get doing actual science.
FWIW, is the earth warming? Yes, so are you posting fear-mongering, or relishing it? I asked Jo and David, , Are you moving poleward? They said no. Nobody is.
Then we consider the alarmists’ travel. Are they essaying their heavy-carbon-spewing jet rip to Paris COP 21? No. They don’t believe that their humongus carbon foot print is contributing to global warming, “We aren’t contributing to global warming, Only the mass of little people are. We don’t need to set an example, we just need to burn a lot of carbons, and tell the rest of humanity they can’t.
As Michael Mann, Al Gore, and Christiana Figureras tell us, “We can emit carbon dioxide, but you masses can’t. We’re not hypocrites, we’re just good-thinimking plutocrats.”
72
Thanks old farte. We have replied to Lucia here, after she declined to discuss it by email, and I understand she intends to produce a reply post at her blog soon.
20
Old Farte,
David’s answer to Lucia
You can always take and post it at her site if you wish.
10
Mediocre scientists sometimes find a more rewarding career in administration. These are ones who often gravitate to the top, getting to control the strings, strangling innovation, inspiration & dissent. A few can become great leaders but most just lose perspective, if they ever had any, and get lost in their administrative bubble.
31
Correction: the payers were NOT scientists.
10
There’s another ten minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
I see the following verbal descriptions:
and
You no doubt have some way of explaining why those two statements are consistent, probably having to do with a distinction between imbalance and OLR change. And I may end up understanding and agreeing with that explanation. But your failure to include ambiguity-dispelling equations with the verbal description leaves us to speculate about what you’re trying to say.
Look, I’ve been withholding judgment here—and still am, although I’ve just about stopped. But I’ve had decades of dealing with scientists and engineers, and my experience is that those who take this long to get to the point usually are confused in their own minds. I’m not saying I know that’s true in this case, but I’ve become pessimistic.
You could have led of with the equations that encapsulate your model and then proceeded to explain them verbally. That way, readers would have had a way to dispel the ambiguities that inevitably afflict verbal descriptions—and had some way of judging various passages’ relevance to the point at which they hope you eventually will arrive.
As it is, this interminable meandering has mostly caused discussions of what you might have meant rather than of the validity of what we’re confident you do mean, and it has led some of us to suspect that it’s all wind-up and no pitch.
Please, please, get to the punch line.
10
Joe, this post is only a road map, to tell you in advance what the strategy is. The diagrams and equations come in the next few posts.
To some people I have indeed presented the alternative model first, as diagrams and equations. They generally failed to understand why it was interesting thing to do, missing precisely the big picture ideas explained in this post as they focused on details. So here I have reversed it.
Sorry it takes so long to present in this format. If I was presenting this in a PowerPoint/handout to a roomful of engineers and scientists this post would take 10 minutes and we’d already be into the details — but a series of blog posts necessarily takes longer (each blog sized check of 10 minutes reading becomes 2 days). I cannot just give out the paper, because the publisher has copyright, but I can discuss it part by part.
This format has the advantage of allowing feedback on each part. There are so many moving parts to critiquing a currently entrenched model and introducing a substantially new alternative that if it is done at one sitting many find it overwhelming, and neglect many of the parts. Again, I’ve tried it on some people, and there is too much that is new.
I’d prefer pumping out the posts faster (they were all written before the series started, there is not the slightest confusion in my mind), but this blog serves other readers with other interests as well, so we shouldn’t dominate.
70
The Royal Society: Philosophical Transactions: Uncertainty as knowledge
Authors: Stephan Lewandowsky, Timothy Ballard, Richard D. Pancost
Published 12 October 2015. DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2014.0462
Abstract: This issue of Philosophical Transactions examines the relationship between scientific uncertainty about climate change and knowledge. Uncertainty is an inherent feature of the climate system. Considerable effort has therefore been devoted to understanding how to effectively respond to a changing, yet uncertain climate. Politicians and the public often appeal to uncertainty as an argument to delay mitigative action. We argue that the appropriate response to uncertainty is exactly the opposite: uncertainty provides an impetus to be concerned about climate change, because greater uncertainty increases the risks associated with climate change. We therefore suggest that uncertainty can be a source of actionable knowledge. We survey the papers in this issue, which address the relationship between uncertainty and knowledge from physical, economic and social perspectives. We also summarize the pervasive psychological effects of uncertainty, some of which may militate against a meaningful response to climate change, and we provide pointers to how those difficulties may be ameliorated.
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/2055/20140462
10
Rankly unscientific. Lack of knowledge, i.e. ignorance, does not change the inherent risk of the climate system. The variables which affect climate determine the range of outcomes, not Lewandowsky’s (or anyone else’s) uncertainty (read ignorance) about them.
He is arguing the case that increased ignorance of a situation increases the need for action:
As a corollary of Lewandowsky’s argument, we know nothing about alien abductions, therefore the call to action could not be stronger nor should it be delayed any longer!
Read another way, this is just another feeble attempt to overturn the null hypothesis that future climate change is not alarming.
This man has opened his mouth and removed all doubt of his ignorance. Many times.
51
Nulius in verba – Nothing but verbiage.
Since becoming headed by that character who was the spit-n-image of Robin Williams, great comedian that he was, I have no longer been able to take output of the Royal Society seriously.
That was before they adopted Lewandowski. Nothing would now surprise me, even if they were to make Lewandowski their next president.
30
All pipes lead to Space
http://models.weatherbell.com/climate/cfsr_t2m_2005.png
Yes if the heat released by the current Elnino should remain in the atmosphere.
00
Hello trevor,
Your comment on ‘Climate models too complicated? Here’s one that everyone can use’ has been removed.
There are several reasons why this may have occurred:
Your comment may have breached our community standards. For example it may have been a personal attack, or you might not have used your real name.
Your comment may have been entirely blameless but part of a thread that was removed because another comment had to be removed.
It might have been removed for another editorial reason, for example to avoid repetition or keep the conversation on topic.
For practical reasons we reserve the right to remove any comment and all decisions must be final, but please don’t take it personally.
If you’re playing by the rules it’s unlikely to happen again, so feel free to continue to post new comments and engage in polite and respectful discussion.
For your reference, the removed comment was:
An interesting article “CLIMATE CHANGE CRACKS” by Dr David Evans on the use of models. He is suggesting that models have not been interpreted correctly ,and they have been over estimated by up to ten times. I know this is counter to the articles summary, but very worth while to get the” fact check” out to see if he has found a real fault in the assumption that the CO2 is 100% of the cause of our warmer climate. If he is correct , he may join Mr Barry Marshall`s reputation in the medical field.
For more information you can read our standards.
Kind regards,
The Conversation
11
What total crap!!
12
1.4.1.4.1, 1.4.1.4.2 both in moderation 🙁
00
Once more once
Roy Hogue October 16, 2015 at 3:14 am ·
I tried doing this a bit ago but that went to moderation.
Please stop nit picking David for details of what you do not understand, please. ie
Roy Hogue October 16, 2015 at 5:02 am
He is up to his ears with folk like Appel and KR tring to only derail this! Ask of others!
“And I cannot remember seeing the term pressure used in any discussion of thermodynamics, not in college and not on this blog.”
Ever notice things like steam engines, jet engines, internal combustion engines, heat engines. All of these are thermodynamics, and all have pressure not heat as the motive force. Thermodynamics has little to do with temperature except that higher is more efficient.
“Heat can move in both directions between bodies at different temperatures simultaneously or even 2 bodies at the same temperature.”
Have you even one physical example of such? No heat flux shall spontaneously exhibit in a direction of higher potential (temperature). The second law of thermodynamics as per Rudy Clausius! Another law via observation as are all physical LAWS.
“No fluid can flow in both directions between positions having different pressures and fluids do not move between positions at the same pressure.”
That is the very same 2LTD as above! But water, air, and heat, pumps all make it reverse with a little work.
Oceans have a very large pressure gradient but that gradient is not expressed for the ocean water itself. The same with this atmosphere. The whole thing is isopotential although it has definite density, pressure, and temperature gradients with altitude. Both fluid bodies exhibit neutral buoyancy of the fluid itself. Although compressible, incompressible fluids work differently if this self-buoyancy were not so the fluids in this gravitational field would not act at all like they actually do. So I don’t understand what you’re talking about. -will-
05
Since you repeat this here I will ask again, do you now speak for David Evans??? 🙁
00
By the way, at #14 I din’t ask a question at all. I was not in the slightest doubt about what I said.
00
Roy Hogue October 17, 2015 at 2:38 am · Reply
(WJ Please stop nit picking David for details of what you do not understand, please. ie
Roy Hogue October 16, 2015 at 5:02 am 6.1.2.1.2
He is up to his ears with folk like Appel and KR trying to only derail this! Ask of others!)
“do you now speak for David Evans??? 🙁 ”
Nope. You did not even look at your bothersome nonsense question! 🙁
Roy Hogue October 17, 2015 at 2:42 am
“By the way, at #14 I din’t ask a question at all. I was not in the slightest doubt about what I said.”
Roy Hogue October 15, 2015 at 12:36 am · #14
“David,
You didn’t say it directly in this post but even I, without anything even close to your understanding of this climate change debate, can see that this is an impossible condition. The highlighted portion alone is never going to be true.”
Indeed without understanding!! David carefully explains the given conditions of a particular model. Even with page references you refuse to look! Brian J. Soden and Isaac M. Held, 2006: An Assessment of Climate Feedbacks in Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere Models. J. Climate, 19, 3354–3360. Then you claim those conditions do not apply somewhere in your imagination.
Your highlighted portion is one thing true of most atmospheres, Earth included. It is called a lapse rate!
Two days after Davids careful answer to your nonsense, you must bring it up again. 🙁
01
No it is not.
GCMs are detailed models with high resolution cell by cell calculations for ocean AND atmosphere. It is not just radiation imbalance.
Most of the properties you describe are derived from the OUTPUT of the models, they are neither the inputs nor the basic model on which they are built.
There is no “core model” that *assumes* the effect of CO2 is only on the surface.
21
Greg, in the context I think “the conventional model” can only mean “the conventional basic climate model”. In cannot mean the GCMs in that context, given the previous paragraph, and given that this series is about basic models and not GCMs.
It gets tiresome for both readers and the writer to always be saying “conventional basic climate model”, so I sometimes omit a couple of words.
I’ve added the full description to that particular instance in the text.
10
David: Your OLR model hopefully includes changes in the altitude of clouds in addition to changes in the fraction of cloud cover. The latter produces changes in reflected SWR, while the former produces changes in OLR emitted by cloudy skies.
The IPCC certainly knows that forcing can directly interfere with any of your “four pipes” to space without changing surface temperature. In the case of aerosols, they consider the direct reflection of SWR to space by aerosol particles and the effect of aerosols on the size of water drops in clouds (the indirect aerosol effect). The microphysics of cloud droplets has been carefully studied and a change in the size of droplets should have an important effect. As best I can tell, we don’t know enough about nucleation to know if the amount of sulfate aerosol currently in the atmosphere has actually changed droplet size.
00
Frank: Yes, the OLR model includes the height of clouds. There is some data, but unfortunately it is conflicted.
00
David wrote: “That is, the essence of the conventional model is that it sums the radiation imbalances (forcings) due to the various climate influences. The alternative model is going to use a different organizing principle: it instead adds the perturbation in surface temperature (“warming”) due to each climate driver, to produce a total surface warming. Its nub will be a sum of warmings.”
Addition is acceptable when you add modest “climate drivers” that are forcings measured in W/m2. You can never add forcing to feedback because the units they are measured with are different. W/m2 and W/m2/K.
Re-reading the post leaves it unclear whether your new approach will make this mistake. However, there is a second complication with converting everything to a temperature change before summing up: When converted to temperature, feedbacks add as an infinite series. Let’s illustrate:
Assume a doubling of CO2 (3.6 W/m2 forcing) with no feedbacks raises the temperature of the earth 1.0 degK. Let’s suppose the only significant feedback is water vapor and the additional water vapor on a planet 1.0 degK warmer is enough to reduce OLR by 1.8 W/m2. (The feedback is 1.8 W/m2/K). That reduction in OLR (if we treat it as a simple forcing) is enough to produce an additional 0.5 degK warming. That warming produces another 0.9 W/m2 reduction in OLR. That reduction in OLR (if we treat it as a simple forcing) is enough to produce an additional 0.25 degK warming. And so on. If we sum the infinite series (0.5 + 0.25 + 0.125 …), we add a full 1 degK of warming via amplification to the 1 degK of warming (before feedbacks are included). ECS will be 2.0 degK.
If 1 degC of warming increases humidity thereby reduces OLR by 2.4 Wm2 (a feedback of 2.4 W/m2/K), then the sum of the infinite series will be 2.0 degK and ECS will be 3.0 degK.
If 1 degC of warming increases humidity thereby reduces OLR by 2.7 Wm2 (a feedback of 2.7 W/m2/K), then the sum of the infinite series will be 3.0 degK and ECS will be 4.0 degK.
If 1 degC of warming increases humidity thereby reduces OLR by 3.0 Wm2 (a feedback of 3.0 W/m2/K), then the sum of the infinite series will be 5 degK and ECS will be 6.0 degK.
If 1 degC of warming increases humidity thereby reduces OLR by 3.6 Wm2 (a feedback of 3.6 W/m2/K), then the sum of the infinite series will be infinity – a runaway greenhouse effect.
As feedback approaches 3.6 W/m2/K, every 0.1 W/m2/K of feedback does not produce the same amount of warming.
There is nothing special about a single water vapor feedback. Only the sum of feedbacks makes a difference. If water vapor feedback is 1.8 W/m2/K and ice albedo is 1.8 W/m2/K, you can’t say that each one adds only 1 degK of warming to ECS. The total reduction is OLR is 3.6 W/m2/K and we have a runaway greenhouse effect.
I presume you have seen this analysis before. It will be interesting to see how you avoid it. We are now 15 posts into this new approach without having addressed this key issue.
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Frank: Already dealt with back in post 3. Standard single loop feedback. Not an issue.
Linearity justify adding climate states. Thus one can apply one driver at a time, calculate the climate state due to each driver, and add the states. Note that the state due to each driver has had all its feedbacks applied. Thus forcings and feedbacks do not get confused. I am not advocating forcings (W/m2) and feedbacks (W/m2/K).
We have essentially already been through your example, sort of. See Fig.2 of post 3, the diagram for the conventional model with AR5 parameter values. Eq. (16) of post 3 follows by inspection (assuming you are familiar with Fig.1 of post 3).
1. “Assume a doubling of CO2 (3.6 W/m2 forcing) with no feedbacks raises the temperature of the earth 1.0 degK.”
Thus ΔI = 3.6 W/m2 and ΔTS = 1.0 K, with f = 0. Hence in this planet λ0 = ΔTS / ΔI = 0.28 K per W/m2. Close to the real value of 0.31 K per W/m2.
2. You specify wv fb of 1.8 W/m2 per K, but let’s just set all feedback to that number, so f = 1.8 W/m2 per K. The AR5 value is close, at 1.7 W/m2 per K.
3. Eq. (16) of post 3 is ΔTS = ΔI λ0 / (1 – fλ0)
Formally divide (it’s just long division) to expand the series, assuming fλ0 < 1: ΔTS = ΔI λ0 [1 + f λ0 + (f λ0)^2 + (f λ0)^3 + ...] Your example applies this: "sum the infinite series (0.5 + 0.25 + 0.125 …)" 4. Then you crank up the feedback, making it more and more positive. Yes, as the loop gain approaches unity you get overload and runaway greenhouse: loop gain = amplification when signal goes once around the loop in Fig.2 of post 3 = fλ0 = 1.8 * 0.28 = 0.5 (before you cranked up f). To quote from post 3:
Nature avoids runaway greenhouse due to excessive positive feedback Frank. We don’t have to do anything.
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“Doubling CO2 is “equal” to 2% more sunlight. (So sayeth Hansen 1984.)”
Equal because both are measured in watts. Does a photon know its source?
“If one of the feedbacks to atmospheric warming by CO2 was to increase the flow through the cloud tops or water vapor pipes, the current climate models could not show that, could not even “think” it.”
It will be interesting to see how the flow will increase through the water-vapor “pipe” without warming the system via the Boltzmann equation. It is normally understood that CO2 and water vapor act as insulators, not pipes. To flow through the water-vapor insulator, the system must first warm so that the rate of thermal transfer out equals rate coming in. That’s why insulators work. Personally, I prefer the hypothesis that the impact of CO2 is insignificant or its impact is offset by a temperature decline due to an ice age or some other variable.
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GM:
“Equal because both are measured in watts.” No, equal because they cause roughly the same surface warming in Hansen’s model.
“Does a a photon know its source?” Of course not, but a photon not emitted to space from the upper atmosphere (due to increased CO2) does not necessarily have the same impact on surface temperature as a photon absorbed by the surface (due to increased sunlight).
“It is normally understood that CO2 and water vapor act as insulators, not pipes.” The definition of a pipe here is that it carries all the OLR emitted by a species of molecule — e.g. the CO2 pipe carries all the radiation to space emitted by CO2 molecules. It is an abbreviation, as well as a useful analogy.
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