In this discussion the First Order effect is accepted to be a doubling effect of 1.2 degrees C per doubling. That s true only so long as you accept the Eddington equations as the definition of GHG actions. Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi correction to the the Eddigton equations as formulated by Milne in 1928. Miskolsci corrects from an infinite solar atmosphere to the finite bounded planetary atmosphere and corrects the boundary conditions and shows the doubling is, closer to .24 degrees C per CO2 doubling.

That is an order less of an effect; and also rules out runaway catastrophes.

Please research the work of NASA’s Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi and the recent explanatory publication “”"

When you say: “”the First Order effect is accepted to be a doubling effect of 1.2 degrees C per doubling. “” are you saying that is a universal property of CO2 ?

Over the total range of surface temperatures on earth; the infra-red emittance varies by at least an order of magnitude from the coldest places to the hottest places; so even if CO2 captured every bit of surface emitted IR, that couldn’t possibly caue a constant 1.2 dge C temperature rise anywhere that the CO2 doubled. In the polar regions there simply isn’t enough surface emitted IR at any time to raise the local temperature 1.2 deg C simply by doubling the CO2.

The concept of a fixed temperature rise per CO2 doubling; which according to Professor Lindzen, you climatologists call “Climate sensitivity” is quite nonsensical. The amount of energy available at any point also depends on the type of terrain, and the atmospheric conditions. In the coldest and other dry places such as tropical deserts there ins’t enough water available to respond to any CO2 warming and create some mythical water feedback amplification of the CO2 triggered warming.

“Climate Sensitivity” simply is not a scientific concept; and you won’t find tabulated values for it in any handbook of Chemistry and Physics. Well you won’t find any tables of “Forcings” in there either; another unscientific terminology of the “climate science” community.
No wonder the Japanese equivalent of our National Academy of Sciences said that the UN’s IPCC disaster climate predictions were the equivalent of “Ancient Astrology”, and that was being unkind to ancient astrology.

Are you saying that this CO2 doubling nonsense originated with Sir Arthur Eddington ? That man already has egg all over his face because of the fine structure constant ‘alpha’.
1/alpha used to be 136.xxx and Eddington wrote a paer in which he proved that it was in fact EXACTLY 136. Well as the experimental measurements got better, 1/alpha became closer to 137 than to 136; so eddington wrote another paper in which he proved that 1/alpha was in fact EXACTLY 137.

This brought loud guffaws from fellow Physicists and earned him the nickname: Professor Adding one. So even after his death he continues to wreak havoc in the field of science.

George
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Reed Coray (10:41:00)

Tom P’s first attempt at formulating an argument occurred when Tom P described “positive feedback” using an example of milk heating in a saucepan [see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/15/rommula-sudden-acceleration/. I have given some thought to Tom P's heating-milk-in-a-saucepan Feedback Diagram and I couldn't resist making two arguments that invalidate Tom P's Feedback Diagram.

Tom P's Feedback Diagram shows heat (labeled Reduced heat loss) from the element of the Feedback Diagram labeled Insulation being summed with the Heat In, and the sum heat passed into the element of the Feedback Diagram labeled Milk. Heat from the Milk is then passed to the Bubbles that form on the surface of the Milk. [Here I make the assumption that these Bubbles constitute the Insulation element in Tom P's Feedback Diagram.] In my opinion, such a feedback can only exist if the Reduced heat loss is zero–which implies there is no feedback.

First, “heat” flows between two objects only when the objects are at different temperatures; and the “heat” always flows from the object at the higher temperature to the object at the lower temperature. In Tom P’s Feedback Diagram, the Heat In will flow into the Milk provided the temperature of the “heating element” (not shown in Tom P’s Feedback Diagram but assumed to be the source of the Heat In) is higher than the temperature of the Milk–a condition which is easy to achieve.

All “heat” entering the Milk (both the Heat In and the Reduced heat loss) acts first to raise the temperature of the Milk to the Milk’s boiling point at which time the heat ceases to raise the Milk’s temperature and instead acts to change the state of the Milk from a liquid to a gas (Bubbles). The temperature of the Bubbles (gaseous form of milk) is at or slightly below the boiling temperature of the Milk–that is, for boiling milk with no outside heat transfer into the gaseous form of the milk, the temperature of the liquid form of milk is at or above the temperature of the gaseous form of milk. Because heat won’t flow from an object at a lower temperature into an object at a higher temperature, no “heat” will flow from the Bubbles to the Milk. [Note: If the Bubbles are heated to a temperature higher than the Milk, then "heat" can flow from the Bubbles to the Milk.

Such will be the case if a portion of the heat from the "heating element" (which is hotter than both the Milk and the Bubbles) is directly transferred to the Bubbles; but Tom P's Feedback Diagram does not include this "heat flow" path. In Tom P's Feedback Diagram, the only heat entering the Bubbles is from the Milk.] Thus, as long as Milk exists, the temperature of the Bubbles is at or below the temperature of the Milk. Such a condition precludes the flow of “heat” from the Bubbles back into the Milk. This means the heat labeled Reduced heat loss in Tom P’s Feedback Diagram must be zero–which implies there is no feedback.

Second, suppose (a) the initial temperature of the Milk is “just below” the boiling point of milk such that any heat added to the Milk won’t raise the Milk’s temperature, but rather will boil the Milk–i.e., change the Milk from a liquid to a gas (Bubbles), (b) the Heat In is finite and is input over a finite time interval, and (c) the total amount of Heat In is sufficient to boil exactly 1/2 of the Milk.

Given these conditions, the Heat In can at most (and will) result in exactly 1/2 of the Milk being converted to a gas (Bubbles). According to Tom P’s Feedback Diagram, however, as the Milk boils, the Bubbles will return a portion of the heat used to “make the Bubbles” back into the Milk. As long as this returned heat (labeled Reduced heat loss in Tom P’s Feedback Diagram) is greater than zero, it will result in additional Milk being converted from a liquid to a gas. This means that if Tom P’s Feedback Diagram is correct and the “feedback heat” is not zero, an amount of externally supplied heat sufficient to boil at most 1/2 of the Milk will result in the boiling of more than 1/2 of the Milk.

This is a violation of the conservation of energy; and as such invalidates Tom P’s Feedback Diagram for all but zero Heat In the feedback path. Zero Heat In the feedback path means there is no feedback.

That is an order less of an effect; and also rules out runaway catastrophes.

Please research the work of NASA’s Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi and the recent explanatory publication

For instability, you need positive feedback with a gain equal or greater than one, though systems with such a gain close to one are very difficult to stabilise.

In the past million years there has repeatedly been climate runaway, with temperatures rapidly rising by up to 10 deg C due to positive feedabck between CO2 and temperature:

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Ice_Age_Temperature_Rev_png

After a while, negative feedbacks will kick in, taking the feedback gain well below one and the climate will stabilise at a higher temperature – we’re in just such a period today, though previous interglacial maxima have been up to 6 degC greater than today.

The climate record therefore suggests a answer to your second question of 6 degC if we assume that past natural negative feedbacks would quickly kick in again and set the same cap to temperatures.

1. If there is a positive feedback mechanism in the earth’s climate system, why wouldn’t it have gone exponential at sometime in the last 4.5*10e9 years? Or are the catastrophists saying that there is an, as of yet unexperienced, positive feedback mechanism, which will be triggered by some combination of conditions which will happen in the near future, but which could have never happened in the past?

2. My understanding is that the maximum possible temperature for a “black body” the size and shape of the earth, and in the same orbit around the same sun, is a limit on the temperature of the earth.

The formula given at the link above (I assume that it is correct because I have neither the math nor the physics with which to gainsay it) has 4 parameters: The black body temperature of the sun (~5780K), the radius of the sun (~686 Mm), the radius of earth’s orbit around the sun (149 Gm), and the earth’s albedo. Of these, the only one men can affect is albedo.

I take it that the effect of adding greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere is the same as lowering the earth’s albedo. This increases the ratio of the earth’s “effective temperature” to the sun’s “effective temperature”. Currently the ratio is 4.3%. Setting the albedo to zero increases the ratio to a maximum of 4.8%.

It is worth noting that CO2 is transparent in the visible, where more of the sun’s spectrum is and cannot lower the albedo that much.

Does this mean that any possible AGW process is capped? How far are we from the cap?

MODELS, MODELING and ei by Benjamin B. Stout (June 25, 2001
Western Forest Mensurationist Meeting)
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:2IC6O0I5VpgJ:www.westernforestry.org/wmens/m2001/stout.doc+magic+model+acid+rain+failure&cd=13&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

I plan on carrying a copy of this on my PDA. I have gotten in numerous “discussions” with AGW advocates – the normal response is that my arguments are:
1.) Too technical and confusing (my fault for trying to present too much data verbally)

2.) Rely on verbal explanations and napkin graphs that don’t match what they remember from “An Inconvenient Lie”

3.) How could I say such things when “EVERYBODY KNOWS” that man is causing global warming

This is a much more cogent argument!

Britain and other European governments have been accused of underestimating the health risks from shipping pollution following research which shows that one giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50m cars.

Confidential data from maritime industry insiders based on engine size and the quality of fuel typically used by ships and cars shows that just 15 of the world’s biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world’s 760m cars. Low-grade ship bunker fuel (or fuel oil) has up to 2,000 times the sulphur content of diesel fuel used in US and European automobiles.

That is REAL pollution to worry about, not like this CO2 the arm-wavers talk about…

“The next step for the United Nation to establish the IPFC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Fart Control.”

LOL

And, in the spirit of PC, we will be insulting people by saying:

I global warm in your general direction!

However, if some geologist are correct there is no way we can get to a doubling of CO2. The ratio of CO2 in air to water is 1-50. If true there is not enough coal and oil in the world to double CO2.

Ummm, if CO2 is 385 ppm now, did it double from 190 ppm previously or not?

Wouldn’t that be Abbot and Costello, or was it Hansen & Gore?

REPLY: Thanks we’ve reached blog equilibrium. – Anthony

And in the case of boiling milk the instability can kick in because the stable operating condition occurs at the intersection of the linear heat loss line and the nonlinear heating curve. Because of the shape of the curve a sudden jump transition can occur for a small change in an operating parameter. (The curve below is for water).

http://www.tpub.com/content/doe/h1012v2/img/h1012v2_64_1.jpg

If memory serves, Andy has raised this point before; certainly others have. It is important, but ill-understood, and generally ignored. Beer’s Law looked at another way, says that given a fixed light source (in this case solar radiation re-emitted from the earth’s surface) and a fixed absorption path length (thickness of the atmosphere) there is a concentration of CO2 beyond which there is effectively no more radiation left to absorb at the wavelengths of interest (saturation). The atmosphere, at these wavelengths, is black. At this point adding more CO2 not only doesn’t do anything, it can’t. Nor can it therefore promote feedbacks of any kind. There is no more energy to absorb. The molecular structure of CO2 (or any other absorber) defines this saturation concentration.

Sorry but this is totally wrong.
The absorption bands are composed of a series of absorption lines, the positioning, spacing, extinction coefficient and width of which are characteristic of the molecule in question. The width of the line also depends on the pressure and temperature, broadening with increased pressure or temperature. At low concentration (the actual value depends on the molecule) the absorption is below saturation throughout the line and has a linear response to concentration. As concentration is increased the point is reached where the center of the line becomes saturated, absorption continues to increase but more slowly passing through an approximately logarithmic phase. Further increase in concentration ultimately leads to a square root dependence on concentration. Below is an example showing part of the CO2 spectrum under Earth and Mars conditions, as you can see the broadening is substantial.

http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn107/Sprintstar400/Mars-Earth.gif

Therefore, the only pertinent questions are, what is the saturation concentration for CO2 in the atmosphere, and how close are we to it? There have been several estimates of this (see Plimer’s recent videos, for instance), and the saturation concentration appears to be somewhere around 500 ppm. If so, then discussions of effects past this concentration are meaningless.

I agree, if the container is big enough the milk will not boil over but reach a new equilibrium. Negative feedbacks will again become dominant.

To bring it back from analogy to reality, this is fortunately what is seen in past climate change – runaway warming has always been brought short, never being more than around +6 degC in the last few million years.

The saucepan analogy was supposed to illustrate how an instability might start to kick in, and how a historically well-behaved system might change its behaviour. It was not supposed to imply unbounded climate runaway.

REPLY: Thanks we’ve reached blog equilibrium. – Anthony

“Really Tom, your analogy isn’t relevant. Stop digging your hole and simply admit that there is no positive feedback in your analogy.”

Haven’t they shared the Alarmist 101 rule with you – “When you find yourself in a hole, dig faster”

There’s still no positive feedback. Boiling over is a symptom of containers, not of a heat system, it is not positive feedback nor unstable. An infinitely wide volume of boiling milk will build a froth, the froth will grow, at some point a new equilibrium will be reached. The temperature of the boiling milk will remain constant, and no additional amount of heat will change that fact. There will be no “runaway” only a growing froth until it reaches an equilibrium where it phase changes back to liquid and returns to the boiling pool.

Although, you are starting to get negative feedback now. The question is; what effect will it have on the loop? Will it break it or strengthen it?

Your Q factor is fast approaching troll territory.

You can look this up on any control theory website, or in a good textbook on the subject. This information is not hard to find.

Mark

I thought it was obvious the feedback is not in the temperature, it’s in the heat that gets into the milk and produces the bubbles which make it froth up and boil over.

No, Tom, that is not feedback. Your example is a simple phase change from liquid to gas. Now, if you put a lid on the liquid, that would force an increase in pressure, which would cause the temperature of the liquid to increase faster than it otherwise would have from the heat alone.

The saucepan analogy is to illustrate how a stable system can become unstable if a new positive feedback mechanism is introduced with sufficient gain.

It is not unstable, either, just more energetic.

Mark

There is no water vapour feedback apparent yet.

- the NCEP reanalysis data shows almost no change at all in specific humidity.
- the newer, more accurate databases show no statistical change in specific humidity.
- The Hadley Centre just finished an exhaustive study of humidity levels and found a little change but not enough to match the expected levels (even after applying the usual “adjustments”).

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcruh/

Icesheet feedbacks.

- well there is a little decline in mid-latitude glaciers.
- but one can’t really conclude there is a definable melt in Greenland or Antarctica.
- the polar sea ice is 4.3% above normal right now so no feedback there.

The Ocean Heat Content does not appear to be increasing anymore so there is no forcing hiding there, unless there is warming occurring in the very deep ocean below the levels reported by the Argo floats at 1000M and lower (there is measurements done of the very deep ocean, it is just not reported yet: the data I’ve seen showed a modest increase of 0.02C rise at the deepest levels).

So, a few more at bats or the mercy rule will have to be called on the feedbacks.

Tom P. Your analogy is flawed. Even if you believe it, it is not helping in the discussion. Please seek another way to make your point and move on. If you can make your point in another way, I will be happy to read it and consider it. But, as it is I (and others) simply don’t agree with the your point about feedback as you have chosen to present it. Perhaps in another form, it will make more sense.