In the wake of Karl et al. 2015, which revises data to match a consensus, we can all take a lesson from how scientific consensus has operated in the past
Guest essay by Dr. David Deming
The world stands on the verge of committing itself to limits on the emission of carbon dioxide that would drastically reduce the use of fossil fuels. If this fateful decision is made, the economies of developed nations will be strangled. Human prosperity will be reduced. Our ability to solve pressing problems, both human and environmental, will be severely limited. We have been told that these shackles must be imposed to forestall a hypothetical global warming projected to occur some time in the distant future. But to date the only unambiguous evidence for planetary warming is a modest rise in temperature (less than one degree Celsius) that falls well within the range of natural variation.
The validity of warming predictions depends upon the questionable reliability of computer models of the climate system. But Earth’s climate system is complex and poorly understood. And the integrity of the computer models cannot be demonstrated or even tested. To anyone with an awareness of the nature and limitations of scientific knowledge, it must appear that the human race is repeating a foolish mistake from the past. We have been down this road before, most notably in the latter half of the nineteenth century when it appeared that mathematics and physics had conclusively answered the question of the Earth’s age. At that time, a science that had been definitely “settled” fell apart in the space of a few years. The mathematical models that appeared to be so certain proved to be completely, even ridiculously wrong.
The age of the Earth is one of the great questions that has puzzled people for thousands of years. In Meteorologica, Aristotle (384-322 BC) asserted that the world was eternal. But with the advent of Christianity and Islam, scholars began to assume that humanity was coeval with the Creation of the world. It followed that the age of the Earth could be estimated from a careful examination of sacred writings.
The first person to make a quantitative estimate of the Earth’s age was the Islamic scientist al-Biruni (c. 973-1050). al-Biruni based his chronology on the Hindu, Jewish, and Christian religious scriptures. He divided the history of the world into eras, and concluded that it had been less than ten thousand years since the Creation.
Working in the tradition begun by al-Biruni, Bishop James Ussher (1581-1686) estimated the age of the Earth by meticulously studying the Bible and other historical documents. In The Annals of the World Deduced from the Origin of Time, Ussher pinpointed the date of Creation as the “night preceding the 23rd of October, 4004 BC.” Ussher’s scholarship was impressive, and his dates were accepted as the standard chronology. Bible editors began to place Ussher’s dates in the margins of their texts.
Isaac Newton (1642-1727), the greatest scientist of the age, was also a Biblical fundamentalist who believed in a young Earth. Newton explained to his nephew, John Conduitt, that the Earth could not be old because all human technology was of recent invention. Like Ussher, Newton wrote his own universal history, Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, that was published posthumously in 1728.
The procedures for establishing a scientific estimate of the age of the Earth were laid out in the seventeenth century by the Danish anatomist, Nicolaus Steno (1638-1686). Steno was the first person to state unequivocally that the history of the Earth was not to be found in human chronicles, but in the Earth itself. Steno’s principles of geologic investigation became the basis for establishing the relative age of rock sequences and the foundation of historical geology.
Armed with Steno’s principles, eighteenth century naturalists began to seriously consider the implications of the rock record. It became apparent to them that an immense amount of time was required to deposit the rock layers that covered the Earth’s surface.
One of the first to recognize the scope of geologic time was the Scottish philosopher James Hutton (1726-1797). In the year 1788, Hutton was accompanied on a field trip by his friend, the mathematician, John Playfair (1748-1819). They traveled up the coastline of Scotland to Siccar Point, and Hutton described the history implied by the sequence of rocks exposed there. After listening to Hutton’s exposition, Playfair later wrote “the mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time.”
By the time Charles Darwin (1809-1882) published Origin of Species in 1859, geologists were of the opinion that the Earth was practically, although not literally, of infinite age. With infinite time at this disposal, Darwin was able to invoke the slow mechanism of natural selection as an explanation for the organic evolution evidenced in the fossil record.
To demonstrate the vast extent of geologic time, Darwin offered the erosion of the Weald, a seaside cliff in England, as an offhand example. Darwin assumed an erosion rate of an inch a century, and then extrapolated that some 300 million years were apparently necessary to explain the total amount of erosion that had occurred.
But Darwin’s estimated erosion rate of one inch per century was little more than speculation. The number was unconstrained by any measurement or scientific observation. Nineteenth-century geologists lacked any quantitative method for establishing dates. The rocks of the Earth’s crust might represent the passage of ten million years. But just as easily, the amount of time could have been a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand million years.
Darwin and his geological colleagues were soon taken to the woodshed by the greatest physicist of the nineteenth century, William Thomson (1824-1907). Better known as Lord Kelvin, Thomson was a man of prodigious gifts who possessed enormous intellectual stature. He published his first scientific paper at age sixteen, and had been appointed a chaired professor at the University of Glasgow at the precocious age of twenty-two.
In 1861, Lord Kelvin began to seriously address the question of dating the Earth. He was aware that the Earth radiated internal heat. This process could not have been going on forever. By maintaining that the Earth was infinitely old, the geologists in effect were postulating that energy was not conserved. This violated the First Law of Thermodynamics, and Kelvin was aroused to do battle.
In the nineteenth century, the only known source for the internal heat of the Earth was the original mechanical heat of accretion. Reasoning that the Earth had been molten at the time of its formation, but cooling ever since, Kelvin was able to construct an elegant mathematical model that constrained the age of the Earth on the basis of its measured geothermal gradient. Much the same method is used today by coroners who estimate the time of death by taking the temperature of a cadaver.
In 1862, Kelvin published his analysis in a paper titled On the Secular Cooling of the Earth. He arrived at a best estimate for the age of the Earth of 100 million years. Kelvin’s estimate was no idle speculation. It was based on a precise mathematical model constrained by laboratory measurements and the laws of thermodynamics.
Kelvin attacked Darwin directly. He raised the question: were the laboratory measurements and mathematical calculations in error, or was it more likely “that a stormy sea, with possibly channel tides of extreme violence, should encroach on a chalk cliff 1,000 times more rapidly than Mr. Darwin’s estimate of one inch per century?”
Darwin was devastated. He wrote to his mentor, Charles Lyell, “for heaven’s sake take care of your fingers; to burn them severely, as I have done, is very unpleasant.” Geologists were left sputtering. They had no effective rebuttal to Kelvin’s calculations. Within a few years, the geological establishment began to line up with Lord Kelvin. Among the influential converts was Archibald Geikie, President of both the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Geological Society of London.
Researchers began to look for evidence that would confirm Kelvin’s calculations. In 1865, Geologist Samuel Haughton had estimated the age of the Earth as 2300 million years, a number reasonably close to the modern value of 4500 million years. But under the influence of Kelvin’s authority, in 1878 Haughton drastically shortened his earlier calculation to 153 million years.
A lone voice of dissent was raised by the biologist, Thomas Huxley (1825-1895). Huxley pointed out that there was a fundamental weakness in Kelvin’s mathematical model. “Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds you stuff of any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends on what you put in.” Put in more modern terms, Huxley’s observation amounted to “garbage in, garbage out.”
But as the end of the nineteenth century approached, the scientific community was beginning to regard Kelvin’s estimate of 100 million years as a near certainty. Writing in the American Journal of Science in 1893, geologist Warren Upham characterized Kelvin’s estimate of the age of the Earth as the most “important conclusion in the natural sciences…[that] has been reached during this century.”
The science was definitely settled in 1899 by the Irish physicist, John Joly (1857-1933). Joly hit upon a robust method for calculating the age of the Earth that was entirely different from Kelvin’s. Joly’s calculation was childishly simple, yet apparently foolproof. He estimated the age of the Earth by dividing the total salt content of the oceans by the rate at which salt was being carried to the sea by the rivers. He found that it would take 80 to 90 million years for the ocean’s salt to accumulate.
In consideration of the uncertainties involved, Joly’s age estimate was essentially identical to Thomson’s. With different methods yielding the same result, it seemed evident that the result was conclusive: the Earth was 100 million years old. It seemed that to deny this reality, was to deny not only the authority of the scientific establishment but the very laws of nature themselves.
The ingenious calculations of Kelvin and Joly were soon to be overturned by an improbable empiricism. In the thirteenth century, modern science began when philosophers came to the realization that logic alone could never uncover the secrets of the cosmos, no matter how seductive its appeal. Contemplation of the mysterious properties of the magnet convinced Roger Bacon and his contemporaries that nature contained occult or hidden forces that could never be discerned or anticipated rationally, only discovered experimentally.
In 1896, Henri Becquerel accidentally discovered radioactivity when he found that photographic plates were exposed when placed next to certain minerals. By 1904, it became apparent that there were radioactive minerals inside the Earth releasing heat. Lord Kelvin’s assumption of no internal heat sources was wrong. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was not even clear if the Earth was cooling or heating. Thomson’s calculations were precise, but he had no way of knowing about radioactivity.
Radioactivity also provided a rigorous way to calculate the age of the Earth. The accepted modern estimate for the age of the Earth is 4500 million years. The nineteenth-century estimate of 100 million years that seemed so certain was wrong, not just by 20 or 30 percent, but by a factor of 45. In retrospect, the reason that Thomson’s estimates had been independently confirmed is that geologists looked for data that would support Thomson’s physics. The consensus that had emerged was the product of a human psychological process, not objective science. The nature of science is such that people who look for confirming evidence will always find it.
Compared to modern climate models, William Thomson’s models were simple, and contained only a few assumptions. In contrast, global warming models are hideously complex, and contain numerous hidden assumptions, many of which are highly uncertain. The most significant of these is whether water vapor will exert a negative or positive feedback on the warming induced by carbon dioxide. All the major climate models assume the feedback will be positive, exaggerating any possible warming. But recent research indicates the feedback may be negative. We don’t know.
There is also much we do not understand about why Earth’s climate changes. It is possible that cosmic rays, modulated by the Sun’s magnetic field, cool Earth by inducing the formation of clouds. We don’t know why Ice Ages end so spectacularly and suddenly. Once they begin, Ice Ages should continue indefinitely, as cooling is reinforced by a number of positive feedbacks.
We ought to be intelligent enough to acknowledge that we don’t know what we don’t know. Science is never settled. We should keep in mind Seneca’s admonition. “Nature does not reveal all her secrets at once. We imagine we are initiated in her mysteries: we are, as yet, but hanging around her outer courts.”
There has never been a time when the need for understanding the limits and nature of scientific knowledge is so compelling, or the ramifications of ignorance so consequential. Those who ignore history are apt to repeat its mistakes.
David Deming (ddeming@ou.edu) is a geophysicist and professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of a history of science in three volumes, Science and Technology in World History.
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Geology is an old science. It has had lots of time to slowly incorporate the scientific method into its principles and modus operadi and teaching methods. And it has had lots of time for new theories to be tested, adjusted and proven by others through other approaches. It has become a non-emotional objective science where facts and evidence rule the day.
Climate science is young and is still an emotional battleground where group-think rules the day.
“”The world stands on the verge of committing itself to limits on the emission of carbon dioxide that would drastically reduce the use of fossil fuels. If this fateful decision is made, the economies of developed nations will be strangled. Human prosperity will be reduced. …..””
I believe that, to a great extent, if not completely. After all there is that human ingenuity!
I believe constricting crude consumption, less than coal, for reasons of global warming is useful – yet for the wrong reason. Whether the politicians do it or the tall ladder of fracking does it the results may well be the same. My reference to the tall ladder is about the low hanging fruit analogy used by peak oil advocates. Fracking may have kicked the can way down the road – but still – down the road.
On topic, CO2 is the wrong reason to do the right thing. By my readings here, the proof seems obvious.
My wish is that the scientists, politicians – all of us can get past this “us against them” mentality” and start doing the right things for the right reasons!!
Gary
There are also the socialists who would like to see more control over populations and re distribution of wealth. I don’t think there is any way to reason with them. As for the others, I agree with you wholeheartedly.
I think restricting the growth of emerging nations is a self-serving goal. It is saying, “Look we have used fossils fuels to accumulate great wealth and power, but sorry you can’t”, The second part of the quote is only half right, not all human prosperity will be reduced equally, human prosperity will primarily be reduced for emerging countries.
Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons sounds like a variation on the ends justify the means. Sometimes in a practical sense that is true, in a moral or ethical sense it is never true.
The peak oil argument boils down the position that we need to make fossil fuels expensive now, because if we don’t, they will become expensive some time in the future.
Regardless of when the oil begins to run out (my personal feeling is we have a couple hundred years before we have to worry), the solution to the problem will be technology.
Given the fact that the richer we are as a people, the faster technology will advance.
The logical conclusion is that we need to become richer now, so that we can develop the technologies that will replace fossil fuels when the time comes. And the way to become richer now is by burning fossil fuels.
Geology may have been studied for hundreds of years but it is not short on discoveries. We have only known about how the Earth works some 55years ago, Plate tectonics was derided for years until leartning about magnetic pole swings, and the ability to measure rock magnetism which was a petroleum company discovery hunting new oil reserves and measuring the Polar swings across the Atlantic during IGY in 1958. There is much more to discover, abiotic natural gas for one.
There was a lot of heat regarding the theory of continental drift not that many years ago.
I also recall some comic relief in those days when someone referred to the continental drip theory, pointing out that the form and appendages of many land masses seemed to be dripping from north to south!
Discovering errors in your understanding of the physical world is one of the most pleasurable experiences you can have while following the scientific method. When I read historical accounts of people making their best efforts at describing physical processes, it becomes abundantly clear to me that what humans believe to be true at any given period of time is most probably incorrect.
People that have great faith in catastrophic global warming are missing this historical perspective of scientific discovery and missing the humility of mankind stumbling from one wrong answer to the next.
Yes, seeing the error opens up exciting new pathways for a scientist. Pity the agw believers are not really scientists.
Example:
A Sydney University student has for the first time used radio telescopes like a giant pair of electronic eyes to locate huge plasma tubes in the atmosphere that interfere with astronomy observations and which could affect some civilian and military navigation systems.
Ms Loi, who graduated in March, had to overcome the initial scepticism of senior colleagues who thought her observations were too good to be true.
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/astronomy/sydney-university-physics-undergraduate-maps-huge-plasma-tubes-in-the-sky-20150601-ghcc9g.html
I would describe science as the art of realising that we were wrong. The few occasions that we got it right is genius.
Not always wrong, sometimes just incomplete.
For example Newton’s laws of motion aren’t wrong, they are perfectly adequate for large masses traveling at non-relativistic speeds. Which was all that Newton was able to observe in his day.
Einstein’s laws of motion, when resolved for large slow objects, match Netwon’s laws almost perfectly. (The differences, when they exist are in the parts per million to parts per billion range.)
The important point IMO is that science isn’t done by consensus, which is almost always wrong to a greater or lesser extent. And when it is objectively correct, it’s because of observation rather than of the consensus.
That earth orbits the sun is objectively “true”, contrary to the consensus of 2000 years, but this hypothesis can now be confirmed by direct observation, so doesn’t need to be inferred, as was the case when published by Copernicus in 1543.
The baleful influence of CACCA advocacy has now corrupted the philosophy of science as well as its practice. Thus does Oreskes try to make consensus rather falsification and confirmation the basis of the scientific method.
So, why was Joly’s salt argument wrong?
My guess is that he erred in assuming a constant rate for salt addition.
He also erred in assuming that no salt was removed from the ocean.
Exactly right.
He also erred in that no one knows when the oceans were formed, probably long after the crust had cooled.
I wonder where he thought the salt as in “salt mines,” came from. And yes, the oldest ocean basin is Jurassic, not Archaen.
The oceans formed within a few million years of the crust cooling enough that it was no longer hot enough to evaporate water.
He also failed to take into account extraterrestrial contributions of water from comets over time.
In a similar fashion to Thompsons error, Joly assumed that salt only entered the water and never left it. The great beds of salt formations of the world, such as the Louanne salt formed in the Jurassic when the Gulf of Mexico was a deep restricted “dead sea” during the opening of the Atlantic ocean, took enormous quantities of salt and other evaporate minerals out of the ocean as the water evaporated to fall as fresh water rain elsewhere.
This article from http://www.indiana.edu/~geol105b/1425chap6.htm, which appears to be from Dr. Jürgen Schieber’s G105 Introduction to Geology class at Indiana U. also mentions a deep-sea volcanic process that removes salt from the water.
I guess one could say that ultimately, Thompson wasn’t worth his salt.
He had no idea what was the actual residence time of salt, and the actual inputs and outputs. Perfectly good model not well constrained by data.
Because salt is so easily eroded, 19th century geologists had no concept of how much salt is in geologic formations around the world until we started drilling for oil and used seismic and gravity methods to map the beds and salt diapirs. Sure, there were salt mines here and there but they are insignificant. These massive salt formations were formed as a consequence of the moving continents as basins formed in the gaps. It requires the Theory of Plate Tectonics and rise and fall of sea level by over 200 meters to understand how much salt can be removed from the oceans.
“…rise and fall of sea level by over 200 meters…”
Didn’t the IPCC say this is supposed to happen next week or something?
According to a 2009 ABC special, NYC was supposed to be under water already.
For the first few billion years, there wasn’t any water..
Ummmm…No.
Controversial subject but 2.5by bp, if not much earlier, there was abundant water.
I think you will find good evidence for water at least 3.6 billion years ago – fossil cyanobacteria. And some for water as early as 4.2 billion years.
The crust solidified by about 3.7 billion years ago. Water condensed into oceans shortly thereafter, in geologic terms. So there was liquid water on its surface while earth was still a bit less than a billion years old.
“The crust solidified by about 3.7 billion years ago”
Much earlier than that. The oldest preserved minerals (zircon) are about 4.4 billion years old. The oldest reasonably large preserved pieces of crust (Greenland, Canada) are at least 3.8 billion years old.
It seems likely that the original crust was largely destroyed during “the Late Heavy Bombardment” c. 3.8-4.0 billion years ago, but the existence of older minerals proves that it did not melt completely.
Tty,
I was referring to the final complete solidification of the crust, which had to be after the Heavy Late Bombardment. There were of course crust and probably even seas before that time.
sturgishopper: The late heavy bombardment couldn’t have remelted the crust, otherwise the heavy materials they brought to the earth would have sunk to the core. The LHB lasted for 10’s to 100’s of millions of years. That would be sufficient to have every point on the surface hit at least once, but still not be heavy enough to destroy the oceans.
Mark,
It evaporated a lot of them, so that the water remained but filling large basins. Clearly liquid water did exist at least intermittently during the LHB.
I would start by asking the Irish physicist how he managed to calculate the total amount of salt in all the oceans way back in 1899. He made up the numerator, estimated the denominator and got 80-90 million years thus proving the consensus.
You mean how did he estimate the total volume of water? The area would have been easy, the average depth a problem. There were, however, some deep-water sounding studies done in the 1800s, so they would have had a rough idea of the depths of the oceans.
Huge salt deposits are formed when seas become isolated and the water evaporates. These salt basins are covered by other sediments, and when the ocean waters cover the area the salt doesn’t dissolve. This is the origin of huge salt layers we see under portions of Texas, Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico. Similar layers are found in West Africa and South America, in Poland, Egypt, and other countries. And then there are huge deposits of carbonates, including dolomites, and other rocks which remove huge volumes of ions from sea water (including carbon, of course).
I think the argument was good but the data used to make the theory was not so good.
That is a general problem with arguments and logic; if an argument is based on false or incomplete data or false assumptions, the argument can remain valid but is useless.
The point that data and evidence is the most important part of an argument is often lost in the presence of a well presented “elegant” argument.
Excellent post. Sums it up quite well.
And it was entertaining too. Thank you, Mr. Deming,
Thank you David and Anthony. I only hope that others will read and think about what has been said.
Well I too enjoyed reading Dr Deming’s account of the history of estimating the age of the earth. Apparently ingenuity is not a modern trait.
One place where I would differ with Dr Deming’s narrative, comes later when he refers to the complexity of climate models.
He states (presumably factually) that the climate models assume that H2O forms a positive feedback amplification of CO2 induced warming. He then asserts that we don’t know if that feedback is positive or negative.
That is where I would disagree.
The idea that the climate models assume that H2O requires an “ignition” from CO2 to begin its own atmospheric absorption of LWIR radiant energy emitted from the earth’s condensed surface, and that without CO2 in the atmosphere, the earth would be a frozen ball at subzero deg. C Temperature, is in my view just plain silly.
Now let’s settle one aspect of the story. I do not for a second, disagree that a surface warming (whatever its cause) will produce increased atmospheric water, which will absorb more surface emitted LWIR radiant energy.
So that is NOT an issue.
So what then if there were NO CO2 in earth’s atmosphere; and here I use CO2 as a proxy for any and all GHG molecules EXCEPT H2O.
So let’s get rid of them all. Evidently we would be according to the folklore some 33 deg C colder at earth’s surface, and there is no CO2 to goose the H2O into action.
Well Ray Pierrehumbert did a computer simulation experiment, where he removed every last water molecule from the atmosphere.
Well that means NO clouds, and NO H2O absorption of incoming solar energy starting from about 700 nm. The ground level solar insolation would experience the largest “forcing” you could possibly imagine, and water evaporation would begin in earnest.
Well in Ray’s simulation, he got all of earth’s atmospheric H2O back in just three months.
That paper can be found in relatively recent SCIENCE. I don’t belong any more so I can’t give your a reference. It might also have been mentioned in “Physics Today.”
Even if earth’s surface Temperature was 255 K instead of 288 K, the vapor pressure of H2O is far from zero, and with the huge increase in surface insolation from the sun, the evaporation of water would be significant.
And yes; that increasing H2O in the atmosphere, even in the presence of NO CO2, would begin to capture LWIR emissions from the surface which presumably warms the atmosphere. I say presumably, because I don’t fully understand the claimed mechanisms for doing that. Yes I do believe that the GHG spectral line absorptions will raise the internal energy of the H2O molecules. It’s the “thermalization” process which I don’t have a good handle on. (but just accept as gospel at this point).
But to me this LWIR warming of the atmosphere is peanuts compared to the interception of incoming solar energy, by that same H2O regardless of what phase it is in (solid, liquid or gas).
I’m told Earth’s cloud cover is about 60%, and that the albedo is about 30%.
That is a huge attenuation of the ground level solar spectrum radiant energy, most of which goes into the deep oceans to be converted into heat.
Anybody who even imagines that H2O in the atmosphere could be a positive feedback on earth’s stable steady state Temperature , in my view has simply never ever built a feedback amplifier, and doesn’t understand how they work.
And I wouldn’t say that unless I had designed and built a great many of them.
The effect of H2O in the atmosphere is to REDUCE the surface level incoming solar spectrum energy, and the part of that reduction that is absorbed by the H2O at solar spectrum frequencies, is eventually lost as an isotropic LWIR emission, only half of which can reach the surface, and when it does, it is strongly absorbed in the top few microns of ocean water, and simply leads to further enhanced evaporation.
I don’t know if Pierrehumbert did his water simulation with and without the CO2, but if he didn’t he should be chastised for not doing both.
In any case I don’t think the outcome would be significantly different.
The idea that earth’s stable Temperature is controlled by GHG interception of outgoing LWIR radiant energy, rather than H2O interception of incoming solar energy, is laughable in my view.
Now I could be wrong. If I am, when somebody proves that I am, I will change my opinion.
In the meantime, don’t use this in your PhD oral presentation because I can give no guarantee of your passing.
George, do you know the clear sky absorption of insolation due to water vapor?
David,
The atmosphere absorbs about 20% of incoming solar radiation. For clear sky, water vapour accounts for 70% of this (according to KT97).
It’s a very interesting point you raise George. It would be good if you could find a reference or link to Pierrehumbert’s experiment.
As for ‘Thermalisation’, here’s a starter….
A CO2 molecule has a number of quantized ‘vibrational modes’. One of these vibrational modes is ‘tuned’ to radiation at 15 microns. CO2 will therefore selectively absorb radiation at this wavelength whilst ignoring other wavelengths which do not coincide with one of its internal energy states. When a molecule absorbs a photon it is raised to a higher energy level and it is said to be in an ‘exited’ state.
A CO2 molecule will typically remain in this state for a few milliseconds after absorbing a photon at 15 microns, before emitting a packet of energy (photon) at 15 micron and reverting back to its ground state. If, before this can happen, the molecule collides with another air molecule, then its newly acquired energy will instead be translated to kinetic energy, appearing as increased momentum in the colliding molecules; as a result it can no longer emit a photon. The absorbed energy is now said to be ‘thermalised’ and, since the average time between collisions at low altitudes is of the order of nanoseconds, this is by far the most likely outcome.
The temperature of a gas can be considered proportional to the average speed of its molecules and so ‘thermalisation’ has the effect of warming the nearby air. Note that all the gases in a local ‘parcel’ of air will be at the same temperature including those, like oxygen and nitrogen, which do not absorb radiation directly.
An important feature of ‘thermalisation’ is that it is a reversible process. A CO2 molecule, for example, may be kicked into an ‘excited’ state through collisions with other air molecules so that, even though it didn’t absorb a photon, it may now emit one.
The proportion of CO2 molecules in the excited state at any one time is constant and depends on the air temperature (the equipartition principle). The amount of radiation emitted by CO2 is thus dependent on the air temperature. In the region where CO2 emits, around 15 microns, the intensity of emission will be in accordance with Planck’s Law.
You may have seen spectral measurements from space of outgoing LWIR. By comparing the intensity of radiation at 15 microns with that from a blackbody, it is possible to determine the temperature of the air from which the emission originated. This in turn indicates the ‘effective radiating level’ from which radiation in the CO2 absorption band can escape to space.
Thank you Mike. So, in an earth atmosphere of equal density, yet sans GHG, about 14% more insolation would strike the surface? This is 14 % of TOA insolation of some 1366 watts per s meter, so about plus 190 watts per sq meter? I am curious as to the different W/L of this insolation, vs the W/L of DWLWIR from GHGs, and if this would partially compensate for the DWLWIR in an atmosphere sans GHGs.
David
The 1366 watts needs to be divided by 4 if you are considering it in relation to the Earth’s surface.
That 70% figure was for clear sky conditions.
“For cloudy conditions, water vapour accounts for nearly half of the total atmospheric absorption, while the second most important absorber is ozone; the contribution by carbon dioxide is small” (KT97)
In fact in cloudy conditions the effect of CO2 is zero.
99% of the Sun’s radiation is emitted at wavelengths shorter than 4 microns; 99% of the Earth’s outgoing radiation is longer than 5 microns.
It’s safe to say that if we detect radiation shorter than 4 microns then it is from the Sun (or a rocket engine or a furnace). The corollary is that infrared radiation above 5 microns is from the Earth or its atmosphere
http://s11.postimg.org/qt4vzvq2b/Sun_Earth_Comparison.png
No David, I don’t.
But I have always assumed (lacking any information to the contrary) that for a clear sky with the sun at zenith and presumably at the annual mean TSI value of circa 1362 W/m^2, the surface irradiance with global average water content, is about 1,000 W/m^2.
All the books I have on solar energy including thermal solar collection seem to use that number.
So that implies that 362 W/m^2 goes “astray”.
Some of that is the Raleigh and Mie scattering that gives us the blue sky.
As near as I can tell the blue sky is essentially isotropic. That is in a local region, the effect of multiple scatterings is that there is as much of that shorter wavelengths blue radiation going in one direction as another, so about half of it reaches the ground eventually (which is why we see a blue sky of course).
But we know from the earth rise photo from the moon that this is the “blue planet.” It looks blue looking down as well.
On a flight to Hawaii, I spent a good amount of time at 38,000 feet and whenever we were over CAVU conditions, when I looked down on the sea, it was blue. Well actually, I couldn’t even see the sea, because it is actually black. So what I could see was the blue sky above that black sea, just as the blue sky looking up prevents us from seeing the black sky of outer space (stars etc not withstanding).
Now I don’t have a good number for what the blue sky radiance is; I’m sure it is in some book or other. I do have a pretty good “light meter” for photography, but it is relatively difficult to find a good location sans extrania to measure the blue sky radiance without getting the near sun in the field of view.
Then of course there is the atmospheric absorptions, which includes ozone at UV->visible wavelengths, and water from about 700 nm to about 4 microns, beyond which less than 1% of solar energy resides.
But I would believe the 20% number that somebody cited here, especially in the tropics.
The point is that what is absorbed by molecular phenomena, rather than scattered a la the blue doesn’t make it to the surface at solar spectrum wavelengths so it doesn’t propagate deeply in the ocean and become heat energy.
That plus the cloud scattering reflectance contribution to albedo makes the CO2 dip rather minor in my view.
Even CO2 exhibits some IR solar energy absorption so CO2 also has a contribution to the negative feedback factor, as does ozone and oxygen (UV).
The direct attenuation of incoming solar spectrum energy, either by scattering or cloud albedo or GHG gas absorption, is what regulates earth’s Temperature, not what outgoing LWIR interception by GHG molecules does.
And water doesn’t need CO2 to activate its own “greenhouse effect” absorption.
MikeB June 8, 2015 at 1:15 am
As for ‘Thermalisation’, here’s a starter….
A CO2 molecule has a number of quantized ‘vibrational modes’. One of these vibrational modes is ‘tuned’ to radiation at 15 microns. CO2 will therefore selectively absorb radiation at this wavelength whilst ignoring other wavelengths which do not coincide with one of its internal energy states. When a molecule absorbs a photon it is raised to a higher energy level and it is said to be in an ‘exited’ state.
A CO2 molecule will typically remain in this state for a few milliseconds after absorbing a photon at 15 microns, before emitting a packet of energy (photon) at 15 micron and reverting back to its ground state.
It’s often significantly more than msecs.
If, before this can happen, the molecule collides with another air molecule, then its newly acquired energy will instead be translated to kinetic energy, appearing as increased momentum in the colliding molecules; as a result it can no longer emit a photon. The absorbed energy is now said to be ‘thermalised’ and, since the average time between collisions at low altitudes is of the order of nanoseconds, this is by far the most likely outcome.
Yes, although more like 0.1nsec.
The temperature of a gas can be considered proportional to the average speed of its molecules and so ‘thermalisation’ has the effect of warming the nearby air. Note that all the gases in a local ‘parcel’ of air will be at the same temperature including those, like oxygen and nitrogen, which do not absorb radiation directly.
An important feature of ‘thermalisation’ is that it is a reversible process. A CO2 molecule, for example, may be kicked into an ‘excited’ state through collisions with other air molecules so that, even though it didn’t absorb a photon, it may now emit one.
Actually it’s not strictly reversible, after IR excitation all the excess energy is in one vibrational mode, collisional deactivation ‘chips it away’ into translational energy of the various colliding molecules. As to collisional activation even if a colliding molecule has energy equal to the vibrational mode it is more likely to end up as translational energy of the CO2, only a collision at a particular orientation would be able to excite the vibrational mode.
The proportion of CO2 molecules in the excited state at any one time is constant and depends on the air temperature (the equipartition principle).
While the total energy of the CO2 molecule has to have a Boltzmann distribution you can’t apply equipartition when the vibrational energy level spacing is greater than kT (in this case T is ~288K).
Hi Phil, thanks for the critique, all sensible and informed comments are welcome.
The equipartition principle is cited by Pierrehumbert in this context
“According to the equipartition principle, molecular collisions maintain an equilibrium distribution of molecules in higher vibrational and rotational states”
Infrared Radiation and Planetary Temperatures, Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, 2011
The values given for excited state lifetimes and collision times were indicative and sufficient to show that thermalisation was by far the most likely outcome. Pierrehumbert gives the lifetime of the CO2 excited state as ranging “from a few milliseconds to tenths of a second” and the time between collisions as “well under 10^-7 seconds”
I don’t understand your comment “Actually it’s not strictly reversible” when later you say “only a collision at a particular orientation would be able to excite the vibrational mode”. Although that sounds correct, to me it still means it is reversible – yes?
And I don’t understand “collisional deactivation ‘chips it away”. The vibrational state is a quantised state, the molecule is either in it or not, there is no half-way house. So it cannot be chipped away?
“””””…..
MikeB
June 8, 2015 at 1:15 am
It’s a very interesting point you raise George. It would be good if you could find a reference or link to Pierrehumbert’s experiment.
As for ‘Thermalisation’, here’s a starter….”””””
MikeB, Thanks for the thermalization descripton, which roughly I understand with some reservations.
My understanding of the CO2 15 micron absorption / emission event, is that this is associated with a particular internal oscillation mode of the CO2 molecule; the so called degenerate (elbow) bending mode(s) , which would seem to be a molecular resonance, and have a very specific internal energy change associated with it.
I don’t understand how the molecule can enter or exit such a specific resonance oscillation mode without transfer (in or out) of a photon of that energy, as it would seem that the molecule is either in that oscillatory state, or it isn’t, and the energy difference must be quite specific.
Now I can appreciate how a collision can disrupt that oscillatory mode. Are you suggesting that in that case, the energy / momentum change is in effect some sort of phonon transaction rather than a photon reaction.
I know that one does get phonon events instead of photon events in the solid state (LEDs and photodiodes for example) and of course the phonon is basically a quantum of heat.
That would seem to make sense. I can grasp that, without understanding one whit of the QM associated with it.
In yellow GaAsP LEDs, which is an indirect band-gap semiconductor, the bottom of the conduction and the top of the valence band don’t match up in momentum, so such a photon transfer would be forbidden. But when an isoelectronic trap like a Nitrogen doping atom, is introduced, and physically localizes the position; Heisenberg then renders the momentum uncertain enough to spread out in momentum, so that it is often enough to cover the difference in the conduction and valence band positions so the photon emission can take place. It’s one of the most dramatic demonstrations of Heisenberg uncertainty that I know of.
My description is a little bit bush, but close enough to the four syllable words the SS Physicists use to describe it.
Can the atmospheric thermalization be that simple. I guess I’ve been assuming that elbow bend oscillation can’t start or stop without a 15 micron photon coming or going, but a phonon would be a nice way to make waste heat instead. ??
Anyhow, thanks for the description.
I’ll see if I can dig out that Peter Humbug paper from some where.
g
And I see that Phil jumped in there too. The bit that has been puzzling me is that it seems (to me) that the bending mode oscillation and its associated energy (delta) is internal to the frame of reference of the CO2 molecule, and really shouldn’t show up as part of the gas Temperature energy of that molecule.
The center of mass of the oscillating CO2 molecule would seem to be not affected as regards the molecule in free flight between collisions. I can appreciate that a collisional nudge, can make the juggler drop the ball; but why doesn’t the ball simply remain a ball.
Isn’t equi-partition a statistical property of a system in thermal equilibrium ??
Thanx Phil and MikeB.
g
Hi George,
I guess we live in different time zones.
My understanding of the CO2 15 micron absorption / emission event, is that this is associated with a particular internal oscillation mode of the CO2 molecule; the so called degenerate (elbow) bending mode(s) , which would seem to be a molecular resonance, and have a very specific internal energy change associated with it.
Yes, for what it’s worth, the ‘15 micron vibrational mode’ is a bending mode. There’s a picture and some explanation of it here http://www.wag.caltech.edu/home/jang/genchem/infrared.htm
I don’t understand how the molecule can enter or exit such a specific resonance oscillation mode without transfer (in or out) of a photon of that energy, as it would seem that the molecule is either in that oscillatory state, or it isn’t, and the energy difference must be quite specific.
The vibrational state is quantised and, as you say, the molecule is either in that state or it isn’t. It can be put in that state in two ways. By absorbing a photon which has precisely the right amount of energy to move it from one quantised energy level to another. A photon at a frequency ‘v’ has an energy ‘hv’ ( or E=hc/wavelength since we are using wavelengths). [From that I have just calculated the energy of 15 micron photon to be about 10^-20 joules, but it was a quick calculation, I could be wrong]. In the case of CO2, a photon at 15 micron has just the right amount of energy to move the molecule from its ground state to a particular vibrational state. So, the excited state can be induced by the absorption of a photon. It can also be induced by collision with another molecule, such that the impact causes the molecule to vibrate at the right frequency (the energy is derived from the kinetic energy of the colliding molecules).
The excited molecule (i.e. vibrating molecule) can revert to its ground state by two ways. By emitting a photon with energy equal to the difference in energy level between the excited and ground state (i.e. at 15 microns) or by colliding with another molecule which stops the CO2 molecule vibrating and ‘translates’ its vibrational energy into kinetic energy.
…the bending mode oscillation and its associated energy (delta) is internal to the frame of reference of the CO2 molecule, and really shouldn’t show up as part of the gas Temperature energy of that molecule.
Yes, I believe that is right. I have always believed that gas temperature depends on the kinetic energy of the molecules in the gas and that the internal energy levels do not affect the temperature directly. But now I am having doubts – I could be wrong about that.
Isn’t equi-partition a statistical property of a system in thermal equilibrium
Yes. But any ‘parcel’ of air will normally be in Local Thermal Equilibrium(LTE) unless someone has just set fire to it, or something equally drastic.
https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/PhysTodayRT2011.pdf
“””””…..
MikeB
June 8, 2015 at 1:15 am
It’s a very interesting point you raise George. It would be good if you could find a reference or link to Pierrehumbert’s experiment. …..”””””
Mike if as you say, GHGs such as CO2 can non-radiatively exit from a photon induced excited state, and instead transfer that photon energy as waste heat to the atmospheric gases, rather than normally re-emitting a nearly alike photon, that might be Doppler or otherwise shifted, but basically the same 15 micron band photon in the case of CO2, then above some “saturation” altitude, one would not expect to find ANY CO2 absorption band radiation. Any LWIR radiation above that level would seem to be necessarily a Temperature dependent thermal spectrum, and unless the thermal energy of the atmosphere IS converted to radiation; then it isn’t going anywhere near outer space.
I’m not among those who believe mono or diatomic gases do not emit thermal radiation; albeit, not at the efficiency of the much denser solid and liquid phases.
I have a perfectly good classical Maxwell / Hertz explanation for collision induced EM radiation, based simply on the presumption, that accelerated electric charge always can radiate, even if the necessary antenna only exists for nanoseconds or less. And in collisions between charge symmetrical atoms or molecules, and any other molecules, that symmetrical charge distribution, with no electric dipole moment MUST become asymmetrical, because while the electric charge is balanced between the nucleus, and the electron “cloud” the nuclear and electron masses are decidedly unbalanced, often to the tune of about 3750:1 ratio in light atoms. So the acceleration / deceleration of nucleus and electrons is quite unequal and must result in a finite charge separation during the collision, and even atto-seconds are long enough to emit some EM waves.
Anyhow, Since there is always some CO2 band (15 micron) found in the extra-terrestrial spectrum of the earth, apparently the CO2 molecule can decay radiatively some of the time.
g
A 650 nm red photon such as from a GaAs60P40 LED is about 2.0 electron Volts, so a 1.5 micron photon, would be about 867 eV or 86.7 meV for a 15 micron photon.
g
“Apparently ingenuity is not a modern trait.”
This is one of things that really bugs me about some of the ancient astronaut enthusiasts. They assume that ancient people must have been dumb.
If they see something ancient, and they can’t figure out how it could have been done, they immediately jump to the conclusion that aliens must have done it, or at least taught our ancestors how to do it.
George, that’s quite a leap to make from no data.
Saying that the climate models assume that CO2 would cause an increase in H2O is not the same thing as saying that without CO2 in the atmosphere, there would be no H2O in the atmosphere.
Quite obviously H20 would always find it’s equilibrium value based on the current temperature of the atmosphere.
The claim which you explicitly accept is that more CO2 means a warmer atmosphere, which should cause the equilibrium point of H2O to shift upwards.
The problem is that this is just an assumption, and studies involving the real world have shown that the situation is a lot more complicated than that.
In the real world evaporating water absorbs energy.
In the real world, humid air is unstable and has a tendency to start rising. When it rises, it cools and the water in it condenses. This does two things, it creates clouds which shade the ground beneath and it releases heat which causes the air to continue to rise.
None of this has been added to the climate models. They just assume warmer equals more water vapor which means more warming, which means … and so on.
There in lie the big problem with the climate models. They assume major forces which either have not been demonstrated, or in many cases have been proven false.
MarkW
June 12, 2015 at 11:21 am
I too find that modelers’ assumptions about H2O feedback are not in evidence, and indeed demonstrably false, since they ignore many observable phenomena.
As to the relationship between CO2 and H2O in the atmosphere, consider that as the high H2O content of the air fell drastically during the early Archaean Eon, CO2 increased spectacularly, then it too crashed.
Hope this graph shows up. The source is not ideal but the science is up to date:
http://l.yimg.com/fz/api/res/1.2/k5ppGp_5uxmzQ8z_LNFfyQ–/YXBwaWQ9c3JjaGRkO2g9MzA1O3E9OTU7dz0zNDU-/http://www.scientificpsychic.com/etc/timeline/atmosphere-composition.gif
Lysenkoism comes to mind as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
Good call.
Thank you for a wonderful post.
Thank you – this is an excellent essay. I like the following sentence best:
“The nature of science is such that people who look for confirming evidence will always find it.”
Though this is valid for both sides of the debate, of course, it concerns more the people who claim “The Science is settled”…
An excellent dissertation on the age of the earth. Now for the age of the universe, currently set at 13.7 billion years. But wait! By what measure can we use for the first 9.2 billion ? before the earth began its circum-perambulation of the sun? Plus ca change..etc.
Good question particularly since we now think the universe is accelerating its expansion.
I wonder if time is only in our perception and not actually a physical property. Am I just entertaining my naive imagination, or does anybody else ever ponder this?
The age of the universe is not set in stone. Quantum corrections to general relativity may indicate that it had no beginning and is infinite in size, in which case the “big bang” may have been a local event. http://m.livescience.com/49958-theory-no-big-bang.html
It was actually a very little bang. And time is rather handy to ensure that everything doesn’t all happen at once.
George,
In an eternity, at once may be a very long time and a matter of the perspective of the observer, like the collapse of a wave function when observed.
“””””…..
Jim G1
June 7, 2015 at 7:03 pm
George,……”””””
Well I’m quite partial to being interested in “Archeo-Physics” which is everything that happened in the first 10^-43 seconds after the little bang. After that the universe got sort of ho hum.
But even that requires that time exists; so no need to evoke eternity.
George,
Not denying the existence of time. It has been measured to behave according to general relativity per the Lorentz Transformations. That would not be possible if it were merely a psychological phenomenon. Just trying to put some perspective on it. Whether it is a part of the fabric of space/time has been questioned, however, as unzipping time from space does get rid of some of the other problems with the standard theory, like allowing C to vary, but both result in other problems.
“There has never been a time when the need for understanding the limits and nature of scientific knowledge is so compelling, or the ramifications of ignorance so consequential. Those who ignore history are apt to repeat its mistakes.”
David, please remove the last cliched sentence from your perfect essay. We wouldn’t be repeating a mistake. We would be making the greatest mistake possible to make by passing the science over to marxist elitist politicians to resolve our ‘problem’. The sentence before it is sufficient.
Don’t forget WW2 for destruction. The thing about Paris is that the real money would not start to roll until after 2020 and if the cooling continues as RSS shows then a new US president and a change of key politicians in Europe could scupper the whole thing on the basis that all agreements were based of fraud. We already have Australia, Japan and Canada on the right side of the battle line.
In the wake of Karl et al. 2015, which revises data to match a consensus….
===
I wonder if they will ever realize they just proved the computer games were wrong?
by changing the data to fit the games……that was not the data fed into the games to get that result
” Newton explained to his nephew, John Conduitt, that the Earth could not be old because all human technology was of recent invention.”
Of course this would make sense if the earth and human life began existence at the same time. It is also the reasoning behind intelligent life in outer space expected to be more advanced than we – a much weaker argument than Newton’s.
“The force of gravity”. To create a force one needs energy. 300 years after Newton and we still don’t know what gravity IS or how it is created. We only know of its effects. I propose that one of it’s effects is to heat the centre of our planet. That the earth didn’t cool after it formed, but heated as it formed and gained mass and increased gravity.
If I could discover a graviton I, or someone else, might be able to make use of it.
Back to basics. Force is not energy, force times distance is energy. In other words, gravitational force would only serve to heat the planet if the planet were collapsing. And it ain’t measurably collapsing.
In fact gravity can and does continue to heat the earth (though not to the same degree as radioactive decay), at least indirectly, through the stratification of materials and through accretion onto the core of denser metals. This can be viewed as a form of “collapse”. The liquid portion of the core itself is thought to undergo liquid convection, giving rise the earth’s magnetic field.
To create a force one needs energy.
No. One doesn’t.
Sam Carey was an Australian geologist who championed the concept of an expanding earth. James Maxlow has a YouTube presentation on this topic, e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePyU7cyMT_k
The constant diameter odf the earth is another example of a ‘settled science’ that needs a serious rethink.
Well energy is the capacity to do work. If you don’t move, you do no work, so you need no energy.
It seems (to me) that an earth forming by accretion of smaller massive bodies under mutual gravitational force, would all tend to move towards their common center of mass, and be accelerating as they approach. Eventually they would all land on each other and that gained kinetic energy, would be largely dissipated as heat. As the body grew, its volume would grow faster than its surface area, so it’s rate of cooling through that surface would diminish. Whether the Temperature rises or falls, would apparently depend on the rate of accretion.
Hello Wicked Wench, It is indeed a travesty of the physical sciences that gravity is still a mystery, one day they will discover that 95% of the universe that is missing, is hiding in plain sight. That, that is missing creates the minor force that is gravity. The wrongness that is the standard models, blind them into trying to find ways to make their models work. The same blindness controls the manipulation of data by the global warming crowd trying to prove they are not wrong.
Great article! It should be followed by another example from geology; the establishment of continental drift and plate tectonics.
I agree. Part of the information for that history is here in a commented debate about the evolution of new theories:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/09/nasa-on-the-sun-tiny-variations-can-have-a-significant-effect-on-terrestrial-climate/#comment-1197678
Inside an extended discussion with Leif on
versus:
I found this essay engaging, and had never appreciated the contortions geologists and biologists inflicted on themselves to conform to Kelvin. It seems their present genuflection to the likes of James Hansen has a long and dishonorable tradition. However, I think Dr. Demming’s assessment of the present political situation is wrong. IMHO, the world is not on the verge of drastically reducing the use of fossil fuels. As we have seen in the US with fracked old and gas, in Germany with coal, etc., planetary saviors use carbon-phobia only as a lever to maintain their political power, and then seek to maximize the flow of economic benefit from fossil-fuel use to their followers.
A difference. The geologists were sincere in their error; I have my doubts about the government funded crimatologists. Leif nails it with Lysenko.
Well, apologies to Victorian geologists and biologists who were caught between religious authority and the hazards of observational science, to Kelvin who might have been a little arrogant but never viewed himself as a messiah, and to Dr. Deming for spelling his name wrong.
What is “fracked old gas?”
Another example of ‘settled science’: autocorrection of spelling
OT but the excellent “Gavin says the funniest things!” allows no comments. Can that change?
I very much agree with the thrust of this post. Thanks for your efforts Dr. Deming.
We just don’t know enough to dismantle the modern industrialized society we live in and watch perhaps 6 billion people die as a result: and additionally, most of what we think we know is erroneous. I would point out the the present ideas of both the alarmists and the luke-warmers are fatally flawed. Over time, if we return to real science, we will begin to understand our planet’s climate but we do not at this time.
We do not understand the huge effect of our oceans and the water vapor in the atmosphere. We don’t understand the impact of clouds nor of storms. We have failed to understand water while we live on a water world! Oh my!
We fail to understand the effect of that mysterious force called gravity upon the atmosphere, and that understanding gravity, atmosphere mass, and water content are vital to understanding our climate. (lapse rate?? what lapse rate??) We also don’t understand the huge role the oceans play in distributing heat from the equator towards the poles. We ignore basic physics and claim that it all boils down to CO2 and “back radiation”. Oh my.
This present “consensus” by alarmists and luke-warmers alike will someday be viewed as the biggest failure of “science” in the history of the planet. School children will someday ask if the people believing in this modern CO2 consensus also thought the earth was flat. They will ask why “learned men and women” thought plant fertilizer was evil.
markstoval
June 7, 2015 at 8:20 am “We just don’t know enough to dismantle the modern industrialized society we live in and watch perhaps 6 billion people die as a result”
All too true, but you neglect the flip side of the coin – that perhaps 9 billion people, and our entire civilization, and perhaps even all higher life forms (thanks to our monkeying with nuclear energy) may die because we allowed ourselves to be completely dependent for the essentials of existence (energy, food, communication) on supremely fragile continental and/or global systems of transport and electricity, without any provision for backup, should these systems fail catastrophically through something as mundane and as unpredictable as a recurrence of the Carrington event.
I agree wholeheartedly that we should not dismantle the energy resources currently in use, except for the nuclear element, which poses a danger we cannot possibly contain without the current infrastructure. As you say, the continuation of our society could depend on it, especially in the face of an ice age.
But to cry “Chicken Little” and “alarmist” is an absolutely irresponsible tactic, because it encourages precisely the “que sera, sera”, “what me worry” attitude that humanity naturally adopts in the face of unpleasant prospects, especially if they are difficult to resolve, and even more so when higher authority encourages such fatalism.
Why would you single out nuclear energy as impossible to contain without the current infrastructure? I could contain the radioactive material in a nuclear power system with the technology of the 18th century. I’d be more worried about toxins that don’t naturally break down, like heavy metals. Are you referring to a nuclear war instead?
Civilization has grown to this scale because of the use of networked industry and energy. There’s only so much redundancy you can add without it becoming ruinously expensive. We can’t have everyone be fully self-sufficient without killing our standard of living.
Well now we have it folks, an admission that they think the real problem is running out of fossil fuels and not wanting to use nuclear power. There are probably many scientist like otropogo that think that because they are so smart and they cannot come up with another solution to the end of oil and gas besides windmills and solar panels that there aren’t any to come. They are willing to bring for sure ruin to the worlds economy now and with that usually come world war because they have no imagination. For the life of me I cannot understand the fear of nuclear power. When you consider the lives lost obtaining, transporting and using fossil fuels against those lost doing the same with nuclear fuels there should be no opposition.
Is there some secret knowledge of a disaster coming (besides the false CAGW and end of oil) that only a few scientist are privy to?
Omega,
The ancient Romans had the technology to contain nuclear reactions.
What are these fantasy problems regarding nuclear power that haunt your night time visions?
Are you one of these people who thinks that even the tiniest amount of radiation is evil and will kill us?
I sure hope you don’t have a granite counter top in your house. It’s going to kill you with radiation.
Mark,
Not to mention living in a brick house.
Geologists ROCK!
I doubt that Ussher lived from “1581-1686.”
The same thought crossed my mind, 1581-1656
1656
But that does not take away from the article.
It may however highlight the fact that everything to do with all and any religion should be taken with a grain of salt.
It’s not religion that’s at fault here. It’s your author not checking his facts. like also not noticing that Ussher was an Archbishop, not a Bishop.
The palaeontologist William Buckland invented the word and the study of coprolites, described the megalosaur (the first known dinosaur) and was willing to adjust his view to promote the idea of Ice Ages as evidence indicated.
A great scientist who is relevant to his discussion.
He also happened to be a clergyman who reached the high role of ‘Dean of Westminster’.
Buckland was the quintessential Victorian eccentric, who at the end went bonkers. The odious Owen persuaded Mrs. Buckland to institutionalize him.
To Buckland’s credit, he was initially persuaded by Agassiz that northern Britain had indeed been covered by ice, but faced with opposition from the Geological Society of London, backpeddled toward the then politically and religiously correct “flood geology”.
sturgishooper, it was the other way round.
Buckland initially went with the flood explanation that seemed most likely to his background. But he later adopted ice ages when the evidence came in.
He was an eccentric gastronome, it is true. But he never sank so far as to eat a KFC Bargain bucket.
Natually he was initially a “flood geologist”, until persuaded by Agassiz of ice ages, but then backtracked to what remained the consensus opinion that there were some alpine glaciers in Britain but not a vast ice sheet “flood”. The politically and religiously correct water diluvians held sway and he rejoined them.
This link contains some information on the ice-diluvian debate at the GSL. Under pressure, Buckland withdrew his pro-ice paper. The extent to which he recanted deep down is debatable, but did not come out in support of Agassiz in public after these debates:
http://www1.umn.edu/ships/glaciers/GSL-debate.htm
I don’t know if he would have balked at KFC or not. But anybody who licks alleged blood off the floor of a cathedral might well consume anything.
Yet St. Shenouda – Shenoute is an alternative spelling – lived for 118 years, apparently – 347-465 or 348-466.
As per the peerless Wiki-thingy, which even I can edit (and have edits, about Shenouda, made no longer operative . . .), so is inestimably reliable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenoute
Auto
NB – Shenouda is not included in the GRG’s list of longest lived human beings.
http://www.grg.org/ refers.
The history of Kelvin’s role in the age of the earth debate has other interesting parallels to the current CAWG madness. Kelvin controlled the debate for a very long time by virtue of his authority. Kelvin’s position as a scientific authority was well earned, indeed, but utterly misused. The details of the end of the debate are well documented in a series of letters in Nature Magazine, which involved Kelvin and Tait (a mathematician) on one side, and the geologist John Perry and physicist Oliver Heaviside on the other.
Indeed, Kelvin’s mathematical model was simple, and most people, including Kelvin, believed it was well constrained by observations. In point of fact, Heaviside and Perry showed that Kelvin’s model was ill-posed, or at least that is how we would characterize it today, and that a small change in the observed data, a change so small that it it could not be resolved in measurements, would change the solution by many orders of magnitude. Heaviside, of course, was self-taught, a skeptic, and had no university credentials, and was therefore at a disadvantage in any dispute with Kelvin.
Geophysicists and historians have redeemed Kelvin’s role in this whole affair by making it seem his only mistake was to not recognize the impact of radioactive decay. But in fact his mistake was more fundamental (lousy model) and completely irredeemable. How like the CAGW imbroglio is this?
That wasn’t Lord Kelvin’s only mistake, he also said
“There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now, All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”
Shortly before Planck and others put a spanner in the works.
I don’t mind scientific “authority” being used to enforce good science. In this case making certain that skepticism received its due would be a good use, but authority used as Kelvin did in many instances, as an ex cathedra argument, is the worst possible use.
Maybe the best quote from earlier scientists to describe the current lemming-like 97% consensus.
Kelvin also said in 1902:
“No balloon and no aeroplane will ever be practically successful.”
In 1898 Kevin predicted peak oxygen:
… only 400 years of oxygen supply remained on the planet
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=EP18980730.2.105
It wasn’t Kevin , it was Kelvin!
So, Kelvin was only human, but still a stupendous scientist. Cannot be said about me, nor the agw mob!
Brett,
Lord Kelvin was a good scientist, but also human, so let his ego get in the way of his science. This is a common failing among human scientists.
Maybe robotic scientists of the future will not share this weakness.
How did Kelvin account for Volcanoes releasing heat from inside the earth?
When the history of the 20th century is written, the names Tom Karl and Sepp Blatter will be mentioned in the same sentence as examples of the same contemporary phenomenon, of the workings of organisations that were untouchable political totems “too big to fail”, blindly trusted until discovered to be riddled to the core by corruption and dishonesty. Ten million dollars was the going rate for a world cup, and is probaby also about the price on a result-U-like paper like Karl et al. 2015, served up as an hors d’oevre for the Paris carve up of political and tax-raising power.
We are into billions of Dollars costs if an agreement is signed in Paris. Fortunately we have a Republican Congress in USA. Whatever Obama signs up to can be changed or withdrawn by the next President – hopefully not a Clinton.
I agree with you – except for the century.
Why know the name of a thing, when the thing itself you do not know? Whose work is it but your own to open your eyes? But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool of you that you will know yourself for one, and so begin to be wise.
George MacDonald, Lilith, 1895.
Thank you Dr. Demming for risking so much to expose the truth and save science from politically inspired manipulation and outright violation.
This article should be circulated through every educational institution in the world. Instead, it is at risk of being censored under the Rico act. Meanwhile, the general public is unaware of anything but the MSM spoonfed selection of politically correct information.
Rats! I misspelled his name too. 1K pardons, please.
Process control reveals that any system dominated by positive feedbacks will saturate. With respect to AGW, it means we either have runaway warming or a constant ice age. Geology tells us it is probable we have see two “Ice Ball” Earth’s – on ~2.4 billion years ago, the other ~600 million years ago. But Earth recovered both times due to plate tectonics and volcanic activities (ash as primary driver instead of CO2 concentration changes).
Geology also tells us the Earth has been as much as ~9C warmer in the past 400 million years. Yet, humanity as developed and flourished over the last 2 million years when Earth’s mean temperature has been -2/+4C from today climate. It is quite obvious Earth’s climate is not dominated by positive feedbacks. That’s the primary why the AGW sponsored models are constantly exerating the changes over the past 20 years.
It’s not rocket science, just science and common sense.
So blooming obvious that you wonder how people calling themselves scientists deny it. Follow the money rather than the science and observations.
Looks like some members of Congress (R) thinks along the same lines – the science is uncertain and needs further investigation before more money is doled out:
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/house-committee-drops-funding-state-department-climate-change
I hope they “stand firm” on this. I am also awaiting Inhofe’s move (Senate hearings) on the “homogenizers” in NOAA/GIS. He should get some results out before Paris in December.