This thread debates the Miskolczi semi-transparent atmosphere model.
The link with the easiest introduction to the subject is http://hps.elte.hu/zagoni/Proofs_of_the_Miskolczi_theory.htm
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I readily admit most of the equations in this go WAY over my head given the time available to review the article; but if I understand the concept correctly it’s based on an analogy I’ve always wondered about.
If I put a pot on the stove and turn up the heat until it is ready to boil, but without enough energy to make it boil, there isn’t really any change I can make to the contents of the post (presuming I don’t replace the water by a large percentage) to change that temperature. For example if I add a pinch of salt to the water I may raise the boiling point but the water will remain at the same temperature – because the overall heat available to the pot hasn’t changed.
As I’m sure you can guess the pot represents the earth, the flame the sun and the air our universe. The heat put into the pot is sapped by the universe at a constant rate.
Thus if I next add a bunch of noodles to the water what happens… well if the noodles are cooler then the water I’ll see a temporary drop in the temperature of the pot, however over time if I did nothing the equilibrium temperature of the pot would return to the same level.
Similarly if I added hot noodles the reverse would apply the overall temperature might briefly increase but because only so much energy was being added to the system the original equilibrium would eventually be restored. – (of course this isn’t a valid question on the temp of the water increasing since we aren’t claiming global warming is coming from outside our system) which leads to the actual experiment…
Finally I could have had 2 pots one with noodles and one without and in the end the temperature of the water in both pots should reach the same equilibrium point – they might need slightly different time frames to do so but the contents of the pot, so long as the contants remain primarily the same do not significantly change the equilibrium temperature of the pot’s contents.
To truly mirror our system I would need to pot to reach equilibrium with the noodles in a bag, and then slice open the bag (CO2 in the earth is represented by the noodles in the bag) and would have to see a sustained temperature difference once the bag was opened to defeat his energy model.
In other words this theory appears to pass the common sense test, but maybe I’m way off…
Let me prime the discussion a little with a comment I posted on an earlier thread that received no responses.
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Does anybody know how to pronounce “Miskolczi”? His work (http://hps.elte.hu/zagoni/Proofs_of_the_Miskolczi_theory.htm) seems to me to be more robust than that of Gerlich and Tscheuschner (http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161).
Although the latter has the best description I’ve seen of why the greenhouse effect works and how it differs from the atmosphere, they seem to go too far in several arguments: denying the existence of an average surface temperature of a body (because it cannot be calculated from first principles), the proposition that because the atmospheric greenhouse effect as commonly described constitutes a perpetuum mobile of the second kind the atmosphere does not provide overall warming, and their questioning of the meaning of the arrows in the radiative heating diagrams (the obvious answer being “energy”, which is conserved). On they other hand, their description of the folly of trusting GCMs, especially those that would purport to give accurate solutions to the Navier-Stokes equation from uncertain initial conditions over dozens of years, is exactly right. Their analysis left me puzzled by certain observations, such as why it becomes much colder at nights where there is no cloud cover than on nights where there is.
The analysis by Miskolczi has much more explanatory power, in my opinion, taking into account convection and the optical depth; it also makes predictions that are upheld by current measurements, such as the drop in water vapor as CO2 increases.
nice overview here.
I find this one statement somewhat of an over-reach:
It doesn’t take into account changes in surface land use. For example, if I paved the entire North American continent, I would expect there to be a significant change in the climate of Kansas with no change in solar input. Ripping out millions of acres of native grasses or forests and replacing them with various crops, housing developments, and asphalt roofs might result in some changes as would dams and large scale irrigation. To say that ALL observed warming MUST be caused by only solar changes is, in my opinion, a bit of a reach. BUT I will add the caveat that land use changes would tend to be step changes and their impact on a global scale would probably be minimal at this time. By that I mean that the building of Chicago probably hasn’t melted any Antarctic ice.
Interesting that the resignation of a Scientist from NASA over perceived ‘muzzling’ of his work is not newsworthy if that work goes counter to prevailing AGW sentiment, but perceived ‘muzzling’ of a scientist due to views that are not counter is front page news.
Many kudos on the 6/25 and 6/26 posts. No offense to others, but to me you have the best GW website on the web. The format changes that you made recently were very good, and you should be proud. It’s the first site that I go to each morning. BTW, I haven’t heard anything lately about earthshine. The last that I saw, it seemed as if they were trying to get a few other measurement locations on-line, to go along with a new scope. Are they coming back with more data? What’s there is several years old.
REPLY: Thanks for the kind words. As for earthshine they are still working on getting the worldwide robotic telescope network up and running.
Crosspatch, his terms Sg, K and P are the “landuse” variables.
I’ve been reading the PDF of the published paper, where he takes more care in defining the terms. This, remember, is taken from a presentation so some of the verbal information is missing. The PDF is pointed to at the beginning I believe.
I’m an AGW Skeptic, however I am not a climate scientist. That said, I am really interested in the assessment of Dr. Miskolczi article, by those of you who are.
Re: Robert Wood (11:22:24)
Agreed, the statement was in only the higher level “Thesis” section. Overall I would say Dr. Miskolczi is taking a much more “holistic” approach to atmospheric dynamics than others have in the past.
I think folks should be mindful of how the whole “global warming” thing started back when it was used as a lever to support the large scale adoption of nuclear power over coal. Then once the environMENTAL group put the kabosh on nuclear, it was kept as a lever used against fossil fuel energy in general.
It isn’t as if someone did years of research and discovered that CO2 was causing warming, it came about from the opposite direction. People with a certain world view wanted there to be warming from CO2 and so they have built various ways of validating the idea. And that is why there is so much “push back” from the AGW crowd. It is because we aren’t invalidating some scientific conclusion, people who find no evidence of AGW are basically invalidating the world view of these people which is something very personal and some personality types experience that as adversarial on a personal level. Their conclusions are a closely held part of them and to criticize those conclusions is to criticize them personally. That is why they lash back with personal attacks against those would would question them … becuse they feel personally attacked.
AGW has no basis in science. It is a religion. And when you invalidate someone’s religion, they can become extremely defensive. You have to approach it as you would trying to tell a devout Christian about evolution.
That paper is well beyond my knowlege of the subject. But I hope other skeptics, who are ture climate scientists such as Lindzen and Spencer, will review it.
Nuts – typo! That should read …”true” climate scientists…
OUCH my brain hurts I think I need a brain surgeon. Man the equations made my brain go numb about page 19. Very well articulated paper. Clearly spells out the problem the current AGW theory has. That is why they can’t explain past CO2 to temperature issues. The number are just wrong. This is a book mark page for me.
Re: Crosspatch
I fail to see why people who know evolution exists because they’ve seen it in action/nudged it along a bit cannot simultaneously pray for rain and believe in a higher power. I have been known to darken the doorway of a Christian church myself a time or three, and I can envision the dinosaur in the poultry.
Re the Miskolczi paper, I’m still wading through but found that Ken Gregory gives a pretty good cheat sheet version for the people that are not math majors.
Like many other who are skeptical, my own expertise is in a field other than climate physics. I too will be lurking back here to see what folks with a better uderstanding of the physics think on Miskolczi’s (Miss Coal Ski?) alternative to modeling CO2 in infinitely thick atmospeheres.
Dr. Mikolczi’s theory appears to be correct; or at least to be more correct, than the classical theory with its simplifications from a 100 years ago.
Newton said that: “Force is proportional to the derivative of Momentum”. Or F= d(mv)/dt. Or F = mdv/dt + vdm/dt, mathematically.
Since mass m is = to a constant –> that vdm/dt =0, since the derivative dm/dt of a constant, is zero. And then Newton’s equation simplifies to F=mdv/dt. It was widely adopted, since in produced (almost) correct answers for 3 centuries.
Then a physicist said F != mdv/dt; Newton said F= d(mv)dt and that is correct. He really says that F = mdv/dt + vdm/dt and the vdm/dt term is not always = 0. Mass sometimes is a variable.
This “simplification correction” is called The Theory of Relativity.
It led to E=MC**2 and changed the World. It was merely a “simplification correction”.
Dr. Mikolczi shows where “simplification” was in error, and he provides a “simplification correction” Thinking about it, in hindsight, the “simplification correction” should be as obvious as Einstein’s correction was. After the fact, of course.
The atmosphere is obviously not infinite, for one thing. Secondly, the atmosphere extends all the way to the Earth’s surface. There is not some “discontinuity”, some piece of vacuum between the atmosphere and the Earth’s surface, as the “simplification” postulates.
The atmosphere is a gravitationally bound atmosphere that varies in pressure from the surface to the edge of space. Therefore, It can and does support a convection mechanism, and can use convection to move Energy about.
The atmosphere is connected to an effective infinite source of H2O at one end, and the effective infinite Vacuum at the other end.
These were all neglected in the “‘simplification” from 1928. I don’t know what kind of atmosphere that the simplification described, but it obviously doesn’t describe the reality of Earth and its atmosphere.
How could that be even marginally correct?
These changes make all the difference. It allows some continuity equations that allow for ground and near ground temperatures converging and equal, in equilibrium. Convection as an energy mover process due to gravitation. And a constant optical depth via the limitless H20 pool, at least until the Oceans dry up.
Dr. Mikolczi theory is already confirmed by existing measurements. These measurements of existing thermal profiles more correctly agree with Dr. Mikolczi calculations, and is the measured reality. Versus the “as received” warming theory that was first suggested more than a century ago.
Mark Nodine wrote:
denying the existence of an average surface temperature of a body (because it cannot be calculated from first principles),
If that’s a fair description of what they’ve done, as Miskolczi also seems to indicate…
then it sounds to me like they’ve failed their basic thermodynamics.
If their atmosphere model does not match the actual surface temperatures, then it’s not because the surface temperature doesn’t exist, it’s because the model is wrong.
Swampie:
I agree with that 100% and believe that many do (including me).
The underlying point was, though, that some people will always call for people who question their world view to be put on trial. It has been that way since before the time of Copernicus.
BillSheldon,
If you put a lid on your pot, would not the water temperature increase even though you do not increase the heat applied to the heat? If you prevent some heat from escaping, would not the water temperature increase?
Mark Nodine:
I’m glad to see that the observed decrease in RH in the mid- to upper- troposphere is being met with a real and ready model created by an expert. As the middle troposphere at 400 mb cools markedly it helps the warmer and damper lower troposphere continue to regulate its preferred temperature range. IOW, the real GHE is at the surface and its warming is both cooling and drying the middle troposphere.
It’s as though the lower atmosphere not only saturates H2O but as it saturates it acts as a barrier to more H2O rising higher, thus drying the middle troposphere. And with more energy retained near the surface, the middle altitudes cool. But with the middle altitudes cooling they offset some of the surface warming, bringing the system back to its preferred thermal constant.
It’s notable that according to the climate models this cooling was only expected at higher in the tropopause and stratosphere, which have warmed slightly since Pinatubo. Maybe that’s b/c the climate models also wrongly modeled a constant RH across all altitudes (another oversimplification recently identified by other researchers). Likewise the air over Antarctica has also been found to be drier than expected, hence being markedly less prone to warming.
It might also reflect upon the paleo record where , with both CO2 & WV lagging behind the temperature rise. The paleo WV record (proxied via light oxygen) tracks much more consistently with interglacial temperatures than CO2 ever has!
IOW this validates the inability of CO2 to drive temperatures past a certain saturation point. Since CO2 can only contribute so much before effect and metaeffect saturate, temperatures might continue to climb for other reasons.
http://i32.tinypic.com/28h3dqh.jpg
http://i27.tinypic.com/25fuk8w.jpg
This goes to the heart of the Forcings Model of the Earth’s climate.
Simply put, the Forcings Model says any change to energy inputs results in climate warming or cooling (using some multiple that includes feedbacks).
If the Earth’s climate is in dynamic equilibrium, then forcings have no (significant) effect. And everything the IPCC and most climate scientists say is irrelevant. Put another way, feedbacks swamp forcings.
Which leads to the interesting question – If feedbacks swamp forcings why does the climate change at all? And we know that it does – glacial and interglacial phases of the current ice age.
The answer is that things that affect feedbacks drive the Earth’s climate (as well as oscillations such as PDO and AMO). So the primary determinants of climate change are galactic cosmic rays, dust and particulates, and irrigation.
These are things that affect phase changes of water and the net amount of water vapour in the atmosphere.
IMHO, as always.
From the Climate Audit forum: http://www.climateaudit.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=161.
There’s 286 posts in response to the thread, and it may be useful to reference. The conversation over there has mostly been centered around the math/physics. Because they are currently disecting that side of the debate over there, and because it seems that the CA responders seem to know what they’re talking about, we can still be useful and use his description of the atmosphere and determine if his predictions about a compensating (through a decrease in water vapor), saturated greenhouse effect can be indepently confirmed in observations.
David Stockwell has also made several posts on the topic, giving the clearest description of Miskolczi’s theory I’ve seen: http://landshape.org/enm/category/audits/miskolczi/.
His posts were made in a relevant order, so start at the bottom and read up.
Also relevant to this debate is how Miskolczi’s theory effects paleoclimate interpretation. Here is Miklos Zagoni’s (a Hungarian physicist) powerpoint presented at the ICCC, entitled “Some paleoclimate consequences of Dr. Miskolczi’s new greenhouse theory”: http://www.heartland.org/newyork08/PowerPoint/Tuesday/zagoni.pdf
There are other paleoclimate consequences of this theory, including the attribution of the cause of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene-Eocene_Thermal_Maximum#Methane_release).
I am happy to see this thread as I was hoping for more eyes looking at this theory. I found this web site that has picked the theory apart, and might be of interest. http://landshape.org/enm/category/science/climate/page/2/
A couple of things to note, previous papers by Miskolczi laid the ground work for this paper, and Miskolczi views the atmosphere as a heat engine with corrected boundary conditions (one of which is no energy is coming from volcanism).
I check this web site daily as a sure bet to see new insights of the follies of GW.
“Niche Modeling” has discussed Miskolczi’s new equations too:
http://landshape.org/enm/category/audits/miskolczi/
The physics and mathematics are often beyond my ken, but this type of discussion allows some of it to sink in. It sure would be nice to have some credible experts who could explain it all to the rest of us.
I recommend the link pointed to by JSH, or go directly to http://www.friendsofscience .org for a good explanation.
I like the agreement with empirical data.
No offense to others, but to me you have the best GW website on the web.
Nobody beats the Rev!
If you put a lid on your pot, would not the water temperature increase even though you do not increase the heat applied to the heat? If you prevent some heat from escaping, would not the water temperature increase?
That makes sense to me. Also, if you added salt and the boiling point went up, so would the that of both the water and the “atmosphere”, assuming the lid was loose (like the “lid” on the atmosphere) allowing steam to escape?
The tightness of the lid would affect the equation.