From an Oregon State University Media Release (h/t to Leif Svalgaard)
Long debate ended over cause, demise of ice ages – may also help predict future
)
The above image shows how much the Earth’s orbit can vary in shape.
This process in a slow one, taking roughly 100,000 to cycle.
(Credit: Texas A&M University note: illustration is not to scale)
CORVALLIS, Ore. – A team of researchers says it has largely put to rest a long debate on the underlying mechanism that has caused periodic ice ages on Earth for the past 2.5 million years – they are ultimately linked to slight shifts in solar radiation caused by predictable changes in Earth’s rotation and axis.
In a publication to be released Friday in the journal Science, researchers from Oregon State University and other institutions conclude that the known wobbles in Earth’s rotation caused global ice levels to reach their peak about 26,000 years ago, stabilize for 7,000 years and then begin melting 19,000 years ago, eventually bringing to an end the last ice age.
The melting was first caused by more solar radiation, not changes in carbon dioxide levels or ocean temperatures, as some scientists have suggested in recent years.
“Solar radiation was the trigger that started the ice melting, that’s now pretty certain,” said Peter Clark, a professor of geosciences at OSU. “There were also changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and ocean circulation, but those happened later and amplified a process that had already begun.”
The findings are important, the scientists said, because they will give researchers a more precise understanding of how ice sheets melt in response to radiative forcing mechanisms. And even though the changes that occurred 19,000 years ago were due to increased solar radiation, that amount of heating can be translated into what is expected from current increases in greenhouse gas levels, and help scientists more accurately project how Earth’s existing ice sheets will react in the future.
“We now know with much more certainty how ancient ice sheets responded to solar radiation, and that will be very useful in better understanding what the future holds,” Clark said. “It’s good to get this pinned down.”
The researchers used an analysis of 6,000 dates and locations of ice sheets to define, with a high level of accuracy, when they started to melt. In doing this, they confirmed a theory that was first developed more than 50 years ago that pointed to small but definable changes in Earth’s rotation as the trigger for ice ages.
“We can calculate changes in the Earth’s axis and rotation that go back 50 million years,” Clark said. “These are caused primarily by the gravitational influences of the larger planets, such as Jupiter and Saturn, which pull and tug on the Earth in slightly different ways over periods of thousands of years.”
That, in turn, can change the Earth’s axis – the way it tilts towards the sun – about two degrees over long periods of time, which changes the way sunlight strikes the planet. And those small shifts in solar radiation were all it took to cause multiple ice ages during about the past 2.5 million years on Earth, which reach their extremes every 100,000 years or so.
Sometime around now, scientists say, the Earth should be changing from a long interglacial period that has lasted the past 10,000 years and shifting back towards conditions that will ultimately lead to another ice age – unless some other forces stop or slow it. But these are processes that literally move with glacial slowness, and due to greenhouse gas emissions the Earth has already warmed as much in about the past 200 years as it ordinarily might in several thousand years, Clark said.
“One of the biggest concerns right now is how the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will respond to global warming and contribute to sea level rise,” Clark said. “This study will help us better understand that process, and improve the validity of our models.”
The research was done in collaboration with scientists from the Geological Survey of Canada, University of Wisconsin, Stockholm University, Harvard University, the U.S. Geological Survey and University of Ulster. It was supported by the National Science Foundation and other agencies.
UPDATE: Science now has the paper online, which is behind a paywall. The abstract is open though and can be read below:
| Science 7 August 2009:
Vol. 325. no. 5941, pp. 710 – 714 DOI: 10.1126/science.1172873 |
Research Articles
The Last Glacial Maximum
Peter U. Clark,1,* Arthur S. Dyke,2 Jeremy D. Shakun,1 Anders E. Carlson,3 Jorie Clark,1 Barbara Wohlfarth,4 Jerry X. Mitrovica,5 Steven W. Hostetler,6 A. Marshall McCabe7
1 Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA.
2 Geological Survey of Canada, 601 Booth Street, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0E8, Canada.
3 Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
4 Department of Geology and Geochemistry, Stockholm University, SE-10691, Stockholm, Sweden.
5 Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
6 U.S. Geological Survey, Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA.
7 School of Environmental Science, University of Ulster, Coleraine, County Londonderry, BT52 1SA, UK.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Adam
1. Many oscillations have only recently been discovered and then reconstructed using proxies. With these proxies compared to temperature proxies, the correlation stands up before industrial input of GHG’s. However, I will give you this, you cannot say what the oceanic oscillations are capable of long term when all you have are proxies of long term conditions and observations of short term conditions. Observations are what are needed to solidify or refute what ENSO is capable of. So far, the present correlation is acting like the proxied correlation, regardless of what CO2 is doing now or has done in the past. You also mistate what I wrote. Warmth from CO2 and other GHG’s now and in the past I believe have a relatively steady state warmth, regardless of changes in concentration (because of each individual set of characteristics of greenhouse gasses to absorb, redirect and reach the saturation point when it is no longer capable of absorption). It is Earth’s atmosphere that brings variance to ground and sea warmth provided by GHG’s, just as it does the relatively steady state additions of Solar warmth.
2. Circulations that have had major interruptions by a glacial period from its beginnings to its end may not act upon geography in a way similar to interglacial periods. The jet streams may have acted in much different ways, been in different places, and reacted to other oscillations in different ways. Storms or the lack of storms may be quite different during these disruptions than during the relative calm of interglacial periods. Proxies of these conditions are hard to come by. But it makes sense to say that when oscillations change from calm to energetic and back again, storm, weather, and cloud patterns will be more active and chaotic, more so than during the calm of interglacial periods.
3. You know as well as I do that the amount of CO2 in the air caused by industrial emissions are proxied. It is partly made from observations and partly made from dynamical calculations. You also know as well as I do that from greenhouse experiments plants are capable of a very wide variety of CO2 absorption. The rise could be either an ENSO affect (meaning it will fluctuate around a mean as you say), or the proxy dynamical calculation is wrong. The AIRS demonstration is not long enough to show what happens to CO2 when other ENSO parameters are in place.
Finally, all the ENSO oscillations taken together bring a lot of variables into play. Their alphabet names do not give its complexity justice. We don’t know nor have we experienced all the possible combinations. Therefore it cannot be concluded that this very large set of variables, completely natural in Earth’s systems, is not capable of combining in long-term trend producing ways. The final word would be this: if you removed JUST industrial CO2 from the atmosphere, and you know what a small percentage that is, would the temperature graph be statistically different over the past 100 years? No it would not. Therefore industrial CO2 is not a major or minor player in the last 100 years.
Leif Svalgaard (10:29:07) :
Nasif Nahle (07:59:23) :
Instead saying “Heat content of the oceans”, I would say it correctly, i.e. Energy content of the oceans”.
And this is incorrect. The oceans currents have bulk kinetic energy, so is part of the energy content of the oceans, but is not heat energy, because that is the random, disorganized kinetic energy, but the kinetic energy of the bulk flow. Nobody is saying that kinetic energy is heat, but rather that heat is the kinetic energy of the random, disorganized motions. This is your confusion. The heat is that part of the total energy that can be transferred without applying any forces, and is still there even if not transferred or ‘in transit’. You can also meaningfully say that ‘heat is added’ to the system [which then contains more heat] and it is in this sense the word is used in the second law of thermodynamics.
It’s not incorrect. Kinetic energy is energy, or not? Kinetic energy is internal energy and the system “oceans” contains kinetic energy. Thus, it is very correct and scientific to say “energy content of the oceans”. You said that heat is kinetic energy:
“Leif Svalgaard (08:27:53) :
Nasif Nahle (22:42:30) :
If heat was retained, it would be as potential or kinetic energy and it would stop being heat
Heat is the kinetic energy of the molecules bouncing around or vibrating.”
Bolds are mine… 🙂
One final response comment to the notion that industrial CO2 created warmth and SST posed by a question. Do you know how the oceans are heated? Is it by warm air or by Sunbeams? And which is better at heating anything other than the top few mm?
Leif Svalgaard (11:11:00) :
Nasif Nahle (10:09:35) :
heat is energy leaving the system across the boundaries of that system.
Perhaps this will help: The unit of heat is Joule, because it is an ‘amount’ which you can move from one place to another. If it were a ‘transit’ [leaving], the unit would be Watt [Joule per second], namely leaving at such and such a rate, but the unit is Joule, not Watt.
And it is Watt [= (J/s)], i.e. power. For example:
q = Ћ A (Ts – T∞)
q = 3.6185 W/m^2∙K (1 m)^2 (11.5 K) = 41.61 W
or 41.61 J/s.
The units for internal energy are Joules. The units for the energy transferred by heat are Joules. The units for the rate of heat transfer are Watts (J/s).
Heat is energy in transit, so its units are Watts (or Joules/s).
Nasif Nahle (13:00:19) :
Heat is energy in transit, so its units are Watts (or Joules/s).
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/heat-units-d_664.html says Joule.
http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/SP811/sec04.html says Joule
http://www.ktf-split.hr/periodni/en/abc/j.html says Joule, and so on.
Nasif Nahle (12:50:35) :
It’s not incorrect. Kinetic energy is energy, or not?
But not necessarily heat. Heat is random, unordered kinetic energy, not the kinetic energy of the a flow. The solar wind is another case. It has a bulk flow of 400 km/s. The kinetic energy of that is not thermal energy or heat. In addition there is a random thermal component of about 50 km/s. That is heat and corresponds to a temperature of 100,000K.
Nasif Nahle (13:00:19) :
Heat is energy in transit, so its units are Watts (or Joules/s).
One last time: the unit of an ‘amount of heat’ is Joule. That amount can be stored, moved, distributed [as you said]. The second law deals with an ‘amount of heat’ added to a system which then clearly contains more heat than before, under any reasonable definition. For a gas, the amount of heat is a measure of the kinetic energy of the random, disorganized motion of the molecules [or atoms].
Heat can be transferred: heat-flux in Watt.
Leif Svalgaard (14:22:10) :
But not necessarily heat. Heat is random, unordered kinetic energy, not the kinetic energy of the a flow. The solar wind is another case. It has a bulk flow of 400 km/s. The kinetic energy of that is not thermal energy or heat. In addition there is a random thermal component of about 50 km/s. That is heat and corresponds to a temperature of 100,000K.
Absolutely, nonsense… Heat is photons. Now you’re confunding temperature and heat.
Leif Svalgaard (15:02:20) :
One last time: the unit of an ‘amount of heat’ is Joule. That amount can be stored, moved, distributed [as you said]. The second law deals with an ‘amount of heat’ added to a system which then clearly contains more heat than before, under any reasonable definition. For a gas, the amount of heat is a measure of the kinetic energy of the random, disorganized motion of the molecules [or atoms].
Heat can be transferred: heat-flux in Watt.
What a mess! Energy units are Joules. Heat units are Watts (J/s).
In your phrase: “For a gas, the amount of heat is a measure of the kinetic energy of the random, disorganized motion of the molecules [or atoms]” You’re confounding temperature with heat. The measure of the average translational kinetic energy of a system is temperature, not heat. For the last time, heat is energy transferred from a hot system to a colder system, so its units are Watts.
Nasif Nahle (17:24:41) :
For the last time, heat is energy transferred from a hot system to a colder system, so its units are Watts.
Remember the old definition:
“One calorie is the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water one degree”.
There are two concepts:
Amount of heat, measured in Joule [or calories]
Heat flux, measured in Watts
You keep confusing the two, and heat is not photons (and if it were its units would be Joule, BTW).
From your postings it seems that you’ll stay stuck in your confusion. Because of this I’ll advice you of using explicitly ‘amount of heat’ when talking about the heat content, and ‘heat flux’ when talking about heat transfer.
Heat is NOT a noun; it is the process of converting energy (in any form) to the mechanical vibration of atoms and molecules. Arguably then, “heat” has no meaning in the absence of physical material; and certainly heat has no meaning in the context of photons.
I have to join hands with Leif on this; what we call “heat” in a noun sense applies only to the statistical energy of vibration or real atomic and molecular materials; hence the concept of “the Mechanical equivalent of heat” which used to be 4.187 Joules per Calorie. I used to tell my students that a calorie was a quantity of food, in a vain attempt to wean them off the rod/stone/fortnight system.
Leif Svalgaard (18:15:04) :
Remember the old definition:
“One calorie is the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water one degree”.
I have no problem with this given that it is heat transferred to 1 g of water until it reaches a temperature of 1 °C.
There are two concepts:
Amount of heat, measured in Joule [or calories]
Heat flux, measured in Watts
You keep confusing the two, and heat is not photons (and if it were its units would be Joule, BTW).
It’s not me, but you. I have shown you that energy is stored, not heat. Heat is energy, so heat is photons; have you forgotten the nature of the heat? Waves and photons, electromagnetic radiation, etc. Please, don’t push me to start explaining those basic concepts. I think your problem resides on your confusion between heat and temperature.
From your postings it seems that you’ll stay stuck in your confusion. Because of this I’ll advice you of using explicitly ‘amount of heat’ when talking about the heat content, and ‘heat flux’ when talking about heat transfer.
“Load of heat” sounds better, but there is not heat accumulated in any system. Energy (electrical, chemical, mechanical, etc.) can be “accumulated” by systems.
“”” Leif Svalgaard (07:26:12) :
Nasif Nahle (00:07:37) :
Heat is not a form of energy, but it is energy in transit. If that energy is not emitted and/or absorbed, but stored into a system, it’s not heat, but internal energy, i.e. potential and kinetic energy.
A definition has to be useful, and the definition of ‘heat’ you offer is not. “””
Pasted from way up above; this exchange would lead me to observe that in the normal course of events; the rate of heat flow between the sun and the earth must be quite small, since “heat” as we know it is a property only of physical materials; composed of atoms or larger units; and although the sun spits out a lot of such matter that reaches earth it is peanuts compared to the electromagnetifc radiation transport of energy from sun to earth;
If we had to rely on “heat” transport from sun to earth; we would all be in dire straits.
Note also that EM radiation is quite happy to make the reverse journey; so long wavelength photons of earth emitted infra red radiation; are accepted enthusiastically when the reach the sun; which they do in about equal quantities to those arriving at the moon from earth. So there is no second law violation involved in the mere emission and absorption of radiant energy.
For me, heat is what you feel in the top 5 inches of Wallowa Lake. It don’t matter if it is stored or kinetic, or whatever, it feels warm. Cold is what you feel below that. Any man has my respect who is willing to put his privates below that 5 inch mark. It takes days to “re-emerge” if you catch my drift. On the other hand, any woman worth her salt who has entered the wet tee shirt contest in Joseph takes a dip first in the lake. She also has my respect. And usually gets first prize. Hell, it’s so cold in Wallowa Lake you don’t need a breast lift. Just take one dip a week and you’ll be right perky.
Pamela, as I understand it, the state of the science is that on centennial time scales, ocean systems oscillate. Ocean(/atmosphere) patterns change over the long term (geological) when other components disturb the equilibrium routine: whether significant ice sheet changes (ice age/interglacial change), significant global warming, or significant tectonic movement (eg, gondwanaland). When the system is in equilibrium (a relative term – equilibrium is always changing, but can appear steady in the short term), the oceans(/atmosphere) vary around a mean.
Oscillating trends for ocean systems have been identified. Long-term (centennial) trends have not. How long do you propose we wait to see if speculations about ocean-driven long global temperature trends are satisfied? Mainstream climate science expresses its ‘predictions’ in terms of probabilities. I see the issue as a risk management exercise (I have no truck with conspiracy theories, BTW). While such speculation is valid and useful, the message we are getting is that we don’t have the luxury to wait and see. I know that much of the thrust at this blog is that the projections are hyped. I’m not convinced.
I get no satisfaction from accepting the mainstream view. Who wants to tighten their belts when there is so much uncertainty? But there has been no debunking of the mainstream view – despite jubilation over its death throes here. The real debate is about projections, not whether the globe is warming. And that’s just it – a debate. To paraphrase a sensible critic of the IPCC and mainstream view – Roger Pielke Snr – it is not that we know what will happen, it is that we do not know. Things could be worse or better: or the mid-range projections could be very close to what happens. We must act to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels in any case for reasons that go beyond the concerns of global warming. Fossil fuels are finite, we are tied to unsavoury governments for their procurement and securing access is a factor in military policy (I don’t claim that it is inevitably carried out, but it is certainly a feature). There are also positive reasons for changing our energy source – economies are powered by innovation and entrepreneurialism: we should be ahead of the curve.
I’ve strayed from the topic here: my apologies! I didn’t mean to play the advocate. But having this perspective, I think there are pressing reasons to work with the science we have rather than wait for the science that might be. If indeed we discover long-term signals in ocean patterns that account for the last century’s general warming, then that might be a *good thing* – or it might not. Radiation physics isn’t going to change much, I think, and we will still have a warming signal that lasts while we burn fossil fuels.
Despite my drift into advocacy there (rather unusual for me) I am chiefly interested, as a layman, in the emerging science, as well as understanding the established science. If a long-term signal is discovered as you’re speculating, then I know that I’ll read about it here.
I don’t know the answer to your question about sunlight/winds and SSTs. I’ve probably read about it – my interests are broad. I could google it, but I thought I’d be frank. My guess is that many factors play here, but I wouldn’t know how to prioritize their contribution.
Shortwave radiation (direct Sunlight) heats salt water to relatively deep layers, measured in meters. Warmed air (the assumption of of AGW) which is basically longwave radiation bounced off of Earth’s surface, absorbed and then re-emitted by GHG’s, can heat salt water only shallowly, measured in mm. This layer of saltwater loses heat to evaporation like crazy, so it is rather impossible to say with a straight face that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are responsible for stored heat in the oceans. Wind is capable of moving water (and ice). The at rest state would be warmed water that stays in place. If wind moves the warm water, cold water upwelling replaces it. If you want to know what is warming or cooling the Earth, check out what the trade winds do to SST’s. For those who think that SST’s have no real ability to warm or cool land surfaces, all I can say is that you don’t live near an ocean. You must live somewhere in the middle of a rather large continent. As for GHG’s, those are about as steady state as the Sun in their ability to warm the planet. Once again, Earth’s swirling globby mixture of atmospheric substances determines how much Sunlight gets in and therefore how much LWR allows said GHG’s to keep us warm.
I don’t think I would come down on the side of “let’s tax some entity in order to reduce CO2 to cool us down” just yet. Removing CO2 will not cool us down. Preventing Sunlight reaching the surface has a better chance. Why choose CO2 when it is such a bit player? If I follow your reasoning of lets do something, you should be heralding mirrors and whatnot to keep shortwave radiation from getting to the surface. So tell me Adam, are you a rubber necker in terms of understanding the scene or have you studied this issue for years?
Nasif Nahle (18:40:23) :
I have no problem with this given that it is heat transferred to 1 g of water until it reaches a temperature of 1 °C.
It is ~4 Joules, so the unit of the heat is Joules, of course.
Heat is energy, so heat is photons
Energy is not photons; photons do have energy, but so does a speeding locomotive, or a planet orbiting the Sun, or a rotating Earth, or the solar wind mass flux.
Pamela Gray (19:19:33) :
it is rather impossible to say with a straight face that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are responsible for stored heat in the oceans.
Ah, but according to Nasif, there is no heat stored in the oceans 🙂
George E. Smith (18:45:43) :
“”” Leif Svalgaard (07:26:12) :
Nasif Nahle (00:07:37) :
Heat is not a form of energy, but it is energy in transit. If that energy is not emitted and/or absorbed, but stored into a system, it’s not heat, but internal energy, i.e. potential and kinetic energy.
A definition has to be useful, and the definition of ‘heat’ you offer is not. “””
Unfortunatelly for you, it’s not my definition, but the definition given in any book or treatise on thermodynamics. Let’s start again:
Hendrick C. Van Ness is a distinguished professor of chemical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He’s unsurpassed as an expert in the field. Well, H. C. Van Ness included in his book Understanding Thermodynamics, on PAGE 17, the definition of heat. Here is it:
“Remember that Q is a term which is included to account for energy changes in the surroundings. However, we call it heat because it is energy transferred across the boundary of the system as a result of a temperature difference.”
Source: Thomas Engel and Philip Reid. Thermodynamics, Statistical, Thermodynamics & Kinetics. 2006. Pearson Education, Inc. PAGE 16:
“In thermodynamics, heat is defined as the amount of energy which flows through the boundaries between a system and the surroundings, as a consequence of a difference of temperature between the system and the surroundings. The same as the work, the heat has some important characteristics:
* Heat is transitory and only appear during a change of state of the system and the surroundings.”
Source: Potter, Merle C. and Somerton, Craig W. Thermodynamics for Engineers. Mc Graw-Hill. 1993. PAGE 40:
“Heat is energy transferred across the boundary of a system due to a difference in temperature between the system and the surroundings of the system. A system does not contain heat, it contains energy, and heat is energy in transit.”
Google:
http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistryglossary/a/heatdef.htm
And so it goes on, and on, and on…
Pasted from way up above; this exchange would lead me to observe that in the normal course of events; the rate of heat flow between the sun and the earth must be quite small, since “heat” as we know it is a property only of physical materials; composed of atoms or larger units; and although the sun spits out a lot of such matter that reaches earth it is peanuts compared to the electromagnetifc radiation transport of energy from sun to earth;
Nonsense. Heat is not a property of matter. You’re saying that there is not heat without physical material, which is absolutely nonsense.
If we had to rely on “heat” transport from sun to earth; we would all be in dire straits.
Nonsense again. Energy is transferred from one system to another through three modes, convection, conduction and radiation. Radiation doesn’t need a medium.
Note also that EM radiation is quite happy to make the reverse journey; so long wavelength photons of earth emitted infra red radiation; are accepted enthusiastically when the reach the sun; which they do in about equal quantities to those arriving at the moon from earth. So there is no second law violation involved in the mere emission and absorption of radiant energy.
Evidently, you’re not taking induced negative absorption into account.
Leif Svalgaard (19:29:31) :
It is ~4 Joules, so the unit of the heat is Joules, of course.
It’s not heat stored, but heat introduced to the system “water”. As heat crosses the boundary of the colder system, i.e. water in this case, it is no more heat, but kinetic or potential energy, i.e. internal energy.
Energy is not photons; photons do have energy, but so does a speeding locomotive, or a planet orbiting the Sun, or a rotating Earth, or the solar wind mass flux.
Now you’ll come with the novelty that photons have mass. See the mess where you’re sinking more and more each time you say something?
Leif Svalgaard (19:34:16) :
Pamela Gray (19:19:33) :
it is rather impossible to say with a straight face that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are responsible for stored heat in the oceans.
Ah, but according to Nasif, there is no heat stored in the oceans 🙂
It’s not my opinion… Would you like I start again quoting those authors who scientifically define heat?
Energy is stored. Heat is energy in transit from one system to another, but it is no more heat after it crosses the boundary of the second system (i.e. after that energy in transit is absorbed).
Nasif Nahle (19:47:55) :
It’s not heat stored, but heat introduced to the system “water”. As heat crosses the boundary of the colder system, i.e. water in this case, it is no more heat, but kinetic or potential energy, i.e. internal energy.
As I said many times, a definition is neither right nor wrong, but can be more or less useful, and the strict thermodynamic ‘we call it heat’ is not too useful in applications that are not steam engines. It makes perfect sense to say that if dQ is heat added to a system, then it now contains Q+dQ amounts of heat. This does not introduce any contradictions with thermodynamics, and is general usage in climatology, c.f. Spencer and Levitus [and Pamela and tallbloke and Steve F and …], for example. Strictly speaking, what is called the heat-content is actually the Enthalpy, but that is another story.
“Energy is not photons; photons do have energy, but so does a speeding locomotive, or a planet orbiting the Sun, or a rotating Earth, or the solar wind mass flux.”
Now you’ll come with the novelty that photons have mass.
As Einstein pointed out photons have an energy E = h*f Joule where h is Planck’s constant and f is the frequency of the photon. I don’t know from what mess you get the mass idea from.
Leif Svalgaard (20:40:57) :
As I said many times, a definition is neither right nor wrong, but can be more or less useful, and the strict thermodynamic ‘we call it heat’ is not too useful in applications that are not steam engines. It makes perfect sense to say that if dQ is heat added to a system, then it now contains Q+dQ amounts of heat. This does not introduce any contradictions with thermodynamics, and is general usage in climatology, c.f. Spencer and Levitus [and Pamela and tallbloke and Steve F and …], for example. Strictly speaking, what is called the heat-content is actually the Enthalpy, but that is another story.
I repeat, it doesn’t matter if six billion people use incorrectly the term, it would be incorrect, anyway; your concept of heat is incorrect. Heat is what it is, no matter if it is energy transferred into an engine or in any system in the known Universe. Heat is energy in transit.
Want to talk on enthalpy? Good, I’m all thermodynamics and know that a photon has not mass.
As Einstein pointed out photons have an energy E = h*f Joule where h is Planck’s constant and f is the frequency of the photon. I don’t know from what mess you get the mass idea from.
Your mess, Leif. You’re comparing photons with trains, planets and its orbits, stars, and other lumps of matter’s motions.
I can’t believe Leif is using other ‘bloggers’ here as references…
Nasif Nahle (20:40:04) :
“Ah, but according to Nasif, there is no heat stored in the oceans :-)”
It’s not my opinion… Would you like I start again quoting those authors who scientifically define heat?
As I said that definition is of little use as it is not really being used in thermodynamics. What is used is dQ, the amount of heat.
I just got Physics Today [August Issue]. On page 12, in discussing tidal interactions between Jupiter and its moon Io, the author states “It appears, therefore, that Io is close to a thermal steady state – that its volcanic activity is driven by the heat generated by tidal friction now, rather than by heat retained from a past period when tides might have been even higher”. A very sensible statement and yet another example of how scientific practice and word usage have finally moved out of the straightjacket of steam engine terminology.