From a Louisiana State University Press Release Oct 1, 2009
Algae and Pollen Grains Provide Evidence of Remarkably Warm Period in Antarctica’s History
Palynomorphs from sediment core give proof to sudden warming in mid-Miocene era
The ANDRILL drilling rig in Antarctica
For Sophie Warny, LSU assistant professor of geology and geophysics and curator at the LSU Museum of Natural Science, years of patience in analyzing Antarctic samples with low fossil recovery finally led to a scientific breakthrough. She and colleagues from around the world now have proof of a sudden, remarkably warm period in Antarctica that occurred about 15.7 million years ago and lasted for a few thousand years.
Last year, as Warny was studying samples sent to her from the latest Antarctic Geologic Drilling Program, or ANDRILL AND-2A, a multinational collaboration between the Antarctic Programs of the United States (funded by the National Science Foundation), New Zealand, Italy and Germany, one sample stood out as a complete anomaly.
“First I thought it was a mistake, that it was a sample from another location, not Antarctica, because of the unusual abundance in microscopic fossil cysts of marine algae called dinoflagellates. But it turned out not to be a mistake, it was just an amazingly rich layer,” said Warny. “I immediately contacted my U.S. colleague, Rosemary Askin, our New Zealand colleagues, Michael Hannah and Ian Raine, and our German colleague, Barbara Mohr, to let them know about this unique sample as each of our countries had received a third of the ANDRILL samples.”
Some colleagues had noted an increase in pollen grains of woody plants in the sample immediately above, but none of the other samples had such a unique abundance in algae, which at first gave Warny some doubts about potential contamination.
“But the two scientists in charge of the drilling, David Harwood of University of Nebraska – Lincoln, and Fabio Florindo of Italy, were equally excited about the discovery,” said Warny. “They had noticed that this thin layer had a unique consistency that had been characterized by their team as a diatomite, which is a layer extremely rich in fossils of another algae called diatoms.”
All research parties involved met at the Antarctic Research Facility at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Together, they sampled the zone of interest in great detail and processed the new samples in various labs. One month later, the unusual abundance in microfossils was confirmed.
Among the 1,107 meters of sediments recovered and analyzed for microfossil content, a two-meter thick layer in the core displayed extremely rich fossil content. This is unusual because the Antarctic ice sheet was formed about 35 million years ago, and the frigid temperatures there impede the presence of woody plants and blooms of dinoflagellate algae.
“We all analyzed the new samples and saw a 2,000 fold increase in two species of fossil dinoflagellate cysts, a five-fold increase in freshwater algae and up to an 80-fold increase in terrestrial pollen,” said Warny. “Together, these shifts in the microfossil assemblages represent a relatively short period of time during which Antarctica became abruptly much warmer.”
These palynomorphs, a term used to described dust-size organic material such as pollen, spores and cysts of dinoflagellates and other algae, provide hard evidence that Antarctica underwent a brief but rapid period of warming about 15 million years before present.
LSU’s Sophie Warny and her New Zealand colleague, Mike Hannah, sampling the ANDRILL cores at the Antarctic Research Facility.
“This event will lead to a better understanding of global connections and climate forcing, in other words, it will provide a better understanding of how external factors imposed fluctuations in Earth’s climate system,” said Harwood. “The Mid-Miocene Climate Optimum has long been recognized in global proxy records outside of the Antarctic region. Direct information from a setting proximal to the dynamic Antarctic ice sheets responsible for driving many of these changes is vital to the correct calibration and interpretation of these proxy records.”
These startling results will offer new insight into Antarctica’s climatic past – insights that could potentially help climate scientists better understand the current climate change scenario.
“In the case of these results, the microfossils provide us with quantitative data of what the environment was actually like in Antarctica at the time, showing how this continent reacted when climatic conditions were warmer than they are today,” said Warny.
According to the researchers, these fossils show that land temperatures reached a January average of 10 degrees Celsius – the equivalent of approximately 50 degrees Fahrenheit – and that estimated sea surface temperatures ranged between zero and 11.5 degrees Celsius. The presence of freshwater algae in the sediments suggests to researchers that an increase in meltwater and perhaps also in rainfall produced ponds and lakes adjacent to the Ross Sea during this warm period, which would obviously have resulted in some reduction in sea ice.
These findings most likely reflect a poleward shift of the jet stream in the Southern Hemisphere, which would have pushed warmer water toward the pole and allowed a few dinoflagellate species to flourish under such ice-free conditions. Researchers believe that shrub-like woody plants might also have been able to proliferate during an abrupt and brief warmer time interval.
“An understanding of this event, in the context of timing and magnitude of the change, has important implications for how the climate system operates and what the potential future response in a warmer global climate might be,” said Harwood. “A clear understanding of what has happened in the past, and the integration of these data into ice sheet and climate models, are important steps in advancing the ability of these computer models to reproduce past conditions, and with improved models be able to better predict future climate responses.”
While the results are certainly impressive, the work isn’t yet complete.
“The SMS Project Science Team is currently looking at the stratigraphic sequence and timing of climate events evident throughout the ANDRILL AND-2A drillcore, including those that enclose this event,” said Florindo. “A broader understanding of ice sheet behavior under warmer-than-present conditions will emerge.”
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P Wilson: It is impossible for me to have a scientific discussion with someone who just makes up the science as he goes along. What you are saying is simply nonsense. There is no other way to put it. Complete and utter nonsense that no respectable atmospheric scientist in the world would agree with.
Joel, I left out T2 because it fluctuates for various reasons, mainly PDO. And indeed the fluctuations of T2 are reflected by fluctuations in T12 minus the water vapor that blocked the IR along the way. But the reasons that T12 fluctuate that I talked about are twofold: the water vapor, and the changes in UT temperature, which come from changes in T2 and changes in the UT. The latter are essentially changes in the vertical temperature profile. That’s why the vertical temperature profile (in some form) is an input in all of the papers calculating UTWV.
The vertical temperature profile is, as Soden would say, “sensitive” to changes in UTWV. But it is also sensitive to lower altitude WV along with convection and subsidence which are essentially independent of WV. And indeed Soden’s model includes those with many assumptions about the weather since it can’t be modeled with fine enough granularity. The reason most models fail is the amount of convection and subsidence doesn’t really matter, only the distribution. For example, concentrated convection warms and dries the UT (and causes global cooling) whereas diffuse convection adds moisture to the UT and is net warning.
Also absolutely everything you have quoted from the paper indicates that HIRS does not measure UTWV. No other papers indicate that HIRS measures UTWV. Soden used the HIRS data to confirm his model temperatures, not to measure UTWV. But as I said, that really only confirms his assumptions about weather that went into the model.
Eric (skeptic): I’ve lost what you are saying at this point. I can sort of see what you might be getting at in regards to a change in the vertical temperature profile. However, since T_12 and T_2 look at temperature over a fairly similar range of heights, I don’t think this would matter very much. According to Soden, T_2 is a little broader, sampling from 200 Pa to 800 hPa whereas T_12 samples from 200 to 500 hPa. I suppose if you created some really bizarre change in the temperature profile, with dramatically different behavior in the 500 to 800 hPa relative to the 200 to 500 hPa than the models assume then there could be some error introduced. However, this seems rather unlikely and it would probably have to be pretty darn large before changes in T_12 – T_2 ceased to be at least a rough measure of changes in the UTWV. At any rate, Soden is not the only one who has looked at the satellite data on this…Dessler and co-authors, for example, have too. I don’t know what method they used to extract the UTWV but they seemed to get similar results.
Perhaps the best thing for you to do would be to write up a comment on Soden and submit it to Science.
Joel, The sampling distribution over the interval is not uniform. Also T12 samples over a broad range but is sensitive to changes in 200-500 mb WV (that is NOT its sampling range). The changes in T2-T12 would be influenced equally by the change in temperature profile and the change in UTWV, one doesn’t override the other.
My comment would say that I see no flaws in Soden’s approach or in his conclusions which they already knew. But without the details of his simulation I have no way of knowing if that was oversimplified, although I suspect it was. The weather modeling in particular has likely made assumptions about convection distribution that equate in some measure to roughly constant RH (or increasing UTWV). Therefore he only proves that his model matches his hypothesis for the lack of change in T12, no more and no less.
Dessler2000 uses a sounder for very precise measurement of UTH . The complete list of his papers is here http://atmo.tamu.edu/profile/sub/239 Obviously a sounder is a good validation of a simulation, better than any other measurement technique. He then acknowledges that his model is simple and overestimates UTH. He does not look at changes over many years as Soden does. Perhaps my comment to Science should be that Soden should redo his simulation and compare it to a sounder, although the problem with that is I don’t think the sounders have been around as long.
Joel Shore (10:40:57)
Its not a difficult principle to follow so here’s how it works.
NASA maintain that 41% of radiation from the total energy budget leaves the earth as infrared radiation. The radiation given off by an object is a function of its temperature – so normal temperature matter doesn’t give off much radiation. It is not 41% of the thermal energy budget that NASA use in this flowchart
http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/EDDOCS/images/Erb/components2.gif
ghg’s only absorb heat at the lower troposphere – in the case of c02 at subzero temperatures. 15 microns represents subzero, whereas normal temperatures, eg 15C-35C represent 4-12 microns. c02 cannot intercept or absorb such normal temperature matter.
If normal temperature matter was radiating this much energy as 15C-30C, at the bottom rate of 15C, it would be 390 watts per square metre. A huaman being gives off between 150-250 wpsm – which is the frequency at which thermal imaging detectors trace heat – in the 6-12 micron range. If this 41% figure were correct then thermal imaging equipment would be swamaed or overwhelmed with light and humans wouldn’t be detectable. so far from 41% it is 0-1% the Steffan-Boltzmann equation has been pulled into climate models to justify these ridiculous numbers, although there isn’t and proof or evidence of 41% re-radiation from the surface of the earth. This flowchart isn’t derived empirically – it is derived to satisfy a mathematical formula
I’ve read through the methodology in the detailed description section – interesting – so thanks for the link.
What is not discussed is the temperature scale. In the troposphere temperatures decrease with altitude, so “where c02 is at its most active” the temperature range is between -19 to-45C. There is no explanation as to how these temperatures can produce heat at surface level. NASA don’t offer one, the IPCC don’t.
P Wilson: It is really not worth arguing with you anymore. If you want to believe utter and complete nonsense, I simply can’t stop you. I’ve given you links to webpages where someone who works on infrared night vision systems says how they work. I’ve explained the necessity of radiative balance to you. I’ve told you that, far from there being no empirical justification for these numbers and equations, in fact, satellite remote sensing relies on their correctness everyday. Just ask Roy Spencer.
But, hey, “you can lead a horse to water…” I shouldn’t waste my time with someone who would rather spread his own ignorance than actually learn something. It is not because your comments are so brilliant that RealClimate decided to censor your posts but because they don’t have an infinite tolerance for pseudoscientific claims polluting their comments section. They are actually there to teach people who have at least some desire to learn.
This sounds suspiciously like “the atmospheric greenhouse effect violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics” nonsense promulgated by Gerlich and Tscheuschner. It is wrong. The NET heat flow is from the (warmer) earth’s surface to the (colder) upper troposphere as required by the Second Law. This may seem like it contradicts the idea of the upper troposphere heating the surface but the confusion lies in what the comparative case is, namely, the case of no greenhouse effect where all of what the earth radiates would escape into space. So, the fact that the upper troposphere returns any of the heat to the earth causes warming relative to the case where it all escapes to space, even if only a small fraction of what the upper troposphere receives is returned to the earth.
The night vision equipment works on those principles as you describe. They are a useful source of thermal emissivity for that reason. I don’t think we’re in disagreement there.
I’ve looked at NASA’s webpages on these flows, and there are some wild numbers, such as 117% of radiation given off as compared to incoming. That would increase the figure to 650wpsm at normal temperatures, if incoming radiation is 51% of solar energy which hits the top of the atmosphere. 1366wpsm minus 26% minus 16% = 792 W/m2. (from the flowchart). average surface temperature is 15C. The Stephan-Boltzmann constant maintains that an object at -19°C emits 235 W/m2 black body radiation. 15C + 19C = 34C (rounded to 33) degrees C warmer than it would be without an atmosphere. This figure comes from the Boltmann constant
These are made up numbers. Earth gives off 235wpsm at 50C. Even if it were giving off 450wpsm -that would be the equavalent to 27C being emitted psm. as our thermal imaging equipment shows, a human giving off 150-200wpsm detects lower amplitude radiation. Theoretically, non human matter should be over twice the temperature. It is through this constant that a doubling of c02 – actually, of anthropogenic c02 is inferred to cause a 1C rise in temperature. (it would be impossible to double c02 from 387ppm to 774ppm to 2100). the temperature cools as it acts as a heat sink, and explains why surface temperatures don’t correspond to the ghg theory with the Boltmann constant. Since ghg induced global warming can’t be proved at the surface – near surface, it is looked for elsewhere in the atmosphere, using the esoterical and made up formulae of why theere is a greenhouse effect further up. -it iis nothing more than a gradient comparison for what is *not* happening at the near surface. – only this increases the implausibility of the models due to the temperature difference.
At the mid-higher level of the troposhere, radiation is the limiting factor than ghg’s
P Wilson says:
You are getting confused. Look at this diagram, which gives actual numbers: http://www.windows.ucar.edu/earth/Atmosphere/images/radiation_budget_kiehl_trenberth_2008_big.jpg The amount emitted by the earth is ~396 W/m^2. And, your estimate of the amount from the sun is wrong.
The solar irradiance at the earth’s radius is 1366 W/m^2. However, this number has to be divided by 4 to get the average amount of radiation per m^2 of the earth’s surface. The reason for this is that the earth intercepts the sun’s radiation like a disc having an area of pi*r^2 but the total surface area of the earth is 4*pi*r^2. (Another way of looking at this is that, although 1366 W/m^2 hits the earth’s upper atmosphere at the place where the sun is directly overhead, at other parts of the earth it hits only obliquely and, of course, over half the earth where it is night it isn’t incident at all. The net effect of this, if you do the calculus is, of course, the same result, namely that the average amount of energy per unit area of the earth’s surface is the 1366 W/m^2 divided by 4.)
You are correct that the earth’s surface radiates an amount equal to ~117% of the total incoming solar radiation, but that works out to be ~396 W/m^2. And, the fact that it radiates more than it…or even the whole earth-atmosphere system…receives (239 W/m^2 once you account for the part of the 341 W/m^2 that is reflected by clouds or by the surface) is precisely the greenhouse effect. I.e., the surface of the Earth is at a temperature that is above what the blackbody temperature (~-19°C) is for a body that emits as much solar radiation (239 W/m^2) as the earth’s surface and atmosphere absorbs.
I have no idea where you get these numbers from and I don’t think that either one is correct.
Some years ago I came across a strange website where the author had done some elegant calculations. He estimated that an average human being naked in an enviroment of 300 degrees K would radiate about 2 million calories per day.
From this he concluded that Steff/Boltz must be wrong since humans lived quite well on a mere couple of thousand calories a day.
Kindest Regards
The 117% varies enormously from the 41% in the other flowchart used by NASA.
The 1366wpsm is the initial radiation from this has to be subtracted 26% reflected away, plus 16% claimed is absorbed by the atmosphere. That leaves 41% re-radiation, during the course of a day, since the earth rotates for most part of the earth to receive this amount of radiation. If the earth were fixed then that division by 4 would be justified.
Thats why NASA get their sums in a mess and produce different results according to They are based on satisfying mathematical equations and not empirical observations. Even if the numbers were scaled down to acceptable parameters, they are still ridiculously high. Part of the fallacy is the notion that outgoing energy has to equal incoming, which is a concept used in engineering. It works for engineers and mechanics but not scientists. Its too simplistic an equation. In electronics, then energy disippation is used more closely to the climate – as transistors use fans to cool them down. With radiation only and no air circulation transistors become very hot. If they were able to radiate either 41% or 117%, according to which ever arbitrary formula is used, cooling devices wouldn’t be needed to cool them down.
Like other matter however, even very hot metals give off less than 5% of their heat which is why they need cooling devices.
Earth matter is even less elegant that electronics. None of these mechanical formulae apply.
Joel. My 1st premise is that NASA are quite either unaware, or else are quite indifferent about this fraudulent use of mathematics
a jones: That writer probably was unaware of one important fact – a food “Calorie” is really a kilocalorie (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie ). If you consider that fact, then the estimate that he made is perhaps still a little high but probably only by about a factor of 2.
P Wilson says:
This is ridiculous. The rotation has nothing to do with what the average amount of W/m^2 received by the earth’s surface in a day. It just affects the distribution of that energy. I.e., because the earth rotates, a particular location sees a variation over the course of a day. The average amount of power per m^2 received over the course of a day over the whole earth is still 1366 W/m^2 divided by 4.
Where do you come up with these statements? I am beginning to think you must just be trolling because I don’t think anyone can really believe what you say with the vociferousness that you believe it. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself, your scientific qualifications, and how you came up with these ideas? You are certainly very interesting from a psychological / sociological point of view.
If outgoing energy does not equal incoming, the system will continue to heat up until it does. (If changes that affect outgoing energy or incoming energy are happening fast enough, the system might be out of balance…and, in fact, it is true that the Earth is currently a bit out of radiative balance because of the rapid increase in greenhouse gases. However, that imbalance is well less than 1%.)
That makes no sense at all. Transistors do not receive energy from the sun. They generate energy internally due to their resistance to the flow of electricity. And, indeed, while a transistor will initially heat up because the energy generated exceeds that which it is emitted, it will eventually reach a steady-state where it is indeed giving up as much energy (due to radiation, convection, and conduction) as is being generated.
regarding the final paragraph of your comment, Joel –
“eventually reach a steady-state where it is indeed giving up as much energy (due to radiation, convection, and conduction) as is being generated.”
you’re starting to understand thermodynamics at last. This demonstrates the principle 2nd law of thermodynamics that energy disippates to equilibrium at normal state.
According to your theory of AGW this energy should be conserved and not disippated or equalised.
Over the course of a day the earth receives the said amount of energy , not all in the same place of course. According to the 1st law this energy has to be conserved and re-emitted from the earth as a whole.
You have to conceive it as a chicken in a turning spit, and form a coefficient based on that principle than just dividing the total by 4
and further – earth doesn’t re-radiate either 41% or 117% of incoming radiation. Most exits through convection and conduction. You said that it is all re-radiation on another post. Even NASA in their flowchart say conduction is 70%, whilst radiation absorbed by the atmosphere is 15%
a jones (21:18:50)
Using the S-B constant, 5.67E-8 J K^-4 m^-2 s^-1, and T is the
temperature in Kelvin. So if you have a surface area of 1 m^2 and a
surface temperature of 310 K, you radiate at a rate of a little over
500 Watts. That means that you would have to eat over 10,000 Calories
per day just to maintain your temperature. In reality the net rate is around 150wpsm
the transistor principle was used to demonstrate outgoing radiation. If they could emit their own temperature at the rate inferred from the constant then there would be no need for fans to cool them down.
The explanation is that heating-cooling takes place through excitation of electons and moleculed from transfer of heat to the receiving body. The disippation process is the lack of excitation of this. It means that a body cannot be higher than the optimal energy received by the heat source, so if a 200C heat source heats pure water at normal atmospheric pressure to give a 100C boiling point, then a 2,000C heat source won’t increase its boiling point, just the rate at which it reaches it. There is no input having to match output formula involved
P Wilson says:
You know, I hate to pull rank on people but you are annoying me to the point where I can no longer resist. What exactly are your qualifications to be such an expert on thermodynamics? Mine are that I have a PhD in physics and have written papers in some of the top journals in the field (e.g., Physical Review Letters) on subjects in statistical physics, which forms the foundations upon which thermodynamics is built.
Frankly, I can’t make heads-or-tails of the rest of your post. I don’t understand why you feel there is a conflict between energy being conserved and it being “equalized”…i.e., the energy received by the earth from the sun equaling the energy it emits to space. And, I don’t know what you mean by energy being “dissipated”. Energy can be transferred into different forms (including mass through Einstein’s relation that E = mc^2) but it must be conserved.
There is a distinction between transfers from the earth’s surface to and from the atmosphere, which can occur by convection, conduction, and evaporation / condensation, and transfer from the Earth (meaning the entire earth system including the atmosphere) to space which can occur only by radiation.
Yes, life would be a b*tch if you were in outer space and were thus radiating heat without having any significant amount radiated toward you. However, in the world that we inhabit, we are surrounded by objects that are radiating heat also.
Joel, the physics PhD explains a lot. I just looked through a few of your papers, didn’t understand much of it, but looked solid to me. The problem a with many theoretical physicists (not a stereotype, just a fact, and not ad hominem) is that they like to use oversimplified models in their analysis of climate. I see them often at RC and they tend to parameterize weather (i.e. the distribution of water vapor). Water vapor is highly nonlinear and needs to be modeled at fine granularity to get an accurate depiction of convection, clouds, rain, etc.
It is certainly possible to model the weather at fine granularity and then use those results as parameters into a GCM. I have not seen much of that in the literature. It is quite obvious from the literature on calculating UTWV that line by line models for cloudless skies work, and some more complex models work for cloudy skies. But no models work unless the clouds and temperature profiles themselves are measured. IOW, they can’t get UTWV without knowing those things. Tying that back to the models, particularly the GCM’s, those won’t get accurate results without accurate depictions of clouds in particular (along with temperature profiles). Those come from accurate modeling of weather (not forecasting of course, the initial conditions can come from the model vice being measured in reality for weather forecasting).
“There is a distinction between transfers from the earth’s surface to and from the atmosphere, which can occur by convection, conduction, and evaporation / condensation, and transfer from the Earth (meaning the entire earth system including the atmosphere) to space which can occur only by radiation.”
This is what i have been saying in exchanges with you, although when *I* said it, I recall you said “Wrong. all energy leaving the earth is radiation from the surface. Radiation cannot leave the earth by convecttion”. Most heat leaves in the form of convection, conduction, and evaporation – convectional currents circulate the air for about a month, while small amounts of radiation – radiation is certainly not 41% – compete with convection for moving heat around.
The NASA “energy budget” claims 41% of the energy leaving the surface of the earth is in the form of radiation, while 59% is other methods of transfer (conduction and evaporation. ) This is a remarkable thing to maintain – that 41% leaves as radiation. These figures is arrived at with no discernable evidence.
Relating this back to c02, there is not disagreement that c02 absorbs 8% of radiation from any quarter. That 8% is fixed regardless of c02 concentrations. For present purposes, assume that c02 absorbs 8% of all radiation and not just the 15 microns available to it, which would take it down to less than 3%. IPCC maintain that current c02 levels lead to a 7.2C increase in temperature than if there were no c02, and that 4.3wpsm would be the increase from a doubling of c02 – the 41% radiation is also used by the IPCC. However, the claimed increase to 2.7C gives the following anomaly. The S-B constant gives 390wpsm at average temperature of 59C. 41% of this is 160wpsm That means c02 is absorbing 53% of radiation. This is a known mathematical anomaly, That 53% results in a temperature of 7.2C The figure of 7.2% is purely arbitrary, also arrived at with no evidence, and is an assumption that doesn’t form a rational equation when any attempt to resolve it is made with mathematics.
If 8% ss used with these spurious mathematics, and improbable radiation budgets instead of 53% then it results in 8% of 41% outgoing radiation to produce 1.1C for all c02 and not 7.2%. Then, the result of doubling c02 would be .015C and not the 1C proposed by the IPCC
“Yes, life would be a b*tch if you were in outer space and were thus radiating heat without having any significant amount radiated toward you. However, in the world that we inhabit, we are surrounded by objects that are radiating heat also.”
That still doesn’t explain why thermal imaging devices – something we’ve agreed on that produces images of heat in the 5-12 micron range – can pick up a human temperature signal of net 150-200 watts psm (for argument sake, assuming he is lying down and doing nothing), but not radiation that is supposed to be a higher value. For the S-B constant, -19C produces 250wpsm
Eric (skeptic) says:
Yeah…We have that reputation when we move into other fields. One of the other students of my adviser who was a few years ahead of me did some really cool work with her postdoctoral adviser showing how they could use a simple block and spring model and reproduce the power law distribution of earthquake intensities on a fault that seismologists had discovered. Her fellow physicists thought it was cool but the geologists / seismologists would always say tell her how she was neglecting this and that important aspect of real earthquake faults… and so forth. We, as physicists, thought that they were missing the whole point, which was that to get this basic property of earthquakes that they saw empirically, you didn’t need all of that complication…It could be reproduced with just some very basic physics!
Oh well, I guess we physicists will always be misunderstood! Seriously though, I think climate is complex enough that you need people looking at it from different levels. And, I talked to an atmospheric scientist recently who is pretty much from a physics background and he was decrying the fact that the climate models are very engineering-like and are throwing in everything but the kitchen sink.
In reality, I think it takes all kinds, and I think it is good both to have the people of the more engineering-bent trying to model the system with as much fidelity and detail as they can and also the people of the more physics-bent either trying to look in more detail at the individual fundamental processes (such as nucleation of droplets and ice crystals in clouds…which is what the guy that I mentioned above did) or trying to look at the whole system but from a much more simplified perspective.
What is your background, by the way?
Anyway, regardless of any contretemps (Joel), the only justified human induced heating is the Urban Heat Island effect, or albedo changes caused by land useage change
oops! re: (20:55:08)
The S-B constant gives 390wpsm at average temperature of 59C.
should read
The S-B constant gives 390wpsm at average temperature of 59F, or 15C.