Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Figure 1. The Experimental Setup
I keep reading statements in various places about how it is indisputable “simple physics” that if we increase the amount of atmospheric CO2, it will inevitably warm the planet. Here’s a typical example:
In the hyperbolic language that has infested the debate, researchers have been accused of everything from ditching the scientific method to participating in a vast conspiracy. But the basic concepts of the greenhouse effect is a matter of simple physics and chemistry, and have been part of the scientific dialog for roughly a century.
Here’s another:
The important thing is that we know how greenhouse gases affect climate. It has even been predicted hundred years ago by Arrhenius. It is simple physics.
Unfortunately, while the physics is simple, the climate is far from simple. It is one of the more complex systems that we have ever studied. The climate is a tera-watt scale planetary sized heat engine. It is driven by both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial forcings, a number of which are unknown, and many of which are poorly understood and/or difficult to measure. It is inherently chaotic and turbulent, two conditions for which we have few mathematical tools.
The climate is composed of six major subsystems — atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, lithosphere, biosphere, and electrosphere. All of these subsystems are imperfectly understood. Each of these subsystems has its own known and unknown internal and external forcings, feedbacks, resonances, and cyclical variations. In addition, each subsystem affects all of the other subsystems through a variety of known and unknown forcings and feedbacks.
Then there is the problem of scale. Climate has crucially important processes at physical scales from the molecular to the planetary and at temporal scales from milliseconds to millennia.
As a result of this almost unimaginable complexity, simple physics is simply inadequate to predict the effect of a change in one of the hundreds and hundreds of things that affect the climate. I will give two examples of why “simple physics” doesn’t work with the climate — a river, and a block of steel. I’ll start with a thought experiment with the block of steel.
Suppose that I want to find out about how temperature affects solids. I take a 75 kg block of steel, and I put the bottom end of it in a bucket of hot water. I duct tape a thermometer to the top end in the best experimental fashion, and I start recording how the temperature changes with time. At first, nothing happens. So I wait. And soon, the temperature of the other end of the block of steel starts rising. Hey, simple physics, right?
To verify my results, I try the experiment with a block of copper. I get the same result, the end of the block that’s not in the hot water soon begins to warm up. I try it with a block of glass, same thing. My tentative conclusion is that simple physics says that if you heat one end of a solid, the other end will eventually heat up as well.
So I look around for a final test. Not seeing anything obvious, I have a flash of insight. I weigh about 75 kg. So I sit with my feet in the bucket of hot water, put the thermometer in my mouth, and wait for my head to heat up. This experimental setup is shown in Figure 1 above.
After all, simple physics is my guideline, I know what’s going to happen, I just have to wait.
And wait … and wait …
As our thought experiment shows, simple physics may simply not work when applied to a complex system. The problem is that there are feedback mechanisms that negate the effect of the hot water on my cold toes. My body has a preferential temperature which is not set by the external forcings.
For a more nuanced view of what is happening, let’s consider the second example, a river. Again, a thought experiment.
I take a sheet of plywood, and I cover it with some earth. I tilt it up so it slopes from one edge to the other. For our thought experiment, we’ll imagine that this is a hill that goes down to the ocean.
I place a steel ball at the top edge of the earth-covered plywood, and I watch what happens. It rolls, as simple physics predicts, straight down to the lower edge. I try it with a wooden ball, and get the same result. I figure maybe it’s because of the shape of the object.
So I make a small wooden sled, and put it on the plywood. Again, it slides straight down to the ocean. I try it with a miniature steel shed, same result. It goes directly downhill to the ocean as well. Simple physics, understood by Isaac Newton.
As a final test, I take a hose and I start running some water down from the top edge of my hill to make a model river. To my surprise, although the model river starts straight down the hill, it soon starts to wander. Before long, it has formed a meandering stream, which changes its course with time. Sections of the river form long loops, the channel changes, loops are cut off, new channels form, and after while we get something like this:
Figure 2. Meanders, oxbow bends, and oxbow lakes in a river system. Note the old channels where the river used to run.
The most amazing part is that the process never stops. No matter how long we run the river experiment, the channel continues to change. What’s going on here?
Well, the first thing that we can conclude is that, just as in our experiment with the steel block, simple physics simply doesn’t work in this situation. Simple physics says that things roll straight downhill, and clearly, that ain’t happening here … it is obvious we need better tools to analyze the flow of the river.
Are there mathematical tools that we can use to understand this system? Yes, but they are not simple. The breakthrough came in the 1990’s, with the discovery by Adrian Bejan of the Constructal Law. The Constructal Law applies to all flow systems which are far from equilibrium, like a river or the climate.
It turns out that these types of flow systems are not passive systems which can take up any configuration. Instead, they actively strive to maximize some aspect of the system. For the river, as for the climate, the system strives to maximize the sum of the energy moved and the energy lost through turbulence. See the discussion of these principles here, here, here, and here. There is also a website devoted to various applications of the Constructal Law here.
There are several conclusions that we can make from the application of the Constructal Law to flow systems:
1. Any flow system far from equilibrium is not free to take up any form as the climate models assume. Instead, it has a preferential state which it works actively to approach.
2. This preferential state, however, is never achieved. Instead, the system constantly overshoots and undershoots that state, and does not settle down to one final form. The system never stops modifying its internal aspects to move towards the preferential state.
3. The results of changes in such a flow system are often counterintuitive. For example, suppose we want to shorten the river. Simple physics says it should be easy. So we cut through an oxbow bend, and it makes the river shorter … but only for a little while. Soon the river readjusts, and some other part of the river becomes longer. The length of the river is actively maintained by the system. Contrary to our simplistic assumptions, the length of the river is not changed by our actions.
So that’s the problem with “simple physics” and the climate. For example, simple physics predicts a simple linear relationship between the climate forcings and the temperature. People seriously believe that a change of X in the forcings will lead inevitably to a chance of A * X in the temperature. This is called the “climate sensitivity”, and is a fundamental assumption in the climate models. The IPCC says that if CO2 doubles, we will get a rise of around 3C in the global temperature. However, there is absolutely no evidence to support that claim, only computer models. But the models assume this relationship, so they cannot be used to establish the relationship.
However, as rivers clearly show, there is no such simple relationship in a flow system far from equilibrium. We can’t cut through an oxbow to shorten the river, it just lengthens elsewhere to maintain the same total length. Instead of being affected by a change in the forcings, the system sets its own preferential operating conditions (e.g. length, temperature, etc.) based on the natural constraints and flow possibilities and other parameters of the system.
Final conclusion? Because climate is a flow system far from equilibrium, it is ruled by the Constructal Law. As a result, there is no physics-based reason to assume that increasing CO2 will make a large difference to the global temperature, and the Constructal Law gives us reason to think that it may make no difference at all. In any case, regardless of Arrhenius, the “simple physics” relationship between CO2 and global temperature is something that we cannot simply assume to be true.
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Since CO2 is located high in the atmosphere where it is colder, it radiates less intense then the earth, thus resulting in an greenhouse effect.
I have seen this a few times, and I have a major problem with it.
If a CO2 molecule receives a quantum of radiation in a particular band, say 1400 nm, then it has to re-radiate that at the same band, or absorb part of the energy by going to a higher state and re-radiating out at a less energetic band. It might then lose that energy state and radiate out the new band. In the long run though every Joule in is emitted. Basically 1400 nm in, means 1400 nm out, albeit split into two pieces in some cases.
But this is true of the gas at any temperature. The alleged “cold” CO2 does nothing hot CO2 doesn’t do. So the temperature of the outer layer makes no difference to the way energy is released.
I can also understand that the temperature of the CO2 might affect which radiation it will absorb. If the cold CO2 is blocking an extra band not otherwise covered by the atmosphere, it will add a greenhouse layer not previously present. While this may be what people mean, it sure isn’t what they say is happening.
So the temperature of the band at which the CO2 is emitting to space seems to me to be entirely irrelevant.
For every extra “cold” CO2 molecule in the outer atmosphere, there is one less O2 molecule there. It’s not like the addition of CO2 affects the effective outer temperature that the earth is radiating at.
I would appreciate a fuller explanation please.
@Allan M (13:55:07) :
“The first 30 feet of the earth has about the same temperature as the earth (Why?)”
You can measure that can’t you?
“Since CO2 is located high in the atmosphere…
And everywhere else too.”
The CO2 that is located lower does radiate too, but part of its radiation is absorbed by the CO2 above it. So the higher the gas the more of its radiation can escape to space. On average most of the radiation from CO2 to outer space comes from the CO2 higher in the atmosphere.
This in contrast to water vapor, that is mostly found in the lower part of the troposphere.
For my previous message read WUWT for WWUT. BTW, I believe transparent gasses are not black bodies so they can only emit black-body thermal radiation at wavelengths they also absorb. This is why I believe that convective heat transfer must continue as thermal radiation from the cloud-tops.
ThinkingBeing (13:50:32) :
The predictions come from the very simple fact that an increase in CO2 will raise temperatures 0.5C, and an increase of 0.5C in temperature will increase the amount of moisture in the atmosphere in a way that will increase temperatures by another 3C (which no, does not further increase temperatures… the effects are not simple and additive, and the 3C already takes into account any such progression).
Raise temperatures 0.5C from a temperature of what? What is the temperature that will cause 3C worth of water vapor to be added to the air?
Don’t feed the trolls
ThinkingBeing
Simplifying complex systems with a monotonic rebuttal.
>>
Les Francis (22:06:09) :
Physics.
According to the laws of physics and aerodynamics, it is impossible for the humble bumblebee to fly
<<
This is way off topic, but there has been considerable advancement of knowledge in this area, and many papers published about it. Basically two things are different for insects: 1) there’s a scaling difference (the air looks more viscous to an insect than to larger animals and, of course, human airfoils), and 2) insects operate their airfoils differently than either birds or humans.
The primary thing insects do is to operate their airfoils nearly at stall. They increase their angle-of-attack until the airfoil stalls, then they quickly lower the angle-of-attack to regain the airfoil’s boundary layer. The process repeats. This technique allows for smaller airfoils. We don’t usually operate our airfoils at stall.
It’s interesting that about 325 million years ago, there were dragonflies with wingspans of up to 70 centimeters (28 inches). These insects’ wings lacked some of the modern features of current dragonflies; even so, they probably couldn’t fly in today’s atmosphere–too thin. Apparently the ancient atmospheres were thicker (likely due to far more CO2).
Jim
Excuse me?
Where, then, is this heat?
After this tripe, dude, there is no point even insulting you. You’ve managed to do that yourself quite effectively.
ThinkingBeing (14:16:13) :
“No, the point I see in this article is to explain that complex systems behave in anti-intuitive ways, and then to imply that climate scientists don’t understand this, something that you have clearly fallen for.”
There is pharmacological help available for sufferers of paranoia. No, the great majority of those in the general population who “believe” in CAGW, and believe they have a basis for doing so, have been swayed by the claims from the climate science community that it is all very simple, is based on 100 year old “science”, yada, yada. They are convinced because they see the CO2 is rising, and CO2 can trap heat, and that is as far as they go.
“If you can’t understand the science…”
Why do you feel a need to make such insults? Do you feel it will win people over to your side? Or, does it just give you a release to vent your frustration?
“I myself have studied the climate science in detail…”
Yeah, I know. We’ve sparred before. You hang out at Tamino’s place and believe sarcasm and ridicule put you on an elevated plane, where effort and real understanding are not required. I recall I slammed you pretty hard when you tried to pass off a Tamino rant as being definitive proof that Spencer had made a silly error in his analysis of the relationship between SST and CO2 concentration, and it was pretty obvious that Tamino himself had made a silly error.
Here’s a ticket for the clue bus: You are not as technically adept as you think you are, and there are people posting here who know more than you do.
RJ (14:18:54) :
“Can you please point me to an article or study that demonstrates the backcast capability of models?”
Implying what, that I was lying? Do your own work. Use google. Read. Learn. Stop parroting things without thinking. This information is readily available, in abundance. I’m not going to hold your hand.
Joel (14:24:21) :
“I think you’re being totally naive with this statement. If anything, we’ve learned that many in the “inner circle” of the climate science community have been more involved with propaganda and nudging numbers in ways to prove their specific points — they act much more like eco-activists than objective scientists.”
This is laughable. I read a lot of the “Climategate” (silly, sales-pitch name) stuff in detail, down to reading the actual computer code referenced. I’ve also read most of the papers. I never once found anything that suggested anything other than human beings doing a difficult job and getting frustrated because it’s so easy for people that want to obfuscate things to accomplish their goal (like this post!!!!).
There is no “inner circle.” There is very little propaganda as compared to that of the denialsphere. And there was no nudging of numbers at all. You are being easily and willfully mislead, because it plays into what you want to believe. As such, I can’t help you.
You won’t believe any of this, and I’m not going to try to convince you. Believe what you want, but don’t call me naive. I understand it, and the ramifications of everything involved, more than enough for my own satisfaction.
@DocMartyn (14:21:22) :
“So the warm CO2 molecules emit a broad emission spectrum and the cold CO2 molecules can only absorb a very narrow set of wavelengths. The colder the ones at the top, the less of the spectra of the warmer ones they can absorb.”
The spectrum CO2 gass can absorb and radiate is the independent of temperature. The intensity of the radiation depends on the temperature. The higher the temperature the more intense the radiation. So the colder at the top the less is radiated out. If it were warmer at the top then at the ground, greenhouse gasses would have a cooling effect.
ThinkingBeing:
“The predictions come from the very simple fact that …….. an increase of 0.5C in temperature will increase the amount of moisture in the atmosphere in a way that will increase temperatures by another 3C”
If it’s such a simple fact, then you’ll no doubt have absolutely no difficulty explaining it to us.
O/T but not as much as that troll:
Found a german article about Kirkby’s CLOUD-9 experiment at CERN in Die Welt.
http://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/weltraum/article5304764/Sonnenwind-gibt-Antworten-zum-Klimawandel.html
It’s a conservative news outlet but as mainstream as it gets! Title in english:
“Solar Wind answers questions re climate change.”
Re: scienceofdoom (21:25:35) :
“The visible climate community has talked itself and its followers into the view that weather is chaotic, but because climate is the average of weather it isn’t chaotic.
This I don’t understand.”
Its not a case of understanding – this view is just plain wrong.
Before, I elaborate however, it is important to differentiate between a CHAOTIC system and a COMPLEX system.
Chaotic systems are typically very simple non-linear systems doing simple things in a deterministic fashion (we can easily write down the governing set of equations for chaotic systems). The non-linearity means that the system is extremely sensitive to initial conditions. If we know the initial conditions of such a system exactly, then they are 100% predictable. If we are off by an infinitesimally small amount, however, the evolution of the system will quickly become unpredictable (the classic “butterfly effect” of Lorenz). Now, one property of chaotic systems is that they are scale independent or “fractal”- examine a chaotic system from 10,000 ft or through a microscope – you can’t tell the difference. Therefore, “zooming out” or waiting around for a long time and recording the systems “average” behavior won’t help, the properties of that average will exhibit the same chaos that it did at the finer scale.
The Weather and Climate however, are a classic example of a COMPLEX system. A complex system contains multitudes of highly inter-dependent non-linear mechanisms, each of which (in isolation) often exhibits chaotic behavior. Importantly, you cannot write down an equation which describes the behavior of a complex system. Similarly, it is extremely difficult to observe the entire complex system and figure out what each of the inter-dependent mechanism are or how they are related to one another or the system as a whole.
One behavior of such systems, however, are very interesting. They exhibit something called “emergence” or “self-organization”. For periods of time, the system can “settle” down and appear to favor one type of behavior, only to go through a phase transition and do something else for a while.
A trivial analog is the human body (a complex system): It is capable of crawling, walking or running (amongst other things). Yet, even by fully understanding how a head, trunk, or leg works you will never understand crawling, walking or running or why it switches from one behavior to another.
ThinkingBeing (15:08:16) :
“You won’t believe any of this, and I’m not going to try to convince you. Believe what you want, but don’t call me naive. I understand it, and the ramifications of everything involved, more than enough for my own satisfaction.”
I’m an eternal optimist, so I read that as “he’s leaving”. Whatever will we do without the ThinkingBeing’s enlightened abuse? “You’re stupid, and I know all, or I would if I put any effort into it, which you obviously haven’t.” You have to admit, it’s a pretty compelling argument.
ThinkingBeing:
“But I’m not going to argue the validity of the models on these pages with anyone here. This is the land of zealots who have already made up their minds, then, with their minds closed, have chosen to very heroically label themselves as “skeptics.” So there’s no way to educate them, and no point in trying.”
So what exactly are you trying to achieve here then?
Peter (15:18:31) :
ThinkingBeing:
“The predictions come from the very simple fact that …….. an increase of 0.5C in temperature will increase the amount of moisture in the atmosphere in a way that will increase temperatures by another 3C”
“If it’s such a simple fact, then you’ll no doubt have absolutely no difficulty explaining it to us.”
And why global temperature anomaly is not 6C hotter than claimed.
ThinkingBeing (15:08:16) states “The predictions come from the very simple fact that an increase in CO2 will raise temperatures 0.5C, and an increase of 0.5C in temperature will increase the amount of moisture in the atmosphere in a way that will increase temperatures by another 3C (which no, does not further increase temperatures… the effects are not simple and additive, and the 3C already takes into account any such progression)”
I just thought I would repeat your simplistic model in case anyone missed it.
Apologies, if redundant, but I read, skimmed, read, skimmed, and saw no criticism of the linear nature of warmists’ GCM math methods.
Weather and climate are chaotic, as W.E. has illustrated.
Linear math CAN NOT simulate a chaotic system. The “scientists” who are relying on the GCMs to prove their points are either math-ignorant or deliberately deceptive.
No, I’m not a mathematician. Just 40 years of computer system & model design, management, and audit of methodology and data integrity. These “models” produce intended results, no more and no less.
Here’s a great example of what we are up against, in the form of a vacuous blog rebuttal to the article above. “His argument? Well, rivers don’t run straight to the sea; they meander. Ergo, water doesn’t run downhill in a complex system. Consequently, no global warming. In another place he argues that humans are not metal, therefore, no global warming.”:
http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/the-unbearable-lightness-of-climate-denialist-thought/
Here’s another thread on the same site where Anthony commented to set the record straight:
http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2009/12/27/anthony-watts-dont-bother-me-with-the-sarcastic-facts/-with-the-sarcastic-facts/#comment-94928
REPLY: Yes it is a hilarious read over there, but IMHO he’s best left ignored. All of this bluster and posturing is just an attempt to draw attention to his blog. The strategy is that if he says ridiculous and inflammatory things, he’ll get some attention. My advice is to simply ignore him, he’s unreachable. – Anthony
THE GREAT OZ HAS SPOKEN!
Bart (15:23:37): Whatever will we do without the ThinkingBeing’s enlightened abuse?
I found his comments were interesting. After all we have to admit that his point of view is, thanks to MSM, is the predominant viewpoint out there. I wish he would answer my question:
“Still simulating the climate may be impossible. How do we know that it is not impossible?”
Surely many honest, skilled and hard working climate scientists outside the inner circle know 10x or possibly 100x more about climate and climate models than anyone else. Still simulating the climate may be impossible. Do we have any indications that simulating the climate is at all possible?
ThinkingBeing
“I myself have studied the climate science in detail…”
You’ve watched An Inconvenient Truth 3 times or 4 times?
The experts – IPCC say…
ClimateGate does not exist…
You should rename yourself “AlmostBeing”
Glenn (15:28:45) :
Peter (15:18:31) :
ThinkingBeing:
“The predictions come from the very simple fact that …….. an increase of 0.5C in temperature will increase the amount of moisture in the atmosphere in a way that will increase temperatures by another 3C”
“If it’s such a simple fact, then you’ll no doubt have absolutely no difficulty explaining it to us.”
And why global temperature anomaly is not 6C hotter than claimed
——————–
Maybe it already IS 6C hotter…. just not hotter than the starting point claimed. I.e., we know CO2 is a GHG, but there’s already a built-in 6C component we’ve already benefitted from but that started lower down on the temp scale. Each increment doesn’t give us another 6C boost ’cause it’s a lognormal relationship. If it induced runaway warming, partygoers would soon find themselves driven out of their night club from the heat because of all that moist, CO2-rich air they’ve been exhaling all night.
(Is alcohol a GHG?)
“”” JP (10:44:16) :
George Smith,
You did a nice pithy summary of CO2 as a climate forcing agent; however, you did leave out one thing. That one of the signatures of CO2 induced AGW is a mid-tropespheric tropical hot spot. The lack of one even bothers Gavin Schmidt. “””
Well actually, I left out a whole bunch of things; so a computer generated mid troposphere hot spot; was not singled out for special exclusion.
My whole point is that as near as I can fathom, the logarithmic relationship between CO2 abundance in the atmosphere, and the mean global surface temperature; or lower troposphere if you prefer; is one that is simply dictated out of the blue by Schneider’s expostion of the concept of “climate sensitivity.” Maybe the silliest idea I’ve heard of in a long time. But no Physics that I’m aware of would set up such a logarithmic relationship, and we most certainly don’t have a long enough (ratio wise) set of accurately measured data to even suggest that it is any more logarithmic than it is linear; heck we don’t even have any believable evidence that they are related at all ; other than some empirical data that suggests that global temperature changes are followed eventually by CO2 abundance changes.
We know for example that the decay time of the charge on a capacitance shorted out by a resistance; follows the logarithm of the charge ratio; and it follows it as accurately as can be measured, from the highest charged Voltages, down to the final noise level. That is a real logarithmic relationship.
CO2 and global temperature have not been show to do any such thing. The life of a sample of a radioactive isotope has been shown to follow the logartithm of the ratio of the amount remaining to the original amount; accurately within the statistics of such processes, once again down to the limits of detectability; that too is reasonably a logarithmic relationship.
We can’t show a logarithmic relationship between CO2 abundance in the atmosphere, and mean global surface or lower troposphere temperature, for even a single doubling of the CO2, let alone some orders of magnitude range.
So let us please drop this logarithmic silliness; which is every bit as silly as the concept of a “climate sensitivity”.
I’m sorry for all the climate science students who were taught this in school; but don’t blame me for simply pointing out the fallacy of that idea.
Paul Vaughan (23:40:54) ” http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/QBO_fGLAAM_fLOD.png ”
tallbloke (00:25:12) “Interesting Hiccup in the early-mid ’70’s”
The ’73 hiccup can be traced to a hard phase-opposition of SOI & QBO (or f(aa) & QBO, if you prefer a geomagnetic angle, which I suspect you might).
What I’ve presented here so far is just the tip of the iceberg. With the results I have, I know exactly what calculations need to be done to help the world see the multiway spatiotemporal phase-relations. I need a team of programmers with expertise from different fields, including GIS (geographic information systems).
What is getting lost in the lust for “global” variables is the spatial phase-relations. The correlations can be shown to drift in space, causing *apparent breakdown in temporal phase-relations.