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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RE: Mooloo (14:16:48) :
“Why is cold CO2 somehow more effective as a greenhouse gas than warm CO2? Why does it, allegedly, matter that CO2 is in the outer atmosphere?”
I expect that CO2 is much less of a greenhouse gas in the upper atmosphere, above the tropopause, because a CO2 absorption-band photon is much more likely to escape through the remaining thin atmosphere. I believe that well over 90 percent of the mass of the atmosphere is below the tropopause.
As convection stops at the tropopause, I would expect that most heat must escape the Earth from that point on as radiation from cloud-tops or from the ground.
Mr Ace
You say “The temperature of the high CO2 is colder than the temperature of the surface because of the pressure difference (lower pressure means colder).”
Why is the temperature ot which low satellites commonly orbit about 1,200 deg C?
You are getting confused by the ability of very dilute gases to make an object like a thermometer “feel” hot. The temperature of a multi-molecular gas is determined by the rapidity of motion about its bonds.
ThinkingBeing,
Here’s a simple question for you.
Exactly what is the evidence that man’s CO2 is causing global warming ?
Please also give a page number reference to the latest IPCC report where this evidence is presented.
You can invent theories to claim that the world will warm by 0.5 degrees (based on the negative feedback that we see in natural systems) or 3 degrees (based on unstable positive feedbacks) because of a doubling of CO2. You can also invent theories that the world will cool towards another ice age because of low solar activity. It is easy to build models around whatever theory you have, to get the results you want. However, without evidence, the popular theory of man’s CO2 causing global warming is nothing more than political propaganda.
Re Bart 12:44:34
You say “If anything, it’s the constant denier arguments that try to oversimplify things.”
I do not think that your comment sits well with climate modellers who demand ever increasing teraflops when they cannot (a) pose the main questions properly and (b) insert quit points when they realise that an approach is taking them nowhere.
kadaka (15:31:20)
While this is fascinating to some, economics is way out of place on this thread. Could I please ask you to discuss it on a thread whose subject is economics?
Many thanks,
w.
DirkH (16:14:55) :
Typical. Note that they push the standard line:
Geoff Sherrington (16:52:49) :
You got the wrong guy. That was ThinkingBeing (14:16:13). He was directing his ad hom at moi.
I hate it when I forget to close the tag. Moderator, can you substitute this?
DirkH (16:14:55) :
Typical. Note that they push the standard line:
The untutored say “oh, so it balances, and the anthropogenic contributions accumulate independently.” But, this is not how dynamic systems work. A balance never exists in nature for any length of time by happenstance. Balances are established because there are two forces of equal strength opposing one another, and any additional push from either side will result in increased resistance from the other side. The equilibrium can shift, but it does not just skate away.
@Willis Eschenbach (17:15:08) :
No problem, I was done anyway. Just a quick sideline discussion.
PS: Good article.
kadaka (17:53:20) :
Thanks, kadaka. Much appreciated.
w.
RE: RJ (10:56:19) :
Yes, you are correct in your points presented. I doubt that he died believing the sun was made of coal, but he more than likely grew up being taught this. The point is that knowledge changes over time. I remember being told (by the scientists) about mass starvation by the year 2000. And don’t forget that back in Arrhenius’ time the concensus was that man would never step foot on the moon. It wasn’t their fault, it was just the way they saw things at that time. He altered the sensitivity of CO2 several times as he became more knowledgable, but his methods were still lacking. That is why I giggle every time someone references him- and Wiki. Keep fighting the good fight.
Willis Eschenbach (20:27:57) :
“You don’t know me. You don’t know my motives. You don’t know my intentions. You don’t have a clue why I do what I do. And yet you call me a liar? I write what I believe to be true. It might not be true, I have been wrong before many times, but I believe it is true.”
You know what, you are right on this. I made the assumption that like many [snip-don’t use that word again. ~ ctm] you knew exactly what you were doing, in my mind artfully misrepresenting the facts, and that you were doing it purposefully.
I can see that you honestly do believe in what you said. I was wrong to call your post disingenuous, and for that I apologize.
I would point out, however, that any number of people here heaped a whole lot more abuse on me, and most of them with rather uneducated and downright silly comments. This also lead me to misinterpret at least one poster’s honest question (about model backcasting) as abusive, rhetorical sarcasm.
It’s sort of a problem with the whole debate… there are too many people that are ready to accuse instead of discuss, and I fell into that trap, then fell in deeper when other people attacked me.
But, on the other side of the coin… if you are going to create a pet theory of your own (in this case, implying that all climate scientists are silly to think that they can even attempt to understand and model the climate because it’s just too complicated), you are going to need a thicker skin. You can’t be all happy because your buddies told you how wonderful your post was, and then get all bent out of shape because one person contested it.
And I’ll point out that for all of the detailed points I made, your only response was to get all in a huff about my calling you a liar. You immediately wanted to take your ball and go home.
But… I did make my points, and would certainly, publicly retract the implication that your post was purposely disingenuous. That was unfair, and untrue, and for that I apologize.
Wow, this is one of the most befuddled posts that I’ve read for a long time. The prefix “pseudo” comes to mind. Do you really understand constructal mechanics? Do you understand climate modelling at all, or do you simply disagree with results that don’t sit well with you? Silly stuff.
ThinkingBeing (21:37:38) :
Without evidence,
Without proof,
There is no truth,
There is no reality,
There is only opinion and perception.
Dr Pielke found an interesting scientific point of the model ensembles http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/12/consistent-with-fallacy-how-not-to.html. He added 50 new arbitrary models to the IPCC’s ensemble of models and discusses about its impact on the confidence on the models.
He is about to say aloud that traditional statistics does not apply to computer model runs and chaotic systems.
Peter (22:30:50) :
Wow, this is one of the most befuddled posts that I’ve read for a long time. The prefix “pseudo” comes to mind. Do you really understand constructal mechanics? Do you understand climate modelling at all, or do you simply disagree with results that don’t sit well with you? Silly stuff.
Silly is as silly does.
You have not demonstrated your understanding of constructal mechanics, you denigrate and you presume, following to the letter your sentence before last.
Come to think of it, since you are an expert on climate modeling, I would be interested in your debunking my precis on climate models given in anna v (12:22:47) : , in this thread.
ThinkingBeing (21:37:38) :
“I would point out, however, that any number of people here heaped a whole lot more abuse on me, and most of them with rather uneducated and downright silly comments.”
Gimme a break. You deserved it and then some. You came in spouting irrelevant nonsense and calling everyone “deniers” and “liars”. The very screen name “ThinkingBeing” is an implied insult, and a joke on you. And, you even finish your little plea for pity by piling on more abuse.
You have nothing of interest to say. You only parrot the lines you learned by rote elsewhere, which have already been debunked in this forum in other threads. If you want to engage in the discussion and learn something, then first get a new screen name. Then, engage constructively and earnestly on the topics under discussion. Otherwise, do not feign injury when you are treated as you treat others. It’s disgusting.
Ah Bart, it’s good to see you being so kind and gentle to TB… he can’t really help it, you know. He’s been programmed rather effectively.
Rolling back, you mentioned:
And life changes that even more.
If there was a giant excess of CO2, and I mean actually gigantic and harmful as opposed to a few ppm, the oceans and land are teeming with wee creatures whose numbers would swell enormously. Their entire purpose for existing is to consume vast quantities of CO2, they are most likely responsible for Earth even having free O2 in the first place. Once the CO2 levels were reduced, the creatures would either die off or fail to reproduce. If there was a reduction in O2, other micro and macro organisms leap into action to balance things out.
Just as a cold or flu or herpes virus in the human body is capable of incredible feats of multiplying, and our body’s immune system is capable of rising to the occasion, there is no “plan” or “mechanism” behind it. It just “is”. The planet is as it is because of life, life is as it is because of the planet.
Nature abhors 3 things: a vacuum, an equilibrium, and a straight line. There are no such things as stable populations, climate, weather, etc. ALL of these things will oscillate around some arbitrary level. And NO trends continue up, up and away in a straight line.
And, regarding TB, an apology with ill grace is not much of an apology at all.
ThinkingBeing,
You seemed to have missed my last post … or is it too difficult a question for a simple alarmist ?
———————-
Dr A Burns (16:49:12) :
ThinkingBeing,
Here’s a simple question for you.
Exactly what is the evidence that man’s CO2 is causing global warming ?
You can invent theories to claim that the world will warm by 0.5 degrees (based on the negative feedback that we see in natural systems) or 3 degrees (based on unstable positive feedbacks) because of a doubling of CO2. You can also invent theories that the world will cool towards another ice age because of low solar activity. It is easy to build models around whatever theory you have, to get the results you want. However, without evidence, the popular theory of man’s CO2 causing global warming is nothing more than political propaganda.
———————-
ThinkingBeing (21:37:38)
Bro’, you walk into a man’s house, the first thing you do is accuse him of being a liar, and you are surprised when people abuse you in a variety of interesting ways? Where have you been living? How can that possibly be a surprise to you?
Again I say … what did you expect when you call a man a liar? Bouquets of flowers and hugs all ’round?
First, I said nothing about “all climate scientists”, that’s your fantasy. You may note that I always quote what I am responding to, so there is no question what I’m discussing and I know that I am not misrepresenting what you said.
I was objecting to a popular argument, of which I cited two examples, the argument being that “simple physics” proves that CO2 has to make the climate warmer. I did not say that the climate was too complicated to understand, I said we understand it poorly and that climate is far too complicated for “simple physics” to be a reliable guide to its actions. And whether it is theoretically possible to model the climate I don’t know, but I’ve been programming computers for forty-five years now, and I do know that the current generation of models are pathetic. They miss a host of phenomena for a variety of reasons, and simply put in convenient numbers for the others. Their poor performance is understandable, because a computer model can never be greater than the programmer’s understanding of the climate, and we don’t understand the climate very well. All the models show is that if the programmer assumes that CO2 will warm the planet, guess what?
But that’s not the issue, that you think my ideas are wrong or that you don’t seem to have understood what I was saying. That happens all the time. That’s science. The issue, since you still seem to have missed it, is not that you contested my theory. That’s why I post on the web, so that my ideas can be attacked and perhaps even demolished. That’s the scientific process. Science is a blood sport, people trying to demolish each others’ claims, and I revel in it. I have no problem with being proven wrong or with admitting when I am wrong. I don’t like it, but it’s part of the scientific process.
The issue was that you came in and first thing out of the box you called me a liar. I say again … where did you grow up? Because I grew up on a cattle ranch. The cowboys were generally poor, they didn’t have much but their honor, which they burnished and guarded. Calling one of them a liar was the worst thing that you could possibly do. Now, I guess where you grew up calling a man a liar was not a deadly insult as it was where I grew up, what we called “fighting words” and would not let stand unchallenged even when we were young kids. So regardless how you missed this in your education, you should know that to many people out here, calling a man a liar is not something to do without both proof and provocation.
Nor is this a new idea that is unique to me or the time and place I grew up. Google “the Lie Direct”. In Shakespeare’s time that was the name for what you did, and it was something that would likely end in someone’s death. Here’s Shakespeare’s humorous view of it, from “As You Like It”:
But despite Shakespeare’s light treatment, it is not a laughing matter. The importance and the mortal nature of giving someone the Lie Direct was later enshrined in the Code Duello (Code of Duels) of 1777, viz:
As you can see, for men who care about their honor, there is no greater insult, and there are still many people who live by that principle.
You must be joking. You came in to my thread, and the very first thing you did was to give me the Lie Direct. So I told you to go away, that you had execrable manners and you weren’t welcome. Ignoring that, you came right back and called me a liar again! I couldn’t believe it, my eyeballs popped out and my blood was sorely angrified.
Now you want to pass it off as a childish game, saying that I wanted to “take my ball and go home” … NOT. To the contrary, I wasn’t going anywhere — I wanted you to take your lack of honor and your unbelievable insults and go home.
And now you come back to say inter alia that I didn’t address your “detailed points”? Can a man truly be that dense? Get real, my friend. When you go to someone’s home and call him a liar not once but twice, you take what you get, and on my planet it is very unlikely to be a discussion of detailed scientific points. Stand up and be a man, stop complaining about the reception you got here, you brought it on your own head. As I have often learned to my own sorrow, my momma was right when she used to say, “Son, if you scorch around, you’ll get burned.”
No, you did not “[imply] that [my] post was purposely disingenuous”. That’s the Lie Circumstantial or even less. You flat-out called me a liar, the Lie Direct, and so even your apology lacks backbone. You don’t even say “I retract it”, you say you “would certainly … retract it.”
However, it seems these nuances were not part of your education either, and you are not to blame for that. I accept your apology, and I am impressed that you came back to offer it, but this is all I’m going to say to you on this thread. I do not wish you ill, I just wish you would go away and think about the whole episode and perhaps even learn something from it. For me, you have worn out your welcome on this thread.
However, all is not lost, in the longer view I see this as just another part of life’s rich pageant. Come back when I put up a new post on a new subject, after my blood pressure retreats from the four-digit zone. Next time, to avoid misunderstandings, quote the things I say that you disagree with and tell us why, and we’ll see how it goes from there.
In hopes of a more irenic and fruitful discussion on the next thread, I offer you my best wishes,
w.
John Doe (22:46:42) :
“He is about to say aloud that traditional statistics does not apply to computer model runs and chaotic systems.”
Spot on.
In my area of science (geology) it is properly called “geomathematics” as defined by Fritz Achterberg decades ago in his similarly titled text.
Statistics are summaries of measurements taken from discrete objects (billard balls, human individuals, manufactured bolts, nuts, etc). In this case N is always an integer.
Apply this methodology to other areas introduces problems, and in geoscience we call it the sample volume variance effect (Koch and Link, 1972) or sample support, where N is no longer an integer but a real number.
Extended to aggregation of temperature data within a grid cell (defined by units of latitude and longitude) one is confronted with the physical meaning of an average temperature of a 2-D spherical surface.
You have to be brain dead, or a otherwise a social scientist, to consider such a nonsense seriously (maybe depends on what one is smoking).
It’s why I have always rejected the wacky idea of greenhouse gases – physically they can’t exist, and statistically it’s a bigger nonsense as well.
RE: Willis Eschenbach (00:40:49) :
Willis, you are a saint.
Willis
Jeez, seems you and I eat beef :-), pardner.
Willis,
Alarmists seem to have started flinging the term “liar” at honest sceptic scientists of late, in retaliation for the lies, fraud and deception revealed by ClimateGate. I think it is just a sign of panic, given the complete absence of any science whatsoever to support their nonsense.
par5 (01:01:51)
I greatly appreciate the compliment, but no, I’m just a poor fool whose intentions are good, and who is unbearably tired of the reprehensible actions of those who seek to defend the consensus. As such, I would be less than honest if I emulated those actions myself.
Plus, when your age begins with the number “6”, unless you are six years old you should have achieved some kind of tolerance for the hasty actions both of yourself and others … it has been said that until you make the hundred most common mistakes in a field, you can’t consider yourself an expert in that field.
If that is true, then I am assuredly an expert in the field of screwing things up by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time …
When I was younger I once went to my white-haired father and told him about some particularly foolish thing I had done. He did not condemn me for my idiocy. He said “Do you see my head of white hair?” I said I did. “Every white hair used to be black and they turned white, one by one,” he said. “And each one was turned white as a result of me making a mistake that was just as foolish as this mistake of yours.”
So I could do no less than that with respect to ThinkingBeing’s mistakes …
My regards to everyone,
w.