Guest post by Steven Goddard
There is no question that some of the greatest minds have been scientists. Da Vinci, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Edison, Einstein, Fermi, Feynman are a few names that come to mind.
But how about the consensus? One of the most famous cases of consensus science gone ridiculous involved the theory of Continental Drift. In 1912, a German scientist named Alfred Wegener introduced the theory that the continents were not stationary, but rather moved.
Any child can see that the continents fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, yet the scientific community took over 50 years to stop ridiculing Wegener and accept his theory.
“Utter, damned rot!” said the president of the prestigious American Philosophical Society.
“If we are to believe in Wegener’s hypothesis we must forget everything which has been learned in the past 70 years and start all over again.” Geologist R. Thomas Chamberlain
“further discussion of it merely incumbers the literature and befogs the mind of fellow students.” Geologist Barry Willis
Sound familiar?
http://travel.state.gov/images/maps/brazil.gif
http://www.globalkids.info/v3/content/africa.jpg
Several earlier scientists had also observed the obvious – from Wikipedia :
Abraham Ortelius (1597), Francis Bacon (1625), Benjamin Franklin, Antonio Snider-Pellegrini (1858), and others had noted earlier that the shapes of continents on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean (most notably, Africa and South America) seem to fit together. W. J. Kious described Ortelius’ thoughts in this way:[1]
Abraham Ortelius in his work Thesaurus Geographicus … suggested that the Americas were “torn away from Europe and Africa … by earthquakes and floods” and went on to say: “The vestiges of the rupture reveal themselves, if someone brings forward a map of the world and considers carefully the coasts of the three [continents].
Not only do the continents fit together, but Wegener observed that their geology matched.
http://www.scientus.org/Wegener-DuToit.jpeg
And the fossils match.
. 
http://www.scientus.org/Pellegrini-Wegener-1.gif
We see a parallel to global warming. The earth is not warming out of control. Sea level is not rising out of control. The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are not collapsing. The IPCC documents have been shown to be littered with junk science and fraud. The hockey team has been shown to be misusing their positions. Yet the consensus hangs on to the ridiculous, for the same reasons they did from 1912 to 1960. No one wants to “forget what they learned and start over again.”
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Tom P. – Thanks, there is no point in discussing here, with the people present (see below) how much Arrhenius reduced his own estimations or why.
scienceofdoom (19:43:52) :
” So what happens to the longwave energy absorbed and reradiated downwards?
It is not accumulated, stored up and ready to explode.. instead, it increases the surface temperature(compared with the situation if it wasn’t there), which raises accordingly to the annual global “average” of +15′C (288K). ”
No it does not neccesarily increase the surface temperature, it is absorbed RELATIVELY, if warmer it warms by how much warmer it is compared to the surface, or if cooler it merely slows the absorbers rate of cooling by that amount.
To assume it is merely added to the surface as you have is
CREATIONALIST.
energy creationalist, which is how MAN made (misconcieved) global warming has come about.
It is all completely imaginary, you are talking “rollocks”.
This is precisely the reason that that I’ve always maintained that arguing about temperature is futile.
The Earth is usually always either warming or cooling and the fact that at on any given time frame it is doing either one or the other should come as no surprise.
In order to resolve the issue of AGW what we should be discussing of course is whether CO2 can actually warm the atmosphere.
The simplest test for such enquiry is to compare a transparent container of pure CO2 to another of ordinary air. By exposing both containers to the same heat source simultaneously we should be able to observe the results to see exactly how pure CO2 compares to ordinary air in the domain of radiant heat.
I find it staggering that even now after all this time, that people who consider themselves scientists, still have not yet performed such a simple test to establish or debunk the AGW hypothesis.
Myself not being one to be content to simply talk the the talk, have conducted many such experiments and can only conclude that in all my tests, ordinary air outperforms CO2 in the domain of radiant heat every time.
I have uploaded a couple of my test as videos on to my web page which can be viewed by clicking on my name above.
scienceofdoom (21:23:11) :
You say the retained radiation drives up the temperature – natural greenhouse effect. I go along with that.
But increased temperature increases blackbody/greybody radiation. Temperature must increase until a new equilibrium is reached and outgoing radiation equals incoming radiation (summed across all wavelengths).
James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt proudly boasted a few years ago they managed to measure/model (i don’t know how exactly they computed it and don’t bother to try and understand) a radiative imbalance of 0.85 W/m ^2.
Link:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1110252
Personally i find this result next to meaningless; it’s a pretty tiny imbalance, probably drowned in noise. It would be useful to find the stored energy on earth.
I just wanted to point out here that even the AGW people say that there is nearly exactly as much radiation going outwards as comes in.
DirkH:
Your concept is right and your points are spot on.
Energy balance is all about the top of atmosphere.. the earth’s climate as a complete system.
Broad-brush concept
If we look at the top of atmosphere (TOA), outgoing long-wave radiation (OLR) = incoming shortwave (solar radiation). Unless there is significant heating up or cooling down.
This is the standard energy balance idea. Everyone in physics subscribes to this idea. The number is around 240W/m^2 (expressed as a global average in terms of the earth’s surface area).
We can measure OLR using satellites. We can measure incoming solar with satellites.
At the earth’s surface and in the atmosphere it is more complicated. There is convection and latent heat movement as well as radiation. It doesn’t mean that energy balance doesn’t exist – but it means that adding up radiation budgets isn’t the whole story.
Specifics
As you rightly point out the “imbalance” at TOA from Hansen is drowned in noise.
There’s no confusion because this is all written up. In Trenberth and Kiehl’s 1997 paper “Earth’s Annual Global Mean Energy Budget” they explain that the instrument uncertainty for the top of atmosphere balance is enough that they explicitly fix the incoming and outgoing to the same value.
And in the introduction and the conclusion to their paper they explain that there are gaps and uncertainties in the knowledge which need further work.
Their 1997 paper is well worth a read – you can currently find a copy online. There is a link towards the end of CO2 – An Insignificant Trace Gas? Part Five
In Trenbert and Kiehl’s 2008 update, instead of constraining OLR = solar radiation they explicitly use the TOA imbalance calculated by Hansen.
The imbalance is calculated (I think – from other commentaries I have read – but haven’t actually read the paper) by looking at increases in ocean heat content over the last 20 years or so.
In the end, Trenberth and Kiehl’s results aren’t really affected by a 1W/m^2 imbalance, they are just trying to explain all the numbers to the best of the knowledge available.
This is science – applying theory to measurements. Finding the gaps, explaining where further work needs to be done, identifying uncertainties. And in the papers – perhaps surprising to people who don’t get the opportunity to read these papers – even from the “scientists who are politicians as well” you mostly just see science.
In summary, energy out = energy in (unless there is heating or cooling).
At the top of atmosphere energy is transferred compleletly through radiation, so the radiation numbers balance.
At the earth’s surface there is radiation PLUS convection and latent heat so the pure radiation numbers don’t balance.
Although there are questions about exactly how much solar radiation the atmosphere absorbs, and exactly how much energy imbalance exists, the global average energy balance situation is quite well understood.
Not being a “hard” scientist (nor an engineer) but just a “soft” sociologist/political scientist/economist I have the following question:
Having studied he entire literature on the “climate change/AGW” issue I find particularly interesting the adiabatic theory of Sorokhtin and al as presented in the bok “Global Warming, Global Cooling: Evolution of Climate on Earth.” published by Elsevier in 2007.
Based on this book – which builds it’s case on the most elementary relationship in physics – gas pressure versus gas temperature – this book argues that the “hothouse effect” (as the authors call it to differentiate it from the greenhouse effect in order not to “be” inside the radiative GHG theory, the so called delta between earth without atmosphere and with it, normally (but not always – read Gerlich & Tcheuschner) assumed to be 18C+15C = 33C level)) results from the pressure of the column of atmospheric gases above us.
As the existance of the adiabatic effect seems to be “obvous” in the sense of being absolutely basic in the framework of physics, as atmosphere abnove us has weight and therefore, has to has pressure) the fact that there is no mention of the possible contribution of the adiabatic effect to tempeature in most if not all of the AGW literature (including most sceptics, who focus on ensitivity) is for me the conclusive proof that the entire greenhouse effect theory based on “radiative forcings” must be bogus or, at least, fundamentally incomplete.
Could you please comment, “hard” scientists?
Regards
Anyone wanting to further discuss AGW / radiation budgets / etc
is more than welcome to join in the layman aimed discussions at
http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/forums/index.php
scienceofdoom you have avoided answering my posts so far,
answer this please, as it is the basis of “back radiation”, remembering that the atmosphere is cooler than the earth’s surface.
How does a cooler thing warm a warmer thing. ?
My simple example given earlier shows that can not happen.
ScienceofDoom (and Oliver!)
Congrats on figuring out the math problem. You would be shocked how many well educated people stumble around for a couple of days and then come back begging for the answer.
There were several posts after mine addressing your question, so I think you get my drift. It makes no more sense to compare a single lw number at toa to a single lw number at earth surface than it does to add the change the bell boy got to the amount the three guys paid. If you agree that energy out at toa is equal to energy in at toa, then by default the total amount of energy INSIDE of toa cannot be changing. All you have is the SAME amount of energy being recirculated in different ways. You can argue that CO2 would change the manner in which the energy circulates, and you might be right, but you cannot attribute NEW energy into the system as a whole from CO2.
to extend your house with a roof analogy… Suppose your house has no heat source like a furnace or even people living in it, Suppose it is in a constant environment of 0 C. What’s the temp inside the house? Answer, 0 C. Now wrap 10 meters of insulation around the house. What’s the temp inside the house? Answer, 0 C. The insulation generates no energy, and so can’t change the temperature inside the house.
davidmhoffer (07:28:00) :
David, I have just seen this video, made by Dr. Zagoni,
(2007 IPCC reviewer) about the Dr.Miskolczi paper;
I have also read through this thread, which ends abruptly, just
when Dr.Miskolczi enters the scene;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/26/debate-thread-miskolczi-semi-transparent-atmosphere-model/
And I have read his paper here;
http://miskolczi.webs.com/
But my knowledge on radiation has dwindled over the years,
so I’m no longer able to follow him….
Maybe I would, if I was 25. Now. But I not.
Have you looked at it? Any comments?
KWIK
I watched the video only. And my physics education was several decades ago (I’m not 25 anymore either!). As a consequence the detailed calculus was over my head in that I would have to re-educate myself to confirm one way or the other on the details, but I understood the logic and fundamentals. In brief, he showed that the energy balance must be zero, that the data confirms this, and that the net effect on the temperature gradiant between earth surface and top of atmoshphere from CO2 is so small as to be a rounding error. Excellent explanation in my opinion based soley on the fact that it agrees with mine of course 🙂
On average, the amount of incoming and outgoing radiation for the planet has to be balanced. This is the first law of thermodynamics.
In reality, the amount of outgoing radiation is (on average) slightly larger than incoming due to radioactive decay of Uranium and other elements found in rock magma, and seawater.
davidmhoffer (08:58:02) :
hehe! Yes, it does agree with yours!
Some sharp brain needs to look at it additionally to Dr. Zagoni and the Peer reviewers. Just so his theory gains acknowledgement.
Why not here, revewed by Lindzen? That would be something!
I think Steve may have missed some of the points of the webpage where he got his graphics from (www.scientus.org/Wegener-Continental-Drift.html). The page has other examples where the scientific community accepted a new theory that had more problems than Wegener’s Continental Drift theory. When Darwin presented his theory, it had two big holes in it (not one like Wegener’s). Based on the then current knowledge of inheritance, evolution by natural selection would have been impossible. There was also no good explanation for the Cambrian explosion as well. Scientists seemed to accept the theory well before there were satisfactory explanations for these flaws. A theory does not have to be bullet-proof before it is accepted. This has application to the climate controversy as well. People might ask where the bulk of the evidence points as the scientists who were quick to accept Darwinism did. The same applies to the early supporters of Galileo’s Copernicism, the science of the day more strongly supported the alternatives to Copernicism.
Pepi,
Wegener presented clear, irrefutable evidence that the continents were connected at one time. The geography, geology, geomorphology and paleontology left little doubt that he was correct.
The lack of a mechanism for continents splitting and moving was no excuse for the multi-decade dissonance of the “consensus.”
And scientus can present any viewpoint they want. By including the links, I was acknowledging that I found the quotes on their site.
The science may well be found wanting, but this was never really about the science.
It is/was/still-is about social politics, the “science” of persuading us to go back to walking/cycling/horses and wattle-and-daub huts.
If you cannot persuade the “electorate” then there is no hope of stopping the agw bandwagon, and most of the “electorate” are easily persuaded by indoctrination.
From http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=bFTcfbQc-TEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA53&dq=%22double+helix%22+watson+mothers+of+scientists&ots=tX6agh_QYp&sig=hiSlbcG6iUlZlV8_nPjuRLSiKIM#v=onepage&q=mothers&f=false
On page 14 of the book “The Double Helix: The Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA” James Watson made the following observation:
should read
Fingers faster than the brain.
Pepi (09:45:42) :
Pepi,
No one knew about the Cambrian explosion at the time Darwin presented his theory. In fact, no one, except the original discoverer of the Burgess Shale, Charles Walcott, and his sons, were aware of the existence, let alone significance, of this find. From 1909 until 1924 he recovered over 65,000 fossils and was attempting to fit them into existing taxa and theories. There are still arguments ongoing about what it all means. Some believe all the finds can be placed in modern phyla. Others say no. In any event, no new phyla in the animal kingdom since the Cambrian.
I like this idea:
Debunking Pangea
Robert Franks (11:26:04) :
“Debunking Pangea”.
If this was true, where was all the water at that time? Added later
via meteorites? That would be an awfull lot of meteorites.
davidmhoffer (07:28:00) :
“It makes no more sense to compare a single lw number at toa to a single lw number at earth surface than it does to add the change the bell boy got to the amount the three guys paid. If you agree that energy out at toa is equal to energy in at toa, then by default the total amount of energy INSIDE of toa cannot be changing. All you have is the SAME amount of energy being recirculated in different ways.”
I think your problem is due to sloppy units. When one speaks of W/m^2, one is speaking of power density, not energy density. Without a doubt, overall power-in must balance overall power-out, or you will get a buildup of energy, which is the time integral of power. But, that says nothing about the amount of energy retained.
Think of an electrical RC circuit. I have a resistance in parallel with a capacitor and apply a voltage across it. In the steady state, the current is V/R, and the power is V^2/R, which I will assume is constant. The steady state energy contained in the capacitor is 0.5*C*V^2.
I will now increase the resistance to R2 but keep power going in to a constant. This requires that the voltage change to V2 = V*sqrt(R2/R). The capacitor will adjust its energy level to 0.5*C*V2^2 = 0.5*C*V^2*(R2/R) in the new steady state. Since R2 is greater than R, the energy content has increased by the factor R2/R, even though the power is the same.
davidmhoffer:
We all agree “no new energy” can be introduced by CO2. I’m not claiming “new energy”. You said:
Of course, I agree. Insulation does nothing in this case. (And with no sun warming the earth, CO2 would do nothing to lift the temperature above absolute zero).
Now, let’s change the analogy to match earth. An energy source is introduced which warms the surface of the house. And the surface temperature raises up to let’s say 10’C (it will reach some steady state temperature, we don’t know what the number is).
Now, if we add a roof does the temperature stay at 10’C, or does it go higher?
I believe it goes higher.
Was new energy created? No.
How can it be then, that the temperature at the surface of the house has increased?
Jerzy Strzelecki:
Unfortunately the Google book preview misses out the pages which explain the theory so I’ve no idea how they construct their argument.
You said:
Every basic treatment (and advanced) of atmospheric physics that I have seen, of course introduces the pv=nRT relationship and its effect on the climate. In fact, I haven’t seen such a thing as an “AGW book”..
Convection dominates heat transfer in the lower atmosphere. What happens?
The surface of the earth is warmed by radiation from the sun. We can measure the value at the earth’s surface. It doesn’t warm the lower atmosphere through radiation because the lower atmosphere is almost transparent to the sun’s radiation (99% inside 0.1um to 4um wavelengths) The surface heats up and warms the lowest levels of the atmosphere which now, because of the “ideal gas law” expand and therefore rise.
Then, in these physics books, you get a few chapters explaining the various convective effects, little or lots of maths depending on the author’s plan, the environmental lapse rate of 6.5K/km and the adiabatic lapse rate that would be expected of around 10K/km – why the difference, the effect of moisture on the lapse rate, lots more graphs…
Well, atmospheric physics is an interesting subject. It includes much about the ideal gas law, the pressure column, the lapse rate as well as the effect of absorption and re-emission of longwave radiation by various gases (CO2, CH4, O3 etc).
It’s not true that atmospheric physics – which includes the “greenhouse effect” – ignores the existence of the gas laws.
Look at a book, take the first one I found online, I haven’t read it: “An introduction to atmospheric physics” By David G. Andrews, look up the google preview for the contents page.
Chapter 2 “Atmospheric thermodynamics”
-the ideal gas law
-atmospheric composition
-hydrostatic balance
-entropy and potential temperature
… etc more of the same.
Bart,
Agreed, I get sloppy with the terms. Power = energy/unit if time
Scienceofdoom,
Putting a roof on the house is not that good an analogy because we’re going from an open system that allows convection to one that doesn’t and so on. Think of it more like this. You have a house heated by an external heat source that goes on and off. The peak on temp at centre of house is +10 degrees and the peak off temp is -10 degrees. The average is 0. Now wrap a whole bunch of insulation around the inner walls of the house. Depending on what the temp inside the house was, you would get a fluctuation in temperature that would eventually settle out. The temp inside the house at centre would wind up at a new high of +5 and a new low of -5. The average temperature inside the house would be 0, the same as before. HOWEVER, if you were to measure the temperature gradient from the centre of the house to the outer wall, you would find that THAT had changed to a more gentle slope than before. If you measured temperature at a single point in the system for a short period of time after the insulation was inserted, you would “observe” either a warming trend or a cooling trend depending on where you started, but in the long term… nada.
Jack Simmons (11:02:02) :
No one knew about the Cambrian explosion at the time Darwin presented his theory. In fact, no one, except the original discoverer of the Burgess Shale, Charles Walcott, and his sons, were aware of the existence, let alone significance, of this find. From 1909 until 1924 he recovered over 65,000 fossils and was attempting to fit them into existing taxa and theories. There are still arguments ongoing about what it all means. Some believe all the finds can be placed in modern phyla. Others say no. In any event, no new phyla in the animal kingdom since the Cambrian.
————————————————————————————
Jack,
Darwin predated the discovery of the Burgess Shale and during his day the problem with the geologic record wasn’t called the Cambrian explosion. But Darwin knew he had a problem with the sudden appearance of fossils of the main divisions of the animal kingdom in the Cambrian strata and the inability to find transitional forms in strata predating the Cambrian. He used part of Chapter 10 of the Origin of Species to try to explain it.
>>
scienceofdoom (04:13:48) :
There’s no confusion because this is all written up. In Trenberth and Kiehl’s 1997 paper “Earth’s Annual Global Mean Energy Budget” they explain that the instrument uncertainty for the top of atmosphere balance is enough that they explicitly fix the incoming and outgoing to the same value.
&lgt;&lgt;
There’s a slight mismatch that they sort of ignore.
>>
In Trenbert and Kiehl’s 2008 update, instead of constraining OLR = solar radiation they explicitly use the TOA imbalance calculated by Hansen.
The imbalance is calculated (I think – from other commentaries I have read – but haven’t actually read the paper) by looking at increases in ocean heat content over the last 20 years or so.
&lgt;&lgt;
The imbalance is roughly 0.9 W/m^2 which they spend great deal of time justifying. My question is where do they get the IR window value of 40 W/m^2? They sort of make it up.
>>
In the end, Trenberth and Kiehl’s results aren’t really affected by a 1W/m^2 imbalance, they are just trying to explain all the numbers to the best of the knowledge available.
This is science – applying theory to measurements. Finding the gaps, explaining where further work needs to be done, identifying uncertainties. And in the papers – perhaps surprising to people who don’t get the opportunity to read these papers – even from the “scientists who are politicians as well” you mostly just see science.
&lgt;&lgt;
Or it’s bad science. Using the KT 1997 model, I can disprove the GHG theory with a simple MS Excel spreadsheet.
Jim