In the New York Times:
For science that’s accessible but credible, steer clear of polarizing hatefests like atheist or eco-apocalypse blogs. Instead, check out scientificamerican.com, discovermagazine.com and Anthony Watts’s blog, Watts Up With That?
Of course, we can’t have that, now the howling begins. Some context below.
More from the New York Times Virginia Heffernan:
Clearly I’ve been out of some loop for too long, but does everyone take for granted now that science sites are where graduate students, researchers, doctors and the “skeptical community” go not to interpret data or review experiments but to chip off one-liners, promote their books and jeer at smokers, fat people and churchgoers? And can anyone who still enjoys this class-inflected bloodsport tell me why it has to happen under the banner of science?
Hammering away at an ideology, substituting stridency for contemplation, pummeling its enemies in absentia: ScienceBlogs has become Fox News for the religion-baiting, peak-oil crowd. Though Myers and other science bloggers boast that they can be jerky in the service of anti-charlatanism, that’s not what’s bothersome about them. What’s bothersome is that the site is misleading. It’s not science by scientists, not even remotely; it’s science blogging by science bloggers. And science blogging, apparently, is a form of redundant and effortfully incendiary rhetoric that draws bad-faith moral authority from the word “science” and from occasional invocations of “peer-reviewed” thises and thats.
Under cover of intellectual rigor, the science bloggers — or many of the most visible ones, anyway — prosecute agendas so charged with bigotry that it doesn’t take a pun-happy French critic or a rapier-witted Cambridge atheist to call this whole ScienceBlogs enterprise what it is, or has become: class-war claptrap.
This is all about Pepsigate. See Heffernan’s column The Medium
h/t to Tim Lambert of Deltoid, hosted by Scienceblogs who couldn’t bring himself to reference anything else here at WUWT with his collection of supposed gotchas, only the one point where he was sure he could get a dig in:
Heffernan reckons that Whats Up With That presents credible science. This is a blog that argues that Venus is hot, not because of the greenhouse effect, but because of the high pressure in the atmosphere (so hence Jupiter and Saturn are the hottest planets right?) . Look:
If there were no Sun (or other external energy source) atmospheric temperature would approach absolute zero. As a result there would be almost no atmospheric pressure on any planet -> PV = nRT
Only if there was no such thing as gravity.
Umm, Tim, can you tell me what gases on Venus remain in a non-solid state at temperatures approaching absolute zero? What happens to solidified gases like dry ice (Frozen Carbon Dioxide) in a (planetary) gravitational field? Here’s an experiment to help you get the answer:
1. Acquire some dry ice
2. Go outside
3. Toss it upwards into the atmosphere
4. Observe
The point that was being made in that article by Goddard is that with no external energy source (the Sun) Venusian atmospheric gases would contract and eventually freeze at near absolute zero and cling to the surface of the planet, thanks to gravity.
PhysLink agrees:
Question
What will happen to the gas at absolute zero temperature (0 K)?
Asked by: Rohit
Answer
First of all, the gas will no longer be a gas at absolute zero, but rather a solid. As the gas is cooled, it will make a phase transition from gas into liquid, and upon further cooling from liquid to solid (ie. freezing). Some gases, such as carbon dioxide, skip the liquid phase altogether and go directly from gas to solid.
…
First off, 0K can never be achieved, since the amount of entropy in a system can never be equal to zero, which is the statement of the second law of thermodynamics. This can be nicely illustrated by your question:
Using the state equation for an ideal gas:
PV = nRT
T, the thermodynamic temperature will be equal to 0, so the product of the molar gas constant R (8.31 J/mol/K) and the amount of moles n, will also be zero.
Therefore the product of PV must be zero also. the pressure of the gas must be zero or volume of the gas must be zero
As an example, look at the Ice Caps of Mars, still well above absolute zero but below the freezing point of Carbon Dioxide:
From Wiki:
The polar caps at both poles consist primarily of water ice. Frozen carbon dioxide accumulates as a thin layer about one metre thick on the north cap in the northern winter only, while the south cap has a permanent dry ice cover about eight metres thick.[62]
As we see in the Physlink description, a planetary wide near absolute zero temperature (if the sun blinked off), all the rest of Mars atmosphere would be bound to the surface as a solid too. The result: no atmosphere and no atmospheric pressure.
UPDATE: As is typical anytime somebody not on the team that gets a voice or mention, those who deal in mudslinging and angry rhetoric swarm in to squash it and convince the writer of the “wrongness” of it all.
Here’s a comment from Virginia Heffernan after she’s had the treatment here. Note the number of angry labels preceding her response.
Virginia Says:
I’m grateful for all the replies. Nice to meet you here, David.
I get the sense that Pepsigate was the last straw – or not the first, anyway – for at least some of the dissenters from ScienceBlogs. Out of curiosity: Did no one quietly resign over PZ Myers’s Mohammad cartoons? Or question whether they wanted to be part of a network to which he’s the main draw?
In my experience, legacy media types, who do kick up furors over stuff like Mohammad cartoons, nonetheless see *debate* over ad-ed breaches as common, especially now because of the confusion what old-media road rules mean in digital times.
With notable exceptions, blogging, as a form, seems to me to have calcified. Many bloggers who started strong 3-5 years ago have gotten stuck in grudge matches. This is even more evident on political blogs than on science blogs. In fact, after being surprised to find the same cycles of invective on ScienceBlogs that appear on political blogs (where they’re well documented), I started to think the problem might be with the form itself. Like many literary and art forms before it (New Yorker poetry, jazz, manifestos) blogs may have had a heyday – when huge numbers of people were inspired to make original contributions – before, seemingly all at once, the moment is gone. Some people keep doing it, and doing it well, but the wave of innovation passes, and the form itself needs new life. (Twitter? Tumblr?)
I have no training in science. My surprise at ScienceBlogs was akin to the surprise a scientist who might feel if he audited a PhD seminar on Wallace Stevens. Why aren’t they talking about “Anecdote of the Jar”?! Why are they talking about how “misogyny intrinsic to the modernist project”? I saw political axe-grinding bring the humanities almost to a standstill in the 1990s. I thought science was supposed to be above that!
One regret: the Watts blog. Virtually everyone who emailed me pointed out that it’s as axe-grinding as anything out there. I linked to it because has a lively voice; it’s detail-oriented and seemingly not snide; and, above all, it has some beautiful images I’d never seen before. I’m a stranger to the debates on science blogs, so I frankly didn’t recognize the weatherspeak on the blog as “denialist”; I didn’t even know about denialism. I’m don’t endorse the views on the Watts blog, and I’m extremely sorry the recommendation seemed ideological.
All best,
Virginia Heffernan
[snip]
REPLY: While I disagree with Mr. Lambert on most everything, I’ll also point out that I have been dealing with a person who has been an Internet stalker calling my office, showing up at my office unannounced, digging into my private life, trying to obtain my private business records, etc.
Therefore, I don’t condone you putting up his info, even if it is publicly available from a University, especially since you don’t use your own name in posts. I don’t condone bothering people at their place of work.
Please do not do this again. – Anthony
joshua corning
The amount of solar radiation reaching Jupiter is much lower than earth, so we would not expect to see the same temperature at the same atmospheric pressure. Nevertheless, temperatures at the bottom of the atmosphere are incredibly hot – because of the pressure.
I’m astonished that anyone who made it past junior high school science would even argue about this.
Poptech,
I want to thank you for putting together the long list of skeptical papers. It save me hours of digging for references and lets me see papers about things I never would of thought of.
Steve Goddard posts:
“There are four degrees of freedom in the ideal gas law. You can’t solve for one without knowing or constraining the other three. You need to understand basic algebra.”
Steve, actually three, but you are on the right track, I can’t do it for earth just the same as you can’t use it to explain the temperature of Venus.
Consider your explanation of the temperature of Venus debunked.
My apologizes as you could never find his office without [snip ]
REPLY: See above. Stop it. An apology is in order in comments if you wish to continue posting on WUWT, there’s no excuse for this sort of behavior. – Anthony
Well, I guess from her statements we know who Virginia Heffernan believed, choosing between her angry commenters or her lying eyes.
Diet and Nutrition have come up on this thread as well, just as deeply “religious” a subject as Climate Science has become. The abuse of science and statistics in the areas of diet and nutrition are so appalling as to render one speechless.
People ask my why I trust other scientists but not climate scientists – I laugh. Once you check one, you are shocked to discover that you need to check all.
I don’t know that the preference of mythology over solid scientific practice can be “fixed,” but I hope so.
James Sexton says:
July 31, 2010 at 4:34 pm
CodeTech says:
July 31, 2010 at 12:49 pm
“…..There are foods that I used to eat as a child in the 60s and 70s that are either no longer available or have morphed into a mere shadow of their former glory…
I agree with that too. I am in my sixties and can easily out work many male teenagers. I quit eating the crap in stores and restaurants and buy direct from the farmer if I can. The high fructose corn syrup dumped in everything these days is the real killer not the fats that are an absolute requirement for life. – yes life. Lack of fat KILLS, it was called rabbit starvation, my mother had it because of a diet from an idiot doctor placed her on.
I went back to eating a diet rich in fats and meat two years ago, my weight dropped and my blood pressure nose dived by 60 points! I feel twenty years younger.
I’d be really upset if I was compared to unscientific America magazine. It’s almost as bad as Bad (New) Scientist Magazine
What have the bottoms of their feet got to do with anything?
Karma is a fanciful construct for poets and storytellers, but has no basis in reality.
Gail, I am glad to hear it.
Timmy constructed a ‘troll dungeon’ to erase me and it worked, but after a full year of ad homs I was glad to see the back of the Deltoid larrikins.
bob
We will start with basic arithmetic.
1. Pressure
2. Temperature
3. Number of gas molecules
4. Volume
That is four degrees of freedom. Consider your elementary school education debunked.
Karma is simply the zero sum effect happening on all planes including the metaphysical. Will is the fifth and consolidating force. The Instanton (vritni in chetna) is ‘god/first cause’. Theosophy is the understanding of science and religion in the human context.
bob,
Quiz for you. It is over 20,000 degrees in the interior of Jupiter . This is because:
1. They get lots of sunshine 500 million miles away from the sun.
2. They are having a huge barbecue there.
3. The pressure is extremely high.
4. NASA is lying about the properties of Jupiter because they are being paid off by big oil.
Well, not exactly. The greenhouse-effect everyone worries about here on Earth assumes an atmosphere that is optically thin at visible wavelengths and optically thick at thermal wavelengths. Venus is optically thick in the visible for sure because we never see the surface. It must be optically thick at thermal wavelengths too.
Indeed Venus has a high albedo, my point was that an atmosphere, stirred vigorously by convection (it can only do so if there is some absorption at the surface) will approach an adiabatic temperature profile, and if sufficiently deep will reach a very high surface temperature.
OK, I agree, except the business about cooling as it rises is not pertinent. It cools (going up) and heats (going down) along the same temperature curve, unless there is latent heat from some precipitation. Transport by radiation is important too as you point out. Venus and Earth balance their “radiation books” at very different heights. That is why Venus can appear cool, when in fact its surface is literally hotter than hell; while Earth’s outgoing radiation depends to a great degree on surface temperature.
bob says:
July 31, 2010 at 2:05 pm
If PV=nRt works on Venus, how come it doesn’t work on earth?
The temperature extremes on earth are 183 K for the coldest and 330 K for the hottest.
Using the ideal gas law equation, that would mean if it was 1 atm in Libya, then it would be .55 atm in Vostok.
The actual highest recorded extremes of pressure are 1086 mb to 870 mb.
If the ideal gas law worked that way then there would be one heck of a wind blowing between the two.
Since there isn’t, that use of PV=nRt is nonsense.
BRAVO BOB!
Between you and Willis you’ve got it whipped, I think.
Venus’ heat source is volcanism.
I noticed that too. Mars has the most elliptical orbit of any of the planets (thus how Kepler was able to find his elliptical orbit “law” using the Mars data) except Mercury. I wonder if “summer” in the southern hemisphere on Mars also coincides with aphelion. No doubt the answer is on the internet someplace, but I feel no urgency to hunt right now.
stevengoddard says: July 31, 2010 at 5:06 pm
It appears that a whole cottage industry has developed out of misquoting, misinterpreting and just plain lying about this obviously correct paragraph from the Venus article. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/08/venus-envy/
If there were no Sun (or other external energy source) atmospheric temperature would approach absolute zero. As a result there would be almost no atmospheric pressure on any planet -> PV = nRT.
“Obviously correct,” huh? That was an interesting article we put together. Re-reading it I came across two quotes of yours, and one obviously correct one of mine.
stevengoddard says:
The ideal gas law works just fine, and gravity has nothing, nada, zippo to do with the accuracy of the equation.
stevengoddard says: . . .
As I have stated about 14 times now, the atmospheric pressure . . . is set by the weight of the atmosphere above it. P is fixed by the weight of the column of air above.
Mike McMillan says:
Weight requires gravity.
Anthony, are you going to ban Poptech?
Poptech has been suspended pending an apology here. His actions were just wrong and I’m sorry I didn’t see his shenanigans earlier.
Keith G says:
July 31, 2010 at 3:48 pm
“Poor Virginia! How did she not know that WUWT is part of a well-oiled machine on the […]“One regret: the Watts blog. Virtually everyone who emailed me pointed out that it’s as axe-grinding as anything out there. I linked […]”
CYA. Job security rules.
OK, in the strictest sense the pressure of the “atmosphere” would remain at 1 bar at sea level regardless of the temperature in order to hold its own mass up in the presence of Earth’s gravity. Nullius is right that a fully solidified “atmosphere” would still exert a pressure of 1bar at it’s base. When it has a vanishingly small volume and hence is no longer a gas common sense says that the ideal gas approximation no longer holds. I mean, is Lambert seriously asserting (csci – they like that word) that Venus and Earth would have an appreciable atmosphere in the absence of the sun? Even at 3K? I don’t consider the ocean, or ice, or the lithosphere to be part of the atmosphere regardless of the fact that they would all still have a finite vapor pressure at finite temperature. Perhaps Tim should check out how a cryopump works including the mongo one at JSC NASA used for testing Apollo equipment. To my knowledge it’s the largest vacuum chamber in the world. Or perhaps he should read a “Pail of Air” by Fritz Leiber. Fun story that gets the atmosphere part right, and he might just lighten up a bit.
However, another way of looking at it that Lambert would not enjoy is to pick a point somewhere in the atmosphere above sea level. Let’s say 5000ft. Now, what happens to this ideal gas atmosphere as we cool it by removing the sun? Well, the pressure at sea level stays constant, but the volume continues to shrink. In fact, the boundary between what we consider space and the atmosphere would collapse toward the surface. Staying at 5000ft I would see the pressure in the atmosphere drop as that boundary moved closer to me and eventually I would be outside the atmosphere. Wow, I’ve used ideal gas with gravity and without a phase change and I’ve seen a pressure drop with dropping temperatures. Pick any point above the thickness of a condensed atmosphere and you’ll see that effect. Imagine that. Oh, and don’t be pedantic and select a point already in deep space.
Alternatively, as Steve pointed out with his phase diagrams and Nullius mentioned, as parts of the atmosphere begin to condense out pV=nRT still holds but not only are V and T changing but n is changing(falling) as well. Less stuff in the atmosphere means less mass to suspend and lower pressure. But if you want to pick a point below the condensate, then it’s still 1 atmosphere of pressure. Again, it all depends on where you draw the line in your definition of “atmosphere.”
The bottom line is that aside from some nitpicking Steve’s post got most things right. A key point that these warmists apparently refuse to accept about Venus is that its atmospheric mass plays a role in its surface temps (and above) and not only through CO2 IR absorption.
p.s. Anthony, the lovely bit of your cousin, Mr. Douglas Watts, questioning if Jupiter was hotter than Venus was priceless.
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
July 31, 2010 at 11:48 am
I have no training in science.
I could tell.
———-Reply:
Yes, but that silly science can sneak up on anybody–even the most unobservant. Expand your chest and the air rushes in; do the opposite and the air gets pushed out. Jump up and in short order you find yourself pulled back down, a phenomena that is repeatable ad nauseum. Skip down the sidewalk and each step takes you farther away; turn around and retrace your steps and you’re back again. No training required, Virginia, but a life of examples. These few mentioned include partial pressure, gravity, and friction.
Maybe Virginia will come to realize that people don’t need science “training” per se–science just IS. We can observe it all around us; we even see it in the mirror. All it takes for recognition is an open mind. Given that, your brain will do the rest.
Tsk Tsk says: July 31, 2010 at 8:09 pm . . .
p.s. Anthony, the lovely bit of your cousin, Mr. Douglas Watts, questioning if Jupiter was hotter than Venus was priceless.
That was one of the things I pointed out in my censored attempted post over on Taquino’s site. I even had the link to the NASA page that had the details. Sorry I gave him a page hit.