Guest post by Thomas Fuller
It should be clear to all who are following climate issues that the establishment is flailing a bit in regards to how they should be dealing with a pesky public.
Ever since Climategate, Copenhagen, and a cold winter in western media capitals, their old techniques have been increasingly ineffective. Whereas before it was enough to combine a ‘sexy’ symbol, such as a polar bear or a Himalayan glacier, with a press release of a new paper showing how models predict doom for whatever symbol they used, now people seem to want things like data, whatever that is.
But there really isn’t enough data to make a definitive case for the type of climate change the establishment needs to command immediate and decisive action. (And it is my personal opinion that that is precisely the way it works–deciding the appropriate action and then searching for supporting information, of whatever quality they can drum up.)
Since then, we have seen some rather dubious attempts to play the media game differently, starting with an attack on Andrew Montford’s book ‘The Hockey Stick Illusion, where a blog aptly named Scholars and Rogues tried to mathematically prove that nobody needed to read the book, and then the sad coda to a great career for the late Stephen Schneider, where they hammered out a libelous paper purporting to show that establishment scientists were far more qualified (and better looking as well) than skeptics, which they did by looking only in English language publications, getting names and jobs wrong, and miscounting published papers.
That didn’t work. So they began also to run advertisements, such as jet planes crashing into skyscrapers, and the more recent explosion of skeptical children and soccer stars.
None of it is working right now. They literally cannot admit uncertainty, and they have lost the aura of invincibility–or at least authority. Criticism of the major skeptical figures hasn’t worked in the past–Lindzen, Spencer, Christy and others do not appear to have been damaged by accusations of tobacco use and being religious, and the screaming about conservative rich people giving liberal amounts of money to conservative think tanks is too obviously hypocritical when balanced against the amounts of money available to the establishment position. And it certainly hasn’t worked against new critics, such as Steve McIntyre or our host here.
The 10:10 video ‘No Pressure’ is a new symbol–not one that the Establishment will cherish. It’s a symbol of failure to communicate. They sent a message all right, just as the WWF, Stephen Schneider and Scholars and Rogues sent messages.
But they’re not listening–and so in the end they cannot communicate.
Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
mkelly:-
—There is only one thing in the universe that can trap heat and that is a black hole. So please no more “heat trapping gases”.—-
This, of course, is only if you use “trapping” in the most extreme sense, which I don’t understand why you would. It’s well known that CO2 slows down, or absorbs heat, and this is according to Kirchhoff’s law of thermal radiation.
—-Quote:”It maybe noted that since the flux in carbon dioxide band is equal at any level, to a difinite fraction of the black body radiation corresponding to the temperature of that level both upward and downward direction, the resultant flux of carbon dioxide readiation vanishes in th approximation chart.”
Quote:”…Arrhenius in connection with his well known suggestion that the ice ages might be due to a change in the radiative properties of the atmosphere caused by a change in its carbon dioxide content, an idea which has long since been abandoned as an untenable speculation.”—-
The experiment that Elasser discusses here is likely the experiment done in 1904 in regards to the “suggestion” that Arrhenius made about CO2 and ice ages. Knut Ångström published an experiment that his assistant, Herr J. Koch did which tried to mimic the atmosphere using gases and tubes. Had he used longer tubes his results would have been closer to the truth, but this poor experiment (there was limited instrumentation at the time) was published and cited frequently later on. Herr Koch reported that when he cut the amount of gas in the tube by one-third, the amount of radiation that got through scarcely changed. The fact that gases are well mixed throughout the atmosphere has been known since military flight personal and scientists (from satellites) from several countries independently found this in the fifties. The first line-by-line spectra of the atmosphere was done by Plass; more were done, specifically Ramanathan, and lastly Myhre in the 90’s, which has the most recent and conservative number for CO2 radiative forcing, used by the IPCC.
—If you can demonstate Dr. Elsasser wrong please do so.—-
Satellite observation has already done so in the 1950’s. But again, this is work not even done by him; he is just citing it.
gryposaurus,
“These consensus opinions are generally done by many branches of science. Saying the figures are “plucked from the air” is not the reality.”
Ok. They get together and discuss what the probability is, based on their own opinions. That hardly adds much more credence to the 90% probability. Look, imo, to claim 90% probability is pure spin. You’re obviously fine with it, so fair enough, end of discussion.
@Rob R:
‘One of the problems for those who wish to communicate science while advocating a political position is that there are many in the general public who eventually become curious. Curosity leads to investigation. The more “science cloaked advocacy” that is communicated to the public the more in-depth the eventual scrutiny by members of the public who by chance also do rather a lot of science. The actual level of scientfic uncertainty is gradually revealed and public confidence in the science diminishes towards the appropriate level.’
Excellent point Rob – this is exactly what happened to me, from relatively complacent to fiercely antagonistic. Prior knowledge of historical climate (medieval and ancient) finally tripped my bs sensor after one of the ‘OMG we’re all going to die’ statements, along with a viewing of The Global Warming Swindle and then of the greasy snake oil of Gore’s revivalist rubbish.
And, to digress, 10:10 have lost their corporate sponsors. I bear a grin, just like Anthony’s smiley.
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/10/04/corporate-partners-out-as-1010
gryposaurus says:
October 4, 2010 at 1:11 pm
“This, of course, is only if you use “trapping” in the most extreme sense, which I don’t understand why you would. ”
Words have meanings. There is no extreme sense. Something that is trapped cannot escape. If you meant slow down say so, but CO2 cannot even do that.
At thermal equilibrium, the emissivity of a body (or surface) equals its absorptivity. This is Kirchoff’s Law of thermal radiation. It has nothing to do with slowing down heat.
If you read the paper by Dr. Elsasser, then you know he cited many peoples works including his own. His paper on radiative heat transfer in the atmosphere is still a oustanding piece of work.
His first quote I cited is the most operational of the two. As he stated the fluxes negate each other and CO2 ends up adding nothing to the radiative heat of the atmosphere.
Please telling me how satellite observation demonstrated him wrong.
Just wondering if anyone else at first thought the movie was ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”. lol… I clicked play and was like “WTH…This isn’t Indy!”. But it sure looked like it at first!
Anyway, back on topic, I would like to add that any data that indicates AGW is only the beginning in a long line of questions that must be answered, among many of which is whether our cutting back would even matter. I mean, assuming it was the case, who’s to say we could correct the mistakes of our forebearers by cutting it out altogether?
But proponents are so stuck on step one. Not only that, they resort to messages that get everyone up in arms over the tastefulness/intent. Just imagine how they would react to inquiry further down the line…
mkelly:
—-Words have meanings. There is no extreme sense. Something that is trapped cannot escape. If you meant slow down say so, but CO2 cannot even do that.—-
Yes, words do certainly have meaning and in which version of English does “trapped” mean that something cannot escape at some point? And yes, CO2 does certainly slow down the escape of heat into space. This is a well established fact.
—At thermal equilibrium, the emissivity of a body (or surface) equals its absorptivity. This is Kirchoff’s Law of thermal radiation. It has nothing to do with slowing down heat.—
No really, it very much does.
—-If you read the paper by Dr. Elsasser, then you know he cited many peoples works including his own. His paper on radiative heat transfer in the atmosphere is still a oustanding piece of work.
His first quote I cited is the most operational of the two. As he stated the fluxes negate each other and CO2 ends up adding nothing to the radiative heat of the atmosphere.
—-
What you need to understand is that these early pre-fifties experiments were done at sea level pressure which caused all the bands to overlap. When you go up into the atmosphere, these bands separate and mix differently.
And not surprizingly, when I go read the paper, the quotes you selected were taken out of context, and it appears Elsasser was developing theory based on Arrhenius’ work that was shown by satellites and airplane instruments 10-15 years later by military personal. Let’s look at that quote you use:
“Arrhenius in connection with his well known suggestion that the ice ages might be due to a change in the radiative properties of the atmosphere caused by a change in its carbon dioxide content, an idea which has long since been abandoned as an untenable speculation…”
Within the next few paragraphs in that paper (you look it up yourself on pages 76-78), he describes the recent work that uses the Arrhenius experiments and shows why they are important to atmospheric heat transfer.
Elsasser Quote:
“If the emissivities have been measured for both water vapor and carbon dioxide and for the thickness and temperatures obtaining in the atmosphere, the transfer problem is completely solved with an accuracy equal to that of these measurements — apart from a four-fold correction.”
He when goes on to describe the correction. He built his theory models on Arhennius’ work.
—Please telling me how satellite observation demonstrated him wrong.—
I’m afraid Elsasser’s theory and later the evidence for it obtained by aircraft and satellite has proven you wrong. I’d suggest reading your citations a bit more closely.
As far as the first quote, found on page 23, Elsasser saying that “It maybe noted that since the flux in carbon dioxide band is equal at any level, to a difinite fraction of the black body radiation corresponding to the temperature of that level both upward and downward direction, the resultant flux of carbon dioxide readiation vanishes in the approximation chart.” means that the CO2 layer in his chart has no direction preference and doesn’t even discuss the layer as an absorber in that situation. How can you make any definitive thoughts on temperature when he is only discussing one of the actions? Knocking down well established, well evidenced scientific theory is more difficult then selecting some quotes from a 60 year old paper that doesn’t say what you think it does. This is much more complicated.
It isn’t rhetoric. You engaged in rhetoric. I’m asking you to take the rhetorical terminology you used and justify their usage in a scientific context, if you can. Provide the scientific definition of “radiative forcing” you are employing in your question.
gryposaurus says:
October 4, 2010 at 5:04 pm
It has nothing to do with slowing down heat.—No really, it very much does.
Kirchoff’s Law a=e
I note no element of time or speed in Kirchoff’s Law. I have examined my heat transfer book several times and have found no speed indicated for heat using this law.
What is the speed of heat and how exactly does this law say heat is slowed down?
If you want to say that fv=c and speed is the speed of light OK but there is no slowing of that so please inform me.
mkelly:
These definitions are from Wiki, for searching and subsequent research if you question my explanation.
Kirchoff’s law of thermal radiation is: At thermal equilibrium, the emissivity of a body (or surface) equals its absorptivity.
Planck’s Law applies that to the electromagnetic spectrum. It describes the spectral radiance of electromagnetic radiation at all wavelengths emitted in the normal direction from a black body in a cavity in thermodynamic equilibrium.
The Stefan–Boltzmann law, also known as Stefan’s law, states that the total energy radiated per unit surface area of a black body per unit time (known variously as the black-body irradiance, energy flux density, radiant flux, or the emissive power), j*, is directly proportional to the fourth power of the black body’s thermodynamic temperature T (also called absolute temperature).
Before these theories, John Tyndall wrote in 1962:
Tyndall did simple lab experiments, shining light through different tubes of gases, CO2, water vapor, etc.
If you look at any spectra reading from CO2 gas, you will see it becomes very active at certain wavelengths (absorbs and emits long-wave radiation)
The more layers of CO2 in the atmosphere, the more “bodies” are there to slow down the heat energy from exiting our atmosphere into space. We have several detailed studies showing the imbalance of energy at human emission gas wavelengths growing since 1950.
The Tyndall paper is from 1862. A slight difference 😀
@robr
One of the problems for those who wish to communicate science while advocating a political position is that there are many in the general public who eventually become curious. Curosity leads to investigation. The more “science cloaked advocacy” that is communicated to the public the more in-depth the eventual scrutiny by members of the public who by chance also do rather a lot of science. The actual level of scientfic uncertainty is gradually revealed and public confidence in the science diminishes towards the appropriate level.
Exactly. I read ‘the Science is Settled’ once too often and began to wonder what sort of science it was that they were doing. And remembered some long ago work for my Masters in Atmospheric Chemistry and how we conducted that…and rapidly came to the conclusion that the science not only wasn’t settled, it had very little actual foundation at all. And that many of its online advocates were little more than screaming harpies.
Which has led to an interesting new hobby for me of commenting in blogs like this one and watching as the tide slowly turns away from the CAGW religion. I give it 10-20 years before the beast is fully dead…but it is already dying day by day. And ‘No Pressure’ just shortened its life by 5 years. One more blow like that and it will be fatally wounded. Bring it On
Psychologists tell us that humor often tries to cover deeply anti-social emotions with a socially acceptable smiley face, and that the emotion is often unconscious to the humorist. The 10.10 film demonstrates that \”campaign to reduce carbon emissions\” (or whatever they are calling it this week) is a watermelon campaign — green on the outside and red on the inside. Like their explicitly communist brethren these people would not hesitate to make their hostile fantasy real.