Guest Post by Barry Woods
All too often the ‘simple physics of CO2’ argument is presented to the public by the media, politicians, climate scientists and environmental advocacy groups, in a way that grossly simplifies the issue of the response in global temperature to increasing CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere.
An excellent response to the simple physics argument is to be found in the comments at Climate Etc (Professor Judith Curry’s blog)
In reality my feather blew up into a tree
“….. which is that since CO2 is a GHG it follows that increasing CO2 must increase the temperature (of something). No matter how many times we say that the climate is a system with complex non-linear feedbacks they still love this simple principle of physics.
This is because physics works by isolating simple situations from reality. That was the great discovery of physics, that if you simplified reality you could find simple laws. So far so good.
But as every engineer knows, these simple laws often do not work when reality gets messy, as it usually is. Simple physics says that if I drop a ball and a feather they will fall at the same rate.
In reality my feather blew up into a tree.
It is not that the simple law is false, just that there are a number of other simple laws opposing it. In the case of climate we don’t even know what some of these other laws are, so we can’t explain what we see. That is where we should be looking.”
The ‘do you deny the simple GHG physics’ argument is also often an attempt to portray anyone that asks reasonable scientific questions about AGW and the complexity of climate science, as some sort of an ‘anti-science’, ‘flat earther’ denier.
The realities and complexities and unknowns of climate science are described in the IPCC working Group 1 reports, but somehow get ‘lost in translation’ into the Summary for Policymakers, for example (and everyone knows very few politicians even read beyond the executive summary of anything).
IPCC (Chapter 14, 14.2.2.2, Working Group 1, The Scientific Basis)
Third Assessment Report: “In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
Time and time again the media and environment groups ignore this IPCC fact that the climate is a coupled nonlinear chaotic system and that the worst case scenarios of the computer model ‘projections’ or scenarios (because they know they cannot use the word prediction) latest example, 4C by 2060, are just one result of computer model ‘runs’ programmed with various extreme values of these assumptions.
The low-end ‘projections’ of temperature by model runs with other values and assumptions are ignored completely by CAGW advocates, the data output or projection of a computer model transmorphs into a scientific fact, the data output of a computer model becomes evidence of CAGW.
Climate Science is often portrayed to the public in simplistic terms as a mature science, narrowed down and focussed onto one primary factor – CO2, assuming all else to be equal, and not the possibilities in this type of system that varying one parameter alone, may vary other parameters in non-linear ways, even potentially flipping some from positive to negative feedback (or vice versa)
At the time of the Copenhagen Cop 15 Climate Conference, stunts on TV, rather than the discussion of uncertainties of ‘climate science’ were the order of the day.
The classic demonstration of the ‘do you deny the simple physics of CO2’ argument is a glass tube filled with CO2, heated and then the TV presenter or preferably a senior government scientist says ‘look it has warmed!’ –
As demonstrated by the BBC in their Newsnight program, Copenhagen Climate Conference time, the BBC’s apparent intellectual response to the climategate emails and documents. Watts Up With That, gave a critique of this particular type of TV experiment and CAGW PR.
I wonder what would have happened if a member of the audience had been able to question their methodology, or even ask simple questions like:
What is the percentage of CO2 in the jar?
ie total atmospheric is ~0.038%, what percentage is in the glass jar – 50% plus perhaps, or more?
[Corrected typo spotted in comments – 0.038% / 380 ppm]
If you were to mention that the CO2 effect is logarithmic, then you are likely to be labelled a ‘climate change sceptic’ or worse a ‘climate change denier’ by any passing MSM media TV presenter, environmentalist group or AGW consensus minded politician, and then they will simply stop listening, because you are obviously a fossil fuel funded denier, such has been the CAGW consensus PR.
I wonder if for a sceptical joke, someone could produce a spoof YouTube video of a feather and a cannon ball in a glass jar experiment (non evacuated) and the TV presenter could say to the audience:
“Proof – The Cannon Ball FALLS faster that the feather – Simple Physics clearly show this”
Someone in the audience could then ask, but you have air in the jar? and then get ridiculed by the group as an ‘anti-science’ denier, the scientist/presenter could even bring out the ‘No Pressure’ red button to use!
The simple and not so simple physics of a number of climate parameters, are programmed into the climate computer models. Many of these parameters, it is acknowledged, are not completely understood or that there is serious contentious debate about in the scientific literature. ie aerosols, clouds, solar pacific and atlantic oscillations, volcanoes, etc,etc
Engineers (or economists now, perhaps) will advice climate scientists, model are not reality, reality is often more complicated than any computer model. Take a step back, view with hindsight with respect to risk in the financial markets. At the trouble the cream of the last few decades of science graduates – turned computer modellers – left the world’s economy in, following the modelling of credit risk amongst many other economic assumptions.
Next time anyone starts on about the simple physics of CO2, remember the feather and a cannon ball in a very large glass jar analogy, or for the classically motivated, atop the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Politicians could lay trillion-dollar bets, and dozens of competing scientific groups (publically funded) could even attempt to write a computer models to predict when and where the feather would land…………
Thanks again to Anthony for the opportunity to write at Watts Up With That again. There is a little more about me here.
Or maybe you could stop by at my new blog, I hope that the Watts Up With That regulars like the name.
Yep, reality always humbles. So when do we point out the IPCC predictions have been proven wrong (their feathers blew up some trees)?
For those who think the analogy is flawed:
The whole POINT of the analogy is that it’s ridiculous. You and I both know that the feather will fall slower (if at all, it probably will fly away) because of another, FAR more powerful directly acting force.
By simplistic rules of physics, as in the demonstration performed on the moon without air, any two objects will fall at the same rate. The point is that simplistic rules rarely, if ever, apply in the real world.
This is known as “the elephant in the room”… a fact that is so obvious that it’s amazing anyone could possibly avoid seeing it. Other factors in the atmosphere massively overwhelm CO2’s effect, especially at the concentrations we are dealing with.
Re Craig Loehle:
A better analogy with earthquakes should be to do with the effect of an earthquake on an entire building. That’s more in line with calculating the effect of rising CO2 on the climate. Like the climate where scientists don’t have a second Earth to test against, engineers face a similar problem in that they can’t test an identical building under an actual Earthquake. So they use computer modeling. In both cases the simple physics of the models is taken from lab experiments.
So I think you are spot on. The analogy would hold that a lot of skeptics would argue that scientists cannot possibly know what an Earthquake will do to a particular tower because that is just based on computer models of what will happen. We’d get to hear revelations like “garbage in garbage out”, “you can make a computer say anything”. “computers aren’t real science”. “the model doesn’t include X so is absolutely useless and junk”. Or various other dismissals skeptics use.
“Simple Physics?” No such thing. And this problem is not simple. Trust me. That is why we must rely on empirical methods, not models.
The BBC chose this ‘simple’ experiment to demonstrate to its ‘simple’ audience in the simplest way possible.The BBC actually believes its mass audience are simple minded and their programming merely represents how the BBC feels about its audience, this is not however a local phenomenon and many organisations and groups have been dumbing down output for years. but the BBC has refined its contempt for its viewers to a new level.
The BBC researchers who put the simple fraudulent experiment together must have known that it cannot represent reality and the carefully selected audience of simpletons would not ask the questions required, this is the BBC in action. We have a massive tax funded media empire which uses its notional independence to pursue a political agenda decided by the groups political ideology and the groups output reflects this. Of course the fact that the BBC pension fund is heavily invested in the new eco green economy built on the parasitical basis of siphoning cash from the more productive areas of the economy and from ordinary people of modest means and the BBC funding itself is a mechanism that does the same thing escapes most commentators.
The BBC itself is a perfect representation of an artificial subsidy model, it distorts and damages the free market in the TV medium and it holds back the healthy market based evolution of the visual media. The BBC can be dishonest and manipulative because it has been able to claim that any independent oversight is an attack on its editorial independence, it has become a bullying manipulative spoiled child and as the last vestiges of output oversight has been disabled so this spoiled child has run wild.
The BBC has been in the forefront and vanguard of the CAGW fraud from the start, it has used its gigantic financial influence to promote the CAGW fraud with thousands of one sided pro CAGW propaganda reports produced in industrial quantities in concert with its eco green allies who have been able to use the BBC as a free worldwide propaganda dissemination outlet, the BBC has been essential for the forces selling the CAGW fraud.
The tragedy is that the British nation who did so much to contribute to the rise of Western civilisation has done so much to precipitate the decline of the West by being a driving force in the CAGW fraud, when the CAGW fraud falls apart it will be British institutions who will bear a large share of the blame and its hard to see how our national reputation will ever again become the force for good it once was.
Onion here is some simple physics.
E = m c^2 or energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared.
E = h v or energy is equal to Planck constant times the frequency of the radiation.
So m c ^2 = h v
or m = (h v) / c^2
Since the volume of the earth nor the atmosphere increase in size during a day and
E(in) = E(out) we must also say that m(in) = m (out).
Or does the mass of the incoming light that heats the earth equal the mass of out going IR that cools the earth? Does it?
I await your enlightened response. 🙂
Ric Werme says:
December 28, 2010 at 6:08 am
For all wondering / arguing about the toxic levels required to affect humans at various time exposures, here’s the final word from the CDC: “Signs of intoxication have been produced by a 30-minute exposure at 50,000 ppm [Aero 1953]…”
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/124389.html
Back in the 19th century scientists such as Langley, Arrhenius and Angstrom first noted that “dark rays” (infra-red radiation) were strongly absorbed by “carbonic acid gas” (carbon dioxide). They were able to measure the wavelengths of these emissions (using rock salt prisms etc) and found the CO2 absorption lines that we know today: several grouped between 2-6 microns and a big band around 15 microns.
They also conducted experiments back then that showed IR radiation at these wavelengths was totally absorbed by transmission tube containing pure CO2 only a few feet long.
In trace amounts CO2 still exhibits remarkable absorption properties. Even at 0.039% concentration, the earth’s atmosphere is completely opaque to these IR wavelengths, which is radiated from the surfaces heated by the Sun’s rays. Most of this absorption, from the ground, takes place in the bottom kilometer of the atmosphere.
The following chart shows the amount of UV, light and IR radiation received from the Sun (bell-shaped curve on the left) and the amount re-radiated by the Earth at various black-body temps (bell-shaped curves on the right). Without an atmosphere, the Earth’s black-body temp would be 255K. The mean surface temp is actually 288K (15C) so atmosphere acts like a comforter blanket, provided an extra 33C degrees of warmth, making life as we know it possible.
http://clivebest.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/595px-atmospheric_transmission.png
You should also note these facts:
1. Water vapor is doing most of the ‘heavy lifting’ in terms of heat absorption here.
2. There is a “window” at approx 8 to 14 microns which allows about 30% of the thermal radiation to escape, unblocked.
3. Because of the shape of the terrestrial radiation curve, the CO2 band at 15 microns is much more important than the wavelengths between 2-6 microns, because it’s only partially covered by water vapor absorption.
4. Since the atmosphere is totally opaque to CO2 at these wavelengths, adding more CO2 doesn’t make it any “opaquer”!
Water vapor is the main contributor to the so-called “greenhouse effect” (a misnomer because trapping LW heat is not what makes greenhouses hot). It’s hard to see the significance of CO2 here, because water (in all of its physical forms) dominates the heating and cooling effects.
So, getting back to Barry Wood’s idea here of “simple physics”, is it possible to isolate the CO2 effects from the H2O effects?
Answer: Yes, we have an ideal planetary CO2 greenhouse laboratory in place on the planet Mars, whose atmosphere is 95% CO2.
The Martian atmosphere is much thinner, only 1% of Earth, but because it’s almost pure CO2 the actual concentration of CO2 is about 30 times greater per unit surface area than on Earth.
Yet the mean surface temperature is the same as the black body temperature, ~210 K, according to NASA’s “Mars Fact Sheet”:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html
Black-body temperature: Mars 210.1 K Earth 255 K
Average temperature: Mars ~210 K Earth 288 K
Conclusion: Even though CO2 is a powerful absorber of 15 micron radiation, in isolation its contribution to “greenhouse warming” is negligible.
James Sexton says:
December 28, 2010 at 7:50 am
I think it is well past time to let the climate alarmists stand on their record of accuracy, in both forecasting and backcasting.
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but James, that is their problem, they can’t forecast.
That’s why when they see a couple of years of cooling, they predict another ice age.
A couple of years of warming, and it’s global warming.
All they can do is look at a trend.
“Climate scientists” lie and say they don’t predict weather, but they use weather to make their climate predictions.
The rest of it is just smoke and mirrors, voodoo, lying………..
Ric Werme says:
December 28, 2010 at 6:08 am
That’s pretty far from accurate. What CO2 does is restricts the flow of LWIR from surface to space which causes an increase in temperature at the surface. The increased surface temperature then accelerates the flow rate. The LWIR all still makes its escape.
It might help to equate temperature to pressure. By restricting the flow of IR the radiation pressure increases at the surface which in turn increases the flow rate through the restriction.
Re :
John of Kent says:
December 28, 2010 at 6:21 am
Don’t be confusing radiative with conductive physics.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-101/
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/07/yes-virginia-cooler-objects-can-make-warmer-objects-even-warmer-still/
Read them, especially the second one.
Ulric Lyons says:
December 28, 2010 at 6:41 am
In your post few months ago you said:
….found worldwide, is a rudimentary rain calendar, mapping the heliocentric cycles of Jupiter, Mars, Earth and Venus over 44.75yrs.
Interesting, but this one is based only on JSU.
Ulric are you astrologer or something ?
From my Excel file I took peaks for the resonance cycles and the temperature and put them on the graph just to show that there is no 60 year cycle.
Prompted by your comment Iwas tempted to prove your number wrong.
Here is how the numbers from my graph ad:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETpr.htm
resonance temperature
1998 difference—– 2003 difference
1954 44 —————- 1948 55
1906 48 —————- 1916 32
1860 46 —————- 1871 45
1816 44 —————- 1830 41
1770 46 —————- 1778 52
1729 41 —————- 1734 44
total 269—————- total 269
average—-44.83333333 average—-44.83333333
It looks like as you and your long gone astro friends may have been right but for wrong reason.
I am astonished.
Ulric thanks for the post, I hope someone has saved the graph with numbers so it can be proven that there was no fixing of the numbers.
James Sexton says:
December 28, 2010 at 7:50 am
onion says:
December 28, 2010 at 7:17 am
Sam Hall writes:
“There is also no basis to argue that a rise in CO2 is dangerous.”
There is. What we do know establishes a threat (CO2 rising, beyond levels seen for hundreds of thousands of years, greenhouse gas, ocean acidifification, etc).
I have to agree with James here, in fact somebody here (on another thread, James, was it you?) made a comment of such pertinent clarity that it begs reiteration for this thread: “The only definitive statement that anyone can say about Co2 is that it makes plants grow” I probably paraphrazed that a little, maybe, “…makes plants grow better…” or, ..”more…”, can’t recall who posted it, my apologies to the author.
We can all agree that Co2 supports and enhances the biodiversity on this planet, and if it gets a little warmer well, that’s just an added benefit.
Hans Erren wrote:
A doubling of CO2 could raise the global temperature between 0.3 degrees C (Miskolczi, 2007) and 10 degrees C (Andronova and Schlesinger,2001) .
… Or 16 to 20, according to this guy!
But seriously. Roger Peilke Sr.’s work should be mentioned in this thread. He’s spent many years producing peer reviewed studies that document other probably causes of the warming we have witnessed in the twentieth century, especially land use issues. Of course, his work is routinely denigrated and basically discarded as irrelevant by the hard core warmists / scare-mongers who rule the roost at the IPCC and act as gatekeepers when it comes to information dissemination.
Onion says “What we do know establishes a threat (CO2 rising, beyond levels seen for hundreds of thousands of years, greenhouse gas, ocean acidifification, etc). It’s a bit like taking a drug that hasn’t been tested. Sure I have no basis to claim with certainty that it will be harmful, but I don’t need that to know that the act of taking the untested drug is dangerous.”
CO2 is not a drug and it has been proven to be in higher concentrations several times before in the earth’s long history, so CO2 is not a problem on its own. What is a problem is the proposed feedback effect from increasing CO2 concentrations, specifically its contribution to rising temperatures.
To suggest that the extent of this feedback is known, is to agree that global warming will also result in more snow during the winter. They weren’t predicting this in 2007 when the Arctic ice was nearing an all time low. But in 2010 the lack of Arctic ice is the main cause of Europe’s harsh snow storms.
Climate science is the new oxymoron.
Incidentally, here’s a link to the Apollo 15 demonstration of dropping a hammer and a feather on the moon:
http://videosift.com/video/Physics-Hammer-vs-Feather-falling-on-the-moon
“onion says:
December 28, 2010 at 7:17 am
Sam Hall writes:
“There is also no basis to argue that a rise in CO2 is dangerous.”
There is. What we do know establishes a threat (CO2 rising, beyond levels seen for hundreds of thousands of years, greenhouse gas, ocean acidifification, etc). It’s a bit like taking a drug that hasn’t been tested. Sure I have no basis to claim with certainty that it will be harmful, but I don’t need that to know that the act of taking the untested drug is dangerous.”
Oh, c’mon. Bad analogy.
Earth’s atmosphere had over 1000 ppm of CO2 before and all forms of life thrived. (See early carboniferous period)
Besides, people living on nuclear submarines are exposed to concentrations of CO2 greater than 1000 ppm.
I think one or 2 people are missing(deliberately?) the point and the joke and an analogy
The analogy shows not just one force at work, but a complex system…
To further add to the joke, maybe a bird could catch the feather and fly off with it….! 😉
Climate is vastly more complicated than the simple physics of a single molecule, (let alone the chemistry involved)
The IPCC reognises this, media, lobby groups, pretend otherwise it seems.
sorry about the typo on the %co2
Steve from Rockwood says: “I read that a green-house was using levels of 1,500 ppm CO2 to achieve greater growth rates in plants without any harm to humans. But I have a feeling there may not be an upper level for CO2 that poses risks to humans…”
British submarines operate at 8,000ppm CO2.
Greenhouses optimize plant growth at 1,000-2,000ppm CO2.
Some scientists and agronomists think the current level of atmospheric CO2 is much too low to maximize plant growth, though you would never think that from the abysmal media coverage of this subject.
John says: December 28, 2010 at 6:05 am
“Simple physics says that if I drop a ball and a feather they will fall at the same rate.” It also says “in a vacuum.”
Simple physics says that increased CO2 will raise temperatures.
It also says in an enclosed, non open air environment.
Fixed.
It think that the point here isn’t the physics isn’t simple and therefore must be wrong, but rather that the variables are too many. Quantum mechanics and string theory are examples of complex physics, but that doesn’t make them wrong. The physics of climate science is relatively simple, but that doesn’t make the conclusions people draw from the physics right. That is because there are too many variables to calculate and some of those variable are unknown at this time.
stephen richards says:
December 28, 2010 at 7:32 am
The gas CO² per se will not kill you if you are in an atmosphere with 20% O² Impossible but I think it is probably true. Pure CO² kills animals and Humains and , I think, someone has shown that death has occured at above 7000ppm but the O² content was not measured. And last but not least, a number of celebs in the UK, I think, have died with bags over their heads while performing a sexual act. This occurs because the brain does not ‘see’ CO² as dangerous and you therefore drift gently off to die without suffering the distress of suffocation.
This is horribly wrong. CO2 poisoning is quite painful. The cells in your body produce CO2 as a byproduct of metabolism. It is excreted through the lungs and the excretion relies on the concentration in the blood being greater than that in the air. As the concentration in the air rises there is a concommitant increase in blood concentration. To some degree this can be ameliorated by breathing faster. Indeed the first symptoms of CO2 poisoning is increased respiration and heart rate. At some point your heart and lungs can’t pump fast enough and blood CO2 inevitably rises. This causes pH to fall – your cells begin to acidify. Proper pH is critical to all sorts of metabolic chemistry and metabolism eventually halts as a result.
All the oxygen in the world won’t save you once you can’t breathe fast enough to stop rising pH in bodily fluids.
I think you’re confusing CO2 poisoning with CO poisoning. CO is tasteless, odorless, and non-irritating but at a concentration of 1% it will cause unconsciousness in just three breaths followed by death in three minutes. If you weren’t unconscious it would be painful. CO2 poisoning takes quite a lot longer and you stay awake for most of it.
So in other words Onions, “better safe than sorry”, yes? When in doubt, go with the “precautionary principle”?
Gaylon says:
December 28, 2010 at 8:18 am
on another thread, James, was it you?) made a comment of such pertinent clarity that it begs reiteration for this thread: “The only definitive statement that anyone can say about Co2 is that it makes plants grow”
=======================================================
Naw, thanks though, but anyone that’s been here for a while knows that I’m much more verbose(I’m sometimes the posting equivalent to a windbag) than that nice, concise and clear statement.
But this is a tenet upon which the CAGW(or nom de jour) rests and usually gets a pass. I’ve read predictions of increased hurricanes to crop failures to sudden sea level rise causing severe flooding (all the while causing droughts) and everything else in between. After a generation of wailing and gnashing of the teeth and prayers to Gaia, nothing has been demonstrated. Brooklyn is still above water, crop productivity is increasing. Obviously, the latest scare of a drought in the SW U.S. was entirely overstated. An entire generation is made to bear witness to the ludicrous prognostications of our alarmist friends. And yet, they still get air time???!!!?? The truest test, observation, shows our alarmist friends to be less than credible.
CodeTech says:
December 28, 2010 at 8:30 am
Cool video. I probably watched it live as they did it but can’t specifically recall it.
CAGW hypothesis has about as much substance as the hypothesis that the moon landings were faked which adds even more richness and nuance to this video.