A guest post by Ken Coffman and Mikael Cronholm
In clicking around on the Internet, I found an outstanding paper called Thermodynamics of Furnace Tubes – Killing Popular Myths about Furnace Tube Temperature Measurement written by Mikael Cronholm. The paper was clever and wise…and made a lot of sense. Clearly Mikael knows a lot about infrared radiation and I’m a guy with questions. A match made in heaven?
We exchanged e-mails. I want to be clear about this…Mikael corrected some of my wrong ideas about IR. I’ll repeat that for the slow-witted. Some of my ideas about infrared radiation were wrong. I am considered a hard-headed, stubborn old guy and that’s completely true. However, I want to learn and I can be taught, but not by knuckleheads spewing nonsense and not by authoritarians who sit on thrones and toss out insults and edicts.
Ken Coffman (KLC) is the publisher of Stairway Press (www.stairwaypress.com) and the author of novels that include Hartz String Theory and Endangered Species.
Mikael Cronholm (MC) is an industry expert on infrared radiation, a licensed, level III Infrared Training Center Instructor and holds two Bachelor of Science degrees (Economics and Business Administration).
The following is a summary of our conversation.
KLC: Hello Mikael. I found your paper called Thermodynamics of Furnace Tubes and I found it very informative, practical and interesting. I hope you’ll bear with me while I ask a couple of dumb questions. I am an electrical engineer, so I have some knowledge about thermodynamics of conduction and convection, but not so much about IR radiation. In return for your time, I would be happy to make a donation to the charity of your choice.
If I take an inexpensive IR thermometer outside, point it at the sky and get a temperature reading of minus 25°C, what am I actually measuring? Is there anything valid about doing this?
MC: Just as a matter of curiosity, how did you find my paper? I checked your website and I guess this has to do with the Dragon, no? If you want to make a donation I would be happy to receive that book. If you can, my postal address is at the bottom. I don’t follow the debate more than casually, but I am a bit skeptical to all the research that is done on climate change…it seems that the models are continuously adjusted to fit the inputs, so that you get the wanted output…and they argue “so many scientists agree with this and that”…well, science is not a democracy…anyway…
About radiation, then. There is more to this than meets the eye. Literally!
Looking at the sky with an infrared radiometer you would read what is termed “apparent temperature” (if the instrument is set to emissivity 1 and the distance setting is zero, provided the instrument has any compensation). Your instrument is then receiving the same radiation as a blackbody would do if it had a temperature of -25°C, if that is what you measure. It is a quasi-temperature of sorts, because you don’t really measure on a particular object in any particular place, but a combination of radiation, where that from outer space is the lowest, close to absolute zero, and the immediate atmosphere closest to you is the warmest. (I have once measured -96°C on the sky at 0°C ground temperature.) What we have to realize though, is that temperature can never be directly measured. We measure the height of a liquid in a common thermometer, a voltage in a thermocouple, etc, and then it is calibrated using the zeroth law of thermodynamics and assuming equilibrium with the device and the reference.
KLC: Global warming (greenhouse gas) theory depends on atmospheric CO2 molecules absorbing IR radiation and “back radiating” this energy back toward the earth. If you look at the notorious Ternberth/Keihl energy balance schematic (as shown in Figure 1 of this paper: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/TFK_bams09.pdf ), you see the back radiation is determined to be very significant…more than 300W/m2. From your point of view as an IR expert, does this aspect of the global warming theory make any sense?
MC: The paper you sent me mentions Stefan-Boltzman’s law, but it does not talk about Planck’s law, which is necessary to understand what is happening spectrally. I suggest you read up on Planck and Stefan-Boltzman at Wikipedia or something. Wien’s law would be beneficial as well—they are all connected.
Planck’s law describes the distribution of radiated power from a blackbody over wavelength. You end up with a curve for each blackbody temperature. The sun is almost a blackbody, so it follows Planck quite well, and it has a peak at about 480nm, right in the middle of visual (Wien’s law determines that). The solar spectrum is slightly modified as it passes through the atmosphere, but still pretty close to Planckian. When the radiation hits the ground, the absorbed part heats it. The re-radiated power is going to have a different spectral distribution, with a peak around 10um (micrometer). Assuming blackbody radiation it would also follow Planck’s law.
S-B’s law is in principle the integral of Planck from zero to infinity wavelength. Instruments do not have equal response from zero to infinity, but they are calibrated against blackbodies, and whatever signal they output is considered to mean the temperature of the blackbody. And so on for a number of blackbodies until you have a calibration curve that can be fitted for conversion in the instrument.
That means that the instrument can only measure correctly on targets that are either blackbodies, or greybodies with a spectral distribution looking like a Planck curve, but at a known offset. That offset is emissivity, the epsilon in your S-B equation in that paper. It is defined as the ratio of the radiation from the greybody to that of the blackbody, both at the same temperature (and wave length, and angle…). Some targets will not be Planckian, but have a spectral distribution that is different. If you want to measure temperature of those, you need to measure the emissivity with the same instrument and at a temperature reasonably close to the one you will measure on the target later.
So, of course, the whole principle behind the greenhouse effect is that shorter wavelengths from the sun penetrates the atmosphere easily, whereas the re-radiated power—being at a longer wavelength—is reflected back at a higher degree. I have no dispute about that fact. It is reasonable. So I think the Figure 1 you refer to is correct in principle. My immediate question is raised regarding the numbers in there though. The remaining 0.9 W/m2 seems awfully close to what I would assume to be the inaccuracies in the numbers input to calculate it. You are balancing on a very thin knifes edge with such big numbers as inputs for reaching such a small one. An error of +/- 0.5% on each measurement would potentially throw it off quite a bit, in the worst case. But I don’t know what they use to measure this, only that all the instruments I use have much less accuracy than that. But with long integration times…well, maybe…but there may be an issue there.
KLC: I am interested in some rather expensive thermopile-based radiation detectors called pyrgeometers (an example is the KippZonen CGR 3 instrument http://www.kippzonen.com/?product/16132/CGR+3.aspx).
If a piece of equipment like this is pointed into the nighttime sky and reads something like 300W/m2 of downwelling IR radiation, what is it actually measuring? If I built a test rig from IR-emitting lightbulbs calibrated to emit 300W/m2 and placed this over the pyrgeometers, would I get the same reading?
MC: “What is it actually measuring?” Well, probably a voltage from those thermopiles…and that signal has to be calibrated to a bunch of blackbody reference sources to covert it either to temperature or blackbody equivalent radiation.
Your experiment will fail, though! If you want to do something like that, you have to look at a target emitting a blackbody equivalent spectrum, which is what the instrument should be calibrated to. IR light bulbs emitting 300W/m2 is simply impossible, because 300W/m2 corresponds to a very low temperature! Use S-B’s law and try it yourself. Like this: room temp, 20°C = 293K. The radiated power from that is 293K raised to the power of 4. Then multiply with sigma, the constant in S-B’s law, which is 5.67*10-8, and you get 419 W/m2 or something like that, it varies with how many decimals you use for absolute zero when you convert to Kelvin. For 300 W/m2 radiation I get -23.4°C at 300 W/m2 when I calculate it (yes, minus!). Pretty cool light bulb.
I don’t know what your point is with that experiment, but if it is to check their calibration you need a lot more sophisticated blackbody reference sources if you want to do it at that temperature. But you could do a test at room temperature though. Just build a spherical object with the inside painted with flat black paint, make a small hole in it, just big enough for your sensor, and measure the temperature inside that sphere with a thermocouple, on the surface. Keep it in a stable room temperature at a steady state as well as you can and convert the temperature to radiation using S-B’s law. You should get the same as the instrument. Any difference will be attributable to inaccuracy in the thermocouple you use and/or the tested instrument. Remember that raising to the power of 4 exaggerates errors in the input a lot!
I hope I have been able to clarify things a little bit, or at least caused some creative confusion. When I teach thermography I find that the more you learn the more confused you get, but on a higher level. Every question answered raises a few more, which grows the confusion exponentially. It makes the subject interesting, though.
Let me know if you need any more help with your project!
KLC: I found your paper because one of the FLIR divisions is local and I was searching their site for reference information about IR radiation. I know what a 100W IR lamp feels like because I have one in my bathroom. If someone tells me there is 300W/m2 of IR power coming from space, and I hold out my hand…I expect to feel it. What am I missing?
MC: Yeah, you put your hand in front of a 100W bulb, but how big is your hand…not a square meter, I’m sure. It is per area unit, that is one thing you are missing. The 100W of the bulb is the electrical power consumption, not the emitted power of the visual light from it. That’s why florescent energy-saving lamps as opposed to incandescent bulbs give much more visual light per electrical Watt, because they limit the radiation to the visual part of the spectrum and lose less in the IR, which we cannot see anyway. The body absorbs both IR and visual, but a little less visual.
And, here is the other clue. Your light bulb radiation in your bathroom is added to that of the room itself, which is 419 W/m2, if the room is 20°C. Your 300 W/m2 from space is only that. You will feel those 300 W/m2, sure. It will feel like -25°C radiating towards your hand. But you don’t feel that cold because your hand is in warmer air, receiving heat (or losing less) from there too.
Actually, we cannot really feel temperature—that is a misconception. Our bodies feel heat flow rate and adjust the temperature accordingly. It is only the hypothalamus inside the brain that really has constant temperature. If you are standing nude in your bathroom, your body will radiate approximately 648 W/m2 and the room 419 W/m2, so you lose 229 W/m2. That is what you feel as being cooled by the room, from radiation only. Conduction and convection should be added of course. The earth works the same way—lose some, gain some. It is that balance that is being argued in the whole global warming debate.
KLC: I still feel like I’m missing something. IR heat lamps are pretty efficient, maybe 90%? Let’s pick a distance of 1 meter and I want to create a one-square meter flooded with an additional 300W/m2. It must be additional irradiation, doesn’t it? That’s going to take a good bunch of lamps and I would feel this heat. However, I go outside and hold out my hand. It’s cold. There’s no equivalent of 300W/m2 heater in addition to whatever has heated the ambient air.
Perhaps I’m puzzled by something that is more like a flux…something that just is as a side-effect of a temperature difference and not really something that is capable of doing any work or as a vehicle for transporting heat energy.
It’s a canard of climate science that increasing atmospheric CO2 from 390PPM to 780PPM will raise the earth’s surface temperature by about 1°C (expanded to 3°C by positive feedbacks). From my way of thinking, the only thing CO2 can do is increase coupling to space…it certainly can’t store or trap energy or increase the earth’s peak or 24-hour average temperature.
Any comments are welcome.
MC: Efficiency of a lamp depends on what you want, if heat is what want then they are 100% efficient, because all electrical energy will be converted to heat, the visible light as well, when it is absorbed by the surrounding room. If visible light is required, a light bulb loses a lot of heat compared to an energy saving lamp. Energy cannot be created or destroyed—first law of thermodynamics.
When you say W/m2 you ARE in fact talking about a flux (heat flow is what will be in W). If you have two objects radiating towards each other, the heat flow direction will be from the hotter one, radiating (emitting) more and absorbing less, to the cooler one, which radiates less and absorbs more (second law of thermodynamics). The amount of radiation emitted from each of them depends on two things ONLY, the temperature of the object and its emissivity. So radiation is not a side effect to temperature, it is THE EFFECT. Anything with a temperature will radiate according to it, and emissivity. (If something is hotter than 500°C we get incandescence, emission of visible light.) Assuming an emissivity of unity, which is what everyone seems to do in this debate, the radiation (flux. integrated from zero to infinity) will be equal to what can be calculated by Stefan-Boltzmann’s law, which is temperature in Kelvin, raised to the fourth power, multiplied by that constant sigma. It’s that simple!
With regard to your thought experiment, it is always easier to calculate what an object emits than what it absorbs, because emission will be spreading diffusely from an object, so exactly where it ends up is difficult to predict. I am not sure where you are aiming with that idea, but it does not seem to be an easy experiment to do in real life, at least not with limited resources.
CO2 is a pretty powerful absorber of radiated energy, that fact is well known. Water vapor is an even stronger absorber. In the climate debate it is also considered a reflector, which probably also true, because that is universal. Everything absorbs and reflects to a degree. So I guess that the feedback you mention has to do with the fact that increasing temperature increases the amount of water vapor, which increases absorption, and so on. But my knowledge is pretty much limited to what happens down here on earth, because that is what matters when we measure temperature using infrared radiation. However, it is important to remember, again, that we talk about different spectral bands, the influx is concentrated around a peak in the visual band and the outgoing flux is around 10 micrometer in the infrared band, and the absorption may not be the same.
With so many scientists arguing about the effects of CO2 I am not the one to think I have the answers. I really don’t know what the truth is. And the problem that all these scientists have is that they will never be able to test if their theories are correct, because the time spans are too long. For a theory to be scientifically proven, it has to be stipulated and tested, and the test must be repeatable and give the same results in successive tests for the theory to be proven.
If not, it is not science, it is guessing.
More like a horoscope…
@ur momisugly Myrrh. The answers to those two questions have been given. If you don’t understand the graph I gave you, or the explanations by me and others, I cannot really help you any more. You have to study the basics.
to Mikael
This paper might be interesting to you.
Infrared and Sub-millimetre Observing Conditions on the Antarctic Plateau
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jacara/Papers/pdf/pasa_modtran.pdf
“The temperature of the atmosphere affects the flux levels in the near IR, mid IR and sub mm IR quite differently.”
Mikael, you haven’t answered my questions, you never really do. Either you don’t know or you understand exactly what I’m saying in the tale of two lightbulbs.
Either way, AGWScience is nonsense, and so garbled that it’s no wonder AGW’s don’t understand what it’s saying…
barn E. rubble – A couple of things before I sign off here. A few posts up George mentioned the energy the earth receives, he said: For a start, the solar spectrum recieved at earth contains 98% of its energy in the wavelength range from 0.25 microns in the UV to 4.0 microns in the IR”
Bear in mind firstly that AGW claims it is Solar Energy which heats the Earth, not Thermal IR. Solar in AGW only comprises UV, Visible and Near IR. Thermal IR is only used in their ‘energy budgets’ as that which the heated earth radiates out.
Near IR is 0.7-1.5 microns, then comes Mid IR and Far IR. What George has done here is include Thermal Mid IR in his 98% of Solar Energy. Rather a lot of it…
There is some confusion about where one ends and the other begins, but those who have particular need to accurately tell, do know. Near and Mid IR have different properties, Near is Reflective, Mid is Absorptive, Near is Cold, Mid is Thermal. In other words Near IR is included in the Solar Energies because it is Light not Heat energy.
Those interested in IR re furnaces for example, who work in IR beginning at 2, I would reason that this begins a 2 microns to be sure that what is being worked with is Thermal IR/Heat Energy, and not interfered with by Near IR which isn’t, which is Light Energy.
Here’s NASA on Cool Near Infrared: http://science.hq.nasa.gov/kid/imagers/ems/infrared.html
And from another page from those who need to understand the difference to use the wavelengths accurately: http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.arts.sf.science/2008-07/msg00098.html
From which: If we assume a suffficiently advanced technology, near IR and visible are good for getting through air. If you are operating on a planet or plan to bombard a planet, you are pretty much restricted to a band of 1.5 to 0.2 microns wavelength for your light – near IR 1.5 to 0.7 microns, visible 0.7 to 0.4 microns, and near UV 0.4 to 0.2 microns (if you need to shoot through an ozone layer, etc.
This fills in with detail by actual number what the NASA page explaining cold Near IR has indicated in its graphic. Cold IR relative to Hot Thermal IR, you cannot feel it, any more than you can feel the rest of the Light Energies from the Sun in any of the colours of the rainbow or in UV. George has include 2.5 microns of Thermal IR in his statement.
If this is how AGW calculates its Energy Budget models then it is claiming one thing, that only Near IR is used, while actually also using the heat energy of Mid IR.
And, claiming that it is this total which is impacting the Earth to heat it, microscopically by generating heat kinetically only and not by absorption of Thermal Mid and Far IR.
See here: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/EnergyBalance/page1.php
Only Shortwave in, Longwave out.
What this does to those Energy Budget Diagrams I don’t have the maths patience to work this out. Are they using 2.5 microns of Thermal Energy masquerading as Shortwave? (George?)
UV as I’ve said, doesn’t penetrate beyond the first layer of skin, the epidermis, which is why people can get sunburnt even on not so hot days without realising they’re being burnt. Short wave energies do not carry heat, and it’s only these said to be included in the term Solar or Solar energies by AGW, the Visible + the nearest short waves either side. They have a high energy frequency, although with a tendency to be scattered in the atmosphere because they are Reflective and not Thermal. They can be concentrated and directed then with accuracy, as the weapons use discusses, but they can no more warm the Earth than they can cook your egg, because their reflective penetration is neglibible, and, the Earth and all life isn’t permanently scorched.. When you’re sitting on a hot rock warmed by the Sun, it’s Mid and Far Thermal energy which has penetrated its organic matter, just as it warms us and the metal tanks in the desert the soldiers used to fry their eggs. Astonishingly complementary energies, perfect for life as we know it.
The high energy states do not have the bulk nor the heating power of Thermal Energy, which is explained in my link about a 100 Watt lightbulb, and properly understood, this means the Sun gives the majority of its Energy in Thermal IR which is deeply penetrative. And, as NASA understands in its work which it developed with spacemen in mind, this deep penetration is also healing in tissue and cell levels.
In other words, the AGW claim that shortwave Solar Energy, which is Light, heats the Earth kinetically without Thermal Ir is simply absurd.
As an aside to this, Anthony and Phil, I am sorry to see Will banned. He was goaded into explaining himself (I’ve seen this method played out elsewhere) by those who never answer straight questions, but always claim their own use of out of context science trumps. It doesn’t. Which is why they can never give a straight answer. Wishing them a real lightbulb moment.
Anyway, barn E. rubble, good luck with trying to make sense of it all.
AJB says: Apart from conflating the impact of the illustration with sublimation and pressure change, no. The data largely came from Engineer’s Toolbox (e.g. for water vapour). Feel free to elaborate and correct, I’m all ears.
Ok, The Y axis is in units of heat capacity. The heat capacity for ice is illustrated correctly, the heat capacity for water is illustrated correctly, the heat capacity for steam is illustrated correctly, and the heat capacity for N2 is illustrated correctly all at 1 ATM. But . . . .
At 273 K the latent heat of fusion shouldn’t be illustrated with just a big orange blob. In fact at it’s melting point ice just sits there and sucks up 334 kJ/Kg with no change in temperature at all. This should be illustrated on a logarithmic Y-axis scale showing a huge spike in energy absorbing capacity – a vertical line that jumps not one but two decades from the 2.0 value up to 334 and then back down to eventually arrive at the 4.2 value of water.
And then again at 373 K it should show an even bigger spike of 3 decades of energy absorbing capacity of 2257 kJ/Kg to get from water to steam.
In addition, CO2 is incorrectly illustrated at 195 K. This is the temp at which it sublimes. Below 195 the heat capacity of solid CO2 is 1.2 kJ/(Kg*K). Right at 195 a similar spike in the graph should be illustrated of ~760 kJ/Kg to reflect the latent heats of melting + vaporization since CO2 sublimes at 1 atm.
But neither of these addequately illustrate what is going on, because the units of latent heat of fusion, and latent heat of vaporization, don’t match the units of heat capacity.
I believe what the author of this illustration was trying to show was how much energy absorbing capacity water had over either of the atmospheric gases. IMHO to illustrate this correctly, the Yaxis should have just had units of energy, and the X axis units of temperature. When this is laid out properly, even with a logarithmic Y axis, the significantly higher heat capacities of ice, water and water vapor, PLUS the huge energy absorbing phase transitions, show just how amazing water’s temperature/energy buffering capacity is! You need a logarithmic scale just to keep the other gases even on the graph, otherwise they look like they are both barely above zero over the whole range of temperatures. (BTW Normal climatic temp range 240-320 K)
I would like to add one more comment to this thread that suggests a neat experiment anyone can do to prove the very low contribution of CO2 back radiation to our blue planet.
http://solarcooking.org/plans/funnel.htm
On this page (put together by BYU professor Steven E. Jones, and his students) you will find simple directions for how to build a simple solar cooker out of a piece of cardboard, aluminum foil, a mason canning jar and a “shake and bake” bag. The plans illustrate a way to make a simple funnel shaped mirror with the canning jar (blackened) sitting inside the bag (to prevent convective energy loss) at the focal point of the mirror to focus radiant energy transfer and collect all of the energy in the sun’s light rays.
Now, you could play around with this fun toy on a nice sunny day (or even a cloudy day) and show just how much radiant energy rains down on us. But that isn’t the cool experiment. No, the cool experiment is to take the funnel mirror with the blackened mason jar (a blackened plastic frozen juice can might work bettter) inside of not one but two plastic bags out on a average cloudless night, and face the mirror out at the black sky.
Read almost to the bottom of the page at the above web site and you will see that over a couple of hours the radiant energy transfer to the cold black body temps of deep space will drop the temperature of the water in the can 10 degrees C below ambient! They claim they even achieved freezing!
A quick p.s. Re: Reflective. Reflective means that it bounces off objects, Visible and Near Infrared are Reflective, not penetrative, that’s why Near is used in IR detection systems (object can be seen because not in colour – http://www.sensorsinc.com/whyswir.html).
I discovered this by chance for myself a couple of years ago when I pressed my remote control to change channels in mid movement, it was pointing to the ceiling at the time and still changed the channel. (Spent some moments testing out angles, but didn’t try from another room… grin) Bounces off, that’s why UV generally does not burn up everything.
One other thing, Visible light against Mid and Far IR – Visible does not travel as well through foggy conditions when it loses half its energy compared with 3% loss for Far IR. Can’t find the naval page looking at this, but it’s what I recall from the table. The longer the wave the less lost, when visible light has practically stopped the IR is still relatively strong. Don’t know how this can be used in understanding Heat Energy through the atmosphere. If I can find it again will post for info.
Don V says February 22, 2011 at 1:03 am
Hi Don,
Point taken about CO2 at 195K. But you seem to be having a problem with units, the blobs as labelled bear no relation to the Y-axis and temp goes nowhere. I guess you’d rather see something like this (no need for a log scale, did you forget to factor out K on the Y-axis?):
http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/2442/water2.png
Obviously both depictions are hugely simplistic, just a like for like comparison of each in a pure state, hence the jokey title. Water is nifty stuff though, except when you don’t want it playing it’s big bag of tricks 🙂
To AJB
Nice graph.
Now graph the same three molecules with respect to number of molecules of each gas within the atmosphere…for total joules in the atmosphere for each.
What do you see?
Focusing on CO2 by the warmistas looks pretty ridiculous once you look at the whole scheme of things….
AJB, I second Domenic. We are very fortunate to live on a planet with so much water–which is capable of absorbing and emitting huge amounts of energy during the two common phases changes…all of which help us maintain a livable temperature. Energy does not equal temperature. The reason we’re here today thinking about this stuff is a side-effect of that fact.
AJB,
Yes, that’s closer to what I’m talking about! Are you sure you got all the slopes and phase change jumps right though? Especially for CO2? Remember the energy content can be computed as m*Cp*(T-Tzero) up to the first phase change. Thereafter the energy content is equal to the total heat capacity at the temperature of the phase change plus the phase change energy plus the heat capacity of the new phase multiplied by the delta T as measured from the phase change. The CO2 graph should include a large phase change energy added to the solid phase heat capacity starting at it’s sublimation temp.
Furthermore water’s slope should be 4, ice to water jump only 334 (graph seems a bit more than that), and water to steam jump 2257 (graph should hit near 3600 near 400 K).
Domenic,
I agree, that’s the point I was trying to make. Multiplying each of the numbers in each graph by the mass of each gas in a kg of air would illustrate the energy content carried by each. Since CO2 is such a tiny, tiny fraction of air’s total volume, it’s energy carrying capacity is miniscule, when compared to water’s. The difficulty of producing this kind of graph though is deciding what part of the atmosphere you want to “sample” and deciding on the sample’s water content. It can go anywhere from near zero in the dead of winter at the poles to greater than 1 Kg(H2O)/Kg(Air) in a drenching ice storm (all three phases). See:
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/moisture-holding-capacity-air-d_281.html
And then when you add in the density differences of each of them in the gas phase and realize that most of the CO2 is sinks to the bottom . . . .
to Don V
We do have a pristine data baseline reference to guage the true ‘greenhouse effect’ of CO2. It’s the Antarctic data. (Note: do not use Antarctic coastal data, it’s too noisy due to higher ave temps and higher humidity. The interior data is most pristine. High signal, no noise.)
There is virtually no moisture in the atmosphere above Vostok and Amundsen-Scott.
And there has been a rise in CO2 in the air there comparable to Mauna Loa.
So, in Antarctica, any ‘greenhouse effect’ of CO2 increase should be magnified there, as there is no water vapor to moderate it.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/VOSTOK.pdf
Keep in mind, the ‘greenhouse effect’ of CO2 the warmists keep pointing at actually has two components (1) absorbing more incoming solar radiation during daytime, and (2) keeping heat ‘trapped’ during night time.
And yet, the temperature records there show decreasing temperatures, not increasing with increased CO2 also present there.
And during both the Antarctic summer and winter! sun and no sun.
What bothers me most is that Keeling must have noticed that. He was involved in setting up the original CO2 monitoring in Amundsen-Scott in 1957. That SOB must have known his original theory of connecting global warming with CO2 was a sham in his later years, prior to his death. And yet, he said nothing…
RE: Myrrh says:
“Anyway, barn E. rubble, good luck with trying to make sense of it all.”
And here I thot everyone had moved on from this thread. (I got real busy and didn’t get a chance to catch up until now.) I appreciate the time and efforts from all who’ve contributed here. I’m sure I’m not alone and there are many more who think the same, reading thru all of this with great interest. As much as it may not seem to those directly involved but – this is real debate! Science vs. science (in spite of how some may see it) arguing about how things ‘REALLY WORK’ . . . well, from their point of view . . . which of course is ALLdebate. I picked up some anomisty but no uncivility. I think those involved in the details here may underestimate how many people were following your debate and just because they didn’t post a comment doesn’t mean you were arguing between yourselves. This has been a great thread! It has been enlightening and disheartening, IE: for those of us looking (hoping?) for agreement that ‘all is well and here’s why’ . . . vs. the ‘we’re all gonna die and it’s my fault’.
While trying to keep up with those here RE: graphs, laws and such, I tried to find some base understanding of the topics discussed by reading up on the specific stuff mentioned here, elsewhere. Thinking the more sources of information I found the better. As if! It seems the more I read the worse the fog gets!
On my recent journeys I found many sites that left more questions than answers. Unfortunately (for me anyway) well written pieces can seem quite logical and reasonable. Thanks to the internet, IE: post whatever ya’ want, you need to have your own info/bullshit filters. Only you can’t buy them. So those like me are left to to try and make our own. One area in particular that I’ve read about seemed reasonable but because I hadn’t seen/heard about it before leads me to think I may have been mislead. As in my own BS meter started to twitch.
I’m referring to the Stefan-Boltzmann law which is something that has been a major foundation block (if you will) to the discussion here. Now this may well be old news to most here but it’s the first I’ve read about NASA finding the SBL of no use for the moon landings.
For those that know better, is this just a ‘junk science’ thing that I’ve read? I found a number of sites/pages starting from about a year ago and they all read well . . . seem to have supporting references and ‘non-crazy’ authors. I have no way (either education or pro experience) to refute what I’m reading.
What are the thoughts here on the premise that SBL has no ‘real’ world application? And in particular how real world applications of SBL on the AGW argument?
I’ve gone back thru this whole thread looking for this connection and didn’t find it. Maybe I missed it.
Again to those contributing here; I’m not the only one who appreciates your time and expertise here.
Thank you.
-barn
@ur momisugly barn E. rubble and other readers/contributors. I totally agree with you, it has been a very interesting debate here, and I second barn E. rubble in the appreciation of all the input.
The laws of physics are not depending on us for their existence. We don’t make them up, we discover them. They are not inventions, they are the rules and mechanisms by which the universe operates. Once discovered and found to hold true by testing, it is up to us to use them within their proper realm and limitations. So a law of physics does not care whether it is “applicable” to us or not in a given situation. We have to figure that out, and to do it, we first need to understand it. Really understand it. I have have realized just how big a challenge that is for people who are not used to working with these laws regularly for years on end. I see the same challenge towering before the students I teach in IR thermography. The difference is that we have material prepared, we have the time we need to go through things step by step, so that all is introduced in a less painful manner and gets into place.
Trying to get things explained well on a forum like this is difficult. There is a great variation of previous knowledge between readers and you cannot find a balance to suit everyone’s needs when explaining something. It will be too simple or too difficult for many readers. Of course, the big plus with a discussion like this is the interactivity which weighs up some of the disadvantages.
In general, I have a feeling that a lot of the stuff that is written on these topics are going over our heads. Scientists in the higher hemispheres are not very good at explaining in layman terms and that presents a challenge to all of us.
The saddest thing though is when science becomes hostage of politics, and politics are driving science instead of the opposite. Scientific discovery cannot be planned, ordered, administrated, or made to fit preconceived models. That is the problem with the global warming issue. Scientific work needs to start with a hypothesis, of course, but the result of the research must be accepted whether it turns out to prove the hypothesis or not.
I wish everyone best of luck in their endeavors of learning!
Hello.Progress of thermodynamics has been stimulated by the findings of a variety of fields of science and technology. The principles of thermodynamics are so general that the application is widespread to such fields as solid stat.e physics, chemistry, biology, astronomical science, materials science, and chemical engineering. I find two great open access books “Application of Thermodynamics to Biological and Materials Science” You can read it on online reading platform or just download it here: http://www.intechopen.com/books/show/title/application-of-thermodynamics-to-biological-and-materials-science and “Thermodynamics” http://www.intechopen.com/books/show/title/thermodynamics
The contents of this books should be of help to many scientists and engineers. Chee
I too want to thank all participants for this great discussion!
I certainly experience the difficulty described by
Mikael Cronholm (says: February 23, 2011 at 10:44 pm) also by barn E. rubble (says:February 23, 2011 at 7:10 pm) and perhaps many others here (I didn´t have the time to re-read the whole thread)
… the diffuculty to follow a discussion which partly is well above my head. The one thing which is obvious nevertheless, is that “the scinece is settled” can only apply to science settled to follow the scientific principles. Any appeal to authority, any smearing of differing opinions, any “untidyness” resulting in lost data, any group-thinking, “save-the-world” fervor, etc. – should be ruled out and disqualifies the person who resorts to it. For me at least.
Domenic says:
February 23, 2011 at 2:23 am
Thank you for this information (antarcitc data), unfortunately I can not find the source of it. Which is bad, because I´d like to use it in discussions with friends and other people. Could you share the relevant publishing information or piont me to the place which I overlooked? Thanks!