This is how Slashdot breaks the news from Forbes article: “New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism”. When it hits Slashdot, you know it has gone viral.
New NASA Data Casts Doubt On Global Warming Models
from the but-scientists-love-models dept.
bonch writes:
“Satellite data from NASA covering 2000 through 2011 cast doubt on current computer models predicting global warming, according to a new study. The data shows that much less heat is retained by carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere than is assumed in current models. ‘There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans,’ said Dr. Roy Spencer, a co-author of the study and research scientist at the University of Alabama.”
Note: the press release about the study is somewhat less over the top.
It is unfortunate that version of the story was the one to go viral. The repeated use of the word “alarmist” was beyond gratuitous and verging on the absurd. However the saving grace is that the article does explain the water vapour feedback issue in simple terms. Most AGW believers seem unaware that CO2 alone can not cause dangerous warming even if we burnt all known and projected reserves of fossil fuels.
While the top of atmosphere radiation budget analysis proves the point, I would like to see empirical testing close to the Earths surface. We know that back scattered LWIR from CO2 cannot heat the oceans accounting 70% of the Earths surface, which invalidates the case for CAGW. However the case may be fully dismissed if a spectral analysis were done for the emissions of LWIR for various materials and environments on the Earth over a full diurnal cycle. Water, vegetation and soils are unlikely to be radiating a complete IR spectrum like a black body. How much LWIR around the 15 micron band is actually emitted by Earths true surfaces (not at the top of the troposphere)? What shifts occur in the emission spectra over a diurnal cycle?
I’ve been a /. member almost since its beginning (4-digit member No. !). Since then I’ve seen it degenerate from a genuinely great News For Nerds site into something which kinda annoys me these days. The reason? It seems to be teeming with AGW alarmists! At the same time, it’s fascinating to watch their reactions to anyone who shows the remotest sign that they’re an AGW sceptic. At first I was letting their attacks, venom, and bile get to me, but I’ve since then managed to turn that into amusement, as I realise now that what I’m seeing is the dying shrieking of “The Emperor’s clothes are awesome and you are an idiot for not seeing it! DENIER!” and so on.
I’ve had the idea of picking a climate-related /. entry, and making a blog entry purely about the types and styles of comments made by the AGW-believers, as reading those comments by them gives you a fascinating insight into their thought processes (or lack thereof).
Maybe I will do that sometime. I’ve not blogged much since the March 11th quake due to having to deal with the aftermath of that and have been a wee bit too tired of late.
Great for the publicity, but don’t worry the global warming alarmists and the NY Times will attempt to destroy the study in the eyes of the public in short order.
Yeah, but when are you stupid skeptics gonna get people who aren’t doodoo heads to do science? Huh? We still have the consensus so neener neener.
“The main finding from this research is that there is no solution to the problem of measuring atmospheric feedback, due mostly to our inability to distinguish between radiative forcing and radiative feedback in our observations.”
Couldn’t you look at that and say that the limit is in a range there somewhere? Or is the range going to be too large?
dmmcmah said:
July 28, 2011 at 10:43 pm
> Great for the publicity, but don’t worry the global warming alarmists
> and the NY Times will attempt to destroy the study in the eyes of the
> public in short order.
And the authors of the study too, if they stay true to form.
dmmcmah , It has already begun in the /. comments, where some of the AGW believers are using the ad hominem fallacy against Dr Roy Spencer, in an attempt to discredit his paper. (Saying he’s a creationist quack, therefore his paper is bunk).
It’s precisely the type of venom I mentioned in my earlier post here. Fascinating.
This seems as good a place as any to mention this recent paper:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=8119&linkbox=true&position=4 (July 22nd)
The paper shows how current AGW models break the laws of physics (that the amount of radiation emitted is proportional to its temperature) which explains the findings of Lindzen (and now confirmed by Spencer-Braswell in this paper) that Earth’s radiation emitted is actually fluxing with temperature.
The paper also slams the AGW models as they use equations which physicists use to model stars, which do not work for terrestrial bodies. Thus all the AGW models are completely useless.
Apologies, the link above should be:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=8138
Anything with Dr.Roy Spencer’s name anywhere near it will never be given a chance by the cabal that usually feeds the Press. Despite the hoo-hah now, this paper will be widely and generally ignored.
But first of course….we have to have the RealClimate rebuttal!
Stand by your beds!
Lol, I just countered the “he’s an ID believer” ad hominem on Slashdot by mentioning Richard Dawkins, who like me is an atheist but rather unlike me he has blind faith in the AGW theory.
My point being should I discount everything Dawkins has to say about religion and evolution just because he appears (in my opinion) to have the cognitive dissonance to have complete /faith/ that humans are causing planet Earth to overheat due to a minuscule additional release of a trace gas?
I think not. 😉
I am actually amazed that this story has any traction in the mainstream media at all. Of course the BBC will refuse to show it, but the fact that Forbes printed it and various news networks picked it up as actually heartening.
I am now waiting for all the pro cAGW people who have been arguing that cAGW is proven because even the mighty NASA show it to be true, to start trashing NASA.
Talk about beating them over the head with the “alarmist” bit. The article was a touch strident, but nothing like the alarmists’ use of the emotionally laden “D” word.
The End Is Near.
A very interesting article, but it would be very helpful if Dr. Spencer (and others) would refrain from writing nonsensical articles in unrelated fields which he clearly knows nothing about, such as evolutionary biology. This article on intelligent design (if true) ( http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/roy-spencer-on-intelligent-design/ ) unfortunately makes him look like a total nutcase, and provides too easy ammunition for those who want to discredit him with ad hominem “look he wrote that stupid article so his mental abilities and logic are obviously questionable and we can´t trust that the current article is any better”. Of course such logic is flawed but providing such an easy target is less than helpful. Creationists and those subscribing to intelligent design are really equivalent to the flat Earthers.
By the standards of the maiinstream media, the Forbes article on Yahoo! is quite good. It alerts readers to the fact that Global Warming relies on positive feedback from water vapour, which has not been proved. One for the good guys, methinks.
“When it hits Slashdot, you know it has gone viral.”
In 1999 maybe.
I have not checked but i suspect this site gets more traffic then Slashdot does.
@Kevin Cave
“Maybe I will do that sometime. I’ve not blogged much since the March 11th quake due to having to deal with the aftermath of that and have been a wee bit too tired of late.”
OT Sorry to hear that. I’m in northern Yamagata. We had a big shake, but we, and more importantly our farmers seem to have escaped the fallout.
I’ve got one that always stumps Warmists…they don’t like it because they simply cannot dispute the ‘facts’ upon which my argument is based. It goes like this….
The temperature at 300hPa ranges from around minus 60C at the poles to minus 30C over the equator.
This is around 30,000 feet; the cruising altitude of long haul passenger planes and you can see it on the flight info display along with maps and arrival times.
I ask if they have been on a long haul flight and if they experienced turbulence.
The ones which say yes, I ask what they think turbulence is?
Gently I get them to admit that turbulence is air rising, cooling and falling…in short water vapour convection and radiation.
I then ask them to explain at what point in their scientific model, warm air will cease to rise into the vast frigid reservoir of cold that is our atmosphere – lose its heat (easily across the big Delta T) and fall again.
I then sit back and listen to them wriggle!
It’s true that Dr Spencer knows nothing about evolutionary biology, and should shut up about it. He gave a gift to climate alarmists everywhere when he spoke up about ID, which is creationism-in-disguise, and they won’t let anyone forget about it.
James Hansen also is a semi-creationist, but everyone engages him on the things he should be knowledgeable about, and never mentions his religious belief system.
There’s also a 542 comments-and-counting thread about this study over on fark.com (http://www.fark.com/comments/6426807/NASA-Global-Warming-is-officially-OVARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR). Fark climate threads are always a fun read.
A qualitative article about a quantative issue! Where are the NUMBERS.
What’s this, NASA checking their models with observation? What will Gore think. (Sarc. off)
It is good to hear about science actually being carried out as it should be. But how long before either some wild explanation emerges for these observations or governments take any notice.
Just what would it take to convince warmistas that AGW is a false ideology? After all, true belief is a difficult change.
Absolutely agree.
Assuming that the analysis proves to be robust [even good guys can make mistakes!], this is surely the first really definitive piece of evidence that bears directly on the AGW hypothesis – and is also surely the final nail in the coffin of the theory. Everything else has so far been, essentially, just circumstantial (pro and anti the theory – albeit increasingly anti) – even climategate has been basically of an ad hominem nature, trashing the rather dodgy deliverers of rather dodgy ‘data’ pertaining to the theory – but I fail to see how any scientist, or intelligent layman, can ignore these results. Interesting times, indeed.
The finding in Spencer and Braswell’s new paper 2011 paper “On the Misdiagnosis Of Surface Temperature Feedbacks From Variations In Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance” that the earth’s atmosphere resists forcing changes (loses more heat or less heat to stabilize planetary temperature rather than to amplify forcing changes) makes sense physically (positive feedback does not occur in natural systems as it makes the system unstable and is purposely ensured to not occur in manmade systems.) and is consistent with the paleo climatic record (planetary temperature is stable except when the galactic cosmic ray changes by the sun or the geomagnetic field changes sensitivity of the cloud mechanism), it is also consistent with previous findings by Lindzen and Choi.
Extreme warming (3C and greater for a doubling of atmospheric CO2) only occurs if the earth’s atmosphere has positive feedback to amplify rather than resist a increase forcing change due to increased atmospheric CO2 or due to any other forcing change.
If the earth’s atmosphere respond to a change in forcing is neutral (i.e. not positive and not negative) the models predict a very conservative (on the high side) warming for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 of 1.2C. As it appears the feedback response is negative the actual warming will be less than 1C for doubling of CO2.
The IPCC’s safe warming for the planet is 2C. It appears we have already won the war on global warming. The US and other Western Countries do not need to spend trillions of dollars on a bureaucracy to monitor and police CO2 emissions, on a bureaucracy to control trading of CO2 credits, on a bureaucracy to tax CO2 emissions, on bureaucracy to hand out money without control to corrupt third world governments, and so on.
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL039628-pip.pdf
On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data
By Richard S. Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi
Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Climate feedbacks are estimated from fluctuations in the outgoing radiation budget from the latest version of Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) nonscanner data. It appears, for the entire tropics, the observed outgoing radiation fluxes increase with the increase in sea surface temperatures (SSTs). The observed behavior of radiation fluxes implies negative feedback processes associated with relatively low climate sensitivity. This is the opposite of the behavior of 11 atmospheric models forced by the same SSTs. Therefore, the models display much higher climate sensitivity than is inferred from ERBE, though it is difficult to pin down such high sensitivities with any precision. Results also show, the feedback in ERBE is mostly from shortwave radiation while the feedback in the models is mostly from longwave radiation. Although such a test does not distinguish the mechanisms, this is important since the inconsistency of climate feedbacks constitutes a very fundamental problem in climate prediction.
The back peddling by those who predicted extreme global warming has started.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/j/j/global_temperatures_09.pdf
Do global temperature trends over the last decade falsify climate predictions?—J. Knight, J. J. Kennedy, C. Folland, G. Harris, G. S. Jones, M. Palmer, D. Parker, A. Scaife, andP. Stott
Way to go Dr. Spencer! Measure and analyse. Keep at it! Your approach is the only way to go.
We will win the scientific discussion in the end.
Unfortunately it wont happen until all CO2 taxes are in place. I discussed this with a colleguae here in Norway. His take on it was;
Relax. They will keep all their existing tax’es anyway. Some of them will just change name, and increase. Look at the name on a tax as a text-string that just keeps changing its content. In one election it will be called Horse-Power tax. (Yes, we have that in Norway) After the election, if the new government is “green’ish red”, or “conservatively green’ish”, it might be called “Carbon tax”. Or whatever. The crux is that the total amount of tax must either stay the same or slowly increase to follow the inflation.
Why? Well, you have a certain percentage working for the Government.
They have a budget, every year. It doesnt decrease. So, there you have it.
CO2 is a nice tax-increaser.
But in Norway there is a logical fallacy. Oil and gas is a very, very important income source for these budgets. If they decrease their oil/gas activities due to CAGW the whole system will get into financial problems. Statoil. Remember?
Before oil / gas in Norway, we had progressive income tax.This was back in the 70’ties. I remember my father complained that if he worked extra, he would keep only 10 percent for himself.
How / why do they go along with CAGW, since oil / gas is so important as a source of income for all employed by the government?
My take on it is that not even the Prime Minister, Mr.Stoltenberg, goes along with CAGW privately.
But they agree officially. Don’t want to loose votes. But when it comes to signing anything in Copenhagen that would hurt the government finances, they would never sign.
Not even close. Check out http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wattsupwiththat.com and http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/slashdot.org . Slashdot has much more traffic.
The good thing is that the story on slashdot gets an audience gets a general audience. Wattsupwiththat is preaching to the converted. The slashdot story has more than five hundred comments. That’s a lot even for slashdot.
The bad thing is that the comments that are ranked highest tend to be negative on the story. There are some alarmists over there and they are very aggressive. Still, it’s impressive that the story was carried at all.
It was just a matter of time until some climate scientists produced some interesting empirical research. Empirical research is truly the death knell of global warming. Warmista have been locked inside their Gaia models no less completely than Spinoza was locked inside his conception of God.
I followed a link to climatecrocks. I wish I hadn’t. I had no idea that such ignorant philistines still trolled the web.
It is good to see that the paper is getting some publicity.
The problem for the ‘warmists’ is that there is undeniably a divergence between model projections and recent current temperature measurements and this divergence requires an explanation.
The Spence paper provides a reasonable explanation for the divergence. If the ‘warmists’ do not like that explanation, they need to come uip with their own explanation. Presently they cannot do this. Hence, there are difficulties in attacking the paper on grounds of principle. Ad Homs attacks is only hand waving and most mature (is there such a thing) warmist will no that that does not carry any real weight.
Accordingly, their best strategy is to hide the paper, after all they have previosu experience in hiding the decline and they have the MSM on their side. I bet the BBC does not report on this paper.
Here in Australia we have once again witnessed blatant examples of the double standards that the MSM applies to AGW advocates and AGW sceptics.
In the last week or so we have seen former UK PM Tony Blair helping Julia Gillard to sell her carbon dioxide tax. Now you might think he’s doing this because they are good Labor mates, but could it have anything to do with the fact that Blair is trousering millions of dollars as part of his job selling greenhouse snake oil for billionaire, venture capitalist, Vinod Khosla?
But did the Australian MSM raise the question of Bliar’s blatant conflicts of interest? As you might guess, naught but obsequious fawning.
Contrast this meek acceptance with the puerile nit-picking dished out by the MSM when it came to visiting sceptics Lord Christopher Monckton and the incumbent president of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus. In this instance we had the MSM making bizarre assertions about “Big Oil” payments, and the supposed “theft” of a Biro, when both received nothing more than modest expenses.
We also witnessed Julia Gillard’s display of what could be described as gushing hero worship towards Tony Blair, but she totally ignored the Czech president.
Amazing cant isn’t it?? If you’re a scientist with a religious belief then you are subject to public venom. But if your religious beliefs are based on voodoo science then you are deemed to be a superior person.
regards.
(the AGW scam will not fall over willingly. too much ‘face’ at stake for too many egos.)
Dale says: July 28, 2011 at 11:24 pm
///////////////////////////////////////////////////
This confirms what I have been saying for years, that you cannot get a proper grasp on how the climate works (and in particular how the oceans behave) whilst dealing with averages. Averages only conceal what is truly going on.
It is obvious that there are fundamental floors with the models as is conclusively confirmed by the divergence between their projections and real temperature measurments. If the temperature data record has become inaccurate due to problems with station quality, sitings, station drop out, UHI, adjustments etc, the divergence problem may be even greater.
In the end, reality will catch up. Eventually, Mother Nature will prove her case.
I nice summation article in Forbes can be found: http://blogs.forbes.com/jamestaylor/2011/07/27/new-nasa-data-blow-gaping-hold-in-global-warming-alarmism/
Shorter Spencer and Braswell.
We could not match ten years of real world data with significant ENSO events with model data that makes the assumption that over longer timescales the ENSO effect is neutral.
Over a ten year period ENSO variations were larger than AGW forcings so it was impossible to measure the positive feedback effects that might amplify the radiative forcing from higher CO2.
David Falkner – I’m stealing “neener neener” ha ha ha! Well said! Now THAT’S a great comment! LOL!
Looks to me the AGW crowd is at least a bit snookered now.
Don’t need any satelites to tell me that the increase in CO2 does nothing.
You can all find that for yourself in the area where you live::
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
@- Konrad says:
July 28, 2011 at 10:35 pm
“We know that back scattered LWIR from CO2 cannot heat the oceans accounting 70% of the Earths surface, which invalidates the case for CAGW.”
Could you provide some evidence for this claim? WHY does downwelling LWIR not warm the oceans when it is from CO2 but does when it is from clouds – or are you claiming that cloud cover has no effect on ocean temperature at night?
What would be most valuable would be a suitable dispassionate technical expert to translate the paper into everyday language, flag up the key things which have to be true for the paper to hold water and then invite others to shoot it down in everyday language also.
I suspect this paper is a watershed, but if you want the political establishment to treat it thus, it needs to be translated into less technical language.
Slashdot commenters still firmly on the warmist side, no surprise there – liberal urban geek population; strongly UHI-affected.
re: “… In this instance we had the MSM making bizarre assertions about “Big Oil” payments, …”
I have read that “Big Oil” (or industry) has given skeptics several million dollars over the years. I see this fact (?) mentioned often. On the other hand I have read that governments, mainly the USA, has given out many tens of Billions of dollars to the CAGW side but that never seems to get mentioned.
“Billions” is more than “millions” is it not?
izen says:
July 29, 2011 at 4:01 am
“Could you provide some evidence for this claim? WHY does downwelling LWIR not warm the oceans when it is from CO2 but does when it is from clouds – or are you claiming that cloud cover has no effect on ocean temperature at night?”
LWIR does not penetrate beyond a skin layer.
Kevin Cave says:
July 28, 2011 at 11:43 pm
“My point being should I discount everything Dawkins has to say about religion and evolution just because he appears (in my opinion) to have the cognitive dissonance to have complete /faith/ that humans are causing planet Earth to overheat due to a minuscule additional release of a trace gas?”
Dawkins has replaced blind faith into a religion with blind faith into the political religion of AGW.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voegelin
It worries me how anyone could believe .0.0039% of the atmosphere could heat up the other 99.9961%.
izen says at July 29, 2011 at 3:52 am:
“Shorter Spencer and Braswell.
We could not match ten years of real world data with significant ENSO events with model data that makes the assumption that over longer timescales the ENSO effect is neutral.
Over a ten year period ENSO variations were larger than AGW forcings so it was impossible to measure the positive feedback effects that might amplify the radiative forcing from higher CO2.”
Clearly, Izen has not read the release or he/she/they has reading difficulties. The release says;
“Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA’s Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models.
“The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show,” Spencer said in a July 26 University of Alabama press release. “There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans.””
So, Spencer and Braswell compared empirical data to indications of “the climate models”.
Either the model indications approximate reality or they don’t. The fact that Spencer and Braswell have observed “there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show” proves the model predictions don’t approximate reality.
And excuses or armwaving about ENSO are plain silly.
Richard
Or even .039% could heat up the other 99.961%
Hello! The same article was on Drudge Report as of late afternoon yesterday. Drudge is on someone’s laptop in every major newsroom in America. He’s far more important than /. It’s the overall effect you get here when Yahoo News+Forbes+Drudge+a cascade of popular sites brings a meme into the world. That’s how millions of people begin to form a new opinion by osmosis. A few months from now it’s the combination of stories: reputable paper+impending Maunder-type minimum+results of CLOUD experiment. Wait till you see the opinion polls on climate change next spring. Heh.
Paul Deacon @ July 29, 2011 at 12:49 am
Paul, the positive feedback part of the AGW argument is exactly why it is a load of carp. Any engineer (I am one) will tell you that a system with positive feedback is unstable. If there were spositive feedback in the Earth’s climate, then it would have hit the rails billions of years ago. There clearly is no positive feedback; there isn’t any evidence for positivie feedback; positive feedback exists only in the minds and computer models of those with a political or financial or religious need for anthropogenic warming.
@ Rúnar
> … would be very helpful if Dr. Spencer (and others) would refrain from
> writing nonsensical articles in unrelated fields which …
> makes him look like a total nutcase, …
I fail to see how that article makes him into “a total nutcase”.
He’s actually right, at a very high level. Evolution and Climatology _are_ the same in this sense: researchers must make observations and inferences from sparse evidence about systems which are mostly “hidden”.
And mainstream evolution, though successful in many ways, can’t explain some fairly simple stuff, such as: ‘how did human brain evolve big enough to build spaceships to other planets?’ [when slithering under a rock or climbing a tree are much more ‘practical’ mechanisms for enhancing surviva]l?
I’m an evolution skeptic myself, and also an ID skeptic. I believe there is a yet undiscovered “life principle” which will explain life (and consciousness too) and a lot of these unanswered questions. It’s not a religious belief, but merely a statement of faith about science.
Dr. Spencer isn’t spouting religion either, but merely suggesting that we shouldn’t demonize folks for being skeptics about evolution. You shouldn’t either.
Sound familiar?
i WAITED TWO DAYS TO SEE THIS ON WUWT!
izen says: July 29, 2011 at 4:01 am
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////
The wavelength of the DWLWIR (whether this be from CO2 or water vapour) is such that it can at most penetrate just a few microns into the ocean. There is no mechanism whereby heat in the top few microns can penetrate to a significantly lower depth so that it becomes well mixed with the real body of the oceans. In fact, the top few microns is nothing more than spray and wind swept spume such that there is in practice no pentetration. Yet further, the effect of the DWLWIR is to evaporate the top few microns to which it penetrates thereby leading to a cooling (not warming).
There is little (if any) diurnal change in air temperature over the oceans. Likewise, the air temperature above the oceans is not significantly affected by cloud cover. This is because, the ocean is a huge heat reservoir constantly heating the column of air above it, thereby maintaining a steady temperature. Since the ocean temperature does not change on a day night basis, neither does the air above it. Likewise, since the temperature of the ocean does not change by the presence of a passing cloud, nor does the air temperature above it. Put simply, if the Pacific Ocean or Indian Ocean (whatever) is at a temperature of 30 degC the air above it is at 30 dec day or night, cloudy or not. If it is at 28deg C. the air above it is 28 deg C day or night, cloudy or not.
The air does not heat the oceans. It has insufficient heat capacity in relation to the huge capacity of the ocean and evaporation and convection would in any event prevent the air from heating the ocean. You cannot heat a cup of coffee simply by placing hot air above it. There is no process whereby it can impart its temperature to the cup of coffee below (as we all know-hot air rises).
I have a swimming pool. In the summer, it gets up to about 34 to 37 degC. At night, the air temperature may be circa 23 to 28 degC. However, the air temperature immediately above the swimming pool will be 34 to 37 deg C because the water in the swimming pool is giving up its heat and heating the column of air immediately above it. Now just imaginne that the swimming pool was not say 100 cu metres of water but was infact the volume of the ocean. It is easy to visualise why the ocean controls the air temperature above it and it is not influenced by anything else since the ocean effectively has a limitless supply of heat with which to be able to heat the air above it 24/7 .
It is for this reason that many people are of the view that the AGW theory is at most a phenomenen that affects the land and cannot impact globally because DWLWIR cannot and does not heat the ocean nor control the air temperature above the oceans.
izen says:
July 29, 2011 at 4:01 am
@- Konrad says:
July 28, 2011 at 10:35 pm
“We know that back scattered LWIR from CO2 cannot heat the oceans accounting 70% of the Earths surface, which invalidates the case for CAGW.”
Could you provide some evidence for this claim? WHY does downwelling LWIR not warm the oceans when it is from CO2 but does when it is from clouds – or are you claiming that cloud cover has no effect on ocean temperature at night?
Just from personal observation, although cloud cover has an appreciable effect on air temperature at sea level at night, it has no noticeable effect on sea water temperature at night. Perhaps my local patch of the Indian Ocean behaves differently to whatever you are familiar with.
Great news, but too bad Roy Spencer went out and showed himself to be biased before it’s release. It will allow the wamrers to dismiss this study completely.
Rúnar re: “unfortunately makes him look like a total nutcase”
John A. re: “about ID, which is creationism-in-disguise”
You commit the logical fallacies ad hominem attacks of Red Herring, Appeal to Ridicule and Guilt by Association. You further fail to address ANY scientific evidence on that issue- either for evolution or on it’s limitations. See Hubert P. Yockey, Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life; ISBN 978-0-521-80293-2 and
Michael Behe The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism ISBN 978-0743296229
You even expose your ignorance by failing to distinguish between Intelligent Design and “Creation Science”
Can you rise from gutter garbage to grown up professional dialog?
Haven’t you anything constructive or objective at all to say on Spencer and Braswell’s revolutionary scientific evidence and models?
Slashdot comments tended to be quite pro AGW a few years ago. Around about climategate, that began to shift.
Previously it was a one-sided issue of science vs. ignorance. But the leaks made it a multi-faceted issue and engaged their pre-exiting preference for freedom of information and transparency.
Ars Technica is another geek site that covers AGW, but their pieces continue to be framed as “education” about how this or that method in science is very trustworthy and sound, how the public misunderstands the science, and quickly linked to the topic of climate change, kinda like how The Economist and New Scientist continue to write educational pieces questioning whether science gets it wrong, but then reaffirming that science gets it right, and so climate change is real.
Reluctantly, I have to question this. In a nonequilibrium process with a sinusoidal input, or even a noise input, there are time lags that must be considered. Outputs cannot be expected to match inputs instantly. If the input is a sinusoid, the output will be a sinusoid, but with a phase lag. If the input is noise, the output will be noise. Always, the first law governs: heat out must eventually equal heat in, and “heat retained” must be zero. Changing the “greenhouse constant” will cause the equilibrium surface temperature to change, but this does not necessarily mean the system dynamics will change. Phase diagrams and such will still look the same, but with a temperature offset.
@eco-geek
“A qualitative article about a quantative issue! Where are the NUMBERS.”
Explanation and numbers at Roy Spencers site. You are in my opinion absolutely right, though, to ask such questions. Newspaper articles are third rate derivates of actual scientific data.
Friends:
In addition to my above comment, I point out that the actual paper can be read at
http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/8/1603/pdf
It includes this;
“Central to the difficulty of feedback diagnosis is the very different time-dependent relationships which exist between forcing and temperature, versus between feedback and temperature. While there is a substantial time lag between forcing and the temperature response due to the heat capacity of the ocean, the radiative feedback response to temperature is nearly simultaneous with the temperature change. This near-simultaneity is due to a combination of the instantaneous temperature effect on the LW portion of (the Planck response of 3.3 W m−2 K−1), and the relatively rapid convective coupling of the surface to the atmosphere, which causes surface temperature-dependent changes in water vapor, clouds, and the vertical profile of temperature.”
In other words, any arguments concerning relative timescales (such as those of izen at July 29, 2011 at 3:52 am) are specifically refuted in the paper.
Richard
It didn’t take schmidt and trenberth long to get a rebuttal out there.
http://www.space.com/12469-climate-change-debunked-fast.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo
Talk of Roy Spencers views on ID is ironic cinsidering Al Gore studied at theological school and in public talks said the earth was only 6000 yeasr old.
My newly minted AirForce weatherman son (I’m so pleased and proud http://coalitionoftheswilling.net/?p=15233 !) sent the link via Yahoo yesterday, so it’s mainstream all the way, baby!
However, as forecast, first thing this morning I find the “Spencer’s a quack” namecalling started via my Twitter stream:
http://twitter.com/#!/USRealityCheck/status/96917066480758784
“Climate Scientists Blow Gaping Hole In ‘NASA Data’ Paper By Ideologue Roy Spencer: The climate denier blo… http://bit.ly/mSLCmu tp #US ”
…leading to this ThinkProgress article:
http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/07/29/282656/climate-scientists-blow-gaping-hole-in-nasa-data-paper-by-ideologue-roy-spencer/
Not quite as “viral” as Yahoo, but they’re trying. Perhaps in damage control as well, there was a “release” touted of East Anglia papers yesterday, headlined as:
Climate Research Unit Releases All its Data, Depriving Skeptics of a Favorite Talking Point
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/07/climate-research-unit-releases-data-skeptics.php?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+treehugger%2Fbusiness-politics+%28Business+%26+Politics%29&utm_content=Twitter
(In fact, it was “nearly” all.)
@Tom in Indy
It has a lovely quote by Gavin Schmidt:
“Climate sensitivity is not constrained by the last two decades of imperfect satellite data, but rather the paleoclimate record.”
Imperfect satellite data as opposed to perfect paleoclimate records?
I think the recent revelation that the IPCC fiddled with the climate sensitivity number is just as damaging–or ought to be. here’s the WUWT thread on the topic:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/05/the-ipcc-and-high-biased-climate-sensitivity/
Dear Anthony Sorry to post here, Tips and Notes does not allow me to paste links.
The Guardian has a report regading a scientist being suspended. The scientists was involved in creating the alarm about Polar Bears. The Guardians take is that the suspension is due to the US govt wanting to drill for oil?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/28/arctic-scientist-polar-bear-oil
@Tom in indy says: July 29, 2011 at 5:54 am
————————————————————
Wow, that Stephanie Pappas is a real t[^^]d who obviously didn’t read the paper!
I’ve had enough of this phony physics from oxymoronic ‘climate science’:
There is no ‘back radiation’. There is no energy storage by CO2. The DLR is Prevost exchange energy, a consequence of an object being warmer than absolute zero. It’s balanced by equal and opposite upward radiation. The only work being done is that from the temperature gradient.
The reason why DLR is higher for clouds is that they have emissivity of c. 1 whereas that of moist air is c. 0.1,
The prediction of an energy source from Arthur Milne’s 1922 was a mathematical mistake. It’s time we closed down this bunkum science and put some competent people in charge, you know, a decent physics’ or engineering degree from one of the top 10 World universities, not the UEA.
Remember the missing links found that proved man evolved from lower creatures and birds from dinosaurs and later proven to be false, how long before warming scientists find the missing link to the hockey stick or CO2 or cap and tax and trade and outrageous regulation?
All their predictions have not happened and they have used good weather to promote fear of global disaster by falsifying their reports and hiding their work. And anyone questioning their claims has been vilified and shut out from publication. Warming scientists have produced dictatorial predictions, rather than arguments, that are intended to support legislation of outrageous intent to control and suppress the general population in their normal activities and in the exercise of their freedom.
Scientists are no different than anyone else when it comes to the truth and honesty in their work and as for criticism of a scientist working out of their field of formal training the work should be allowed to speak for itself.
I’ve been a /. member almost since its beginning (4-digit member No. !). Since then I’ve seen it degenerate from a genuinely great News For Nerds site into something which kinda annoys me these days. The reason? It seems to be teeming with AGW alarmists! At the same time, it’s fascinating to watch their reactions to anyone who shows the remotest sign that they’re an AGW sceptic.
Been reading it for just as long. Yes they did get swept up in the AGW thing, but almost everyone did after Al Gore’s self aggrandizement movie came out. That said, They were sane compared to what Digg became. If you remember, there was a time in mid 200’s where people were wonder if /. would even survive, because Digg was eating their lunch. But a funny thing happened. As Digg became more and more radical, especially leading up to the 2008 election, a lot of us tech-head started going back to /., which had mellowed out. Is it perfect? No. But perfect is the enemy of the good, and it’s far better than Digg.
On that note. I think i like the /. version of this story better than the Forbes one. The Forbes version is WAY too over the top. We don’t like it when the press does that with a warmist leaning paper, and we shouldn’t like it when it’s done with a paper that goes to the skeptic side.
CAGW doubt has already gone viral. The people who believe CAGW is happening are simply spread very thin trying to paint over all the holes as soon as they pop up. It’s like a thin skin of belief covering an ocean of doubt, just a matter of time before it all falls apart. I’ve seen articles appear on the front page of Digg that were highly critical of the AGW thesis, of course the CAGW Digg members all flag it as inaccurate so it gets labeled as such, but it still makes it to the front page, with a ridiculous caveat.
There are though, quite literally, people behind the scenes whose only job seems to be to plaster CAGW belief onto Digg, Slashdot, Reddit, etc.. I’m not sure you guys have seen them, but they exist. They post so often, they’re either living off of permanent unemployment or someone is paying them. Either is possible to me. If it’s just highly deceived people who have willingly sacrificed years of their lives defending the indefensible on online forums, I would be quite sad for them.
It looks like Spencer has been shot down once again.
Maybe he should find a new line of work. Like weather forcasting. He shares their level of accuracy.
RU frothing? That’s very hard on spelling competence.
quantative / quantitative
Ken Harvey says: July 29, 2011 at 5:22 am
“…Just from personal observation, although cloud cover has an appreciable effect on air temperature at sea level at night, it has no noticeable effect on sea water temperature at night. Perhaps my local patch of the Indian Ocean behaves differently to whatever you are familiar with…”
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Ken
See my post above (richard verney says:July 29, 2011 at 5:18 am)
I would not join issue with your observation, but I consider that you are describing local events. Near the coast, the weather is different due to different air temperatures between land and sea, diiferent topography, sea breezes etc,
My post is dealing with the condition of the oceans in the middle of the ocean, ie., if you were to go on a deep sea ocean voyage and experience conditions on a ship miles and miles away from the nearest land.
Of course, from time to time, storms will develop and then the air temperature and sea temperature may well be different (very probably will be), or there may be prevailing trade winds carrying air currents 9which may be warmer or cooler). My post is dealing with the position when weather conditions are essentially calm (say not exceeding BF5 or thereabouts).
I have studied hundreds of ship’s logs where ocean and air temperatures and weather conditions are recorded every watch (4 hour intervals), and in the deep ocean areas, there is in practice little if any diurnal temperature change, likewise little if any change between cloudy and open skies.
The air temperature is controlled by the vast volume of ocean acting as a storage heater continually replenishing the air temperature as it gives up its heat.
.
charles nelson says:
July 29, 2011 at 1:04 am
I’m not sure I follow, surely warm air will always rise as it’s less dense, perhaps they “wriggle” as you put it because you don’t make any sense and they are trying to be polite and not call your arguement stupid…
Oceans are heated during the day by shortwave Solar energy, not LW radiation (what the Earth emits back at longer wave lengths). Long wave radiation is captured by greenhouse gases to be re-radiated in all directions, and can temporarily heat air temperatures but only by hardly noticeable fractions. In fact, the oceans are so readily heated by Solar energy that they heat up deeper than land surfaces. At night the oceans begin to cool but very slowly and only slightly, while land surfaces give it up quickly.
For those who question (and I think only one commentor did) these well known phenomena, I recommend any standard 5th grade science text book.
The problem with Spencer’s paper is that it uses observations and matches observations.
This is apparently not the way climate science is supposed to be done.
@- DirkH says:
July 29, 2011 at 4:25 am
“LWIR does not penetrate beyond a skin layer.”
So what do you think happens to that LWIR that penetrates the skin layer – allowing for the 1LoT ?
@- Richard S Courtney says:
July 29, 2011 at 4:47 am
“Clearly, Izen has not read the release or he/she/they has reading difficulties. The release says;”
I know what the press release says because I read it.
I also downloaded and read the ACTUAL paper, including the conclusions.
When you have read the same bits you might want to try again and tell me how the ‘shorter’ version I wrote is wrong.
@- richard verney says:
July 29, 2011 at 5:18 am
“The air does not heat the oceans. It has insufficient heat capacity in relation to the huge capacity of the ocean and evaporation and convection would in any event prevent the air from heating the ocean. You cannot heat a cup of coffee simply by placing hot air above it. …It is easy to visualise why the ocean controls the air temperature above it and it is not influenced by anything else since the ocean effectively has a limitless supply of heat with which to be able to heat the air above it 24/7 .”
The air does not heat the oceans, but its content does affect its rate of cooling. The energy content of the ocean is large, but not limitless, the transfer to the atmosphere is part of the equator to pole movement of thermal energy. Because of the absorption within the atmosphere it is kept at ocean surface temperatures, energy is re-radiated back to the land and the ocean surface so that the net loss of energy is lower.
Brian:
The subject of this thread is yet another valuable contribution to climate science from Roy Spencer.
But your comment at July 29, 2011 at 7:24 am says in total:
“It looks like Spencer has been shot down once again.
Maybe he should find a new line of work. Like weather forcasting. He shares their level of accuracy.”
Your comment is devoid of content and worth (except as an example of your typical comments).
Where has “Spencer been shot down”, and by whom, and how?
Perhaps you could consider the probability that your assertions only exist in your deluded mind.
Richard
Peer review is the most accurate form of science…….global warming
What kind of morons would pass some garbage like this through peer review……..anti-global warming
Not only does the atmosphere release more energy than previously thought, it starts releasing it earlier in a warming cycle. The models forecast that the climate should continue to absorb solar energy until a warming event peaks. Instead, the satellite data shows the climate system starting to shed energy more than three months before the typical warming event reaches its peak.
“At the peak, satellites show energy being lost while climate models show energy still being
gained,” Spencer said.
=======================================================================
I didn’t realize this……
If it’s correct….whoever designed those models is the stupidest person on the face of this earth
Slashdot appears to be deleting posts that aren’t attacking the Taylor article and Spencer.
Since the issue of warming oceans from more CO2 has come up again please see here:
http://www.irishweatheronline.com/features-2/wilde-weather/setting-and-maintaining-of-earth%e2%80%99s-equilibrium-temperature/18931.html
“Extra energy in the air from whatever source other than solar shortwave cannot enter the oceans to affect the equilibrium temperature of the oceans so instead it affects the surface air pressure distribution which then shifts to prevent a divergence between sea surface and surface air temperatures”.
RE: Alexander Duranko: (July 29, 2011 at 6:57 am)
“There is no ‘back radiation’.”
Not quite true. Imagine that you are inside a red-hot spherical shell. The red light that you would see is ‘back radiation.’ In a similar manner, the CO2 or H2O molecules around you are always emitting as well as absorbing infra-red photons. Those emitted infra-red photons that happen to reach you without being re-absorbed also constitute ‘back radiation.’
John A says:
July 29, 2011 at 1:12 am
It’s true that Dr Spencer knows nothing about evolutionary biology, and should shut up about it. He gave a gift to climate alarmists everywhere when he spoke up about ID, which is creationism-in-disguise, and they won’t let anyone forget about it.
Please explain why someone living in a free country should shut up about anything if they feel they want to expound on a subject. Censorship is bad and self censorship is worse.
Isaac Newton was a creationist. Does this say anything about what he did?
I defended Dr. Spencer at Little Green Footballs (although he is a big boy and can defend himself) until I got kicked off. He is free to say and write what he wants on any subject. It is a “free” country. Truth spoke by anyone is still truth.
One of the men who came up with quarks is now a Anglican priest. Does that make him unqualified now to discuss physics?
By the way John please tell me where the energy came from for the big bang.
Richard S Courtney says:
July 29, 2011 at 7:58 am
Richard – I take inane comments by readers such as “Brian” as an indication that the publication by Spencer and Braswell is in fact very effective, and will be causing a lot of consternation amongst the climate elites…
Dale says:
July 28, 2011 at 11:24 pm
This seems as good a place as any to mention this recent paper:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=8119&linkbox=true&position=4 (July 22nd)
Here is a working link to the paper.
http://principia-scientific.org/pso/publications/The_Model_Atmosphere.pdf
The paper shows that the standard radiative model only appears to work for Earth, because of a simplification. Averaging of temperature. That when you apply the standard model to other planets, such as Venus, it does not work.
The underlying problem is that radiation is the fourth power of temperature, so that when you average temperature and then raise this to the fourth power, this over emphasizes radiation from cold places and under emphasizes radiation from warm regions, leading to a miscalculation in the energy budget.
Here is a simple example of the problem. Let D=Day, N=Night, ^4= fourth power, then (D + N) / 2 = average temperature.
Climate Science assumes that
((D + N)/2)^4 = (D^4 + N^4) / 2
And from this calculates that the temperature of the earth should be -18C. Since it is not, the difference must be due to GHG. Thus the climate fears over CO2.
However, except for the trivial cases where D+N = (0 or 2), this equality is false. For example, if D=3 and N=2, then you end up with 39.1 = 45.5, which is nonsense. By adding and subtracting, multiplying and dividing, you can turn 2+2 = 5 into any answer you want.
That when you separate the analysis into day and night, then the standard model breaks down, and the calculated temperature for the earth is not -18C and the standard model is wrong. The author then goes on to create a model that explains the radiative balance for the Earth and the role of GHG in determining temperature.
Richard,
With all due respect, this site is blog speculation.
So yes, In this case I appeal to the higher authority because they’re the ones with the qualifacations.
Anthony
Sorry you have already covered the Polar Bear story?
“Any engineer (I am one) will tell you that a system with positive feedback is unstable. If there were spositive feedback in the Earth’s climate, then it would have hit the rails billions of years ago.”
That is what I’ve always considered one of the simplest and most damning rebuttals to AGW alarmism: if these positive feedbacks are as bad as they make out, how come we’re here? If a tiny increase in CO2 would cause catastrophic temperature rises through positive feedback from water vapor, life should have been wiped out long ago.
Latitude says:
July 29, 2011 at 8:12 am
“At the peak, satellites show energy being lost while climate models show energy still being
gained,” Spencer said.
=======================================================================
I didn’t realize this……
If it’s correct….whoever designed those models is the stupidest person on the face of this earth
Not if your agenda was to create the worst possible scenario for global warming and CO2. To use fear to drive up funding for your branch of science. In point of fact, this tactic has been very successful, with Climate Science grabbing the lion’s share of taxpayer’s science dollars. While funding for less pressing problems like cancer research dries up.
In point of fact, climate science has likely killed more people in the future that climate change ever will, simply by diverting the funding budget from medical and technology research into climate research.
Izen, you are demonstrating a severe deficit in oceanic science. The ocean is constantly evaporating at the surface tension layer. Whatever warming occurs through LW radiation is thus constantly being evaporated off. If any of it is kept and mixed in with layers underneath, it is only a minuscule amount that would be unmeasurable, even over long periods of time. Face it, there is no mathematically defensible physical method for your assumption of LW ocean heating (which I reiterate is only at the surface and is then evaporated off) being the deposit and storage of the heat from increased greenhouse gas sources.
It is far more likely that it is being radiated out to space. Strong radiative cooling is a known and mathematically defensible mechanism.
Brian, if you wish to make such statements about the “qualifacations” of higher authorities, I am willing to bet they wished you could spell that word correctly.
John A says:
July 29, 2011 at 1:12 am
It’s true that Dr Spencer knows nothing about evolutionary biology, and should shut up about it. He gave a gift to climate alarmists everywhere when he spoke up about ID, which is creationism-in-disguise, and they won’t let anyone forget about it.
Well, it’s a gift to alarmists when their movement relies so heavily on ad hominem, I suppose.
izen: Low clouds can retain heat from any surface below, at night, land or sea. They do not cause heating. If the clouds are already tehre in the daytime, the ocean or land is not heated so much. Net, they are cooling.
LWIR does not heat the oceans. CO2 can’t heat oceans because there is no mechanism for it. The original idea was it heats the air and the air was assumed somehow to heat the oceans.
If you warm the air, it heats the top millimeter of water which immediately evaporates more. The ocean does not get warmer. Oceans are heated by higher frequency radiation that IR.
Brian says:
July 29, 2011 at 9:03 am
So yes, In this case I appeal to the higher authority because they’re the ones with the qualifacations.
Qualifications do not make one any less fallible or any more truthful or any less free from bias. Why does Phil Jones hide his work and not want it independently checked for accuracy? Hansen is an astrophysicist. Schmidt is a mathematician. Both are out of their field in climate science. Does anyone truly believe that they are free from bias?
Hansen and Schmidt both work for NASA/GISS, Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Yet they ignore (or worse trash) the satellite record that Spencer is looking at, and are busy building and adjusting the GISS climate record and model that is based on – wait for it – surface temperatures taken from thermometers.
At the same time NASA has a 100 billion dollar ISS in orbit, has just trashed the only US manned launch vehicle, and now plans to de-orbit and trash this 100 billion dollar investment in 2020. In very large part all paid for by the US taxpayer. The message is clear, the only science the “higher authority” wants us to see is that science that comes from the “higher authority”, paid for by the US taxpayer. All other science needs to be trashed.
Brian says:
July 29, 2011 at 9:03 am
So yes, In this case I appeal to the higher authority because they’re the ones with the qualifacations.
=============================================================
Peer review in favor of global warming – the gold standard
Peer review not in favor of global warming – what moron let this through
Right, wrong, ambiguous, whatever. When the headlines contain “NASA Blows Hole on Global Warming”, “Huntsville, Alabama”, “Satellites and Remote sensing”, and it is now all over the internet, I’ll bet good, hard earned dollars that most lay people who see the headlines now believe this to be true without giving it a second thought.
If I was in the CAGW camp and my livelihood depended on perpetuating that POV, I would trampling my colleagues on my way to the bright red EXIT sign.
Game, Set, Match!
Best,
J.
Anandtech has an article from a former warmist on this topic.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=22301
izen:
At July 29, 2011 at 7:49 am you say to me:
“I know what the press release says because I read it.
I also downloaded and read the ACTUAL paper, including the conclusions.
When you have read the same bits you might want to try again and tell me how the ‘shorter’ version I wrote is wrong.”
But before that, at July 29, 2011 at 5:50 am, I provided a link to the “ACTUAL” paper together with a direct quotation from it which directly refutes your spurious point.
Clearly, you have not read the paper or you have reading difficulties. Personally, I suspect both.
Richard
news just in: Oceania is no longer at war with Eurasia. The alarmist models that forecast alarmist warming have been blown out of the water. Those alarming alarmists and their alarm. Alarmists.
“Brian, if you wish to make such statements about the “qualifacations” of higher authorities, I am willing to bet they wished you could spell that word correctly.”
I think he meant to write “quackifications”.
Thunderstorm “tower heat sinks” shunt heat into space.
@MarkG
“That is what I’ve always considered one of the simplest and most damning rebuttals to AGW alarmism: if these positive feedbacks are as bad as they make out, how come we’re here? If a tiny increase in CO2 would cause catastrophic temperature rises through positive feedback from water vapor, life should have been wiped out long ago.”
Everyone on the AGW side considers CO2 a classic pollution problem, i.e. pollution causes environmental degredation. But CO2 is a natural gas that belongs in the atmosphere and the biosphere couldn’t do without. AGW is not a classic pollution case, but it hinges entirely on the positive feedback that forcings are thought to have. And what everyone seems to forget is for a runaway greenhouse effect to happen instability should be a natural state of our atmosphere.
Now, tell me how an inherently unstable atmospheric system of a planet with a chaotic ever changing albedo can be unstable and yet still produce a nice smooth flatline as the hockeystick graph. The very smoothness of the line that is considered by main stream science as proof that we are in an unprecedented warming period may as well be considered the very proof that the climate is stable.
You can not have the cake and eat it.
@Kelvin Vaughan
That is not how the greenhouse effect works. The effect may best be understood by painting your central heating radiator black.You’ll find it looses energy far fastier and while the wife might disapprove of the gloomy look of the room you’ll find real noticable difference in the energy bill.
CO2 may be a small amount of the atmosphere, paint is also a small fraction of the entire radiator. Yet it’s effect is noticable by changing the infrared colour of the atmosphere.
Fox News has it:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/07/29/data-cooling-on-global-warming/
It’s gone totally viral. The world + dog now knows. Dr. Roy Spencer has the floor.
@izen
“The energy content of the ocean is large, but not limitless, the transfer to the atmosphere is part of the equator to pole movement of thermal energy. ”
Of course the energy content per 1 C of the ocean is not limitless. It is at least a factor 3 higher than the atmosphere though. Now, unless you think we have centuries of fossil fuel bonanza left this will be a buffer enough to dampen effects for centuries.
KNMI (hardly the Heartland institute, wouldn’t you say) recently had a study explaining that current lull in warming was due to.. higher reflection as well as higher heat leakage to deep ocean.
http://www.knmi.nl/cms/content/99686/verdwenen_warmte_in_oceaan_gevonden (Dutch language. Sorry)
Philip Plait of Bad Astronomy blog fame puts his foot into the attack against Dr. Roy Spencer’s new paper. I chastise Philip Plait for the use of unprofessional ad hominem personal attacks and get viciously counter attacked. Par for the course. You might be interested. If you wish you might indicate your support for higher standards of conduct between professional scientists in the Google+ comments or the blog article. Thanks.
https://plus.google.com/108952536790629690817/posts/MGqXjz6xicG
Note at the conclusion of this abstract which is the paper we are talking about the author says I DON’T KNOW. The facts remain. The glassier ARE melting.
Abstract: The sensitivity of the climate system to an imposed radiative imbalance remains
the largest source of uncertainty in projections of future anthropogenic climate change.
Here we present further evidence that this uncertainty from an observational perspective is
largely due to the masking of the radiative feedback signal by internal radiative forcing,
probably due to natural cloud variations. That these internal radiative forcings exist and
likely corrupt feedback diagnosis is demonstrated with lag regression analysis of satellite
and coupled climate model data, interpreted with a simple forcing-feedback model. While
the satellite-based metrics for the period 2000–2010 depart substantially in the direction of
lower climate sensitivity from those similarly computed from coupled climate models, we
find that, with traditional methods, it is not possible to accurately quantify this discrepancy
in terms of the feedbacks which determine climate sensitivity. It is concluded that
atmospheric feedback diagnosis of the climate system remains an unsolved problem, due
primarily to the inability to distinguish between radiative forcing and radiative feedback in
satellite radiative budget observations.
@- Richard S Courtney says:
July 29, 2011 at 10:36 am
“Clearly, you have not read the paper or you have reading difficulties. Personally, I suspect both.”
I had already read the paper when you first posted, that’s why my shorter version was accurate.
Unless you think that –
S&B
“Finally, since much of the temperature variability during 2000–2010 was due to ENSO [9], we
conclude that ENSO-related temperature variations are partly radiatively forced. We hypothesize that changes in the coupled ocean-atmosphere circulation during the El Niño and La Niña phases of ENSO cause differing changes in cloud cover, which then modulate the radiative balance of the climate system. …
What this might (or might not) imply regarding the ultimate causes of the El Niño and La Niña
phenomena is not relevant to our central point, though: that the presence of time varying radiative forcing in satellite radiative flux measurements corrupts the diagnosis of radiative feedback”.
is not summarized by my version ?
@- Crispin in Waterloo says:
July 29, 2011 at 9:33 am
“LWIR does not heat the oceans. CO2 can’t heat oceans because there is no mechanism for it. The original idea was it heats the air and the air was assumed somehow to heat the oceans.
If you warm the air, it heats the top millimeter of water which immediately evaporates more. The ocean does not get warmer.”
I KNOW LWIR does not heat the oceans, I have never claimed it did and specifically stated it does not.
But it does have an impact, things would not be exactly the same if there was NO LWIR.
You are claiming that because it promoted evaporation it transfers energy into the atmosphere in the form of water vapor and increased convection. Perhaps you would conclude that the presence of CO2 INCREASES the cooling of the oceans?
@- Pamela Gray says:
July 29, 2011 at 9:18 am
“Izen, you are demonstrating a severe deficit in oceanic science. The ocean is constantly evaporating at the surface tension layer. Whatever warming occurs through LW radiation is thus constantly being evaporated off. …
It is far more likely that it is being radiated out to space. Strong radiative cooling is a known and mathematically defensible mechanism.”
Is the radiative cooling from this increased water vapor at lower temperature (given the wet adiabatic lapse rate) than the ocean surface better at radiating LWIR to space than the ocean surface?
Slashdot has a counter article that was just put up. http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/07/29/1844224/Followup-Anti-Global-Warming-Story-Itself-Flawed
POSITIVE FEEDBACK
A system with positive feedback can be stable, unstable or conditionally stable. In fact, positive feedback may be added to a system to improve gain or speed.
Depending on what kind of system you are working with, you may evaluate system stability using one of several techniques. Control systems are often evaluated using ‘root locus criteria’. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_locus
The requirement for positive feedback does not invalidate agw by itself. OTOH, those who tell us that there is positive feedback have a duty tell us why they feel that the system is stable.
The usual explanation about the feedback is that it isn’t linear and that there is a tipping point at which we will get runaway warming. The trouble with that is that it has been warmer in the past and we didn’t hit the aforementioned tipping point. I think that is why they had to eradicate the Medieval Warm Period. Junk piled on crap piled on complete garbage. Bah. (smoke emerges from my ears)
@- commieBob says:
July 29, 2011 at 1:50 pm
“The requirement for positive feedback does not invalidate agw by itself. OTOH, those who tell us that there is positive feedback have a duty tell us why they feel that the system is stable.”
Because along with the (measured) positive feedback from the increased humidity with temperature is a very large, non-linear NEGATIVE feedback inherent in the relation between temperature and energy emissions.
E=T^4
Looking around the Internet it says a lot about the AGW pushers when all they can say in retaliation is a combination of:
– personal attacks
– “he was wrong in the past so he’s wrong now”
– ignoring completely the satellite data (regardless of the interpretation) that shows more heat is leaving than expected
– using VERY unreliable opinions from “mates” (Trenberth) to discredit the paper (in the guile of personal attacks)
End of the day, I don’t care if he’s a creationist, I don’t care if he believes in ID, I don’t care if his funding was “questionable”, all I want to know is what the satellite says and how it changes our interpretation of the models.
Izen:
Wriggle all you like, but your so-called “shorter version” of the Spencer & Braswell paper is a complete misrepresentation of what that paper says.
My post at 5.50 am provided you with a direct quote from the paper which refutes your assertion.
Please take a course in reading comprehension then read the paper again.
Richard
There is only one way to determine the Earth’s energy balance and settle this problem. It’s to orbit a sensitive bolometer – that is an all wavelength radiation detector – at such a distance that it can image a whole hemisphere. Then by applying the Stephan-Boltzmann Law, the total radiation and its variability over long periods, as well as the diurnal and seasonal ones, can be found. That is in fact the ONLY way of taking the planet’s temperature; any other method comes with the question – where do you put the thermometer?
@- Richard S Courtney says:
July 29, 2011 at 3:36 pm
“My post at 5.50 am provided you with a direct quote from the paper which refutes your assertion.”
The first sentence of that direct quote was –
“Central to the difficulty of feedback diagnosis is the very different time-dependent relationships which exist between forcing and temperature, versus between feedback and temperature. ”
The context of this, from the paper, is that because what the satellite observes is the combination of the two relationships. As is made clear in Fig4, page 9 and in the following text –
“Diagnosis of feedback cannot easily be made in such situations, because the radiative forcing decorrelates the co-variations between temperature and radiative flux. For example, no matter what feedback is specified when the simple model is only radiatively forced, the regression coefficient at zero time lag for a sufficiently long model simulation is always near-zero.”
So my shorter version –
“We could not match ten years of real world data with significant ENSO events with model data that makes the assumption that over longer timescales the ENSO effect is neutral.”
I would contend is a better summary than anything you have presented.
@- Richard Courtney says
“Please take a course in reading comprehension then read the paper again.”
I think both of us are capable of reading, but perhaps you would like to give your summary of what findings you think the S&B paper contains. It might show which of us is capable of comprehension.
I’ll give you a hint, the press release is not a good place to start….
@- Malcolm Miller says:
July 29, 2011 at 3:49 pm
There is only one way to determine the Earth’s energy balance and settle this problem. It’s to orbit a sensitive bolometer …. That is in fact the ONLY way of taking the planet’s temperature; any other method comes with the question – where do you put the thermometer?
On the moon.
commieBob says:
July 29, 2011 at 1:50 pm
I suspect you attribute too much insight to the keepers of the temperature data. Much more likely “they” just didn’t like the bumps that interfered with their virtual world.
I’m sure that had there been any prospect of GHG “tipping points”, conditional or unconditional, being reached within the range of atmospheric compositions and temperatures that would support the carbon based life forms we are familiar with, it would have long since occurred.
If people think this site is blunt then wait until they get a load of slashdot. You get more sides to an argument than a 8 dimensional polyhedron 🙂
I’ve always enjoyed slashdot, sort of like you enjoy the idea of the old wild west where men were men and sheep were nervous. Great to see these things making up the views on what could be considered the original geek site.
I’ve read the mainstream articles and I came to wattsupwiththat to get an informative second opinion. But too bad I got none.
izen says:
All I was doing was correcting a very common misconception, found among the comments here, about positive feedback. Many people, engineers and scientists included, think positive feedback always produces an unstable system. It does not. You can not use it as an argument to dispute agw. What you can do, however, is demand that the warmists justify thinking that the system they postulate is as stable as it is observed to be.
While I’m being pedantic: The equation you cite is technically not a feedback. It is part of the forward response of the overall system equation. For a very simple system consisting of a blackbody with no thermal inertia, energy in equals energy out (the definition of a blackbody) and the equation you cite gives the temperature of the blackbody. It is no more an example of feedback than is Ohm’s law for electricity.
jim says:
July 29, 2011 at 1:12 pm
Note at the conclusion of this abstract which is the paper we are talking about the author says I DON’T KNOW.
That kind of laudable humility is the main reason I respect their work much more than the pablum dispensed by the “consensus” climate community. In my view, given the current abysmal state of “climate science”, anyone who is willing to declare themselves convinced by any of it is either a complete fool or suffering from a profound case of self-delusion.
On a separate point unrelated to your comment, much has been made of Dr. Spencer’s article in defense of ID. Similar ad hom’s have been leveled at Dr. Singer based on his criticism of the science of secondhand smoke. I’ve read both and Dr.Singer is almost entirely correct in his characterizations of the SOSS, which is perhaps one of the few fields of study that is more corrupt than CAGW. Dr. Spencer’s relatively brief piece on ID isn’t something I’d wholeheartedly embrace, but in the end he is not advocating for its inclusion in the educational system, but merely attempting to make the point that questions at the level of First Causes are outside the ability of science to address, which seems intuitively obvious. I’m often amused by those who embrace an atheist belief system and vocally espouse it based on the notion that their choice is much more rational and logical than those who embrace religious belief systems. All that demonstrates is that they don’t understand the question. Those choices are made in an area of mind and thought where as the old song has it “the rules of logic don’t apply”
One more digression before I quit, I promise. If we are meant to disregard the work of everyone who has ever offered a less than mainstream or politically correct opinion about anything, how about we start with old Svante Arrhenius. In addition to his work on CO2, he was a founding figure in the entirely racist field of Eugenics, with a clear trail of philosophical connection to those folks in Germany who did their deadly best to put his execrable theories into action. If exclusion by association is to be the rule, I contend that old Svante ought to be the first with his head on the block along with any who have aligned themselves with him.
peeke
you must be joking, right ?
izen says:
July 29, 2011 at 4:01 am
@- Konrad says:
July 28, 2011 at 10:35 pm
“We know that back scattered LWIR from CO2 cannot heat the oceans accounting 70% of the Earths surface, which invalidates the case for CAGW.”
Could you provide some evidence for this claim? WHY does downwelling LWIR not warm the oceans when it is from CO2 but does when it is from clouds – or are you claiming that cloud cover has no effect on ocean temperature at night?
—————————————————
Clouds (and CO2) at night do not warm the ocean, they slow the rate of cooling. The source of warming is diurnal solar gain. There is no nocturnal solar gain. Insulation does not heat your house, it slows the heat transfer. You heat your house with a furnace.
@- Malcolm Miller says:
July 29, 2011 at 3:49 pm
There is only one way to determine the Earth’s energy balance and settle this problem. It’s to orbit a sensitive bolometer
Wouldn’t even the smallest change in the deep ocean mixing rate invalidate any such reading, as the Earth would no longer be in equilibrium?
Mainstream climate science assumes the Earth is in equilibrium, which is not. This assumption makes the math a lot simpler and what mathematicians like to call “wrong”.
izen says:
July 29, 2011 at 4:01 am
@- Konrad says:
July 28, 2011 at 10:35 pm
“We know that back scattered LWIR from CO2 cannot heat the oceans accounting 70% of the Earths surface, which invalidates the case for CAGW.”
Could you provide some evidence for this claim? WHY does downwelling LWIR not warm the oceans when it is from CO2 but does when it is from clouds – or are you claiming that cloud cover has no effect on ocean temperature at night?
—————————————————————————————————————–
That is very simple. Not only are the oceans composed of liquid water, which renders them incapable of absorbing the discrete wavelengths emitted by CO2, mono-molecular CO2 is incapable of “backscattering” wavelengths unless they are smaller than the molecule. And you will probably lose your mind at the very thought of this statement. but it is obvious if you know the subject; the oceans will not absorb the majority of resonance line emissions from what is referred to as water vapor. Magnetic entanglement caused by the molecular bonds shifts the resonance lines to different wavelengths. And it is actually the oceans, both surface and atmospheric, that heat CO2, not vice versa. Finally, and not meaning to get bogged down in trivial details, but CO2 cannot “heat” (via EM IR emissions) the land surface either.
What you think you know about the cause of the “greenhouse effect” is not, in fact, a description of the manner in which the atmosphere increases air and surface absorption of solar EM energy above the level which can be accounted for by measurements at the TOA. What has been described to you is the manner in which the computer codes were written in attempts to SIMULATE the actual physical processes involved. Back in the day, when everybody coded in FORTRAN (some old coots still do), your hard drive was a 512k magnetic tape cartridge, and a 256k memory card had a footprint larger than today’s laptops and cost over $5000; it was simply impossible to run code based on Mie theory (even a simple dielectric sphere code was out of the question), or radiative transfer theory, or any of the many variations of them. So they settled for absorption-only solutions, coupled with a Monte Carlo emission direction solution, in place of the full Mie solution, which computers at the time simply could not run.
So where do we stand several decades later? We have people who believe that models are closer to reality than empirical evidence (actual measurements). We have people who believe that CO2 can absorb EM emissions from H2O or SiO2 (it can’t). We have people who believe that IR EM waves are some magical entity also referred to as “heat”, which somehow no longer obeys the rules of the rest of the EM spectrum. And we have people all over the internet who don’t understand that “backscattered” means REFLECTED! Making the entire mess even more intolerable is the pernicious habit of publishers of hiding everything behind those insufferable paywalls.
100% of the greenhouse effect is due to H2O gas, H2O vapor, H2O liquid, and H2O ice, which are all present in the atmosphere. So how could it be a feedback? That would require it to simultaneously be both cause and effect .
Someone already mentioned Trenberth, so let me demonstrate just how simple it is to calculate the earths energy budget at the surface. Only 2 values are needed.
K&T1997 total atmosphere and surface absorption of solar = 235W
(235×0.66)+235=390W
TFK2009 total atmosphere and surface absorption of solar = 238.5W
(238.5×0.66)+238.5=396W
If you’re curious about the factor 0.66, it is the ISCCP mean cloud fraction from 1983 to (almost) the present. You can’t get much simpler than this. “Reflect” on it for a while, you’ll get it.
Cheers.
izen:
I hope everybody here has studied your comment at July 29, 2011 at 4:32 pm because it clearly demonstrates your attempt to ‘muddy the water’ with the intention of obtaining the result described by dan at July 29, 2011 at 5:51 pm (i.e. onlookers get confused instead of informed).
My post at July 29, 2011 at 5:50 am provided you with a direct quote from the paper which refutes your assertion. Your response is to cite the first sentence of that direct quote which says;
“Central to the difficulty of feedback diagnosis is the very different time-dependent relationships which exist between forcing and temperature, versus between feedback and temperature. ”
Thus, you claim, the quotation supports your argument because it states a problem.
YOU KNOW THAT CLAIM IS A FALSEHOOD.
The sentence introduces a problem which the paragraph answers by explaining that problem is overcome by analysis of “the radiative feedback response to temperature” which “is nearly simultaneous with the temperature change”.
The entire quotation says;
“Central to the difficulty of feedback diagnosis is the very different time-dependent relationships which exist between forcing and temperature, versus between feedback and temperature. While there is a substantial time lag between forcing and the temperature response due to the heat capacity of the ocean, the radiative feedback response to temperature is nearly simultaneous with the temperature change. This near-simultaneity is due to a combination of the instantaneous temperature effect on the LW portion of (the Planck response of 3.3 W m−2 K−1), and the relatively rapid convective coupling of the surface to the atmosphere, which causes surface temperature-dependent changes in water vapor, clouds, and the vertical profile of temperature.”
Such quotation out of context is usually malign and it is certain that your use of it is a deliberate attempt to misrepresent th analysis of Spencer and Braswell.
Richard
All this paper does is to confirm that the Stefan-Boltzmann Law is alive and well and applies to the Earth’s climate as well as everywhere else.
It is good to see this discusssion about belief systems emerge. I get regularly attacked for having beliefs. One professor called it my ‘epistemiology’…or ‘lets see where this guy is coming from’ and then lampooned my published views about yoga, shamanism, homeopathy and astrology – all apparently ‘belief-systems’, while not mentioning that he himself was a Presbyterian. In fact, I work hard on not having any beliefs – sticking to my experience and observations – which range wider than most of my fellow biologists/ecologists.
I just read Roy Spencer’s views on ID and found them rational and open….he could do with a better knowledge of paleontology and punctuated evolution – there are example of intermediate forms often enough, and still a lot of gaps – but what is happening are periods of acceleration usually linked to rapid environmental change. One major acceleration occured about 40,000 years ago when the human – which had remained as it is today for about 100,000 years, suddenly accelerated in intelligence – using symbolic art, followed by religion, language, music, dance, deceptive politics and eventualy the science of climate change.
There is much that cannot be readily explained by natural selection. And Spencer is simply stating that ‘science’ can’t simply abdicate at the so-called ‘beginning’ of it all and say from then on it is a ‘self-assembly system’ – the energy for the ‘big bang’ had to come from ‘somewhere’ beyond normal time and space, and who is to say that it did not contain an evolving blueprint that included a few tweaks from that beyond, as well as the basic mechanisms of which natural selection is a consequence? In any case, even ID misses the point – the apprehension of divinity is not an intellectual exercise – it is a matter of the heart, which has its own rules and intelligence.
What is of relevance here is that one’s ‘beliefs’ or thoughts about creation are used as weapons of attack but only if they clash with the normative – which is either the atheism of science, or judao-christian orthodoxy. Nobody challenges John Houghton – ‘father of the the IPCC’ for being a Christian!
What should matter of course are the arguments put before peers and thrashed out according to the rules of observational science. Once authority is gained in that realm – nobody cares what you believe (Newton was not only a creationist but also an alchemist and an astrologer, as were the founders of the Royal Society).
The problem is that AGW is based upon soothsaying by computer simulation….in itself now evolved into a belief system,the equivalent of a state religion supported by governmental bureaucracy and propagandist evangelical ‘green’ campaigners – and any critics are labelled ‘sceptics’ much as Christians labelled their earliest competitors as ‘gnostics’ thus ending any possibility of dialogue. That is the point of labelling or branding ‘the enemy’.
Scientific truth, as with other truths, only exists where there is a willingness to meet, to listen and to have dialogue – it is a continuously evolving process. Roy Spencer is to be congratulated in his willingness to a) meet the opposition on their own ground in the science literature; b) stay open about his thoughts in areas where he knows the evangelicals will attack.
“Mike Mangan says:
July 29, 2011 at 4:56 am
Hello! The same article was on Drudge Report as of late afternoon yesterday. Drudge is on someone’s laptop in every major newsroom in America. He’s far more important than /. It’s the overall effect you get here when Yahoo News+Forbes+Drudge+a cascade of popular sites brings a meme into the world. That’s how millions of people begin to form a new opinion by osmosis. A few months from now it’s the combination of stories: reputable paper+impending Maunder-type minimum+results of CLOUD experiment. Wait till you see the opinion polls on climate change next spring. Heh.”
It seems to me that the passion is now with the sceptics. When I read the comments I get the feeling that the AGW crowd responses are often just lashing out or trying to draw the cutains to keep the light out, whilst sceptics are moving forward, trying to understand and bring light into the debate. This difference in attitude will win the debate and win converts.
Follow up to that story has been published on Slashdot, would this be an anti-viral story then?
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/07/29/1844224/Followup-Anti-Global-Warming-Story-Itself-Flawed
Rúnar says:
July 29, 2011 at 12:30 am
“This article on intelligent design (if true) ( http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/roy-spencer-on-intelligent-design/ ) unfortunately makes him look like a total nutcase”
Well, that’s your opinion and, uninformed as it it, you’re certainly entitled to it. I’m the author of that article on Uncommon Descent, by the way.
@- Richard Epsom Courtney says:
“….you claim, the quotation supports your argument because it states a problem.
YOU KNOW THAT CLAIM IS A FALSEHOOD.
The sentence introduces a problem which the paragraph answers by explaining that problem is overcome by analysis of “the radiative feedback response to temperature” which “is nearly simultaneous with the temperature change”. ”
No, S&B specifically state that the problem is NOT overcome because –
“Diagnosis of feedback cannot easily be made in such situations, because the radiative forcing decorrelates the co-variations
between temperature and radiative flux. For example, no matter what feedback is specified when the simple model is only radiatively forced, the regression coefficient at zero time lag for a sufficiently long model simulation is always near-zero.”
They are refering to Roy Spencers’ ‘simple’ model in this case, others have had other descriptions than ‘simple’ for it –
http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/just-put-the-model-down-roy/
Read the paper Richard, it claims little more than that feedbacks are NOT diagnosable from satellite data and that if you take models with very variable skills at simulating ENSO events, average over a hundered years and remove any warming trend the regression coefficients of the smoothed data do not match just ten years of satellite data.
Now linked to all this is Roy Spencer’s strange idea that cloud variation is a forcing not a feedback in ENSO processes which is why I still hold my shorter version –
Over a ten year period ENSO variations were larger than AGW forcings so it was impossible to measure the positive feedback effects that might amplify the radiative forcing from higher CO2.
Is a reasonable, if not rather flattering summary of the paper conclusions. I note that you have not taken up my challenge to provide your own summary of the paper, but have simply re-quoted a section which really does NOT say what you think it does.
Richard S Courtney says:
“Such quotation out of context is usually malign and it is certain that your use of it is a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the analysis of Spencer and Braswell.”
The quote was not out of context, I made a specific effort to provide the context.
I am making a delibrate attempt to represent my understanding of the S&B paper, I am sure it is not perfect, but it is a lot better than the Talyor/Heartland press release. If you want to show how much better you can do at summerizing your understanding of the paper please do so. It might be more worthwhile than asserting I am knowingly making false claims or deliberately misrepresenting the science.
I assume that the “Brian” who occasionally comments is from Monty Python’s film, “Life of Brian”. As his mother says, “He’s not the Messiah…He’s just a very naughty boy”. He is amusing, much like Mr Magoo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Magoo . Notice how I added a reference as that makes me a scientist doesn’t it?
Gavin Schmidt says in his criticism of the S and B paper, “Climate sensitivity is not constrained by the last two decades of imperfect satellite data, but rather the paleoclimate record.”
Does Gavin Schmidt ever put his brain into gear before engaging his mouth?
Why trust an on-board precision platinum resistance thermometer when you can infer temperature by measuring sediment depths and tree ring widths?
Perhaps he and Mike Mann are designing a new satellite system. They probably believe the accuracy can be improved by removing the thermometer and planting a bonsai forest of bristlecone pines within the housing. Then they could further improve the sensitivity by getting a gerbil in a miniature spacesuit to periodically chew and strip away the bark.
What’s his job at NASA, making the coffee and buying the donuts?
I wouldn’t pay him in washers
Andy MC
The finding in Spencer and Braswell’s new paper 2011 paper “On the Misdiagnosis Of Surface Temperature Feedbacks From Variations In Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance” that the earth’s atmosphere resists forcing changes (loses more heat or less heat to stabilize planetary temperature rather than to amplify forcing changes) makes sense physically (positive feedback does not occur in natural systems as it makes the system unstable and is purposely ensured to not occur in man made systems.)
Comments:
1. A writer above stated that man made system with positive feedback can be stable. That statement is not correct. He then linked to this Wikipedia article on Root Locus analysis to determine if the system will be stable. The Root Locus analysis is used to determine likelihood of stability however the analysis is for systems that have negative not positive feedback. (See the Wikipedia article link, not there is a minus sign which indicates one subtracts rather than adds the feedback component.)
2. I see a writer above bring up “Intelligent Design” which has nothing to do with Spencer and Braswell’s paper of feedbacks. I would assume you are trying to distract us from the finding that in validates that alarmist AWG hypothesis. As I have noted Spencer and Braswell’s finding is supported by Lindzen and Choi prior published findings.
3. It should be noted the planetary temperature data indicates the planet has stopped warming. The Live Science article rather than quoting Real Climate blog writers and their friends comment that they were surprised Spencer and Braswell’s paper was published (i.e. They hoped their buddies would block it during secret peer review) could have noted the planet has stopped warming. Observation evidence and logic supports Spencer and Braswell’s finding.
4. It is interesting that there has been a series of recent papers trying to explain the lack of warming.
5. I see the “Livescience” writer appeals to the three other scientists who they contacted that the “extreme AWG” is still valid. I would assume the Livescience writer and three scientists contacted are aware the planet has stopped warming. It seems the Emperor has no clothes and no one to be connected with “deniers” or the evil “Heartland Institute” a libertarian think tank.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_locus
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL039628-pip.pdf
On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data
By Richard S. Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi
Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Climate feedbacks are estimated from fluctuations in the outgoing radiation budget from the latest version of Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) nonscanner data. It appears, for the entire tropics, the observed outgoing radiation fluxes increase with the increase in sea surface temperatures (SSTs). The observed behavior of radiation fluxes implies negative feedback processes associated with relatively low climate sensitivity. This is the opposite of the behavior of 11 atmospheric models forced by the same SSTs. Therefore, the models display much higher climate sensitivity than is inferred from ERBE, though it is difficult to pin down such high sensitivities with any precision. Results also show, the feedback in ERBE is mostly from shortwave radiation while the feedback in the models is mostly from longwave radiation. Although such a test does not distinguish the mechanisms, this is important since the inconsistency of climate feedbacks constitutes a very fundamental problem in climate prediction.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,662092,00.html
Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.
Just a few weeks ago, Britain’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research added more fuel to the fire with its latest calculations of global average temperatures. According to the Hadley figures, the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008 and not by the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, say the British experts, when their figure is adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius — in other words, a standstill.
Richard S Courtney says:
July 30, 2011 at 1:30 am
“I hope everybody here has studied your comment at July 29, 2011 at 4:32 pm because it clearly demonstrates your attempt to ‘muddy the water’ with the intention of obtaining the result described by dan at July 29, 2011 at 5:51 pm (i.e. onlookers get confused instead of informed).”
If onlookers might be confused by which of us is attempting to ‘muddy the waters’ they can always ‘get their hands dirty’ and go and read the paper and make their own minds up.
@- Richard Epsom Courtney says:
“….you claim, the quotation supports your argument because it states a problem.
YOU KNOW THAT CLAIM IS A FALSEHOOD.
The sentence introduces a problem which the paragraph answers by explaining that problem is overcome by analysis of “the radiative feedback response to temperature” which “is nearly simultaneous with the temperature change”. ”
No, S&B specifically state that the problem is NOT overcome because –
“Diagnosis of feedback cannot easily be made in such situations, because the radiative forcing decorrelates the co-variations
between temperature and radiative flux. For example, no matter what feedback is specified when the simple model is only radiatively forced, the regression coefficient at zero time lag for a sufficiently long model simulation is always near-zero.”
They are referring to Roy Spencers’ ‘simple’ model in this case, others have had other descriptions than ‘simple’ for it –
http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/just-put-the-model-down-roy/
Read the paper Richard, it claims little more than that feedbacks are NOT diagnosable from satellite data and that if you take models with very variable skills at simulating ENSO events, average over a hundred years and remove any warming trend the regression coefficients of the smoothed data do not match just ten years of satellite data.
Now linked to all this is Roy Spencer’s strange idea that cloud variation is a forcing not a feedback in ENSO processes whcih is why I still hold my shorter version –
Over a ten year period ENSO variations were larger than AGW forcings so it was impossible to measure the positive feedback effects that might amplify the radiative forcing from higher CO2.
Is a reasonable, if not rather flattering summary of the paper conclusions. I note that you have not taken up my challenge to provide your own summary of the paper, but have simply re-quoted a section which really does NOT say what you think it does.
Richard S Courtney says:
“Such quotation out of context is usually malign and it is certain that your use of it is a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the analysis of Spencer and Braswell.”
The quote was not out of context, I made a specific effort to provide the context.
I am making a deliberate attempt to represent my understanding of the S&B paper, I am sure it is not perfect, but it is a lot better than the Talyor/Heartland press release. If you want to show how much better you can do at summarizing your understanding of the paper please do so. It might be more worthwhile than asserting I am knowingly making false claims or deliberately misrepresenting the science
-possible double post- system crash on first posting – .
Peter Taylor says:
July 30, 2011 at 4:47 am
“I just read Roy Spencer’s views on ID and found them rational and open….he could do with a better knowledge of paleontology and punctuated evolution”
Not as much as you could do with a better knowledge of same. It’s punctuated equilibrium (Stephen Gould et al) you meant to say. ID itself does not dispute evolution, per se. It disputes the notion that evolution is the result of a random dance of atoms. ID is also not confined to biology. Cosmological ID disputes the notion that the finely tuned universe (google “the fine tuning problem”) is the result of a random event. Dig it. The atheist belief is that 14 billion years ago there was nothing then “poof – an incredibly complex universe with finely tuned interdependent immutable laws and machine-like operation according to those law just appears as if by magic”. I don’t believe in magic and as an engineer I’ve never seen a machine appear out of nothing nor increase its organization of its own accord. Ostensibly the universe is a closed system and due to the law of entropy it then cannot have order greater today than at any time in its past. This would require input from outside the universe which is, by definition as a closed system, not allowed. This then raises a very interesting question. If the order in the universe today is no greater than it was in the instant of the big bang, where did that order come from? To me it beggars belief that all the order in the universe today suddenly appeared out of nowhere 14 billion years ago. If you want to swallow that particular just-so story that’s your perogative, of course. I’m a bit more demanding in the way of evidence to support narratives like that. I’m just as demanding of any design explanations. All I know is the universe exhibits all the characteristics of design and there is no evidence as to the nature of the designer. I don’t like being in the dark any more than the next person but I don’t deny my ignorance by making up stories and through positive reinforcement and repetition come to believe that they are anything more than narrative.
Latitude says:
July 29, 2011 at 8:12 am
The problem with the satellite data is how to analyze it. Since there is the question of indirect measurement, one must know what’s measured and how it affects the search results.
This gives an indication of what satellites measure:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Atmosfeer.png
(Study the temperature curve)
————
pwl says:
July 29, 2011 at 1:00 pm
Tried to comment, but it failed for some reason (was logged in at the same time …)
@ 19:27
“Additionally, if I recall, the data is That He’s Been pulling is only a small chunk of the total data. This is a common thread Among climate-change deniers, And Among evolution deniers, to take one tiny chunk of data, claim thats it Does not make sense, and refuse to see the Remaining information. ”
This is the fundamentals that applies to AGW-faithful “scientists”. How he expresses himself is what in psychology is called projection. (Furthermore, “if I recall” – he is not sure …) What is actually happening, is that they “analyze” a few hundred years of incomplete data (and at times adjusted) and suggests indirectly that this is representative of the earth since the atmosphere and the climate occurred, a few billion years ago … It is not!
@ 19:48
“See, in Science, Going Into research or interpreting data with a Severe Political, or religious bias is pretty much just Asking for Trouble.”
Here he talks about (unconsciously) the IPCC and CRU …
@ 20:35
“Tragically, Many hide behind the guise of” Then Prove it wrong, “Which as anyone with two ounces of sense in Their heads know is a logical fallacy: The burden of proof is on the shoulders of the people making the claim.”
Here he does the same (classical) error as @ 19:27. This obviously applies only for AGW skeptics but not AGW believers …
————
Malcolm Miller says:
July 29, 2011 at 3:49 pm
“… where do you put the thermometer?”
Everywhere! Temperatures vary between places (even with short distances in between) and between different times … The ability to draw correct conclusions increases with the number of measurement frequency and points. (Someone who starts to realize the hopelessness of this …?)
pwl:
The quotes are from various posts by Tristan Noel …
Richard G says:
July 29, 2011 at 8:38 pm
“Clouds (and CO2) at night do not warm the ocean, they slow the rate of cooling.”
No, that’s not right. CO2 does nothing except increase the rate of evaporation which goes on to form the clouds. Clouds change the temperature gradient between ocean and cloud. The energy in the DLR which falls upon the ocean surface is translated into latent of vaporization i.e. a molecule of liquid water at temperature X become a molecule of water vapor at temperature X. The energy is not sensible with a thermometer which is why it’s called latent heat. When the water vapor rises and finally condenses into a cloud the energy becomes sensible again. So where you would have had cold air you now have a warm cloud with a shallower temperature gradient below the cloud and a greater gradient above it. If we lived in the clouds this might be of some concern but down at the surface where we live and breathe nothing has changed with regard to sensible temperature. If had been a land surface the DLR energy would be absorbed and would indeed slow the rate at which the ground can give up heat resulting in warmer air near the surface since the air is always warmed by the surface whether it’s a land or water surface.
@ peeke says:
“That is not how the greenhouse effect works. The effect may best be understood by painting your central heating radiator black.You’ll find it looses energy far fastier and while the wife might disapprove of the gloomy look of the room you’ll find real noticable difference in the energy bill.
CO2 may be a small amount of the atmosphere, paint is also a small fraction of the entire radiator. Yet it’s effect is noticable by changing the infrared colour of the atmosphere.”
Following through on your radiator analogy.
If we take June’s CO2 391ppm atmospheric concentration, we get 391/1,000,000 = 0.000391
If we then take a typical radiator of frontal area 1500mm x 500mm this gives us a surface area of 750,000mm^2.
If we multiply 750,000 x 0.000391 = 293mm^2.
If we then take the square root of that area we get a square with 17mm x 17mm sides.
If we arrange all the molecules of the various gases making up the atmosphere pressing down on the surface of the radiator under consideration into individual groups, we would find the total CO2 component occupies that 17mm x 17mm square.
If we then further subdivide that 17mm x 17mm area into what is attributed to naturally occurring CO2, say 300ppm for arguments sake, and that added by man’s activity, the area remaining representative of man’s activity, at 91ppm, which translates into an area of 8mm x 8mm.
If we then stick a square of 8mm x 8mm insulator material on the 1500mm x 500mm surface of the radiator, that would sufficiently represent the effect of man attributed CO2 to the rate of energy transfer from the surface of your radiator…
William says:
July 30, 2011 at 7:33 am
“4. It is interesting that there has been a series of recent papers trying to explain the lack of warming.”
Did you miss the memo? The bandwagon called “climate science” has concluded that China is the responsible party. Using too much “dirty” coal, you see. The sulfate particulates (aerosols) rise up into the atmosphere and act like a patio shade reducing the amount of warming sunlight that can reach the surface.
The irony in that is just so delicious. If it weren’t for the environmentalists we wouldn’t be scrubbing particulates out of fossil fuel combustion emissions and there wouldn’t be any global warming but rather, as was the dogma circa 1970, we’d have global cooling instead, but still anthropogenic nonetheless. You see there always has to be an enemy for the climate boffins and environmentalist whackos and those enemies are invariably any and all people who don’t share their world view. At any rate, the irony is the same chuckleheads who made nuclear energy plants prohibitively expensive with regulatory burdens and nightmare scenarios of nuclear proliferation, and the same boneheads who regulated sulfate emissions out of combustion exhausts, actually created the global warming they are now bitching about.
Personally I think global warming is a good thing for life on this third rock from the sun. Plants don’t grow well in ice and snow and they don’t grow well in low concentrations of CO2 either.
@- Dave Springer says:
July 30, 2011 at 8:25 am
“No, that’s not right. CO2 does nothing except increase the rate of evaporation which goes on to form the clouds. Clouds change the temperature gradient between ocean and cloud. The energy in the DLR which falls upon the ocean surface is translated into latent of vaporization i.e. a molecule of liquid water at temperature X become a molecule of water vapor at temperature X. The energy is not sensible with a thermometer which is why it’s called latent heat. When the water vapor rises and finally condenses into a cloud the energy becomes sensible again. So where you would have had cold air you now have a warm cloud with a shallower temperature gradient below the cloud and a greater gradient above it. ”
So which would emit more energy, the warm sea surface, or a cooler water vapor molecule condensing to a cloud droplet?
Fun facts about ocean heat budget:
Input energy is 100% from sunlight. Output energy is 70% evaporation, 20% radiation, 10% conductive.
The thing about downwelling longwave radiation from greenhouse gases is they must have upwelling longwave radiation in the first place. The ocean doesn’t provide much in the way of upwelling radiation since it loses energy primarily through evaporation. Evaporation doesn’t transport energy as sensible heat (i.e. what you read off a thermometer) but rather as insensible heat called latent heat of vaporization.
Another fun fact of ocean heat budget is that sunlight penetrates and warms the water to a depth of about 30 meters but cooling only occurs at the surface mostly through evaporation. The interesting part is that the warmed water below the surface doesn’t get back to the surface as easily as sunlight reaches down to warm it. Thus solar energy during the summer months is stored and released in the winter months which is why seasonal temperature variation of the ocean is far less than seasonal variation over land at the same latitude (a phenomenon called “continentality”). The reason why the ocean releases heat faster in the winter and slower in the summer is that the air is dryer in the winter and evaporation rate is faster.
It’s all about the water cycle. CO2’s role as a greenhouse agent is limited to land and since land is only 30% of the earth’s surface if you don’t take into account that its effect is insignificant over the ocean then you’ll end up with grossly inflated predictions of global average temperature rise due to it. Climate boffins, at least the smarter ones, are very well aware of what I stated above so in order to keep the CAGW dogma alive they concocted a narrative about how the increased rate of evaporation causes more clouds and more clouds cause more warming. All the while the data is telling us that clouds are neutral when it comes to surface warming. While it’s true that non-condensing GHGs should cause more clouds over the ocean it’s also true that more clouds will deprive the ocean sunlight which will slow the rate of heating and thus lower the rate of evaporation and cloud formation. This a negative feedback and it results in a stable system where cloud cover self-regulates and stays more or less constant regardless of atmospheric GHG concentration.
I want to emphasize again that I’m not denying that CO2 has a greenhouse effect. I’m saying that because it isn’t operative over the global ocean the effect is only about one third of the modeled claims on a globally averaged basis. Adding insult to injury to the models due to horizontal energy transport from lower to higher latitudes the warming that actually is caused by CO2 falls mainly where it is most welcomed in the form of milder nights and winters in latitudes that do not have year-round growing seasons effectively lengthening growing seasons. Longer growing seasons allow two crop cycles instead of one and/or allow crops that need a longer growing season. For example the Vikings used to grow apples in Greenland in the Medievel warm period which cannot be done today and they also were able to graze cattle and store silage to keep the livestock alive through the winter. They can’t do that today either.
Adding yet more insult to injury for the models is that plant growth stops below 200ppm CO2 and increases, more or less, for most plants up to around 2000ppm. We are far from the optimal level of atmospheric CO2 for plant growth and dangerously close to the point where plant growth halts.
Yet another insult for the CAGW narrative is that plants become more efficient in water use as CO2 levels rises. That’s because water loss in plants happens primarily during gas exchange where CO2 is taken in and O2 is expelled. Plants regulate the exchange through pores called stomata. These stomata have irises which open wider to increase the exchange rate or narrow to decrease it as needed. These irises are the closest things to muscles that plants have. Anyhow, when the stomata is open that’s when water is lost through evaporation. When there is more CO2 in the air the gas exchange happens faster and thus the stomata aren’t open as much and less water is lost during the gas exchange. Cool stuff.
So that raises the question of exactly what downside there is to increased CO2. A rising ocean is one of them but the ocean rises so slowly that there is plenty of time to adapt to it. So called climate disruption may or may not be a concern. I doubt it will as the normal natural variation from year to year in regional weather, which is already dealt with, vastly exceeds the much longer term potential for variation engendered by anthropogenic CO2. At this point in time I’ve seen no convincing evidence that the incidence rate of adverse weather is any different now than it was prior to the industrial revolution. If anything it’s less severe because adverse weather includes long harsh winters and I don’t believe it has been possible to go ice skating up and down the length of the Thames in quite some time…
izen:
You assert:
“It might be more worthwhile than asserting I am knowingly making false claims or deliberately misrepresenting the science.”
OK. I concede that you have reading comprehension difficulties because that is the only other explanation for your so-called “short summary” of the paper.
Richard
Much to your probable consternation and surprise, the latter. Heat of phase change from condensation is a couple or orders of magnitude greater than from temperature change in liquid.
John A says:
July 29, 2011 at 1:12 am
“It’s true that Dr Spencer knows nothing about evolutionary biology, and should shut up about it. He gave a gift to climate alarmists everywhere when he spoke up about ID, which is creationism-in-disguise, and they won’t let anyone forget about it.”
A gift that keeps on giving. It encourages the pseudo-scientist climate boffins to make ad hominem attacks. It does nothing but expose the vacuousness of their argument, ignorance of ID, anti-religion ideology, lack of ethics, and incapacity to argue the evidence.
“ID, which is creationism-in-disguise,”
Actually if you go read the bigger Scientific Creationism websites like Answers In Genesis you’ll find they don’t associate themselves with Intelligent Design. In fact many churches won’t have any association with it because its umbrella is too big. Virtually any belief system, or none at all, is accomodated by ID. I know this all too well as I the adminstrator, lead moderator, and most frequent author on the most popular ID site on the intertubes for a few years. The so-called Theistic Evolutionists, with people like Francis Collins (the top cheese at The Human Genome Project) also distance themselves from ID. There’s pretty much something for everyone to hate about ID because the only belief system it doesn’t accomodate is positive atheism.
I won’t try to deny that the vast majority of ID proponents are Christians but given that ID is largely limited to the United States where 80% of the population are self-professed Christians it would be rather silly to expect that the vast majority of ID proponents would not be Christians. Any organization that is a random sample of the population in the US is going to be 80% Christians. These people all take that rather large step from saying the universe and life bears the hallmarks of design to attaching a name and persona to the designer.
I’m an agnostic myself and don’t believe there’s sufficient evidence to either discount special creation or embrace it. Who am I to say a billions of Hindus and a Buddhists have the wrong story. The thing to keep in mind is major religions are all just stories. One of them might be right or, more likely in my opinion, none of them are. Atheism and theism are both based on faith – diametrically opposed faith but faith nonetheless. Faith has no place in science and my religion, if any, is science and engineering.
FYI – here is the definition of ID that I chose to display on the most popular ID site (it’s still there even though I left it a few years ago):
http://www.uncommondescent.com/id-defined/
About the only thing you can accuse Spencer of for spending a couple of years looking into ID and coming away believing it had merit is that he, unlike you, did his homework and has an open mind.
Any questions?
Brian H says:
July 31, 2011 at 1:57 am
“Much to your probable consternation and surprise, the latter. Heat of phase change from condensation is a couple or orders of magnitude greater than from temperature change in liquid.”
Actually it’s incalculable in terms of temperature because there is no sensible temperature increase associated with the phase change. The simplest thing to keep in mind that is that it takes one BTU (British Thermal Unit) to raise the temperature of one pound of water by 1 degree fahrenheit. It takes 970 BTUs to turn one pound of water at 212F into one pound of steam at 212F. All those BTUs are referred to as water’s latent heat of vaporization. Changing from ice to water with no rise in temperature takes 144 BTUs and is called latent heat of fusion. The phase transitions of water take up or release an incredible amount of energy.
turn a pound of water at 212F into a pound of steam at 212F while it takes only 1 BTU to raise the temperature of a pound of water by on degree F.
izen says:
July 30, 2011 at 9:08 am
@- Dave Springer says:
July 30, 2011 at 8:25 am
“No, that’s not right. CO2 does nothing except increase the rate of evaporation which goes on to form the clouds. Clouds change the temperature gradient between ocean and cloud. The energy in the DLR which falls upon the ocean surface is translated into latent of vaporization i.e. a molecule of liquid water at temperature X become a molecule of water vapor at temperature X. The energy is not sensible with a thermometer which is why it’s called latent heat. When the water vapor rises and finally condenses into a cloud the energy becomes sensible again. So where you would have had cold air you now have a warm cloud with a shallower temperature gradient below the cloud and a greater gradient above it. ”
So which would emit more energy, the warm sea surface, or a cooler water vapor molecule condensing to a cloud droplet?
—————————————————————————————————
Pound for pound, the cloud. By a factor approaching a thousand times greater.
Fun fact:.
Every raindrop that falls took enough energy away from the surface to raise the temperature of a hundred times its own weight in air by ten degrees fahrenheit.
Dave Springer:
I like your use of a “Fun fact” (at July 31, 2011 at 3:58 pm) that says:
“Every raindrop that falls took enough energy away from the surface to raise the temperature of a hundred times its own weight in air by ten degrees fahrenheit.”
It is very hard to get people to grasp how much energy is released from the ocean by evapouration, and your “Fun fact” is a useful tool to help people to understand. So, if you don’t mind, I will also use it.
At present, I usually say this:
It takes a lot of energy to lift all the water up to the clouds so it can fall as rain. That energy is provided by the oceans providing heat to evapourate water from their surfaces. And it is a lot of energy: think how your arm would ache if you had to carry all that water up to the clouds in a bucket and by climbing a ladder.
Richard
Richard S Courtney says:
August 1, 2011 at 2:51 am
The energy to lift the water isn’t really a factor as that is returned to the atmosphere on the way down and only represents a small fraction of the energy involved. The energy doing the lifting is represented by the change in temperature between surface and dewpoint which would be on the order of a few tens of BTUs. The energy released when the rising vapor reaches the apex of its ascent and condenses is on the order of 1000 BTUs.
Please, will all those above posters who say that thermal infrared does not heat the oceans and that it is short wave which heats the oceans, explain how?
In the real world I live in, thermal infrared is heat, heat warms things up, and visible light is light, it’s not heat, it’s not hot, it is reflective, water is a transparent medium for it. The first heats up organic matter, the second doesn’t.
I really do want a detailed explanation, I’m getting quite put off by the lack of response when I ask for proof, some kind of proof that shows this working in the real world.
In my world, thermal infrared is well known. There are hundreds of companies making equipment of one sort or another because they know the difference between heat and light electromagnetic waves.
For example:
http://www.cedrussauna.com/documents/NewcloserlookwebonlyFullSpectrum.pdf
I can’t think of one company in the real world that uses visible light for heating anything.. (and I don’t mean artificially concentrated lasers).
How exactly does Blue visible light heat the oceans? I really do need to see some proof that it is even capable of heating water.
Myrrh:
I write to provide brief answer to your questions in your post at August 1, 2011 at 2:06 pm.
All EM radiation is energy. And that energy transforms to heat when it is absorbed by a substance.
Visible light and IR radiation are both EM radiation so they become heat when absorbed by water. IR cannot be seen by the human eye but a strong flux of IR can be felt by human skin. It has wavelengths in the range 0.74 to 1000 microns.
Solar radiation typically provides an irradiance of just over 1 kilowatt per square meter at sea level. Of this energy, 527 watts is infrared (IR) radiation, 445 watts is visible light, and 32 watts is ultraviolet radiation.
Sea water is opaque to IR so IR only penetrates to less than a micron into the water and is absorbed. This absorbtion provides heat to a very, very thin layer at the water’s surface. The absorbtion heats this surface layer and, thus, encourages evapouration that removes heat as latent energy. Hence, almost all the energy of IR is removed by increased evapouration induced by the IR.
Water is transparent to visible light: this is why objects in water can be seen. However, the water is not completely transparent to visible light and different wavelengths are preferentially absorbed in water. Red light penetrates sea water least distance before being completely absorbed, and blue light penetrates most distance.
In sea water
73% of the visible light from the Sun penetrates to 1 centimeter,
44.5% of the visible light from the Sun penetrates to 1 meter,
22.2% of the visible light from the Sun penetrates to 10 meters,
0.53% of the visible light from the Sun penetrates to 100 meters, and
0.0062% of the visible light from the Sun penetrates to 200 meters.
So, the absorbed visible light becomes heat in the ocean, but it does not only heat a very thin surface layer: about half of it heats layers beyond 100 meters depth. Hence, this absorbed heat is not immediately lost from the ocean by evapouration. And, therefore, this absorbed heat can be mixed and difuse to lower layers.
I hope this brief answer is sufficient. If you want more information on measurements of the heating of water at depth by visible light then I commend
http://sabella.mba.ac.uk/718/01/On_the_penetration_of_light_into_sea_water.pdf
Richard
Richard S Courtney says:
August 1, 2011 at 3:43 pm (Edit)
…
All EM radiation is energy. And that energy transforms to heat when it is absorbed by a substance.
Visible light and IR radiation are both EM radiation so they become heat when absorbed by water. IR cannot be seen by the human eye but a strong flux of IR can be felt by human skin. It has wavelengths in the range 0.74 to 1000 microns.
Solar radiation typically provides an irradiance of just over 1 kilowatt per square meter at sea level. Of this energy, 527 watts is infrared (IR) radiation, 445 watts is visible light, and 32 watts is ultraviolet radiation. (His explanation continues above.)
So, A question about the above. Let’s move your example up a little ways from the equator to 70 north latitude on the September equinox:
1) Sea ice and ocean water have almost identical emissivities, so – if both sea ice (e = .99) and ocean water (e = .98) are the same 1 degree K – they will radiate almost identical amounts of energy to the same skies, right? And that thermal cooling radiation will (if daytime temps are the same as nighttime temps) continue all 24 hours, right?
2) Ocean water and sea ice – if both are assumed identically “flat” – have nearly identical reflectivity indices: for average unpolarized light, both will reflect about 14% of the inbound radiation, if the sun is at an assumed 20 degrees incidence angle at noon (90 – latitude 70).. So, only 86% is available to be absorbed – regardless of whether it is striking sea ice or sea water. (at far northern waters at least.) The rest, the reflected energy, goes back on up into the atmosphere.
And, where does that reflected energy end up? Radiated away into space, one presumes. It certainly is not available to heat the ocean or ice back at sea level, and has not changed its wavelength, so it cannot heat any CO2 molecules it passes. Is this one “source” of the lost heat Trenberth cannot find? All CGM model definitions I had heard discussed only use “average” solar constants NOT adjusted for high latitude reflections.
3) At noon, at 70 degrees north Latitude, the sun will be at 20 degrees elevation angle, and the sunlight will flow through (about) 2.9 air masses, cutting the inbound radiation at the ocean’s surface by a factor of 65%, right? Where does that absorbed energy in the air, this energy that does not even reach the surface to be absorbed, reflected, or abstained, end up? Again – one has to state that it ends up radiated into space, never to enter any heat balance near the surface. It is not affected by any CO2 levels present, since it is still at wavelengths too short to interact with either water vapor or Co2 or methane. Or does the heat stay in the Arctic atmosphere at high levels – since it is, after all, absorbed but never gets down to the ground-based temperatures? Do the weather balloons show an Arctic “spike” in temperature at high altitudes as the air absorbs energy up high?
4) Ocean water has an albedo of 7-15%, absorbing 93 – 85% of the heat energy hitting the surface. Ice is more reflective than open ocean water: so, if ice has an albedo of 0.80, it reflects 80% of the available radiation at its surface, and can (on aveage) only absorb 20% of what hits the surface.
So, at best, at noon on the equinox at 70 degrees, an icy surface will only absorb (20%)(65%)(86%) or .112 of the average solar constant received by the average meter square of the average earth. It will absorb that energy only during daylight hours, only when the sun is far enough above the horizon so the potential energy is not reflected away.
The open ocean water next to that assumed ice flow at 70 north latitude at noon will get a bit more: (85%)(65%)(86%) or .47 of the average energy received elsewhere.
And your calc’s above indicate that most of this 47% of the received enrgy will be spent evaporating water from the upper surface of the ocean surface, correct?
All EM radiation is energy. And that energy transforms to heat when it is absorbed by a substance.
I’m sure you mean well Richard and thank you for your considered explanation, but not all energy turns to heat when it is absorbed by a substance, photosynthesis, for example, is energy being used for a chemical change which is not creation of heat.
Let me try another tack. AGWscience says that the atmosphere is ‘transparent’ to Visible light (in the Solar which includes UV and Nr IR) and passes through when its not reflected back, and you say, correctly, that water is transparent to Visible Light. Transparent means that it is not, technically, absorbed. Visible light is absorbed on an electron scale in the atmosphere, andtransmitted through water – the ‘absorbed’ you’re using of water is merely that it ceases to penetrate further, not that it is interacting with the molecules of water, it doesn’t, for all practical purposes, because water is a transparent medium for it.
The technical absorption, such as absorbed to be used in photosynthesis, is a known. Visible light heating water is not known. Visible light does not act on a molecular scale, it’s too small. It is capable of knocking an electron which then emits light as it settles down, but light is not heat. This is what happens in the sky, the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen scatter visible light, there is no heat created, but fluorescence, and the light scattered is not heat.
You, generic, really can’t have it both ways, either the sky is being heated by Visible light, the atmosphere of the gas Air and water vapour, and whatever trace molecules are around, or it is not heating the oceans.
Thermal infrared, Heat on the move, is a known. It is actually known to heat water. It acts on a molecular scale, kinetic energy is molecular scale. Long wave, thermal, infrared is a very powerful energy. It’s invisible, but we feel it as heat. The heat that comes from a fire is all thermal infrared, the heat that comes from a hot stove no showing any visible colour is thermal infrared. It is a known that thermal infrared, heat, is felt on Earth, we feel it. We feel it because we can feel it actually, really, practically, warming us up. Water readily absorbs heat, thermal infrared radiation.
These differences are well known in the real world as I’ve said, countless applications based on knowing the differences. For example, in fire detection:
Note in that article: “A near Infrared(IR) sensor (0.7 to 1.1 µm) is especially able to monitor flame phenomena, without too much hindrance from water and water vapour.” This is because near infrared is reflective as is visible, it passes readily through water and water vapour – applications in the military use near ir where the thickness of water vapour in the atmosphere would stop visible penetrating through, cloud, fog.
Here’s a page which explains what happens on an electron scale which is all the much smaller visible can manage to affect:
Note the difference between electronic and vibrational transitions &, that transmitted is a technical term in optics: “An electron cannot absorb the energy of the photon and the photon continues on its path. This results in transmission”, is what happens to visible light in the oceans because water is a transparent medium for it. Not even being absorbed to affect the electrons.
I repeat, you generic, really can’t have it both ways – either the sky is being heated by Visible light as it is reflected and scattered by the much larger molecules of nitrogen and oxygen, or, it is not heating the oceans.
A good page on Light: http://www.wavesignal.com/Light/index.html The Nature of Light
More on visible light is transmitted through water:
Dave Springer, RACookPE1978 and Myrrh:
Thankyou for your comments. I am replying to them in a single post because I understand that they all address the same subject; i.e. explaining the effects of energy intractions at a surface in a manner which is comprehensible to lay people.
In this post I provide a concluding comment to all of you, and before replying to your individual comments I mention a personal anecdote because it may amuse you and, importantly, I think it illustrates the complexity which we are trying to simplify (but not over-simplify).
From September 2000 to September 2003 I conducted a study of energy interactions at sea surface which required my living on a boat throughout that time. That study was confounded by an effect of ripples that it discovered. This effect was as follows.
Ripples are structurally different from waves and exist on water surface including the surface of waves. They travel across water surface, and they have cross-section approximating a sine wave so they have peaks and troughs. I discovered that a cylinder of air (which I called a ‘tube’) rolls along in each trough. This ‘tube’ is in intimate contact with the water surface so becomes moisture saturated. This saturation affects evaporation from water surface into each ‘tube’ that fills each trough of each ripple. And the troughs total nearly half of ocean surface. Thus, the ‘tubes’ affect energy loss by evaporation from about half of total ocean surface.
The effect of the ‘tubes’ is complex.
The degree of the tubes’ effect depends on the average lifetime of a ripple: if ripples are short-lived then the effect will be small but if they are long-lived the effect will be large (because the degree of their average saturation depends upon their average lifetime). But the average lifetime of ripples is not known and it varies with sea state (and, therefore, also wind speed).
Energy loss by evaporation is a major source of heat loss from ocean surface. My discovery of the ‘tubes’ prevented me quantifying the various heat exchange mechanisms at sea surface.
I provided a Report for the project’s sponsor and it includes a suite of different models I devised that could each be justified according to available data, but they gave such differing predictions of ‘sea surface energy interactions’ that the models were useless (choose your model and you could get an indication of almost anything you wanted to assert).
The work was a commercial contract and the Report has commercial confidentiality so I cannot cite it and my several requests to publish it in the public domain have been refused. I regret this because I have selfish reasons to want the work published in the public domain.
So, you can see that I doubt all simplistic statements concerning energy interactions at sea surface: the complexity of those interactions induced a waste of three years of my life.
Dave Springer,
your comment at August 1, 2011 at 4:02 am is correct. And that is why I like your “Fun Fact” that you have not objected to my ‘stealing’ for use. Your “Fun Fact” provides the understanding for laypeople that my ‘story’ attempted to provide, but your “Fun Fact” does it much more accurately.
Thankyou.
RACookPE1978
your post at August 1, 2011 at 5:56 pm asks me:
“And your calc’s above indicate that most of this 47% of the received enrgy will be spent evaporating water from the upper surface of the ocean surface, correct?
Please note that my “calc’s” were provided as illustration for my explanation to help Myrrh understand why visible light heats sea water. They were only illustrative – and as my anecdote above in this post proves – I am not able to quantify energy interactions at sea surface in a useful manner.
If you were to say, “About half of the solar energy received into sea surface evapourates water”, then I would not object to that. But that leads to debate of what is “about half”.
The remainder of your post is about proportions of EM reflected and absorbed at sea surface. I think you are right but – again – such estimates can only be ‘ball park’ because ocean surface is not flat (it has waves and ripples).
Myrrh,
your comments at August 1, 2011 at 7:33 pm and August 1, 2011 at 8:09 pm do not clearly state whether my reply to your questions was – or was not – helpful. But I think this statement of yours suggests my reply was not helpful;
“I’m sure you mean well Richard and thank you for your considered explanation, but not all energy turns to heat when it is absorbed by a substance, photosynthesis, for example, is energy being used for a chemical change which is not creation of heat.”
True, but most of the energy entering the ocean does not get used in photosynthesis. I understood your original questions to be requesting an explanation of why visible light heats sea water in a manner that IR does not, and – as I say to RACookPE1978 in this post – the data I provided to you were intended as illustration of my explanation. I repeat that – as my anecdote above in this post proves – I am not able to quantify energy interactions at sea surface in a useful manner. What I can say is that the data I provided to you are reasionable approximations.
You go on to say;
“Visible light is absorbed on an electron scale in the atmosphere, andtransmitted through water – the ‘absorbed’ you’re using of water is merely that it ceases to penetrate further, not that it is interacting with the molecules of water, it doesn’t, for all practical purposes, because water is a transparent medium for it.”
Sorry, but, no. You seem to think the word “transparent” means all the light is transmitted, but this is not so. It means the light which is transmitted is not scattered (to a significant degree). The transparent material can – usually does – absorb some light; for example, window glass does.
And you say;
“The technical absorption, such as absorbed to be used in photosynthesis, is a known. Visible light heating water is not known.”
This is simply wrong. Indeed, I gave you a link to a paper which describes measurements of “Visible light heating water”.
Dave Springer, RACookPE1978 and Myrrh,
I conclude this post with a summarising comment.
The energy interactions at sea surface are complex. I do not understand them. Nobody understands them, and people who think they understand them are self-deluded.
The possible energy interactions at sea surface are limited by basic physics and incomplete empirical data. So, we know things such as visible light from the Sun does heat ocean waters but nobody can say with certainty what happens to that heat which is collected in the oceans.
This incomplete knowledge is one of the many reasons I reject the simplistic (often silly) assertions made by AGW-advocates and their models.
I hope this post explains ‘where I am coming from’.
Richard
Richard S Courtney says:
August 2, 2011 at 1:53 am
Myrrh,
your comments at August 1, 2011 at 7:33 pm and August 1, 2011 at 8:09 pm do not clearly state whether my reply to your questions was – or was not – helpful. But I think this statement of yours suggests my reply was not helpful;
“I’m sure you mean well Richard and thank you for your considered explanation, but not all energy turns to heat when it is absorbed by a substance, photosynthesis, for example, is energy being used for a chemical change which is not creation of heat.”
True, but most of the energy entering the ocean does not get used in photosynthesis. I understood your original questions to be requesting an explanation of why visible light heats sea water in a manner that IR does not, and – as I say to RACookPE1978 in this post – the data I provided to you were intended as illustration of my explanation. I repeat that – as my anecdote above in this post proves – I am not able to quantify energy interactions at sea surface in a useful manner. What I can say is that the data I provided to you are reasionable approximations.
First of all, I do appreciate you engaging with me on this, others who say the same thing in this discussion, haven’t responded. But you haven’t given me the direct answers I requested, what I keep getting is just the same claims repeated. I have meanwhile gone to some considerable effort to find clear and well written explanations from real world science the better to explain what I mean, that all electromagnetic energy is not the same, and visible doesn’t convert to heat when absorbed which is the AGWScience claim, and seemingly unquestioned by the majority of AGW sceptics. I gave photosynthesis as an example of visible light being used for a chemical change, the production of sugars, this is not insignificant because the claim is that visible light converts land and oceans to heat because it is ‘absorbed’, and moreover, that this results in the temperature of the Earth being raised some 40°C. This is an extraordinary claim. I am calling on those who keep repeating it to prove it.
Please don’t get distracted by my examples of what visible and heat energies really do, although I’m happy to discuss it, I’m still actually waiting for proof that it is visible and other short wave which heat the Earth downwelling from the Sun and that thermal infrared plays no part in this. My explanations and examples, I hope effective, are to show just how extraordinary a claim this is.
Your anecdote is fascinating – is this the downscaled version of what happens in the tunnels in rolling waves? Which surfers ride through.
Back to “True, but most of the energy entering the ocean does not get used in photosynthesis.”
Photosynthesis began in the oceans, and around 90% of the oxygen in our atmosphere comes from the photosynthesis in the oceans. That’s a lot of energy from visible light being used in chemical and not in heat production. Whatever that is, it needs to be subtracted from the claim for visible directly heating the Earth’s land and oceans. I’m sorry, but you, generic, can’t simply say, ‘true’ and then ignore it.
And keep claiming that visible light’s energy creates heat when absorbed.
You [Myrrh] go on to say;
“Visible light is absorbed on an electron scale in the atmosphere, and transmitted through water – the ‘absorbed’ you’re using of water is merely that it ceases to penetrate further, not that it is interacting with the molecules of water, it doesn’t, for all practical purposes, because water is a transparent medium for it.”
Sorry, but, no. You seem to think the word “transparent” means all the light is transmitted, but this is not so. It means the light which is transmitted is not scattered (to a significant degree). The transparent material can – usually does – absorb some light; for example, window glass does.
I gave a succinct and well compiled description of “what can and will happen” on the wiki page link when UV/Visible which operate on electron minuteness, they are tiny waves; transmitted is a technical term it means a specific thing as does transparent. It means precisely that in a perfectly transparent medium visible light waves are transmitted, they are not absorbed. Water is a transparent medium for visible light. Water does not absorb visible light, visible light passes through it without joining in to the dance of the molecules it passes through, it comes out the other side without being absorbed in any way. My other link to the Nature of Light gave more information on the process, and added pure glass to the example of clear water. That ‘some glass’ might absorb a bit of visible is irrelevant to the definitions being given here. Water is a transparent medium for visible light, it does not absorb visible light, it passes visible light through unchanged – it can be observed in clear water of rivers and springs. This is bog standard physics definitions from well understood effects.
It is a different and distinct effect to that which is given on the wiki page pertinent to visible light reflected and scattered. Here visible light is absorbed, on an electron level :
“An electron absorbs the energy of the photon and sends it back out the way it came in. This results in reflection or scattering.”
This, as I mentioned, is what happens in our atmosphere when the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen refect and scatter visible light.
These are standard physics definitions – what is aiding confusion is the imprecise use of these words in AGWScience memes. For example, the description that ‘the atmosphere is transparent to visible light as through a greenhouse glass’ is not technically correct and in fact is not true. The atmosphere of nitrogen and oxygen is not transparent to visible light, it reflects and scatters it. Water however, is really transparent to visible light and from AGWScience we get the meme that water absorbs it…
Hence my point, either admit that, ‘if visible light absorbed creates heat’, that visible light is heating the oxygen and nitrogen molecules, our volume of gas air, or admit that visible light does not heat water, from the claim that ‘water absorbs visible light. I’m being a tad sarky here… [grin..]
You, generic who claim this is real science, can’t have it both ways. Seriously, please think about it.
Anyway, back to reality, visible light does not heat the oxygen and nitrogen molecules of the volume of gas air which is our atmosphere even though absorbed by their electrons when reflected and scattered, because they simply bounce it back out again, and, visible light does not heat the oceans because water is actually really truly transparent to it.
And you [Myrrh] say;
“The technical absorption, such as absorbed to be used in photosynthesis, is a known. Visible light heating water is not known.”
This is simply wrong. Indeed, I gave you a link to a paper which describes measurements of “Visible light heating water”.
? You mean the 1926 paper on penetration? That’s all about illumination, that’s when they knew the difference between heat and light…
Come on, there must be something that shows visible light’s capabilities to heat water… Wow, think of it, it’s such a powerful energy that it raises the temp of the Earth nearly 40°C! There must be thousands and thousands and, you get my drift, applications in real life which harness such a powerhouse. I can’t think of any. But, you, generic, must have paper after paper, application upon application, demonstrations galore to back up this claim that visible heats water and land, don’t you?
Odd though that for example, lightbulbs, are now produced to give more light and not heat? An ordinary incandescent produces around 5% visible and 95% thermal infrared, and the complaint often made, because now banned by the Green mafia, that at least with incandescent we’d get some heat delivered..
The energy interactions at sea surface are complex. I do not understand them. Nobody understands them, and people who think they understand them are self-deluded.
The possible energy interactions at sea surface are limited by basic physics and incomplete empirical data. So, we know things such as visible light from the Sun does heat ocean waters but nobody can say with certainty what happens to that heat which is collected in the oceans.
This incomplete knowledge is one of the many reasons I reject the simplistic (often silly) assertions made by AGW-advocates and their models.
I hope this post explains ‘where I am coming from’.
Thank you for it. But this is my complaint, that where you’re coming from is a general pool of people, ‘warmists’ and ‘skeptics’ both, who have taken this meme as if real science, as those below I quote. That it has infiltrated the education system is a disaster for this generation and future, it is, I think from my research on this, a deliberate policy to downgrade science knowledge for the masses.
But whatever, I am still looking for actual proof that “we know things such as visible light from the Sun does heat ocean waters”, because, actually, we don’t know that at all. We really don’t know that, because none of you can come back with any real proof or application or method for that claim.
I meanwhile have given, I think, sufficient information for an objective look at the differences between Light and Heat energies as in traditional science and from real world applications based on knowing the differences. ‘All electromagnetic energy is the same’, is a meme from AGWScience, they are not the same, they are different sizes, they do different things, in other words, they have different properties and processes.
I am looking for real proof that visible light actually heats oceans and land. I know you won’t find any. What you will find is what I found on exploring this, it’s physical nonsense.
Won’t you join in? I’m asking you for proof. This is after all, a science blog.
Myrrh:
I don’t want to jump into this argument, but I do want to mindful that seawater, while mostly H2O, is really a elemental ionic soup. In addition it has varying degrees of suspended matter. Each of these influence penetration and photon absorption and thermal excitation. At the quantum level each individual ion or particle can be represented as having different target cross-sectional areas to individual photons (not related to their physical size, but related to its possible interactions probability). Sufficient depth will convert almost all photons thru its full range of possible interactions. I hope, I didn’t just muddy up the water. :=) GK
Myrrh:
Please be assured that I am not being obtuse. I am genuinely trying to explain. And I do not know what you mean by “proof”.
Also, your quoting the different quontifications provided by a variety of people confirms my assertion to you that said;
“What I can say is that the data I provided to you are reasonable approximations.”
Surely, my having provided those data were my “joining in” so I do not understand your implication that I am unwiiling to do that.
So, I will try to explain for one more – and final – time.
Energy exists in many forms. EM radiation is one of them.
x-rays, visible light, UV, etc.are all parts of the EM spectrum. They differ in wavelength. For a good introductory explanation of this please see
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/emspectrum.html
All the energy in the universe was created by the Big Bang. Energy cannot be created and cannot be destroyed, but it can be changed from one form to another. (Think of a lump of modeling clay: it can be moulded to the form of a car or an elephant but it is always the same amount of clay).
So, EM radiation can be converted to heat because EM radiation and heat are both forms of energy.
When EM radiation (e.g. visible light) is absorbed in sea water where do you think it goes?
It is transformed into heat.
A basic explanation of how visible light is absorbed can be found at
http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/light/u12l2c.cfm
Sea water does NOT only consist of water molecules. Almost every possible ion exists in sea water. For example, there are 6 kg of gold dissolved (mostly as gold chloride) in each cubic km of sea water. So, a photon of visible light will interact with an ion that can absorb it if it travels sufficiently through sea water.
Sorry if that does not agree with your world view, but it is the way the world is.
I really do not know what more I can usefully say.
Richard
G Karst:
Thankyou. Your post (August 2, 2011 at 3:23 pm ) was still in moderation when I posted mine (at August 2, 2011 at 3:47 pm ).
I especially appreciated your “muddy up the water” pun that I hope helped Myrrh’s understanding.
Richard
Richard S Courtney says:
August 2, 2011 at 3:47 pm
Please be assured that I am not being obtuse. I am genuinely trying to explain. And I do not know what you mean by “proof”.
Well, I didn’t think you were being that, but certainly when I ask for information on how much heat is produced by visible light and you tell me you’ve provided me with a paper on this heat and it turns out to be nothing at all to do with it, I’m beginning to wonder just what it is you think you’re genuinely trying to explain. But now you mention it… I’m asking for proof that Light heats the oceans and lands as per the AGWScience energy budget which non-AGW’s also claim. I really don’t know how to put it simpler than that. Proof that Visible light from the Sun is capable of heating water and land and how much.
Also, your quoting the different quontifications provided by a variety of people confirms my assertion to you that said;
“What I can say is that the data I provided to you are reasonable approximations.”
Surely, my having provided those data were my “joining in” so I do not understand your implication that I am unwiiling to do that.
Er, you haven’t actually provided me with any data.. Depth of illumination is illumination, it is not proof that the visible light is actually heating the water at any of these depths, and as I have shown, the mechanism is not in place for visible light to do this, it is transmitted through water which is a transparent medium for it, this means, it does not even get electrons moving as it does in our atmosphere, which result is scattering. But, my comment about “joining in” was directed to those I quoted, as I have already made the point that I appreciate that you responded (they who also claim visible light heats the oceans, and thermal ir doesn’t, haven’t joined in..).
So, I will try to explain for one more – and final – time.
Energy exists in many forms. EM radiation is one of them.
x-rays, visible light, UV, etc.are all parts of the EM spectrum. They differ in wavelength. For a good introductory explanation of this please see
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/emspectrum.html
I can only suggest that you stop thinking I don’t know anything about this and re-read what I’ve written so far bearing it in mind.
But for that page: hmm, I have mentioned in other discussions that NASA has been nobbled by AGWScience pushers. They used to teach, in a very good collection of pages for children, which they took down, that the heat we feel from the Sun is infrared.. and an explanation of the difference between thermal and near infrared, saying that near isn’t hot, now they say no infrared reaches Earth at all!
Seems we now have to go up into the mountains to feel heat from the Sun… (grin) This is getting more ridiculous by the minute..
And, not only has NASA been got at, a website set up to capture pages for the record, which Anthony showed me how to use, has taken off the pages I captured on the NASA pages for children and a page I captured from NewWorldEncyclopedia which gave the information that still in traditional physics teaching it is infrared which heats the Earth.
For the record here…, and so that you should no longer be under the illusion that I don’t understand what an electromagnetic wave is but am arguing against the AGWScience corruption of information about electromagnetic waves, so we’ll be on the same page, I gave a summary of the problem in a couple posts in the other discussion on the Spencer/Braswell paper:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/26/pielke-sr-on-new-spencer-and-braswell-paper/#comment-709326
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/26/pielke-sr-on-new-spencer-and-braswell-paper/#comment-709340
I hope that’s cleared up where I’m coming from.
All the energy in the universe was created by the Big Bang. Energy cannot be created and cannot be destroyed, but it can be changed from one form to another. (Think of a lump of modeling clay: it can be moulded to the form of a car or an elephant but it is always the same amount of clay).
So, EM radiation can be converted to heat because EM radiation and heat are both forms of energy.
When EM radiation (e.g. visible light) is absorbed in sea water where do you think it goes?
It is transformed into heat.
A basic explanation of how visible light is absorbed can be found at
http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/light/u12l2c.cfm
Don’t you bother reading the pages you give me to read?
From this page, (which I know because I’ve read it before):
Reflected and transmitted do not create heat. But he is not accurate here about creating heat, photosynthesis is not creating heat and in that visible light is absorbed.
As I’ve tried to explain, you generic are confusing the terms absorbed, transparent and transmitted – transmitted here is a technical term meaning something very specific, please re-read the wiki piece I gave on what this means re visible light, it passes straight through water, is not absorbed and therefore is not creating heat, is not taking part in any interaction with the water molecules because water is a completely transparent medium for visible light. (What AGWScience erroneously claims for visible light in the atmosphere.)
Why some wavelengths of visible light travel further in the ocean than others is up for discussion. That this is termed ‘absorbed’ is not being used in the technical meaning of that word in physics/optics, but in a general sense, and can therefore only refer to the depth of illumination. Since all visible wavelengths are transmitted through the transparent medium water, none is absorbed means something very specific about the physical characteristics I now hope I’ve explained well enough, because then you’ll see the ‘joke’ in my comment that you generic can’t have it both ways, either visible light is heating the atmosphere or it isn’t heating the oceans (from the AGWScience claim that ‘absorbed means creating heat’ as you have again repeated). I am saying that you must actually prove your claim:
“So, the absorbed visible light becomes heat in the ocean, but it does not only heat a very thin surface layer: about half of it heats layers beyond 100 meters depth. Hence, this absorbed heat is not immediately lost from the ocean by evapouration. And, therefore, this absorbed heat can be mixed and difuse to lower layers.” and “When EM radiation (e.g. visible light) is absorbed in sea water where do you think it goes?
It is transformed into heat.”
I have given sufficient explanation to show that this is not physically possible for visible light and water, using the terms absorbed and transparent and transmitted in their correct context.
Sea water does NOT only consist of water molecules. Almost every possible ion exists in sea water. For example, there are 6 kg of gold dissolved (mostly as gold chloride) in each cubic km of sea water. So, a photon of visible light will interact with an ion that can absorb it if it travels sufficiently through sea water.
Sorry if that does not agree with your world view, but it is the way the world is.
I really do not know what more I can usefully say.
Again, you have yet to prove that visible light is capable of heating anything in the ocean, dissolved or not, gold even.., when the physics of this clearly shows that it is incapable of heating the water of the oceans.
Unless you can prove that visible light physically heats water, all the figures claimed for this have to be taken out of the, for ease of reference, the AGWScience energy budget from which even most skeptics do not dispute that only solar heats the land and oceans and thermal infrared plays no part in this.
I hope you can now see the point I’m trying to make here, that this is physical nonsense and that this can be seen to be physical nonsense once the terms are used in proper context.
[I have found that AGWScience is quite organised in taking terms out of context and making claims about properties by misattributing them, etc.]
G.Karst – I hope I’ve made the water clearer.. (grin)
Richard – thankyou for posting that link to the NASA site which shows clearly that it has now stopped teaching traditional well-known and understood differences between Light and Heat energies from the Sun and replacing it with AGWScience fiction memes. This corruption of basic science is deliberate and systematic – dumbing down science education for the masses.
I think this agenda should be brought into the spotlight and a comparison of the NASA pages pre and post corruption is an excellent example as it easily conveys the extent this manipulation has reached. NASA’s reputation is being used to promoted science fiction. I am greatly saddened by it.
Who is accountable for this at NASA? Who has taken the saved pages off webcite? I noticed the announcement was made that the original NASA page was going to be re-directed elsewhere not long after I started posting about it here on WUWT, which may or may not be a coincidence, but that after the deadline it sometimes went over to the new page, which had none of the original’s information about the differences, and sometimes didn’t. As of now, it’s still up. Someone is fighting for real science at NASA – they deserve our help, surely. Something similar happened on the American Met site, a few days after someone noticed that their education pages said that Carbon Dioxide had nothing to do with warming and the news spread, it disappeared. But this NASA example is far, far more serious. A deliberate with malice aforethought corruption of science teaching.
I’ll pull a few more quotes into what I posted above, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/28/spencer-and-braswell-on-slashdot/#comment-711614 for a better look at the difference.
NASA original page teaching previously traditional real world physics to children: http://science.hq.nasa.gov/kids/imagers/ems/infrared.html
From this NASA page:
compare with:
NASA page now teaching that thermal infrared doesn’t even reach us!: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/emspectrum.html
From teaching real physics that the heat we all feel from the Sun is thermal infrared, to the new science fiction paradigm from NASA is that no infrared even reaches the mountain tops.. This is one step further than the AGWScience fiction KT97 claim, which says near infrared, (the shortwave not thermal in real physics, not hot), is included in their “Solar” downwelling reaching Earth’s surface, (Visible with the two shortwave either side of UV and Nr IR).
I do hope all of you who have posted here giving the AGWScience fiction version of reality can know see how this is not traditional science, and physically impossible in the real physical world, and how this fiction is being promoted; simple brainwashing, teaching of the fiction gone viral from a powerful influence into the education system. And a thing to bear in mind about the techniques used, they don’t care that there is inconsistency in the presentation of this corruption of real science – the object is to confuse, the creation of a scientific illiterate mass population encourages argument as if these fictional memes have equal reality with real world physics – it distracts from the concerted analysis required to see how the con is being spread, and dilutes the objections to known examples of the corruption, such as the harry read me emails and hockey stick creation designed to wipe out the MIA and LIA.
It’s an incredibly convoluted and complex scam, much sleight of hand taking terms and properties and processes from real physics out of context, besides the examples of creating such things as temp records by ‘adjustments’. But this NASA example pulls that together in one.
To put into science terms, if a new idea contradicting well known and understood and tried and tested real physics as taught traditionally is being promoted, then the promoters must provide proof that the traditional teaching is wrong and the new idea right. Eliminating the traditional teaching from the education system does not constitute proof…
Myrrh:
I have tried to explain the matters that puzzle you and I have failed. I regret that failure but I cannot improve on the explanations I have provided to you.
The significant statements are:
1.
All EM radiation is the same thing but it differs in energy and wavelength carried by each photon.
2.
All energy can be transformed to heat.
3.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed: it can only be converted from one form to another.
If you think you can disprove one or more of these statements then do it because your disproof will get you a Nobel Prize for physics and your name will be remembered along with those of Aristotle, Newton and Einstein.
Richard
? What are you on about Richard? Not only have you shown you don’t read the links you provided for me, it’s clear that you haven’t bothered to read with any elementary degree of comprehension anything that I’ve written.
I have tried to explain the matters that puzzle you and I have failed. I regret that failure but I cannot improve on the explanations I have provided to you.
The significant statements are:
1.
All EM radiation is the same thing but it differs in energy and wavelength carried by each photon.
1. and differs in properties, such as size, (such as pin head size of thermal infrared and microscopic size of near infrared), and processes, such as UV not radio wave is used in the creation of Vitamin D. Light wavelengths do not convert to heat water because water does not physically absorb visible light because water is transparent medium for it, it is transmitted through unchanged, while the atmosphere is not transparent to visible light because visible light is reflected and scattered by oxygen and nitrogen molecules, by the electrons absorbing it and sending it back out. Some wavelengths are ionising… do you know which and what effect that is?
2.
All energy can be transformed to heat.
2. But not all energy is. The claim is that shortwave, visible and UV and Nr Ir either side, convert to heat the land and oceans, that is, directly heat land and water. Not all processes create heat initially. We’ve been through this, photosynthesis does not create heat, it uses visible light to enable a chemical change, creation of sugars. Re-read the wiki piece on Visible Light and UV wavelengths and what they can and will do. Heat specifically isn’t on the list, visible light is not a thermal energy..
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_and_translucency
My bold.
3.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed: it can only be converted from one form to another.
3. And it’s the actual forms of converstion I’m talking about…
Heat from the Sun is thermal infrared – this is a powerful energy. It moves molecules. We know that from our own everyday experience of it. We do not heat our homes or ourselves with visible light! It is not powerful enough to effect such a thing. Heat is the thermal infrared energy we feel from the Sun, from a fire, from a hot pavement (sidewalk).
It is thermal infrared which is the heat which is 95% of the energy emitted by an incandescent light bulb that we feel is hot, not the 5% visible light wavelengths – and when we switch off the light, we can still feel the thermal infrared.
If you think you can disprove one or more of these statements then do it because your disproof will get you a Nobel Prize for physics and your name will be remembered along with those of Aristotle, Newton and Einstein.
I wasn’t arguing about these statements… So enough of your strawman avoidance.
If you can prove that Blue Visible light heats water, ditto for you…
You continue to not provide any proof of such direct creation of heat by visible. Now I think you’re obfuscating.
Maybe traditional science is too much of a shock to the system..?
How much Blue Visible Light do I need to shine onto my bath full of cold water before I can get in for a good hot soak? Use LED. How much to heat a boiler full of water to drive the Flying Scotsman?