I’ll be offline most of this weekend, as I got virtually no work done for myself this week thanks to the BEST “PR before peer review shenanigans” and the compliant cadre of barking media lapdogs that followed with tails-a-wagging looking for a sound bite.
Discuss topics on science, weather climate, etc here quietly amongst yourselves. don’t make me come back here.
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Myrrh says:
October 23, 2011 at 1:08 am
Carbon Dioxide is heavier than air, it therefore displaces air and sinks unless work is done to move or mix it, it will not, as your analogy extrapolates to and which is the implied message in this junk analogy, mix thoroughly into the fluid gaseous ocean of air of our atmosphere as does the ink. What is the temperature of each in your analogy? Use a drop of something with the same relative weight to water as carbon dioxide to air. Tell us what happens.
——-
All of this is wrong. Its true that CO2 is heavier than air and if you pour pure CO2 out into a room full of air it will sink immediately. But this is temporary.
There is a process called diffusion that will distribute the CO2 throughout the entire volume of the room eventually. Bulk mixing of the gas via a fan simply hastens this process.
There is some segregation of CO2 from the bottom to the top of the atmosphere, but the degree of this effect is dictated by the weight of CO2 relative to the atmospheric temperature. The effect is very small and is typically ignored.
The same effect applies in water. The dye molecules are much heavier than water molecules, but as long as the dye molecules are soluble in water or otherwise dispersible they will spread evenly throughout the liquid.
The same applies to suspensions of clay in water. In effect the thermal jiggling of the clay particles by water molecules prevents them from settling due to gravity. Therefore for settling to happen the partakes must be large enough for gravity to overcome thermal motions.
Hope that’s clear.
And Myrrh just because you don’t understand it does not mean that it’s stupid. A bit more humility will lead to less humiliation.
Christian Bultmann says:
October 22, 2011 at 9:22 pm
Ok I’m a simpleton, if CO2 causes 1C in warming and 2C additional warming from water vapour than those 2C from water vapour should produce another 4C and those 4C another 8C another 16C another 32C.
——
I suspect you are counting it wrong. Water has added 2C AFTER it’s gone around in circles a few times. Not BEFORE.
Latitude says:
October 22, 2011 at 2:20
You can’t “acid” something until you run out of buffer…
…C(arbon)O2
———
True. But titration curves of buffers are not perfectly horizontal lines and the buffer capacity of sea water is small.
Maybe to stop the hand waving we need to see the actual titration curve of actual seawater when titrated with actual CO2.
Lucy Skywalker says
But as you add more, you find that tiny additions quickly become completely unnoticeable, and quickly the water becomes opaque. When you’ve reached that level, which is still very dilute, then more ink produces no real increase in opacity.
——–
This would be true if thermal IR was just one wavelength. It’s not.
I have seen atmospheric CO2 absorption curves where 2/3 of the absorption band is saturated. Which of course means that 1/3 is not saturated.
Which in turn means that if you increase CO2 you do increase the degree of absorption of CO2.
Latitude says:
October 22, 2011 at 4:04 pm
You shouldn’t be…
What CO2 levels are optimum for growing plants in a greenhouse? What should CO2 levels be in a phytoplankton culture? an algae culture, some Pseudomona culture, etc etc
———-
I don’t believe that green house CO2 concentrations are a good indicator for what happens in the wild.
For a start in a green house humidity is controlled allowing the stomata to fully open. .
Second there are no mineral nutient limitations thus allowing the plant to maximize CO2 uptake.
DirkH says
Otter, CO2 does not only absorb IR but in equal measure re-emits it, see here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/05/co2-heats-the-atmosphere-a-counter-view/
So it works more like an IR redistributor.
————
That’s true. But the increased absorption does mean that the atmosphere to space bottleneck for IR radiation is pushed to colder altitudes. Colder altitudes means less emission at the CO2 wavelengths.
You can see this effect directly in the earth’s IR emission spectra as measured by satellite.
LazyTeenager says:
October 22, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Don B says:
October 22, 2011 at 10:27 am
It truly astonishes me that as the rest of the world pulls back from carbon dioxide control, and while China and India always intended to increase their coal burning, Australia begins a carbon tax. Julia Gillard and her political friends are quite mad.
———-
Not really. You simply don’t understand how international diplomatic negotiations work.
If you do understand then it all becomes very logical and not mad at all.
Is this the same sort of diplomacy we had in the 1980’s when al the western world’s socialists were telling us to give up our nuclear weapons because if we did, Russia would do the same? Reagan and Thatcher did the opposite and the world is a safer place as a result.
Otter17: You seem to have stirred up a hornet’s nest with what I think is a sensible question.
I don’t believe in AGW, but I do believe in preserving our environment to the extent that it does not compromise the world’s economy. The way forward is hydrogen fusion ultimately, and more fission currently, with the caveat that nuclear reactors are only sited in geologically and politically stable areas. Instead of pouring money into “the science is settled” projects, we should be spending it on fusion research.
Don B, I fully agree with your comment above, what socialists have never learned, despite all evidence to the contrary, is that higher taxes stifle economic growth and that governments never spend money as efficiently as individuals. The fact that this tax is based on a fallacy must be even more galling for Australians as “green” taxes on fuel and flights are here in UK.
Thanks for the couple of complementary comments for the graph:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NA-SST.htm
There is a process specific to the North Atlantic shown in red colour which has exactly same trend (in this case negative) as the sea surface temperature.
Important point here is that it precedes movements of the SST by 11 years (one solar cycle?), it is plotted inverted, by the faint red line in the bottom graph, and as it can be seen it does predict the SST movements 11 years in advance.
If rise of the SST is caused by the rise in the CO2 concentration (IR radiative process) it should act immediately, not some years later; that should be of concern the AGW experts. Data used are available from NOAA or NCAR.
Smokey says:
October 22, 2011 at 5:52 pm
I think this qualifies for an Open Thread. And this is related.
The UN/IPCC is fabricating history, just like programmer Harry fabricated many years of temperature records, and like Hansen’s GISS routinely alters the past temperature record – always in a manner that is the most alarming to the public.
———-
Sure Smokey. Let’s assume for the moment that your friend Harry was not simply confused by the principles behind a perfectly valid infilling procedure and as a result started making arrogant and cynical comments.
What kind of fabrication did he do? Random values, values biassed to make trends look cooler, values biassed to make things warmer? I don’t think you can answer that question
Considering that Harry’s output produced the temperature series with the lowest upward trend over the last 10 years, making it the darling dataset of many skeptics, maybe it is faked to favor your position. Just speculating wildly.
Lazy T, only the credulous would believe that “Harry” was lying when he stated that he was fabricating many years of temperature data. And if you believe that political organizations like the UN/IPCC don’t “adjust” the temperature record for their own self-serving purposes, you are simply naive.
@Smokey
And you, sir, are a conspiracy theorist. The UN/IPCC don’t have the temperature data to themselves to adjust. And even if Harry did fabricate temperatures, to what effect? And even if it increased the apparent waming trend, how come other datasets agree?
And what about BEST? The darling of the skeptics, until they produced results in line with the mainstream.
There is no conspiracy, only reality. Accept it and join the real debate about what, if anything, should be done about it.
september manua lua is 389
Jesse Fell says:
October 23, 2011 at 12:58 am
“The effect of water vapor is far less problematic. It is a potent greenhouse gas that will lead to further warming, which will enable the atmosphere to hold more moisture which will lead to further warming . .. and so on.”
Why hasn’t this happened in the past?
Muller contradicts himself on UHI.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2011/10/23/mullers-problem-with-uhi/
lucy, I don’t get one of your points. In the past, the sun was colder than nowadays. The AGW “alarmists” explain that despite this, it was warm because the CO2 level were higher. In fact this is how the theory was started in the beginning of the XX century. How do you explain the earth temperatures in the past, without taking CO2 into the account?
here is an article on modeling, but not as you know it.
Does this ring any bells?
“The confidence we experience as we make a judgment is not a reasoned evaluation of the probability that it is right. Confidence is a feeling, one determined mostly by the coherence of the story and by the ease with which it comes to mind, even when the evidence for the story is sparse and unreliable. The bias toward coherence favors overconfidence. An individual who expresses high confidence probably has a good story, which may or may not be true.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-the-hazards-of-confidence.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&pagewanted=all
🙂 I will repeat it here:
nikki says:
October 22, 2011 at 6:09 pm
Mr. Watts, is respected dr Kenji Watts aware of important work of scientist H.A.M.S. ter Tisha co-author of Nobel laureat Andre Geim?
see: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921452600007535
Myrrh says:
October 23, 2011 at 1:08 am
R. Gates says:
October 22, 2011 at 7:21 pm
As CO2 is mostly transparent to the wavelengths of sunlight, no matter how high the CO2 levels go, we would not be in danger of blocking out sunlight. The ink example simple shows visually what we can’t see in term of the effects of something at low ppm. I would of course expect certain skeptics to refuse to grasp this analogy.
Doesn’t show that at all. All it shows is that certain liquids mix. Use a drop of oil instead, what do you get?
——-
CO2 is far more well mixed in the atmosphere than oil would be in water, and while it is true that CO2 is more dense than air and if there was absolutely no wind and constant churning of the atmosphere CO2 would separate out from air and settle to the ground, that’s not the planet we happen to live on…i..e. the container is constantly being stirred.
R. Gates
it seems 3C of warming is very reasonable with a doubling of pre-industrial CO2 levels
or… it seems a doubling of pre-industrial CO2 levels is very reasonable with a 3C warming.
Smokey says:
October 23, 2011 at 4:42 am
Lazy T, only the credulous would believe that “Harry” was lying
——–
But I was not suggesting he was lying. I was suggesting that maybe he was mistaken in his understanding and therefore grossly inaccurate in his description of what was happening.
Remember this is the guy who in the first few lines of his complaining file had a rant because someone was using IDL instead of fortran.
As for the UN/IPCC conspiracy theory we now have BEST as a cross check on Harry’s work. It seems the results are nearly indistinguishable. That means that Harry either did nothing effective to visibly bias his results or else you have to suck BEST into your IPCC conspiracy theory.
As the song says “you have to know when to hold them and know when to fold them”.
Richard B. Woods says:
October 23, 2011 at 12:16 am
““10 Indicators of a Human Fingerprint on Climate Change” at http://www.skepticalscience.com/10-Indicators-of-a-Human-Fingerprint-on-Climate-Change.html claims to list 10 items of empirical evidence that supports AGW.”
“With the lower atmosphere (the troposphere) warming and the upper atmosphere (the stratosphere) cooling, another consequence is the boundary between the troposphere and stratosphere, otherwise known as the tropopause, should rise as a consequence of greenhouse warming. This has been observed (Santer 2003). ”
The tropospheric hot spot, that’s a critical one. Santer tricked around a lot to “find” that; Jo Nova has written a lot about that; see
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/10/this-is-90-certainty-really-yet-another-paper-shows-the-hot-spot-is-missing/comment-page-1/#comment-561555
and see also this comment
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/12/our-sustainable-mirth/#comment-765890
“when even Dr.Syukuro Manabe, the godfather of climate modeling, now agrees with Fred Singer that it’s
not there (see Fu, 2011) and that climate models overstate the warming by 2 to 4 times.
“
Interstellar Bill said “The Suicide Derby now has four contestants: California and Australia vying for first place, England close behind, and nuclear-abolishing Germany the latest entrant.”
Actually there are now some encouraging signs, at least in England and the UK. It’s becoming blindingly obvious to all (even to “null points” Huhne) that UK feed-in tariffs are having the most appalling effect on UK energy price inflation and fuel poverty. This might at last give our crazed politicians pause for thought.
See for example Christopher Booker’s article here in the Torygraph today.
@Smokey says:
October 22, 2011 at 7:51 pm
Another Open Thread contribution.
[Smokey linked to an interesting comment on the OWS, movement as juvenile behavior.]
===================================
Very interesting, Smokey. That makes a lot of sense.
I’ve been following the OWS escapades and so far, I thought their representative chant should be:
“What do we want?”
“WE DON”T KNOW!”
“When do we want it?”
“N-O-W!”
Andrew Harding said
Is this the same sort of diplomacy we had in the 1980′s when al the western world’s socialists were telling us to give up our nuclear weapons because if we did, Russia would do the same? Reagan and Thatcher did the opposite and the world is a safer place as a result.
———
Your recollection seems to be different from mine. There was an escalation in research into defensive technologies. I don’t believe there was an escalation in the nuclear weapons stockpiles. There were likely existing nuclear nonproliferation treaties in place. Could be wrong maybe I should check the timeline.
This is about the experiment on how ink has the potential of being a major pollutant. I tried putting 10 drops of Coke in a 2 liter bottle of Sprite. I didn’t get the same result as the ink in water experiment, so I tried 100 drops of Coke in a 2 liter bottle of Sprite. My results are not as dramatic as the ink in water solution. Is my math wrong, or should I try putting apple juice in orange juice for the comparison? How about putting 560 ppm of scotch in the coke, then add 40% more scotch? I wonder how many of those I need to drink before I feel my globe warming?