From New Zealand Climate Change, this goes beyond “noble cause corruption”. This is outright malicious interference with the scientific process, and it’s damned ugly. I can’t imagine anyone involved in professional science who could stand idly by and not condemn this.
– Anthony
Climategate 2 and Corruption of Peer Review
The post here is a follow-up from my last post on some Climategate 2 emails, which I have tied together into a kind of narrative. Why should you read this? It is very simple. There are plenty of articles, views etc. out there claiming that the climategate 2 emails are being taken out of context. I have also seen Phil Jones has been saying that it is just the normal ‘to and fro’ of normal scientists going about their business etc. etc.
This is most certainly not the case in the emails that follow. There really is no hiding place for the authors, and no ambiguity. The emails will track how annoyance at the publication of a ‘contrary’ article in a journal develops into an attack on the editor, Chris de Freitas, an accomplished scientist. The attack includes a plot to see if they can get him sacked from his job at University of Auckland. Within the story, it is evident exactly what kind of ‘scientists’ the key authors are. The word scientist applied to these people has denigrated the meaning of the word.
Amongst those involved are Phil Jones, Michael Mann, Jim Salinger, Tom Wigley, Barrie Pittock, Mike Hulme + others. In addition Pachauri, the head of the IPCC is copied into many of the emails, meaning that he was fully aware that some of the key scientists in the IPCC were effectively out of control.
The post is very long, but please stick with it. The story unfolds, and is worth the effort if you really want to see what is going on. When quoting the emails, I do so minus annoying symbols such as >>>. Where I am commenting within the email text, I place the text as [this is my comments], and any bold text is my emphasis.
The starting point is email 2683, from 12 April 2003 when there is grumbling about a paper by Soon & Baliunas (S&B) published in the journal Climate Research (abreviated to CR in the emails). There is some discussion of the S&B study, and Mike Hulme discusses the potential of the paper on the thoughts of policymakers with Barrie Pittock:
Yes, this paper has hit the streets here also through the London Sunday Telegraph. Phil Jones and Keith Briffa are pretty annoyed, and there has been correspondence across the Atlantic with Tom Crowley and Ray Bradley. There has been some talk of a formal response but not sure where it has got to. Phil and Keith are really the experts here so I would leave that to them. Your blow by blow account of what they have done prompts me again to consider my position with Climate Research, the journal for whom I remain a review editor. So are people like Tim Carter, Nigel Arnell, Simon Shackley, Rob Wilby and Clare Goodess, colleagues whom I know well and who might also be horrified at this latest piece of primary school science that Chris de Freitas from New Zealand has let through (there are a good number of other examples in recent years and Wolfgang Cramer resigned from Climate Research 4 years ago because of it).
I might well alert these other colleagues to the crap science CR continues to publish because of de Freitas and see whether a collective mass resignation is appropriate. Phil Jones, I believe, is already boycotting reviews for that journal.
The first point to note is their concern is as much about the impact upon policy as it is about the science. This will become important for setting the context for the progressive process in which they eventually seek to destroy the career of the offending editor.We then get a response from Salinger, in response to Pittock’s call for someone to ‘take up the gauntlet’:
Dear Mike, Barrie, Neville et al
Saturday morning here and thanks for all your efforts. I note the reference to Chris de Freitas. Chris writes very voluminously to the NZ media and right wing business community often recycling the arguments of sceptics run overseas, which have been put to bed.
I, personally would support any of these actions you are proposing particularly if CR continues to publish dishonest or biased science. This introduces a new facet to the publication of science and we should maybe have a panel that ‘reviews the editors’. Otherwise we have the development of shonkey editors who then manipulate the editing to get papers with specific views published. Note the
immediacy that the right wing media (probably planned) used the opportunity!
Your views appreciated – but I can certainly provide a dossier on the writings of Chris in the media in New Zealand.
There are several points of note here. First of all, the positioning of de Freitas as being part of a right-wing, and there is even suggestion of a conspiracy. Finally, just to demonstrate that de Freitas is an ‘outsider’, Salinger will produce the evidence. Having a different view, it seems, is condemnation. Pittock then responds to Salinger:
Thanks for your comments and suggestions. I hope the co-editors of ‘Climate Research’ can agree on some joint action. I know that Peter Whetton is one who is concerned. Any action must of course be effective and also not give the sceptics an excuse for making de Freitas appear as a martyr – the charge should surely be not following scientific standards of review, rather than publishing contrarian views as such. If a paper is contested by referees that should at least be stated in any publication, and minimal standards of statistical treatment, honesty and clarity should be insisted on. Bringing the journal and publisher into disrepute may be one reasonable charge.
‘Energy and Environment’ is another journal with low standards for sceptics, but if my recollection is correct this is implicit in their stated policy of stirring different points of view – the real test for both journals may be whether they are prepared to publish refutations, especially simultaneously with the sceptics’ papers so that readers are not deceived.
On that score you might consider whether it is possible to find who de Freitas got to review various papers and how their comments were dealt with. I heard second hand that Tom Wigley was very annoyed about a paper which gave very low projections of future warmings (I forget which paper, but it was in a recent issue) got through despite strong criticism from him as a reviewer.
Here we have our first indications that de Freitas may be about to face problems.
Excerpts:
People with bona fide scientific background should not review articles, as they might actually accept them for publication.
…
… is it not partially the responsibility of climate science to make sure only satisfactorily [agreeing with their views] peer-reviewed science appears in scientific publications?
…
We Australasians (including Tom as an ex pat) have suggested some courses of action. Over to you now in the north to assess the success of your initiatives, the various discussions and suggestions and arrive on a path ahead. I am happy to be part of it.
Again, good science is the science that agrees with their own views. Bad science is to take an opposing view. ‘Purity of science’ is taken to mean ‘agreeing with my views’. Again, this is disturbing, but more disturbing is the moral righteousness that leads towards the comment that Salinger is happy to be part of it.
…
Also assessing copyright as the ‘other’ Soon/Baliunas paper in Energy and Env. is essentially the same as that in CR. Hans wanted to try this first, but didn’t want to tell all what he was doing. Fears a backlash if de Freitas gets removed without due cause. So let’s all try and keep the emails down, and hope we can report something to all once the correspondence Hans initiates gets replies.
Here, they are trying to get de Freitas through other means, which is copyright violation.
…
This is all very tragic. I will, if I have time, try to finish the story, or others may want to take it forwards if they have the time or inclination. What I do know is that this particular case appears to be one of the most clear and damning I have yet seen with regards to the ‘team’ seeking to stifle debate, and ultimately destroy the scientific process. It is just all the more shocking for the tribalistic hounding of Chris de Freitas.
Read the full article here.
If you would like to see the next section of the story, it can be found here. It is even more damning, an excerpt:
email 4808.
Phil Jones is following up on the email of Mann, in which he proposes writing a letter to the other editors of Climate Resarch, asking for the editors to resign in protest at de Freitas being an editor.
Did anything ever come of this? [the email to the CR editors]
Clare Goodness was in touch w/ me indicating that she had discussed the matter w/ Von Storch, and that DeFrietas would be relieved of his position. However, I haven’t heard anything. A large segment of the community I’ve been in contact with feels that this event has already done its damage, allowing Baliunas and colleagues to attempt to impact U.S. governmental policy, w/ this new weapon in hand–the appearance of a legitimate peer-reviewed document challenging some core assertions of IPCC to wave in congress. They appear to be making some headway in using this to influence U.S. policy, which makes our original discussions all the more pressing now.
In this context, it seems important that either Clare and Von Storch take imminent action on this, or else actions of the sort you had mentioned below should perhaps be strongly considered again. Non-action or slow action here could be extremely damaging.I’ll forward you some emails which will indicate the damage that the publication has already caused.
Thanks very much for all your help w/ this to date, and for anything additional you may be able to do in this regard to move this forward.
UPDATE: Dr. Chris de Freitas has responded here, well worth a read.
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Babsy says:
November 29, 2011 at 7:09 pm
What I would like to see is a mechanism. When I was in grad organic mechanisms and structure we had to draw all the reactions out on paper. With the warmistas, it’s all about “You’ll just have to believe us”. The truth is, they don’t have a mechanism by which increases in CO2 cause the temperature of the atmosphere to increase. If they did, they’d be screeching at the top of their lungs for all the world to see. But they don’t.
======================
This is actually not such an unusual problem in real science, i.e. where the consensus turned out to be totally wrong. A really great example is the upside down methotrexate in the crystal structure of the dihydrofolate reductase/methotrexate complex circa 1980. I’ll post links upon request. Usually though, the scientists, and in that case Nobel prizewinners, would say, well I’ll be damned, didn’t expect that.
There’s another one too, much more recently in the human hereditary emphysema field, but I’ll wait ’til that one plays out.
The consensus that “carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas so therefore it must cause global warming”, is turning out to be equally silly based on the data that people other than R. Gates look at.
Meanwhile it looks like this one is also apprioriate as a reference to this incident:
http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=5595
“…I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more
to do with it until they
rid themselves of this troublesome editor. A CRU person is on the
editorial board, but papers
get dealt with by the editor assigned by Hans von Storch.
Cheers
Phil”
re post by: philincalifornia says:
November 29, 2011 at 7:44 pm
Phil, I’d be very interested in the cutting edge emphysema info you mention – my father was a lifelong smoker who finally stopped about 8 years ago, and has fairly severe emphysema as a result.
Babsy says:
The mechanism of the greenhouse effect is well-understood…and has been for decades. The radiative forcing of a certain fractional change in CO2 concentration (such as a doubling) can be calculated to a precision of about 5-10%. We know what sort of warming that radiative forcing will cause all else being equal.
We also know that all else isn’t equal: A warmer world will have more water vapor in the atmosphere and water vapor is a greenhouse gas, thus magnifying the warming. That the water vapor feedback is occurring and is of roughly the expected magnitude is now well-verified (particularly for temperature fluctuations, such as those occurring with ENSO, where artifacts that can affect long term trends are not an issue).
A warmer world will also have less ice and snow and since ice and snow have much higher reflectances than water and land surface, that is another positive feedback that will magnify the warming.
Finally, in a warmer world, cloudiness may change. How this might happen is the biggest source of uncertainty in determining the climate sensitivity. However, both physical models and empirical observations (e.g., of paleoclimate changes) suggest that the climate system is quite sensitive to small forcings…and thus that it is unlikely that clouds will miraculously save us. At best, they will probably be about a wash, and at worse they may amplify the warming.
Joel Shore says:
November 30, 2011 at 2:45 pm
Like I said, you really have no idea. Clouds are formed by cooling, not by heating.
Babsy: For a post barely over one line long, you certainly got a lot wrong. For one thing your statement doesn’t even address anything that I actually said, I didn’t make a claim that warming would necessarily cause more clouds. I just said, “cloudiness may change”. I could have meant that cloudiness would be reduced for all that you know.
In reality though, how cloudiness changes is complex: A warmer world has both more water vapor in the atmosphere and a higher saturation point for water vapor to condense into clouds. (Interestingly, many “AGW skeptics” seem to ignore the second point, whereas you have ignored the first.)
How clouds affect climate is also complex, since clouds can increase both the reflection of incoming solar radiation and reduce the outgoing terrestrial radiation. In general, for low clouds the former effect dominates and the clouds have a net cooling effect, whereas for high clouds the latter effect dominates and the clouds have a net warming effect. (Although these two effects partially cancel, overall the net effect of clouds is to cool the earth. However, despite the confusion that sometimes occurs, this does not tell you that clouds are a negative feedback because to determine that you need to know how cloudiness will change in a warmer world.)
There is no doubt that clouds are the biggest source of uncertainty in predicting the effect of increasing levels of CO2. However, this does not mean that we know nothing or that we don’t have a mechanism for how increasing CO2 levels leads to warming. The mechanism is very clear and well understand even if the details for how all the feedbacks play out for determining the magnitude accurately are quite complex.
By the way, you are in poor scientific company for your claim that there is no known mechanism for something that most scientists would say the mechanism is clear: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNwJFlTFeMg
Joel Shore says:
November 30, 2011 at 5:41 pm
Your claim is that if the concentration of CO2 in a parcel of air increases, then there is an increase in the temperature of that parcel of air SOLELY from the introduction of the additional CO2. I see no reason to accept your argument at face value.
Babsy: No…The claim is that the additional CO2 changes the radiative balance between the sun, earth, and space so that the average surface temperature of the earth is then higher.
In particular, when the CO2 concentration increases in the atmosphere, the effective height from which radiation is escaping to space increases. Since the tropospheric temperatures are a decreasing function of height, that means that the radiation is escaping from colder parts of the atmosphere…and, as a consequence of the dependence of the intensity of thermal radiation on the temperature, the intensity is lower. As a result, the earth finds itself out of radiative balance: It is emitting into space less energy than it receives from the sun. This causes the earth to warm until it reaches a temperature where it is again emitting back out into space the same amount of energy as it receives from the sun.
This is a claim that all serious scientists, be they skeptics or adherents of AGW agree with. People like Lindzen, Spencer, and Eschenbach are just arguing about what the final change in temperature is once all the feedbacks are included, not the basic mechanism of the greenhouse effect.
I see NZ AGW/CC Alarmist blog Hot Topic, the defenders of Climategate are responding with this spiel:
Put it there pal: the real story of Chris de Freitas and Climate Research
Introducing a post copied from a New Zealand sceptic blog, given the headline The tribalistic corruption of peer review – the Chris de Freitas incident — Watts adds:
This is outright malicious interference with the scientific process, and it’s damned ugly. I can’t imagine anyone involved in professional science who could stand idly by and not condemn this.
Unfortunately for Watts and the anonymous (and low profile) NZ blogger who wrote the article, a new analysis by John Mashey of 700+ papers published at Climate Research reveals that the tribalism on display came from a cabal of sceptical scientists, with Auckland University academic Chris de Freitas safely shepherding their papers — however poor the science they contained — through peer pal review.
“Unfortunately for Watts and the anonymous (and low profile) NZ blogger who wrote the article, a new analysis by John Mashey of 700+ papers published at Climate Research reveals that the tribalism on display came from a cabal of sceptical scientists….”
Hey, you’ll get what for saying that ‘ere. It’s only them arlarmist what engage in all kinds of propaganda an’ skulduggery. Them skeptics is as pure as the driven snow. Ask Smokey, he’ll tell ya.
Oops. Sorry. Couldn’t resist that.
CanSpeccy,
We didn’t really require verifiable proof that you’re a water carrier for the evidence-free, pseudo-scientific alarmist tribe. But thanx for confirming it. Oops, Couldn’t resist that.
Note that CanSpecy and Marian can post on this censorship-free site – while even the most polite, on-point and factual comments from scientific skeptics [the only honest kind of scientist] routinely get censored at alarmist blogs. The hypocrisy is so thick you could cut it with a knife.
And anyone desiring a textbook case of psychological projection [imputing your own faults onto others], a glance at Marian’s cognitive dissonance above will fit the bill.
Rational Debate says:
November 30, 2011 at 1:52 pm
re post by: philincalifornia says:
November 29, 2011 at 7:44 pm
Phil, I’d be very interested in the cutting edge emphysema info you mention – my father was a lifelong smoker who finally stopped about 8 years ago, and has fairly severe emphysema as a result.
======================================
OK, just found this.
Actually, it probably has no bearing on your father, although you might want to have him tested for alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency, as there are replacement therapies that could help. If it’s “normal” smoking-related COPD, the best bet is to use the really good therapeutics out there (Spiriva, Advair)
The change in the consensus was all about a certain structure that was assumed for 20 years regarding the mutant protein and how it polymerized causing the disease. It turns out that it wasn’t so.
The scientists weren’t being nefarious, and they performed some ultra-sophisticated studies that appeared to confirm the prevailing view, but it was all wrong as it turned out.
My point was related to the common statement “CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so therefore it must cause global warming”. It’s a non-sequitur when taking into account the multitude of other factors involved …
…. as we are seeing.
Wow, Smokey. You work this blog 24/7. Are you a bot? With a dodgy logic chip, it would appear, plus a complete incomprehension of humor.
Smokey says:
December 1, 2011 at 8:42 pm
And anyone desiring a textbook case of psychological projection [imputing your own faults onto others], a glance at Marian’s cognitive dissonance above will fit the bill.
Smokey.
I don’t have anytime for Hot Topic.
To Joel Shore,
You said:
“In particular, when the CO2 concentration increases in the atmosphere, the effective height from which radiation is escaping to space increases. Since the tropospheric temperatures are a decreasing function of height, that means that the radiation is escaping from colder parts of the atmosphere…and, as a consequence of the dependence of the intensity of thermal radiation on the temperature, the intensity is lower. As a result, the earth finds itself out of radiative balance: It is emitting into space less energy than it receives from the sun. ”
My questionsl are:
How is this effective height measured, or calculated?
Why is higher necessarily colder?
Don’t temperatures increase again at even higher altitudes?
When has the Earth been out of balance with the Sun?
How long did it last?
You further said:
“This causes the earth to warm until it reaches a temperature where it is again emitting back out into space the same amount of energy as it receives from the sun.”
What “temperature”, specifically?
Does the “effective height” change when this “temperature” changes ?
Does this happen during the day, at night, or both?
Is it seasonal?
Does it vary with latitude?
Is this like the way a greenhouse works?
Whether Lindzen, Spencer, or Eschenbach believe in magic or the Easter Bunny seems immaterial. tI don’t recall ever seeing anything from any of them that explained or validated any part of your hypothesis in a verifiable or quantifiable way . If you are aware of something, please cite it.
Thank you.
Joel Shore says:
December 1, 2011 at 2:07 pm
If. Only. I. Would. BELIEVE!!! Here’s a little exercise for ya. Find a gas rack, and put some sea water in it. Close it off from the ambient atmosphere. Get a sample of the air in the rack above the sea water and determine the CO2 concentration in ppm. Record the temperature. Then introduce more CO2 to double the ppm concentration in the test apparatus. After a suitable period of time, record the temperature and report your findings back here to us of the increase in temperature. OK? Have a great weekend!
CanSpeccy says:
“Wow, Smokey. You work this blog 24/7. Are you a bot?”
Give that boy a Participation Trophy.
No, I’m not a bot, I fill out CAPTCHAs all the time. It so happens that Mrs Smokey has had five hip replacements, one total knee replacement, and broke her other knee two months ago. Fortunately I am retired, so I can get my wife around in a wheel chair, fix her meals, take her to the doctor, etc. In between taking care of her I follow the conversation on WUWT, and contribute often. Especially when someone posts nonsense. I don’t want new readers to get the idea that anything unusual is happening to the climate, because it’s not. Or that humans have any more than a minuscule effect [and that effect is primarily from land use changes, not CO2]. I am simply correcting the misinformation that the alarmist crowd constantly posts.
I retired from a career in designing, testing, calibrating and repairing weather related instruments in a large [140+ engineers & techs] metrology lab. One of the biggest in the country, and we received all the scientific literature gratis from various instrument manufacturers. Over thirty years we could see the global winter narrative morph into the runaway global warming narrative, then when the planet refused to cooperate, the narrative morphed into climate disruption, then climate change. I don’t recall one person in our lab believing a word of the CO2=CAGW nonsense. That belief is reserved for two kinds of people: those cashing in on the scare, and Algore’s True Believers.
Any questions?
Babsy says:
You can’t simulate the atmosphere, with its lapse rate, the thickness of its atmosphere, etc. in a table-top apparatus. This is like arguing against evolution by demanding that the scientists produce in the laboratory the phenomenon of a fish evolving into a horse!
However, the various pieces of the theory can and have been tested: Tabletop experiments do give you accurate determinations of the absorption spectra of CO2 and can be used to demonstrate the basic phenomenon of warming that can occur via CO2’s absorption of infrared radiation. And, the theory of radiation transfer is well-tested both in the laboratory and in the atmosphere (e.g., in the field of remote sensing).
BigWaveDave says:
Joel Shore says:
December 3, 2011 at 6:14 am
You wrote: “You can’t simulate the atmosphere, with its lapse rate, the thickness of its atmosphere, etc. in a table-top apparatus.”
Really? There has been much work done in physical chemistry with a ‘table top’ gas rack. Al Einstein thought that a photon ( a massless particle, btw) would change its flight path in the presence of a massive body which was later confirmed by experiment. Do you have experimental data that confirms your model(s)? I didn’t think so. And I so wanted to BELIEVE!!!
Babsy,
Disregard Joel Shore. He is just a water boy for the runaway global warming clique. The fact that the planet repeatedly falsifies his belief system means nothing, due to his incurable cognitive dissonance. The scientific method is totally alien to people like Joel Shore. Thus, their beliefs are tantamount to a belief in astrology.
With a 40% rise in [harmless, beneficial] CO2, the global temperature has not followed as predicted. But don’t expect Joel Shore to accept reality. His belief system trumps that.
Dear Smokey,
I knew that. In a way, I feel sorrow for these people because they are so scientifically illiterate. No matter whose fault it was that they’re that way now, it’s their fault, and their choice, to remain so. It’s been 34 years since I was in P Chem and Mathematical Physics and I would like to think that i still have a pretty good grasp of quantum mechanics so that if he/she/it decided to really do some good explaining about how AGW ‘works’, I would be all ears, even thought there wasn’t a snowball’s chance that would happen. I read about your wife’s orthopedic problems. I wish you both the best on that. Take care.
Joel Shore,
Thank you for your reply.
You say “The easiest way to get the average height is to consider at what height in the atmosphere is the temperature on average equal to about -18 C, since the earth emits an amount of radiation equal to a blackbody at that temperature (although the spectrum is not that of a blackbody because of the strong dependence of the absorption lines of the greenhouse gases on wavelength).”
So, in other words, you can’t say what the altitude that you claim is getting higher, is, but the temperature will be at about -18°C?
You then add; ” However, this is just an average…In reality the height at which radiation is likely to escape to space without being absorbed varies strongly with wavelength. So, the correct way to quantitatively calculate the effect of adding greenhouse gases is using a line-by-line radiative transfer code.” , which seems to negate your first answer, but still provides nothing that can be verified..
Your answer “Because the environmental lapse rate in the troposphere is about 6.5 C per km.” is approximatly correct for the vertical temperature profile in the moister regions of the tropical troposphere,” fails to address why this is so.
You had said “As a result, the earth finds itself out of radiative balance: It is emitting into space less energy than it receives from the sun. ”, which prompted me to ask:
When has the Earth been out of balance with the Sun?
How long did it last?
to which you replied:
“I don’t really understand the question. It depends on how out-of-balance you are talking about. And, as I explained, once it is out-of-balance, it works its way back into balance again by warming up or cooling down. The timescale for return to equilibrium, however, is not too fast mainly because of the large thermal inertia of the oceans.”
So, how out of balance were you talking about?
Then you say:
“This causes the earth to warm until it reaches a temperature where it is again emitting back out into space the same amount of energy as it receives from the sun.”
So when has the Earth actually been out of balance?
You finish with an appeal to authority and and ad hominem attack, suggesting that you think that you and the rest of the gang of people you call climate scientists,who share your view that anthropogenic CO2 is causing warming, know something about the physical behavior of the atmosphere.
But, considering that you all think that pressure has nothing to do with the temperature lapse rate, and the naive ways you treat such things as water’s phase changes, I am confident that I have a much better understanding of it than you. Am I smarter? Likely, but intelligence isn’t knowledge.
Babsy says:
Do you not have any clue? Try looking up the word “remote sensing” and read what that field is all about. You might even want to take a look at a few spectra of the terrestrial radiation taken from satellites.
You might want to investigate before your throw around adjectives like “scientifically illiterate”. Unlike you, I am posting under my real name and it is not too hard to find my contributions in the physical sciences over the last ~25 years. And, I’ve actually read textbooks on climate science and on atmospheric radiation. Have you?
You don’t have any data, do you? Sad.
BigWaveDave:
How hard is it to understand that there is not simply one altitude but it depends on wavelength…very sensitively in fact. And, even then, of course, what you have is a probabilistic distribution function showing the probability vs. height of emission (and angle of emission…unless you integrate over angle) that a photon could escape to space without being absorbed again.
That said, a number often quoted to give you a sense of a rough average value is 5 km (which is the height at which, given a typical environmental lapse rate of 6.5 K per km, you would be ~33 K cooler than at the surface).
Actually, my vague impression was that 6.5 C is a compromise value between the moister and drier regions of the atmosphere. The reason the lapse rate is at such a value is that the troposphere is strongly heated from below and cooled from above as a result of the solar radiation and of greenhouse gas absorption and emission in the atmosphere….This would tend to produce an even larger lapse rate except that the adiabatic lapse rate (moist or dry, depending on whether the air is saturated or not) is a stability limit, beyond which the atmosphere becomes unstable to convection, which tends to transport heat up until the lapse rate is brought back down to the appropriate adiabatic lapse rate.
An instantaneous doubling of CO2 would leave the earth out of balance by about 4 W/m^2. With the current rise in CO2 levels (and with the complicated issue of aerosols)…and the earth continually trying to get back into balance by warming, it is believed to be out-of-balance by something on the order of 0.5 – 1.0 W/m^2.
Well, if you want to believe that you are so freakin’ brilliant that you understand the atmosphere better than people who have actually put some real effort into studying it, just don’t expect us to all go along with your delusions of grandeur. Some people seem to think that the fact that “appeal to authority” is strictly speaking a logical fallacy means that their woefully uninformed opinion is just as good as any other. That is just silly.
Also, it is not “ad hominem” to point out that your posts here have not exactly demonstrated you to be a great expert in the field…and to suggest that perhaps the opinions of experts (even experts who are strongly inclined to your point of view on the broader issue of public policy in regards to AGW) might be more worse listening to than your opinions.
And, you expect to demonstrate that with such nonsense?
(1) The argument is not over what sets the lapse rate. As I have noted, in practice the lapse rate is set by the fact that the troposphere is strongly heated from below and cooled from above (partly due to where most of the solar energy is absorbed and partly due to the warming and cooling effects of the greenhouse gases) coupled with the fact that a lapse rate greater than the adiabatic lapse rate is unstable to convection. Hence, the actual (average) lapse rate in the troposphere tends to be a compromise between the moist and dry adiabatic lapse rate.
(2) Invoking the word “pressure” does not get you around having to satisfy conservation of energy. The earth’s surface can’t be warmer than basic energy balance dictates (in the absence of IR-absorbing elements in the atmosphere) because of pressure. That makes no sense…It violates energy conservation, which is a pretty fundamental physical law. Yes, the adiabatic lapse rate itself is not determined by the greenhouse gases, but the adiabatic lapse rate does not the surface temperature. To put it in the most simple mathematical terms: If I tell you a straight line in the x-y plane has a slope of -6.5 and then ask you to tell me what y is at, say, x = 1, you can’t do it because you need to know something else: the value of y for at least one particular value of x. A slope alone does not unique determine a line.
(3) In what ways exactly do you think that water’s phase changes are treated naively?
Joel Shore said
Ah…The curse of homophones. Of course, that should be
although you might prefer the first one.