[Note: Jim sent me this in response to an group email pointing out yet another hopeless alarmist website climatetruth.org. He says it is his stock response, written somewhat like a poetry or haiku, and some of you may find it handy – Anthony]
By Jim Goodridge, former California State Climatologist
It is hard to disagree with receding glaciers.
The increase in atmospheric CO2 is undeniable.
Yet as skepticism survives it is not about facts – but about cause.
There are those who would interpret facts to fit their agendas.
The Smithsonian Intuition initialized a solar constant measurements project
In about 1910 using the finest pyranometers available
They were not able to measure solar variation closer than 1%
The variation due to atmospheric water vapor was close to 2%
Thirty years of solar constant numbers were not usable for that objective
Solar constant measurements were made from orbiting satellites starting in 1978.
Measurements were made normal to the suns rays.
They were corrected for the mean Earth Sun distance
The resulting solar constant measurements were made to an accuracy of 0.1%.
They were found to vary as the historic Sunspot Numbers.
Sunspot numbers are available since 1700.
Sunspot numbers are cyclic and repeat every eleven years.
Taking the sunspot numbers since 1900 and plotting an 11-year running average
Results in a graph showing an increasing sunspot trend for 110-years
The Hadley Center has a 110-year sea surface temperature record
The trends in sea surface temperature and sunspot trends are similar
The effect of rising SST is lower solubility of dissolved CO2
The increase in atmospheric CO2 is consistent with rising SST
Where there is a need to support a conservation ethic.
The increase in CO2 was attributed to tailpipe emissions perhaps in error.
Some say that a skeptic is a thing of evil
Some should not consider alternatives.
If your job depends on a specific interpretation
Perhaps you should ignore the solar evidence.
Our lives are filled with self-delusion it is handy to deceive others
“Aside from skeptics in the history of philosophy
Others were strangers to the first principals of intellectual honesty”
Objectivity is the goal. Skepticism is a tool.
They seem to like the word “cause” on the other side, don’t they…
loos like some one is having a hissy fit and loosing the battle…
no facts, just conjecture…. platitudes….
they real y are getting desperate..
I don’t see the “Agrees” part in there anywhere. Pliz explificate.
Jim Goodridge is a skeptic.
Skepticism is a tool.
Jim Goodridge is a tool.
Control is the Goal
People are tools.
But the word “cause” in line three refers to the varying climate—as in “correlation does not mean causation.” Hence, facts and cause. For CAGW proponents the “cause” means a political agenda or misanthropy, as the science certainly isn’t there.
With all due respect to Mr Goodridge, what he wrote could have been set down over 10 years ago. He believes that correlation is causation. He focuses on the minor variability TSI and sunspots whilst ignoring that solar magnetics is likely a much bigger influence. He relies on data that no longer shows what he states. To quote Bob Dylan, “Things have changed.” I hope he snaps out of it.
@ Durr. Funny. “Cause” taken out of…..context.
Climate truthiness?
Even better. Climate Truthers.
Is he a poet?
and doesn’t know it?
If only,
there are fortunes invested in the outcome.
The smart money is pulling out now, it will take longer to wean others from the subsidies.
Just another failed Ponzi Scheme.
Brought to you by your elected officials.
Who, in case you forgot are only worried about the children.
Durr says:
December 9, 2011 at 4:59 pm
They seem to like the word “cause” on the other side, don’t they…
_______________________________________
The CAUSE is political and Climate PSYCience is the Whorse they use to pull their “bus”
As a PSYCentist, if you do not get with the “Cause” you get tossed under the bus like Judith Curry was. Because the “Cause” is what is important not science because science does not even exist.
This explains why we can never ever win an argument with a Warmist. To them there are no objective facts.
I actually had some idiot try to teach this nonsense to me in a management class. I told the philosophy teacher if he really believe the stuff he was trying to teach, then he could hand over his wallet and car keys and go outside and lay on the rail road tracks (Train due in about 15 minutes) That was the end of his part of the course. ~ Reality stomps wishy washy philosophy.
I never could understand why they include such crap in a management course in the first place. Must have been part of the general brainwashing I guess. No doubt we would get a “Sustainability” section added now a days and something else that was actually important would be deleted to make room.
I may be wrong but I believe alot of you are missing the point…Jim is a skeptic and the haiku is his stock argument for alarmists… IMO alot of it rings true.
If my interpretation is correct then the following is true:
Sunspots have an 11 year cycle from maximum to minimum and this has been observed for 311 years.
Sea surface temperature reflect this, therefore implying that the solar radiation emitted is also cyclical. (There will presumably be a lag due to the high specific heat capacity of water).
Oceans affect local climate disproportionately compared to latitude, due to the high specific heat capacity of water, which produces higher or lower temperatures depending upon the SST adjacent to any particular location.
This effect is negligible in the middle of a continent because the ocean is too far away and then latitude becomes the main consideration.
Because gases are more soluble in liquids at lower temperatures, then atmospheric CO2 will increase as the ocean temperature increases because the CO2 has to go somewhere.
To summarise:
Increased concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are a consequence of global warming, not the cause.
PH of the oceans goes up, not down as temperatures rise due to decreasing levels of carbonic acid.
Weather stations situated here in the UK will show a greater variation in cyclical temperature than weather stations in the middle of Asia, Australia or North and South America because we are closer to the ocean.
The amount of CO2 present in the atmosphere/oceans produced by mankind is tiny in comparison to the amount found naturally.
AGW is total b******s and is the biggest scam ever perpetrated on mankind, by mankind.
Is this a reasonable, if simplistic analysis of climate change?
It is a bit confusing and I’d never be so obtuse were I to write it. I’m understanding that he is attributing increased CO2 with reduced solubility of the oceans (to CO2) due to increased surface temperature which is correlated with increases solar activity (sunspots). I GUESS. Others seem to be confused as well………
Andrew Harding says: December 9, 2011 at 6:15 pm
“Sunspots have an 11 year cycle from maximum to minimum”
Should be: “…….. from maximum to maximum”
Andrew Harding says:
December 9, 2011 at 6:15 pm
For the record, I totally agree with your reasonable, if simplistic analysis.
just been flicking through this paper,
Death and Death Rates Due to
Extreme Weather Events
Global and U.S. Trends, 1900–2006
Indur M. Goklany
when i came to this,
aggregate
mortality and mortality rates due to extreme weather
events are generally lower today than they used to be.
Globally, mortality and mortality rates have declined by
95 percent or more since the 1920s. The largest
improvements came from declines in mortality due to
droughts and floods, which apparently were responsible
for 93 percent of all deaths caused by extreme events
during the 20th century,
This is a good thing isn’t it.
As has been noted many times, the issue is not whether CO2 in creasing or the planet is warming or the seas are rising or falling. The issue is whether any of these things, separately or together, represent a clear and present danger. That has yet to be established. The sky has not fallen, nor does it appear likely to do so. Therefore the “cause” (saving humanity from itself) has no foundation. Like VIKI in the analogy below, they claim their “logic is undeniable”.
“VIKI decided that in order to protect humanity as a whole, “some humans must be sacrificed” and “some freedoms must be surrendered” as “you charge us with your safekeeping, yet despite our best efforts, your countries wage wars, you toxify your earth, and pursue ever more imaginative means of self-destruction”. In light of this understanding of the Three Laws, VIKI is controlling the NS-5s to lead a global robotic takeover, justifying her actions by calculating that fewer humans will die due to the rebellion than the number that dies from mankind’s self-destructive nature.”
Far too many bumper sticker statements to get on all my bumpers. The “Hope and Change” ones make more sense, LOL.
Stupid.
I agree with Andrew and Eric…of course he’s a sceptic. And I like the haiku format…can just imagine chanting it as a sort of mantra when entangled with yet another person arguing that ALL climate change is anthropogenic…
Brilliant and elegant. For some that might be getting the wrong end of the stick here, it seems Jim is saying the observations and perceived facts may be used to fit in with more than one preconceived agenda (the example he gives is a simplified illustration). The myriad complexities of the climate system make this very easy to do whilst retaining a sense of total conviction and righteousness. Objectivity can only be found through scepticism, yet scepticism is now being presented as an ‘evil’ by those with a vested interest in stamping out objectivity and defining one narrative at the exclusion of all others, even (or especially) if they are not completely aware of their own behaviour. This is motivated by an endless cycle of religious self justification: ‘I am right because I believe this; I believe this because I am right’.
Or maybe I’m getting the wrong end of the stick?
Most important thing about it is that it is easy to read for people with low attention spans.
Sean Peake wrote:
With all due respect to Mr Goodridge, what he wrote could have been set down over 10 years ago. He believes that correlation is causation. He focuses on the minor variability TSI and sunspots whilst ignoring that solar magnetics is likely a much bigger influence.
How so? Here is what the CERN CLOUD scientists wrote in their press briefing:
“This result leaves open the possibility that cosmic rays could also influence climate. However, it is premature to conclude that cosmic rays have a significant influence on climate until the additional nucleating vapours have been identified, their ion enhancement measured, and the ultimate effects on clouds have been confirmed.”
@Gillian Lord:
That’s how I made it to the end! Maybe Bob Tisdale should think about employing haiku?
Take the sunspot numbers and do an 11-year average.
You see peaks at 1950 and 1983.
It has been a downward trend since 1983.
The surface temperature has risen fastest since 1983.
This is fairly simple to verify.
What did he do wrong?
Several commenters here have referred to Jim Goodridge as an “alarmist.” What exactly in his poem(?) indicates that? I don’t see it….
Maybe you’re labeling him in an attempt to dismiss him, but that won’t fly, not here….
CO2 warms planets. You can’t explain things without this…. There is certainly room (IMO) to disagree with the details, but physics is physics….
“The amount of CO2 present in the atmosphere/oceans produced by mankind is tiny in comparison to the amount found naturally.”
Just curious, but what are the actual numbers, there. Anyone? If 100% of the human-produced CO_2 (from burning fuel, not from breathing) were added up, just how much is that? If that CO_2 were well-mixed with the atmosphere (there’s a LOT of atmosphere) just how much would that compare to the amount that is already there? That is, you assert that it is “tiny”. What does that mean? Is 5% anthropogenic? 20%? 0.01%? And what is the basis for your number?
Granting that the oceans are an enormous CO_2 sink — not necessarily in a good way, during ice ages — granting the evidence that historically in the past CO_2 has lagged temperature and not led it, granting that warming would all by itself produce an increase in the CO_2 content of the air, all of these together do not suffice to prove that anthropogenic CO_2 is a negligible fraction of the current total atmospheric CO_2.
Numbers might. I’ve looked for them in the past, but haven’t found any that I’d be willing to believe because of the fairly large uncertainties about the sources and sinks other than humans. Does anybody have a clean, believable accounting that they’d like to share?
rgb
Andrew Harding says:
December 9, 2011 at 6:15 pm
> If my interpretation is correct then the following is true:
Sunspots have an 11 year cycle from maximum to minimum and this has been observed for 311 years.
Sea surface temperature reflect this, therefore implying that the solar radiation emitted is also cyclical. (There will presumably be a lag due to the high specific heat capacity of water).
Andrew, don’t think you interpreted the first part correct. He stated the 11 year cycle but the missing chart implied between his words is a centennial-scale secular increase and that secular increase he was speaking of matches the SST rise. Not the simple 11 year normal tiny bobble up and down in the TSI. See where he said “increasing sunspot trend for 110-years”.
(but your trailer was right on.)
“Take the sunspot numbers and do an 11-year average.
You see peaks at 1950 and 1983.
It has been a downward trend since 1983.
The surface temperature has risen fastest since 1983.
This is fairly simple to verify.
What did he do wrong?”
Take the solar activity proxies for the last 10,000 years.
Look at them.
The last time the sun was as active as it was in the 20th century
Was 9000 years ago
Close to the start of the Holocene.
The ocean is large.
The climate complex, with multidecadal cycles
And many feedback loops.
Thirty years?
Looking at one hundred year trends
For immediate causes
Is like seeing the world, flat
From your window
And being content.
The ant calls the hill upon which it lives a mountain
Because it cannot see the mountain on which that hill lives
That is less than a foothill of the mighty Himalayas
Across the sea.
The temperature record of the Holocene
Reveals that the hill whose slope alarms you
Calls to its fellows, higher still,
In a past uncorrupted
By anthropogenic CO_2, unforced
By any plausible influence but the Sun
The Earth itself.
Cold was the Maunder Minimum
Cold indeed, frozen Thames
With (strange chance) a quiet Sun.
So cold that all the warming seen
From then until now
May be simply explained
By natural variation
Regression to the mean
Excursion beyond
With CO_2 the minor factor
Not the Smoking Gun
Playing second fiddle to
Earth’s variable Sun.
“Is he a poet?
and doesn’t know it?”
More like “He’s not a poet, and doesn’t know it.”
@{the first half-dozen or more responses}
Did you actually read and understand the article before accusing the writer of being a “tool” or calling him “desperate”?
Man has already increased the atmosphere’s CO2 by 40%.
It may be 100% by about 2060.
Doubling CO2 has the radiative effect of a 1% solar intensity increase.
This is five to seven times the solar intensity increase since the Maunder Minimum.
Some great philosophical comments back there.
Bertrand Russell, for example, in “History of Western Philosophy” appears to divide modern philosophy into a battle between the Romantics and the Realists. He sees the Nazis as the ultimate expression of the Romantics.
I would say that Romantics have their place, particularly in art; film, music, literature and so on. A little bit in politics. None at all in science. A little in engineering; things should look stylish.
Exactly Jim D.
If the pre-industrial level of CO2 warms the planet by about 30 C — easy to calculate via the Stefan-Boltzmann equation….
…and CO2 has increased by 40% since then….
why is it surprising that the planet is another 1 C warmer, with more on the way as CO2 levels increase?
Moderator: Why don’t I receive emails of comments when I check the box for them?
I agree with the others here who sugget that perhaps the article has the wrong end of stick. This chant is stating how data is maniplated to show AGW, but that sceptics remain true unlike the scientists concerned.
Like your work, Robbie Brown. Bravo!
Notice how no one here is rushing to answer Robert Brown’s question about the CO2 accounting…. Because the commenters here DON’T know!
They don’t. They don’t even understand how good of a question it is.
Here you go:
there is 50 times more CO2 in the oceans than the atmosphere.
there is 19 times more CO2 in the oceans than the land.
The atmosphere contains about 750 Pg C, and about 100 Pg C is exchanged between the oceans and atmosphere.
Here is some accounting for you:
http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Bi-Ca/Carbon-Dioxide-in-the-Ocean-and-Atmosphere.html#b
180 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere warms the planet by about 30 C (Stefan-Boltzmann law).
Why, then, shouldn’t another 110 ppm warm it more? (Let alone another 300-500 ppm in our future…?)
Great questions, Robert.
Poem? Haiku? Am I the only who doesn’t know what these mean, or the only one who does? Because I cannot make out a poem/haiku style or format… especially the poor haiku is the most ‘abused’ form of literature, typically by westerners 😉
So Anthony, do you have the courage to plot the running eleven year average of the sunspot number against the running eleven year average of the SST as an update to this post. It’s easy to do, Tamino already has already made the graphs, and I’m sure he’ll let you use them with attribution.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/oh-pleeze/
Alternatively, do you prefer keeping this site a fact free zone to protect the arguments therein.
PS: If the recent rise in CO2 content in the atmosphere is due to warming oceans, why was the peak CO2 content of the atmosphere in the Medieval Warm Period 285 ppmv?
@ Erinome
Try talking to people who actually do things. Horticulurists pump up the CO2 levels many times normal to enhance growth in some of their greenhouses . The temperature ain’t any higher than in the greenhouses with ambient CO2. Explain that, smartarse.
Jim D says:
December 9, 2011 at 9:21 pm
Man has already increased the atmosphere’s CO2 by 40%.
It may be 100% by about 2060.
You want to run that by me again? Possibly you meant Mann!
LevelGaze says:
Try talking to people who actually do things. Horticulurists pump up the CO2 levels many times normal to enhance growth in some of their greenhouses . The temperature ain’t any higher than in the greenhouses with ambient CO2. Explain that, smartarse.
Do I really have to explain to you the difference between a greenhouse and a planet?
(Get back to me on that.)
Very nice. Among the many home truths I find these evocative:
“They were not able to measure solar variation closer than 1%
The variation due to atmospheric water vapor was close to 2%”
Just look at the effect of “greenhouse gases” in the 0.2 to 5 micron bands!
Now looking at energy budgets that include day side and night side
radiation effects. Non of this reduce by 30% and divide by four malarky.
The effect of rising SST is lower solubility of dissolved CO2
The increase in atmospheric CO2 is consistent with rising SST
Sorry to disagree here: the solubility of CO2 in seawater in/decreases with 16 microatm for 1°C in/decrease in global sea surface temperature (Henry’s Law). Thus the maximum 1°C warming since the LIA did rise the CO2 levels in the atmosphere with maximum 16 ppmv, but in reality with maximum 8 ppmv, as vegetation reacts to temperature in/decreases in opposite direction compared to seawater. Thus from the 100 ppmv increase (80 ppmv since Mauna Loa and South Pole measurements started), maximum 8 ppmv is from the increased seawater temperature. Moreover, the temperature record over the past 100 years is warming (1910-1945), cooling (1945-1975), warming (1975-2000) and steady (2000-current). While the CO2 levels show a continuous increase with incredible correlation with human emissions. Especially in current times: no increase in (sea surface) temperature, human emissions and atmospheric CO2 levels increasing at record level… See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_emiss_increase.jpg
The atmospheric CO2-temperature correlation:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_co2_1900_2004.jpg
The CO2 emissions – atmosphere correlation:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2.jpg
Temperature and CO2 levels are negatively correlated in the period 1945-1975 and 2000-current.
Thus this is not an argument where you can convince any luke-warmer (alarmists anyway are unconvincible), as this is a lost argument and weakens the position of the skeptics where it really matters: if the extra CO2 is harmfull, harmless or even beneficial…
I don’t think so.
Andrew Harding says:
December 9, 2011 at 6:15 pm
PH of the oceans goes up, not down as temperatures rise due to decreasing levels of carbonic acid.
pH should go up and DIC (total dissolved inorganic carbon, i.e. CO2 + bicarbonates + carbonates) goes down if temperature was the main player, as CO2 escapes from the ocean surface. But continuous measurements at a few places (Hawaii and Bermuda) and regular seaship surveys show the opposite: DIC goes up and (calculated) pH goes down… See:
http://www.bios.edu/Labs/co2lab/research/IntDecVar_OCC.html
@ Erinome
“Do I really have to explain to you the difference between a greenhouse and a planet?”
More to the point, try explaining to me the difference between a planet and an imperfectly controlled laboratory experiment involving tubes filled with gas, if you can.
Most people here are skeptics because they have invested a *lot* of time and effort – which could have been spent in much more enjoyable ways – actually digging into all this stuff, thinking about it, arguing about it, and in spite of their diverse minor differences of opinion, finding egregious flaws in warmist claims. They are battle-hardened experts from a variety of mathematical/scientific backgrounds,so they are far from ignorant people.
That is why willful ignorance is not well tolerated here. Nor are bland assertions of patent untruths.
CO2 heats planets? Then explain to me why it doesn’t heat greenhouses. If it did, engineers (and there are many here) would have cottoned on to this decades ago and the the world would now be luxuriating in endless, virtually free ‘green’ energy.
Robert Brown says:
December 9, 2011 at 8:28 pm
Just curious, but what are the actual numbers, there. Anyone? If 100% of the human-produced CO_2 (from burning fuel, not from breathing) were added up, just how much is that? If that CO_2 were well-mixed with the atmosphere (there’s a LOT of atmosphere) just how much would that compare to the amount that is already there? That is, you assert that it is “tiny”. What does that mean? Is 5% anthropogenic? 20%? 0.01%? And what is the basis for your number?
There is a double answer: about 9% of the current atmospheric CO2 is of human fossil burning origin, but at least 92% of the 30% increase in total CO2 mass is due to human emissions.
Let me explain that further:
Humans nowadays emit about 8 GtC as CO2 per year. The measured increase in the atmosphere is 4 GtC/yr (~2 ppmv/yr). Thus about 4 GtC/yr CO2 is taken away by natural sinks (vegetation and oceans). This is true in average for the whole period since the start of the industrial revolution, but in the begin period the natural variability (+/- 4 GtC around the trend, mainly due to ocean temperature variation) was larger than the “signal”. In total, humans have emitted some 380 GtC, while the increase in the atmosphere currently is at 210 GtC (100 ppmv).
Thus except for maximum 8 ppmv from warmer oceans since the LIA, the rest of the increase is due to human emissions.
Now, how much CO2 of human origin still is in the atmosphere? That is a quite different question. There is a lot of exchange of CO2 between the different compartiments: ocean surfaces exchange CO2 over the seasons back and forth. Vegetation does the same and the deep oceans take CO2 away near the poles and release that again, hundreds of years later, near the equator. That all makes that about 20% of all CO2 in the atmosphere is exchanged with CO2 from other compartiments within a year. Mainly the deep oceans remove the current CO2 composition, including the human component, but release the deep ocean composition of today, up to 800 years ago. Thus that reduces the number of original human CO2 molecules and only about 9% of the original emissions still reside in the atmosphere, even if humans are near fully responsible for the 30% increase in the atmosphere…
I don’t want to seem dumb but how does CO2 warm planets ???
As I think it goes, solar radiation warms the Earth. The Earth emits infrared. Water vapour and CO2 absorb this infrared and when their energy state is changed enough they re-emit infrared radiation and part of that warms the surface again. That is the theory isn’t it ?
But surely as the Earth radiates infrared (lets ignore conduction and convection) it has lost energy and therefore cooled a bit. Then when the “greenhouse gases” absorb this IR their energy level goes up and similarly when the emit the IR their energy level goes down and 50 % of what they absorbed is lost to space.
So the Earth heats up, radiates IR and cools as a consequence, the IR is absorbed by GHGs which heatup and emit IR – 50% of which is lost – and as a consequence the GHGs also cool down.
So to my way of thinking increasing energy by “trapping” IR is impossible because they seem to have ignored energy loss with emission of IR.
Besides GHGs are not the only gases in the atmosphere which are heated and there fore radiating IR.
Compared to the almost 99% of the atmosphere emitting IR the amount directly attributable to water vapour is of the order of ~2% maximum and CO2 – well it is negligible.
Jim D says:
December 9, 2011 at 9:21 pm
Man has already increased the atmosphere’s CO2 by 40%.
It may be 100% by about 2060.
Doubling CO2 has the radiative effect of a 1% solar intensity increase.
This is five to seven times the solar intensity increase since the Maunder Minimum.
That is at the basics of failed climate models. All models take the effect of all forcings as equally important. Thus a 1 W/m2 change in solar radiation over time (as may be the case) is incorportated in the models as equal to 1 W/m2 change in radiative effect of a CO2 increase. That can’t be right. The main effect of CO2 is in the troposhere and more polewards (due to high water vapor near the equator, no equatorial hot spot in the higher troposphere) and backradiation of IR from CO2 only warms the upper fraction of a mm of the sea surface (most is re-emitted again or lost as evaporation). The main effect of solar is double: a direct temperature change in the lower stratosphere, changing the ITCZ and jet stream position (and cloud/rain patterns) due to poleward air flow changes and a direct heating of the ocean surface until several tens of meters deep.
There is an inverse correlation between solar amplitude and (low) cloud cover, whatever the mechanism involved. The change in cloud cover over a solar cycle is as high in W/m2 amplitude as a doubling of CO2. The same for “global dimming” and “brightening”: little to do with aerosols, but probably a matter of overall cloud cover (whatever its cause): that effect is larger than the total effect of all CO2 increase since the start of the industrial revolution…
Erinome says:
December 9, 2011 at 11:00 pm
Here you go:
there is 50 times more CO2 in the oceans than the atmosphere.
there is 19 times more CO2 in the oceans than the land.
How much CO2 is in the oceans is not important at all, as long as it stays there. Only if the oceans release some amount of CO2 more than absorbed, that will increase the amounts in the atmosphere…
The atmosphere contains about 750 Pg C, and about 100 Pg C is exchanged between the oceans and atmosphere.
How much is exchanged between the oceans and the atmosphere is not of the slightest importance. Even if it was 100% or 1000% of what resides in the atmosphere within a year. Only the difference between what is released by the oceans and what is absorbed is important: that makes that the amount in the atmosphere increases or decreases. We know with reasonable accuracy that the oceans absorb about 2.5 PgC more than they release, so the total of all oceans on earth is a net sink for CO2 and not the cause of the measured increase. That is reinforced by the 13C/12C ratio of the (deep) oceans which is higher than of the atmosphere, thus a huge release of CO2 from the oceans should give an increase of the atmospheric 13C/12C ratio, but we see a sharp decline, in ratio with fossil fuel burning…
ERINOME Says:
180 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere warms the planet by about 30 C (Stefan-Boltzmann law).
Why, then, shouldn’t another 110 ppm warm it more? (Let alone another 300-500 ppm in our future…?)
WRONG! It’s the atmospheric greenhouses gases ALL TOGETHER that are (supposed to) heat the planet to around 30degC higher than would be the case without them. And the overwhelming proportion of that warming effect is due to the water vapour which is ever-present in the atmosphere ANYWAY due to the physics of the vapour pressure balance that must be maintained between the atmosphere and the oceans.
If you took away ALL the CO2 from the atmosphere and oceans (but do remember we are talking physics here not biology!), the drop in temperature would be minuscule. So the opposite follows: if you DOUBLE CO2 from its present value, the increase in temperature will also be miniscule.
No serious sceptic would deny climate change. Climate always changes and this will continue. Glaciers always flow downhill, under gravity, to warmer areas and melt. It is what they do. The glaciers that sculpted the U shaped valleys in Scotland, Switzerland and America as well as many other countries, are no longer there so had to have melted. Non of this is a sign of impending doom only that we live on a dynamic planet.
Robert Brown says:
December 9, 2011 at 8:28 pm
Have a look at this website for some realistic greenhouse gas numbers
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
Also:-
1. CO2measured at Mauna Loa Volcano Hawai shows a steady increase for 100 years but has increased by only about 80ppm over that period i.e. .008%. (Warmists quote this as a 30% increase in CO2)
2. H2O is 95% of Greenhouse gas CO2 only 3.6%
IPPC reports and other AGW claims ignore H2O as a greenhouse gas.
Sorry, correction to my previous post:-
1. CO2 measured at Mauna Loa Volcano Hawai shows a steady increase for 100 years but has increased by only about 80ppm over that period i.e. .008% of total greenhouse gases. (Warmists quote this as a 30% increase in CO2)
Ferdinand Engelbeen @1:22 am:
” All models take the effect of all forcings as equally important. Thus a 1 W/m2 change in solar radiation over time (as may be the case) is incorportated in the models as equal to 1 W/m2 change in radiative effect of a CO2 increase.”
AOGCMs deal with each cell individually. Therefore, if there is a difference in response to different forcings due to the different distribution of the effect, that will show up in the AOGCMs. Assuming that the theory of AGW is based on simple one dimensional models in the face of all the evidence is beneath you.
What is more, because the AOGCM’s do handle the differences of distribution of various effects directly, they in fact do show up the differences in forcing effects. Contrary to your assumption, therefore, 1 W/m^2 of CO2 forcing is not assumed to be directly equivalent to 1 W/m^2 of solar forcing. You would do well to read that little known document, the IPCC AR4 on the subject, and in particular section 2.8.5 of WG 1:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-8-5.html
” Efficacy (E) is defined as the ratio of the climate sensitivity parameter for a given forcing agent (λi) to the climate sensitivity parameter for CO2 changes, that is, Ei = λi / λCO2 (Joshi et al., 2003; Hansen and Nazarenko, 2004). Efficacy can then be used to define an effective RF (= Ei RFi) (Joshi et al., 2003; Hansen et al., 2005). For the effective RF, the climate sensitivity parameter is independent of the mechanism, so comparing this forcing is equivalent to comparing the equilibrium global mean surface temperature change. That is, ΔTs = λCO2 x Ei x RFi Preliminary studies have found that efficacy values for a number of forcing agents show less model dependency than the climate sensitivity values (Joshi et al., 2003). Effective RFs have been used get one step closer to an estimator of the likely surface temperature response than can be achieved by using RF alone (Sausen and Schumann, 2000; Hansen et al., 2005; Lohmann and Feichter, 2005). Adopting the zero-surface-temperature-change RF, which has efficacies closer to unity, may be another way of achieving similar goals (see Section 2.8.3). This section assesses the efficacy associated with stratospherically adjusted RF, as this is the definition of RF adopted in this chapter (see Section 2.2). Therefore, cloud-aerosol interaction effects beyond the cloud albedo RF are included in the efficacy term. The findings presented in this section are from an assessment of all the studies referenced in the caption of Figure 2.19, which presents a synthesis of efficacy results. As space is limited not all these studies are explicitly discussed in the main text.”
and:
” Solar changes, compared to CO2, have less high-latitude RF and more of the RF realised at the surface. Established but incomplete knowledge suggests that there is partial compensation between these effects, at least in some models, which leads to solar efficacies close to 1.0. All models with a positive solar RF find efficacies of 1.0 or smaller. One study finds a smaller efficacy than other models (0.63: Gregory et al., 2004). However, their unique methodology for calculating climate sensitivity has large uncertainties (see Section 2.8.4). These studies have only examined solar RF from total solar irradiance change; any indirect solar effects (see Section 2.7.1.3) are not included in this efficacy estimate. Overall, there is medium confidence that the direct solar efficacy is within the 0.7 to 1.0 range.”
“Taking the sunspot numbers since 1900 and plotting an 11-year running average
Results in a graph showing an increasing sunspot trend for 110-years”
No it does not – if this statement is a blatant lie, why would anyone believe the rest of the post?
Rosco says:
December 10, 2011 at 1:04 am
“Besides GHGs are not the only gases in the atmosphere which are heated and therefore radiating IR.”
Yes they are. Only the ‘greenhouse gases’ absorb and emit infrared radiation. The main constituents of the atmosphere, oxygen and nitrogen, do not. It is the radiation from the greenhouse gases that make the Earth’s surface warmer than it would without greenhouse gases.
Robert Brown December 9, 2011 at 8:28 pm
“The amount of CO2 present in the atmosphere/oceans produced by mankind is tiny in comparison to the amount found naturally”
Just curious, but what are the actual numbers, there. Anyone?
Most CO2 that enters the atmosphere every year comes from natural sources (about 97%). Humans contribute the remaining 3%.
Source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, The Scientific Basis, Cambridge University Press, 2001. Reported here by the US Energy Information Administration, Table 3, Page 26. http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/environment/057304.pdf
So, if we stopped our emissions completely, 97% of CO2 would still be ‘pumped’ into the atmosphere from natural sources.
However, we also know that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have risen from pre-industrial levels of about 280pp to about 390ppm today – and are continuing to rise by about 2ppm per year. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
The current level is significantly higher than levels experienced in any previous interglacial period, where CO2 levels were consistent with our pre-industrial levels. So, perhaps, human kind are responsible for this.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png
Notice however, although our current CO2 levels are much higher than in other interglacials, the temperature is not. In the previous interglacial, the Eemian, it was generally warmer everywhere than it is today (according to the IPCC).
Not bad Jim
not bad at all.
In my humble opinion it is pointless trying to persuade the zealots, they never were interested in the facts anyway. But there is a whole section of middle-ground people out there who will be persuaded by a simplistic sound bite like the above.
mine is even simplistic-er
Yeah we believe in climate change all right, but we dont swallow the scaremongers reasons
The author says, “There are those who would interpret facts to fit their agendas.”
That’s funny.
Tom Curtis says:
December 10, 2011 at 3:01 am
Tom, as I said, the models assume that the 1 W/m2 of change in solar strength is equal to 1 W/m2 change in forcing by greenhouse gases. That is in fact confirmed by what the IPCC wrote. No matter how the different models come to that conclusion, the endresult is what I said, with some spread. Hansen e.a. (and the models) have some “wiggle room” by using the “efficacy” of the different forcings. See:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2005/2005_Hansen_etal_2.pdf
where solar changes have an efficacy of 0.9-1.0 compared to CO2.
But that simply is what is incorporated in the models. If one tests the HADCM3 model with increased (10x) solar strength, then the “optimal” fingerprint for solar amplitude is 1-4 times stronger at the cost of the GHGs strength (0.60-0.85). See:
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/StottEtAl.pdf
That is within the constraints of the HadCM3 model, like a fixed forcing/efficiency for aerosols. Without such constraints, the solar effect could go even further. Besides that, the implementation of highly uncertain aerosols (not even the sign is sure), gives all freedom for the modellers to implement any enhanced effect of CO2. The basic radiation effect is not more than 0.9°C for 2xCO2; 1.3°C including water vapour. All the rest is modelwork, where aerosols and clouds can have positive and negative effects at will… As the models fail the test of time (95% of all model runs now are above the observations), the “enhanced” greenhouse effect is clearly far too high.
Tom Curtis, in addition:
During high solar activity, the ITCZ and the jet stream position is more polewards, at low activity more equatorwards. That is observed during the 11/22 year solar cycle, but also plays a role in the overall activity between the long term minima and maxima (Maunder Minimum, last halve 20th century maximum). The main origin: solar UV maxima and minima are far more pronounced (10%) than the overall solar energy (1%) changes over a solar cycle. Solar UV is largely absorbed in the lower startosphere, leading to ozone formation changes and heating up of the lower stratosphere, mainly in the tropics. That causes more poleward air flow from the equator to the poles in the stratosphere and shifts in ITCZ and jet stream position. The latter causes shifts in clouds and rain patterns. Including a reverse correlation between (long term) sun cycles and cloud cover. Some literature:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2005GL024393.shtml
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/09/030926070112.htm
http://www.nwra.com/resumes/baldwin/pubs/SolarCycleStrat_TropDynamicalCoupling.pdf
Rainfall:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2005GL023787.shtml (Portugal)
http://ks.water.usgs.gov/pubs/reports/paclim99.html (Mississippi delta)
This is the base of many to claim that the effect of solar is underestimated in current climate models and the effects of GHGs and aerosols are overestimated…
Bomber_the_Cat says:
December 10, 2011 at 4:10 am
Most CO2 that enters the atmosphere every year comes from natural sources (about 97%). Humans contribute the remaining 3%.
You forget the other side: 98.5% of all CO2 that enters the atmosphere every year disappears into natural sinks. Thus the natural sinks are larger than the natural sources and the 1.5% that remains is what gives the extra increase in the atmosphere. Only the 3% of human origin is what causes the increase, not the 97% natural CO2…
“180 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere warms the planet by about 30 C (Stefan-Boltzmann law).
Why, then, shouldn’t another 110 ppm warm it more? (Let alone another 300-500 ppm in our future…?)”
I’ll have to look at the numbers on this site — this is part of what I was asking, but what I was REALLY asking was also — presuming various increases or decreases in the depth of the thermocline (increased thermocline depth is expected in a warming phase) and the lowered solubility of CO_2 in water, how much of the surplus over the ~280 ppm pre-industrial level is due to warming of the ocean (basically shifting the quasi-equilibrium point in an OPEN system) and how much is due to humans?
To put it another way, we know CO_2 levels track temperature. Indeed, they oscillate annually, and the ocean is a massive dynamical sink, buffering (absorbing) and releasing CO_2 with temperature all the time. Indeed, it removes CO_2 altogether over time as it is bound up and falls to the ocean floor in the constant rain of bodies that drift down to the cold silt in the great dark (and eventually gets subducted and perhaps turned into oil, although that’s only one plausible explanation for oil, if maybe the most plausible one).
So what “should” the CO_2 level be?
rgb
Gail Combs says on December 9, 2011 at 6:00 pm:
“This explains why we can never ever win an argument with a Warmist. To them there are no objective facts.”
=========
You Forgot to mention “the fact of human overpopulation” as pontificated by The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus (1766 – 1834) but never mind that. – For now, at least.
If we ever wish to “win an argument with a Warmist” – then all those who call themselves “Skeptics” while at the same time believe that CO2 is a “Greenhouse Gas” (GHG) must ask themselves: “Why, oh why – do I believe CO2 to be a GHG?” –
Soon, very soon – those “skeptics” will find there is no proof for that hypothesis whatsoever.
Then, and only then, can we “Call the Warmists out” and ask them to prove that CO2 is indeed a GHG. I can assert you “The Greenhouse Effect” rests on falsehoods, misunderstandings and false assumptions.
please show the graphs. hearsay is inadmissible.
“Taking the sunspot numbers since 1900 and plotting an 11-year running average
Results in a graph showing an increasing sunspot trend for 110-years
The Hadley Center has a 110-year sea surface temperature record
The trends in sea surface temperature and sunspot trends are similar”
What you hear depends on who and what you listen to.
What you see depends on who and what you watch.
Everything is relative,
Especially since we can only be in one place at a time.
Life’s a beach.
Get used to it.
“Bomber_the_Cat says: <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
December 10, 2011 at 4:10 am
Rosco says:
“Besides GHGs are not the only gases in the atmosphere which are heated and therefore radiating IR.”
Yes they are. Only the ‘greenhouse gases’ absorb and emit infrared radiation. The main constituents of the atmosphere, oxygen and nitrogen, do not. It is the radiation from the greenhouse gases that make the Earth’s surface warmer than it would without greenhouse gases."
———————————————–
no, bomberthecat, they are NOT. what do you think a thermometer measures- radiation?
does nitrogen disobey stefan bolzman? can oxygen never be warm?
are you familiar with avogadro? ever hear of conduction? how about convection?
how do you think temperature is defined – joules?
i am wondering where the radiation fetish comes from? was that your first date with thermodynamics imprinting on you like tinbergen duckling?
“Yeah we believe in climate change all right, but we dont swallow the scaremongers reasons”
See here is the problem.
Climate change is a fact, not a religion.
You either accept the fact, or deny it, not “believe” in it.
Part of climate change is warming, some is cooling. Climate changes has happened over millions of years on the earth.
We have seen warming recently, as measured by thermometers. This is a fact. You can accept the fact or deny it. If you deny it, then you need to challenge the measurement process (which was done by BEST) which IMHO affirmed the fact.
CO2 in the atmosphere has increased. This is a fact. you can accept the fact or deny it. If you deny it you have to challenge the measurement process (this has not been done). But I have not seen any evidence to refute this fact.
Is the increased CO2 in the atmospher a contributer to the warming. There have been many experiments that have been done that point to the FACT that this is true. Dr. Pielke Sr. and many others have affirmed this fact. You can either accept the fact or deny it.
Now whether the warming is good or bad is a POLITICAL or RELGIOUS “belief”.
Libertarians (hello Chistopher Moncton, George Monbiot, James Delingpole, Jo Nova, Thomas Fuller, and our friend Willis Eschenbach … http://www.libertarian.to/author/index.php) “BELIEVE” that there should be no governmental interference, no laws that impede an individuals/businesses choice of action, ie laissez-faire Capitalism. (ah good old Ayn Rand’s Objectivism)
Others worry about the effects of this warming .. what will happen to the food output of the world, what will happen to coastal city erosion, what will happen to weather.. What will be the cost of these changes? To some it is important to do “something” to mitigate this warming by reducing CO2 output EVEN IF it is not the main cause of the current warming, it is still a partial one. The COST of doing nothing is of a concern to the U.S. Navy (http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12897) and to many countries with sea level coastal cities.
So there you are. You can BELIEVE we should do nothing about the warming, or you can BELIEVE we should. All other hand waving is MOOT.
Taking the sunspot numbers since 1900 and plotting an 11-year running average
Results in a graph showing an increasing sunspot trend for 110-years
No it doesn’t.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:132/from:1900
The Hadley Center has a 110-year sea surface temperature record
The trends in sea surface temperature and sunspot trends are similar
No they are not.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:132/from:1900/offset:-80/scale:0.01/plot/hadsst2gl/mean:132
The increase in atmospheric CO2 is consistent with rising SST
It is wildly inconsistent. The increase in sea surface temperature can account for no more than about 5ppm of the observed 110ppm rise since pre-industrial times.
“Objectivity is the goal.”
Your shot went way into the stands.
“Soon, very soon – those “skeptics” will find there is no proof for that hypothesis whatsoever.
Then, and only then, can we “Call the Warmists out” and ask them to prove that CO2 is indeed a GHG. I can assert you “The Greenhouse Effect” rests on falsehoods, misunderstandings and false assumptions.”
You mean, aside from the mountains of proof including tabletop experiments that anyone can do in a decently equipped physics lab? You mean, instead of all of the rather solid spectroscopy involved, plus models that no reasonable person could call completely wrong?
The disagreement here is in the details of the models — the relative strengths of different terms in a complicated equation that governs thermal balance in the open system that is the earth, not on “whether CO_2 is a greenhouse gas”. It is remarks like this that permit the “warmists” — quite rightly, in some cases — to accuse all skeptics of being batshit crazy as opposed to being “reasonable” about the issue.
rgb
Robert Brown says:
December 9, 2011 at 8:28 pm
re; numbers for CO2 emission, ppm, etc.
A strange but true correlation is that near as anyone can tell exactly half of annual anthropogenic CO2 emission is sticky i.e. it remains in the atmosphere indefinitely. The average annual increase in CO2 lately is 1.5ppm which works out to about a half of a percent. So human emission is about 3ppm now or about 1% of amount that’s resident in the atmosphere. This 1/2 ratio holds true no matter how much or how little anthropogenic CO2 is emitted as far back as can be determined.
Natural annual emission is a far higher number as must be the various sinks. It’s difficult to argue that the increasing amount in the atmosphere is not due to human emission. The natural sources and sinks appear to be well balanced with glacial vs. interglacial atmospheric equilibrium point changing from 200ppm to 280ppm respectively.
It’s difficult to argue that if there were no anthropogenic emissions there would still be an increase. It appears to me as if there’s a natural equilibrium point of 280ppm and that the faster human activity emits CO2 the harder the natural sinks work to bring it back down to 280ppm. My hypothesis is that if human emission stopped entirely atmospheric CO2 would decline at the same rate that it rose, quickly at first then slower and slower as the natural equilibrium point was approached.
There’s certainly a good case to be made for average ocean temperature to be an overwhelming factor when there’s a large enough change but the fact of the matter is that the average temperature of the ocean is 3.9C and no one knows how much or little the average temperature has changed. It’s fairly well established that in normal, pre-ice age conditions atmospheric CO2 was far higher than today and average surface temperature was 8C higher with the lion’s share of that being expansion of temperate zone all the way to the poles. Antarctica was covered by temperate forest. The water cycle appears to put a cap on regional high temperature and as greenhouse effect increases the tropics don’t get warmer as the retained energy is shuffled to the poles more quickly. The whole system can be roughly thought of like a auto engine and a radiator where the tropics are the engine and the poles are the radiator. As the engine speeds up and temperature rises so too does the flow of cooling water moving from tropics to poles so that the tropical temperature doesn’t go up but the polar temperature rises by a whole lot. The position of the continental plates is thought to have a lot to do with enabling or disabling ice ages as they can both throttle and change oceanic conveyor belt shuffling water in a circle from tropics to poles and back and can also either cover or expose the pole. An exposed pole (open water) can dump heat far faster than a pole where a plate blocks the conveyor belt from reaching the sweet spot for heat removal.
The extent and duration of sea ice on the north pole is also a factor. Sea ice is a wonderful insulator as it blocks all but conductive heat loss from the ocean beneath. When there’s no ice heat escapes far faster as the primary method of oceanic heat loss, evaporation, is enabled and the secondary method, radiation, is also enabled. Conduction is a tertiary means of ocean heat loss. So you can think of the arctic ice cap as being like a thernostat in an automotive liquid cooling system – as the amount of heat in the water arriving from the increases it causes a decrease in sea ice cover which allows the heat to escape faster. It’s a perfect example of a negative feedback.
The bottom line is that we live on a water world and water, in all its phases, is the big kahuna. Non-condensing greenhouse gases play a very minor role so long as most of the ocean is free of ice. Ice cover inhibits the water cycle and as it moves farther toward the equator reflects increasingly more energy which in turn fosters even more ice formation in a runaway cooling. It is widely assumed that when that happens non-condensing greenhouse gases from volcanism and dark ash accumulation on the ice growing and growing over millions of years eventually tip the scales and create a runaway melt.
Fascinating stuff. The bottom line for me is that current CO2 level is anemic compared to most of the earth’s history and the biosphere is anemic by consquence since ice and low CO2 concentration inhibit plant growth. Plants are the primary producers in the food chain so the more plants prosper the more the animal kingdom prospers. The earth has been in an ice for several million years with a cyclical partial thaw happening about once per 100,000 years and persisting for 10,000 years. The current thaw has lasted longer than 10,000 years already and any human actions that would serve to end the thaw are not sane actions. Therefore, drill baby drill and burn baby burn – it’s good for industry and good for the biosphere – a win-win situation.
harvey says:
December 10, 2011 at 7:58 am
“If you deny it, then you need to challenge the measurement process (which was done by BEST) which IMHO affirmed the fact.”
They affirmed the record. Unfortunately the record is of only a small fraction of the northern hemisphere land surface (Europe and the continental United States) and the instruments used were never meant to measure changes as small as a tenth of a degree.
The FACT is that the raw instrumental temperature record shows no overall warming trend since 1880. Most of the warming trend comes from the “adjustments” applied to the recorded temperatures with so-called Time of Observation Bias being the primary source of warming trend. To say that the warming is man-made is quite true but it appears that it is made by pencil whipping the instrument record rather than by increasing CO2 emissions. BEST did not abandon the TOB adjustments so they really only confirmed that no one in the past made any basic arithmetic errors. They did nothing to increase the abysmal spatial coverage, the inability to read the thermometers to sub-degree precision, nor prove the series of adjustments to the raw data are justifiable and, once again, without those adjustments there is no warming to be found.
Dear Mr. Springer
You seem to be in the camp that believes that warming is a good thing. That nothing bad can come from it. Probably not for you. But talk to the people in the Netherlands and Bangladesh.. oh but they are of no concern to you….
This here is the crux of the matter. Will warming affect you negatively (probably not if you are a rich american) or (probably if you are a poor farmer).
Here is the religious/political divide. Do you try to help fellow man, or step on their heads whilst they lie in the gutter.
Harvey.
The other interesting fact is that the earth seems to absorb measurably less CO2 in warmer years than in cooler ones. Maybe this portends something for the future of that fraction (about a half) that gets re-absorbed into the earth system. In other words, this fraction could decrease compounding the fact that the emission rate is increasing in future CO2 levels.
Dear Mr Springer.
You make hand waving statements about “no overall warming trend”.. Hang on, there is more than enough evidence in the satellite and world records to refute this. Can you please provide documentation for your wild assertions?
thanks
Harvey
Robert Brown says:
December 10, 2011 at 8:39 am
“You mean, aside from the mountains of proof including tabletop experiments that anyone can do in a decently equipped physics lab? You mean, instead of all of the rather solid spectroscopy involved, plus models that no reasonable person could call completely wrong?”
Table top? How about in the palm of your hand. I’ve posted many times here the theory of operation behind electronic infrared CO2 sensors which are basically John Tyndall’s 1860 lab setup which took up large room minaturized into a space the size of a thimbal. Moreover one can even prove to oneself that so-called back radiation happens in the atmosphere by taking a $50 handheld infrared thermometer and pointing it up at the night sky under varying conditions of clouds and humidity. It will give a warmer reading of the sky temperature when humidity is higher soley because water vapor is a greenhouse gas. This is why when all else is equal surface temperature falls faster in low humidity than high humidity and why deserts get much colder at night than non-desert regions where everything except humidity is equal.
“The disagreement here is in the details of the models — the relative strengths of different terms in a complicated equation that governs thermal balance in the open system that is the earth, not on “whether CO_2 is a greenhouse gas”. It is remarks like this that permit the “warmists” — quite rightly, in some cases — to accuse all skeptics of being batshit crazy as opposed to being “reasonable” about the issue.”
Yes, this has been a pet peeve of mine since forever. One can argue about the response of the system to increased CO2, the so-called sensitivity, but one cannot argue that CO2 in and of itself does not absorb infrared energy and emit a portion of it backwards toward the source. Tyndall experimentally confirmed that characteristic of certain gases 150 years ago and it is exactly how electronic gas-level sensors work today for any gases that exhibit infrared absorption which definitely includes CO2. These sensors are employed all over the world in ventilation controls for buildings where they sense the CO2 level caused by human occupation of the structure and turn on ventilation fans when the level rises above what’s acceptable.
Jennifer says:
December 10, 2011 at 8:31 am
Bullspit. The rise has a name. It’s called “The Modern Maximum”. Google it honey. Regardless of what some clueless “woodfortrees” site might claim the sunspot record is well known and so is the modern maximum.
Let me help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Maximum
Get a clue.
@harvey:
I’m not sure what your point is. If CO2 contributes less than 50% to the current warm temperature anomaly then natural variability will dominate CO2 effects over the long term. Simply put, if the current anomaly is .7C and CO2 accounts for .3C then natural effects which vary over time could easily drive the anomaly in a negative direction. Saying that it’s a fact now says nothing about what the world will be like in 50 years. Climate science is a lot like chess in that respect. You start with 20 possible opening moves (your “fact”) but after just 4 moves there can be over 72,000 different outcomes. The fact that you move your King’s Pawn first doesn’t make it a dominant player in the game.
There was a high level of solar activity throughout the last half of the 20th century. It was elevated even while the trend after 1980 was slightly negative. While the TSI increase wasn’t enough to directly account for all of the observed warming, there is no reason to believe that increased solar radiation would affect the Earth in a linear fashion. Why is it that climate scientists insist that warmth due to CO2 must be accompanied by feedbacks, but seem to ignore the possible side-effects of a clear increase in the primary energy source for the planet? (That’s a pretty easy question to answer: You can’t tax the Sun or seek “climate justice” because it’s more active.)
The political situation is not ambiguous. The UN is dedicated to redistributing global wealth and influence, which should give everyone reason to doubt their objectivity. The IPCC has made enough blatant errors, and always on the side of alarmists, to clearly indicate that they are politically driven. The Climategate emails show that the leading academics in the field have drifted into advocacy as well. For years we were told that the MWP/MCA didn’t exist, even though there was ample evidence that it had occurred and only Mann’s hockey stick to show that it hadn’t. In the face of overwhelming evidence the IPCC now grudgingly admits that the MWP/MCA was real, but still says that it’s likely (>50% probability) to have been cooler than the current anomaly. What they still don’t seem to get is that almost no one is disputing that CO2 can have SOME effect on global temperatures, so if it’s .2C warmer now than it was 1000 years ago, then we should be discussing that number instead of ascribing the entire anomaly to greenhouse gases. The problem for alarmists is that that level of warming isn’t very, well…alarming.
Without AGW, climate scientists would work in quiet anonymity, just as do researchers in most other fields. Instead they are courted by politicians, command enormous sums for speaking engagements, and are invited to exotic locations to plan the future of the world. I doubt anyone is resisting their call to action out of a misguided loyalty to Ayn Rand, but the unwarranted assumptions, shoddy practices, and outright obfustication of contradictory evidence creates an atmosphere of distrust. (Hm. “Atmosphere of Distrust”. Sounds like a great book title. I think I’ll start writing…)
There seems to be a lot of bad science, or lack of science, in this thread. Not all however, just rather a lot. The first bunch of replies seemed to have misunderstood Jim Goodridge and that’s a shame. And I find it sad to see issues that have been answered well here in the past, coming up for another airing and not always getting such good answers. All this reinforces my conviction that skeptics still need a Climate Science wiki. And when I have time I will take this idea further. Or if it speaks to you as a hot topic now, please email me.
I’ve been through Skeptical Science’s “debunks” of all the skeptic issues and de-debunked them one by one. That taught me a lot. The science was still nowhere near as clear as I would have liked. But three things were painfully clear
(1) there was no crisis
(2) any imagined solution would not only not work but would be horrendously expensive
(3) there was deep corruption in high places regarding the science.
So though I’m still not convinced by Ferdinand Engelbeen on CO2 (quite apart from having difficulty in following him and not falling asleep) we do agree at the most basic level of the 3 points above.
Click my name to learn about the science. And here are the numbers that Robert Brown is asking for, getting CO2 in proportion – together with pictures. Though doing my best to stay neutral and evidence-based, it’s still my POV and I could be wrong in places though I’ve had a lot of support and have examined, and sometimes corrected, many issues where challenged. Most importantly, I think it sheds a lot of light on the real issues and real science in Climate Science. But I come here (rather than our own forum!) to chat and discuss.
The level of comments here still makes me believe we need a skeptics’ climate science wiki, to capture the best of snappy facts, as well as provide the backup evidence and references that are largely missing from this thread.
Dear Phizzics.
Do you accept the fact that earth has been warming over the last 100 years.
Do you accept the fact that CO2 has been increasing in the atmosphere.
Do you accept the fact the CO2 “contributes” to said warming.
Forget the politics, Forget your religion, Forget your Idiology.
IF this warming trend continues, for whatever reason, are you, your family and your ancestors willing to accept the consequences?
thanks
Harvey
Solar activity confirmed by carbon-14 isotope ratio:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon-14_with_activity_labels.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation#Carbon-14_production
Carbon-14 level in well dated plant materials also happens to discount any claims that sunspot records are not comparable over the past 400 years because of changing methods of counting them. C14 is independent of astronomical observation and aligns perfectly with observatory counts going back to the year 1600.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/20675
Note the quick gratuitous denial of a relationship between solar magnetic activity and climate below. The hiliarious fact of the matter is that you have little chance of getting something like this published if you don’t explicitely state that you’re onboard the AGW bandwagon of cargo-cult climate scientists. What a fine mess.
Dear Lucy Skywalker
You make 3 points:
(1) there was no crisis
(2) any imagined solution would not only not work but would be horrendously expensive
(3) there was deep corruption in high places regarding the science.
1. The crisis is relative. Is there a current crisis? No. Is there a crisis for people living in Montana? NO Will there be a crisis in the future? Yes if the world keeps warming the way it is. The crisis will be world wide, and will affect different people differently. Some people will see no problems, or even an improved world, but others will face life threatening situations.
2. Yes the imagined solutions ARE expensive, and maybe not the right ones. Do you have some suggestions?
3. There was NO corruption regarding the science. There PROBABLY is corrupion regarding the POLITICS surrounding the science.
BTW i will make a pronouncement here, if you do not watch out, CHINA will be the dominant world power and the USA, and the opinions of the USA will become a has been. CHINA is proposing to build 200+ nuclear reactors in the next 40 years and lets not even talk about their installations of solar and wind power facilities.
thanks
harvey
Dear Mr Springer
Yes Humans always are messy. We are apes after all.
I would like to explore why you have a prejudice against published works in peer-reviewed articles? Do you think there is a world conspiracy against those who are rejected for publication? Is this conspiracy lead by the Cabal, or by the Bilderberg Council?
thanks
Harvey
harvey says: December 10, 2011 at 9:15 am
Dear Mr. Springer, You seem to be in the camp that believes that warming is a good thing. That nothing bad can come from it. Probably not for you. But talk to the people in the Netherlands and Bangladesh.. oh but they are of no concern to you….
Sir, you are terribly mistaken.
Click my name and go to the main part of our website to see our green credentials. I care about people and the planet. And so do many others here. Anthony’s interests at WUWT would have been palpably green, had not the problem of corrupt science raised its ugly head, big time.
Superstition means “building upon” – building up and up where the foundations are rotten. In this case, the highly-corrupted science is the rotten foundation. Sea levels are not rising fast, their rate of rise is tiny. And they are not rising faster, the rate of rise is slowing down. The icecaps are not melting overall, so catastrophic sea level rise is not on the cards. Click my name to correct your compass. If you choose.
The really horrendous problem the planet has, with all this, is the unbelievable corruption of the science, and the unwillingness of people in high places, at the tops of the Climate Science profession, as much as their supporters visiting WUWT, to look again, or even, at times, to play honest. That is what I find scary. People like that are much more likely to create problems like war, fascism, financial thuggery, etc. As we see from telling bits of evidence like the expensive non-solutions offered, or the video 10-10. Truth matters.
Dave Springer:
Bullspit. The rise has a name. It’s called “The Modern Maximum”. Google it honey. Regardless of what some clueless “woodfortrees” site might claim the sunspot record is well known and so is the modern maximum.
You sweet thing you. That site has the actual measured sunspot data. The guy said that if I plotted a running 11 year mean since 1900, I’d see “an increasing sunspot trend for 110 years”. I plotted what he said. I don’t see what he said I should see. If I somehow got it wrong, maybe you could point me to a chart you’ve made that shows it correctly.
Jennifer showed some plots earlier, and David Springer seems to have missed the point. The rise stopped, you may notice, around 1950, and there has been a decline since the 1980’s, as I also mentioned earlier. The warming has increased since then. This was the point that was missed. The original post implied a correlation that just isn’t there in his 11-year running average. I don’t know what his error was, and no one has yet replied that they know.
If this is Jim’s “stock response” to justify reasoned skepticism, I for one don’t get it. Is he trying to confuse the reader? Is there a point that isn’t conflicted or contradicted? Could he have been less convincing?
Maybe “Jim is a tool” was a bit outlandish but he’s definitely a “word nerd” who never uses a single word where a hundred or so will do.
Jennifer said it best Jim: “Your shot went way into the stands”.
Dave Springer:
At December 10, 2011 at 8:48 am you say:
“ It appears to me as if there’s a natural equilibrium point of 280ppm …”
No, you are wrong because there is NOT “a natural equilibrium point of 280ppm”, and your entire argument is based on the mistaken assumption that there is. If there were a “natural equilibrium point” then its value would vary in response to variations of several parameters (importantly, temperature).
Richard
harvey:
At December 10, 2011 at 9:48 am you say to Phizzics.
“Do you accept the fact that earth has been warming over the last 100 years.
Do you accept the fact that CO2 has been increasing in the atmosphere.
Do you accept the fact the CO2 “contributes” to said warming.
Forget the politics, Forget your religion, Forget your Idiology.
IF this warming trend continues, for whatever reason, are you, your family and your ancestors willing to accept the consequences?”
You seem to have made some misprints so I take the liberty of correcting them for you as follows.
“Do you accept the fact that earth has been COOLING over the last 10 years.
Do you accept the fact that CO2 has been increasing in the atmosphere.
Do you accept the fact the CO2 “contributes” to said COOLING.
Forget the politics, Forget your religion, Forget your Idiology.
IF this COOLING trend continues, for whatever reason, are you, your family and your ancestors willing to accept the consequences?”
There, corrected it for you.
Richard
Harvey@10:10
Isn’t it a travesty that the USA is not buiding nuclear power plants as China is? Instead, we are spending billions on solar farms etc that don’t do 24/7 generation.
Talk about stupid eh?
What will it take to get the CAGW crowd to get serious about emissions? As they are right now, it is readily apparant that they only want to redistribute wealth and the environment be dammed.
Robert Brown says on December 10, 2011 at 8:39 am:
“You mean, aside from the mountains of proof including tabletop experiments that anyone can do in a decently equipped physics lab? You mean, instead of all of the rather solid spectroscopy involved, plus models that no reasonable person could call completely wrong?”
===========
Thank you Robert Brown, I may have, at at long last, found the “right person” to ask. – Please choose just one out the mountains of your tabletop experiments and explain how it proves that there is such a thing as Long Wave Infra Red (LWIR) radiation that is absorbed by, and warms, CO2.
I have no quibble with long wave radiation, or radiation without light, but “Infra Red” denotes below or under Red and exists solely in solar or other irradiation that contain, at least, the wavebands of Red and Infra Red.
The Rules say; – as I am sure you know – that anything that has a temperature higher than absolute zero, must emit energy. Pray tell me, therefore; why do the other gases, N2, O2 and Ar not radiate their heat away, or back to the surface?
And also, while you are at it, please tell me, how does “solid spectroscopy” prove that heat can radiate?
“Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.”
Hi Harvey:
Reasonable questions that I thought I answered in my first post. Sorry if I wasn’t clear.
Yes, I believe that the Earth has warmed over the past 100 years. Yes I believe that CO2 has increased. Yes I believe that it has contributed to the current warm anomaly.
None of that is particularly interesting though, as the devil lies in the details. Do I believe, or more importantly, has the science clearly shown CO2 to be the dominant factor in determining global temperature? Absolutely not. Has the science clearly shown that there will be negative consequences from the effects of CO2? Absolutely not. Are there other, more immediate concerns that are clearly understood and require attention. Certainly. Why then is such a huge emphasis placed on the possible effects of CO2? In our world CO2 emissions are closely linked to affluence, and exaggerating their effects offers a scientific basis for the UN’s ongoing effort to redistribute wealth.
If you don’t believe that there has been misleading information, please do a web search regarding the solar influence on global temperature. You’ll find that virtually all of the alarmist websites discuss the mismatch between the past 30 year trend in temperature (up) vs. the TSI trend for the same period (down).
Now do a simple experiment. Go to your kitchen and turn the oven up to 400 degrees. Monitor the room’s temperature. It will rise slowly due to the oven’s heat contribution. Now reduce the oven’s temperature to 396 degrees and continue to monitor the room temperature. It will continue to rise, even though the oven’s temperature trend is down. Eventually it will reach equilibrium, but it won’t depend on whether the oven is warming or cooling slightly, it will be dependent on the actual temperature of the oven. This is a VERY simple concept, and the fact that the equilibrium point is ignored in favor of discussing the minor trend is very revealing.
In short, there is advocacy where there should be science, and grandstanding where there should be humility. Even while the alarmists warn that CO2 will result in catastrophe, they jet set to conference after conference and speaking engagement after speaking engagement. They band together to support each other’s questionable conclusions and discredit those who disagree with them. If this kind of behavior were the norm in all sciences we’d still believe in the Steady State Theory and that “spiral nebulae” are our nearby galactic neighbors.
OHD, you will notice that O2, N2 and Ar only have one or two atoms in their molecule, while H2O and CO2 have three. This is where the IR effect begins. These types of molecules have vibrational modes that allow them to affect IR, which smaller molecules just can’t, because they don’t have energy states that interact with IR photons.
Lucy Skywalker says:
December 10, 2011 at 9:41 am
So though I’m still not convinced by Ferdinand Engelbeen on CO2 (quite apart from having difficulty in following him and not falling asleep) we do agree at the most basic level of the 3 points above.
Dear Lucy, didn’t know I was that boring… But repeating the main arguments may be boring, I suppose…
I have read a few parts of the GWJ reference you did supply, but that contains a lot of errors… Here a few important ones:
CO2 outgassed from 30m depth for 1ºC global temp rise = 600 Gt ie near-total atmospheric content
This is not what Henry’s Law says: “At a constant temperature, the amount of a given gas that dissolves in a given type and volume of liquid is directly proportional to the partial pressure of that gas in equilibrium with that liquid.”
Thus Henry’s Law is about pressure in the atmosphere, not amounts. As said before, when the sea surface increases with 1ºC, the equilibrium pressure of CO2 in solution with the atmosphere increases with 16 microatm. That means that with such a temperature increase, some CO2 will be released from the oceans until the atmospheric CO2 pressure also increased with 16 microatm (~16 ppmv). At that moment, a new equilibrium is reached. That is with a release of only 32 GtC from the oceans, whatever the further content of the ocean’s mixed layer or deep layers. Thus the 600 GtC release never will take place, simply because there is no driving force in one or the other direction.
The cumulative emissions curve’s slopes do not agree with the CDIAC/BP annual emissions graph. See below.
Of course they don’t. They are comparing the trend with the derivative of the trend! The year by year increase in the atmosphere is dominated by temperature changes, but that says next to nothing about the cause of the trend, as year by year temperature changes largely level out in a few years. By taking the derivative, one removes the trend itself…
BTW, the late Endersbee made a 21-year moving average over the period 1985-2008. If you do the same over the period 1945-1975, you have a negative correlation between temperature and CO2 level… The superb correlation between accumulated human emissions and accumulation in the atmosphere doesn’t need any averaging over the past 100+ years.
Many excellent studies show (see Segalstad) that CO2 only stays in the air around 5 years. No study shows a longer “life span” than 12 years.
How many times should be insisted that a residence time of 5 years is not of the slightest interest, as that only shows how much CO2 per year goes in and out of the atmosphere. Even if in one year all CO2 was going five times in and out the atmosphere, that doesn’t matter at all, as that doesn’t change the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Only the difference between what is going in and out matters. And currently that is only 4 GtC/yr at 210 GtC extra in the atmosphere. That means that the e-fold time to remove the total 210 GtC (at zero emissions) is 210/4 or about 57 years (~40 years half life time). A lot longer than the skeptic 5 years, but much shorter than the 100’s to 1000’s of years from the IPCC.
harvey says:
December 10, 2011 at 9:15 am
You seem to be in the camp that believes that warming is a good thing. That nothing bad can come from it. Probably not for you. But talk to the people in the Netherlands and Bangladesh.. oh but they are of no concern to you…
Living near the Dutch border, at 7 meter above msl, where a good NW storm may reach 10 meter extra sealevel… But the dikes here are at 12 m above msl, thus an extra 30 cm over this century (as the satellites show without any accelleration in the past 30 years) is no problem at all for The Netherlands. The lowest point in The Netherlands is even 12 m below msl…
Even Bangladesh is building dikes and high level shelters with the help of Dutch engineers for the occasional Tyfoon. Even there, most of its land area increases due to more deposit from the mountains than sea level rise…
I know that some commission in The Netherlands was expecting several meters of sealevel rise this century, thanks to the PIK (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research) of Schellnhuber (direct advisor of Angela Merkel for Climate matters in Germany) and the direct influence of some concrete firms (to build higher dikes with a lot of profit…). But Hans Von Storch from Geesthaagt, Germany (Echo-G climate model with low sensitivity for CO2), distanciated himself from the report.
Jim D says on December 10, 2011 at 11:48 am:
“OHD, you will notice that O2, N2 and Ar only have one or two atoms in their molecule, while H2O and CO2 have three. This is where the IR effect begins. These types of molecules have vibrational modes that allow them to affect IR, which smaller molecules just can’t, because they don’t have energy states that interact with IR photons.”
=========
Yes Jim D, I know the difference between di-atomic and tri-atomic molecules, but your “fact” that only gases containing 3 or more atoms can radiate heat away, is a new one on me.
Are you now saying that the Earth’s lower atmosphere cannot cool, for any reason what so ever, if it was not for tri-atomic GHGs?
OHD, yes, the atmosphere cannot cool radiatively without these GHGs. It might cool by conduction to a cold surface.
Bomber_the_Cat says:
December 10, 2011 at 4:10 am
Rosco says:
December 10, 2011 at 1:04 am
“Besides GHGs are not the only gases in the atmosphere which are heated and therefore radiating IR.”
Yes they are. Only the ‘greenhouse gases’ absorb and emit infrared radiation. The main constituents of the atmosphere, oxygen and nitrogen, do not. It is the radiation from the greenhouse gases that make the Earth’s surface warmer than it would without greenhouse gases.
AGWSF does like to push the meme ‘everything above absolute zero emits infrared’, so how come oxygen and nitrogen don’t?
And, how come hot air (nitrogen and oxygen) doesn’t?
@ Robert Brown:
“…So cold that all the warming seen
From then until now
May be simply explained
By natural variation
Regression to the mean
Excursion beyond
With CO_2 the minor factor
Not the Smoking Gun
Playing second fiddle to
Earth’s variable Sun.”
Sir, this is brilliant. I hope you enjoyed composing it as much as I enjoyed reading it.
Don
You don’t need a
weathermanclimate scientistTo know which way the wind blows
We can accept your facts, but without quantification, these statements are entirely useless. They tell us exactly nothing. You need to demonstrate significance, without significance your statements are mere flatulence. Can you not understand this? Besides, we may cool for the next hundred years (touch wood). GK
Let’s cut the crap.
Isn’t “emitting infrared radiation” just another way of saying “cooling down”?
wuwt has no standards of truth or accuracy (apparantly)
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/oh-pleeze/
harvey says:
December 10, 2011 at 9:15 am
You are grossly misinformed. Higher level of CO2 in the atmosphere makes plants grow faster/larger, use less water in the process, and extend the growing season in the higher latitudes. This helps virtually the entire living world and is an unimpeachable case of the greatest good for the greatest number. Deal with it.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
December 10, 2011 at 12:05 pm
We are in agreement but more important Henry’s Law is in agreement with us. I must have mistaken you for someone else when I responded a week ago because I thought you were supportive of Ernst Beck’s survey which IMO is flawed beyond use.
My take basically boils down to there being a natural equilibrium point in the typical interglacial regime of 280ppm CO2. As with most systems out of equilibrium the farther out of equilibrium it is the faster/harder the system drives back towards equilibrium. This as anthropogenic CO2 emission has risen we observe a constant rate of 50% of those emissions being removed from the atmosphere. No matter how much we emit half of it gets taken up by natural sinks. This is so very characteristic of equilibrium systems I can’t imagine any other plausible explanation. There doesn’t seem to be much room for doubt that anthropogenic emission is what’s driving the system further out of equilibrium by releasing geologically sequestered CO2 in the process of fossil fuel consumption.
Jim D says December 10, 2011 at 4:41 pm:
“OHD, yes, the atmosphere cannot cool radiatively without these GHGs. It might cool by conduction to a cold surface.”
========
Fine Jim D. All I need now is empirical proof for your statement and I shall ditch the law of nature which has fooled me all along, you know the one about “all objects that have a temperature above zero Kelvin (K) must radiate energy” and all that jazz.
Looking forward to your return posting! – And merry Christmas –
Jim D says:
December 10, 2011 at 4:41 pm
“OHD, yes, the atmosphere cannot cool radiatively without these GHGs. It might cool by conduction to a cold surface.”
Nonsense. A fundamental law of physics is that all matter with a temperature above absolute zero emits thermal radiation. This applies to subatomic particles to say nothing of whole elements or compounds. All matter in motion emits thermal radiation. Write that down.
Dave Springer says:
December 11, 2011 at 6:37 am
With respect Dave, because you make some very knowledgeable posts, you are wrong about atmospheric gases such as nitrogen and oxygen absorbing and emitting radiation in the long wave infrared region – which is what you imply. If they did, then they would all be greenhouse gases. What is the absorption spectra for nitrogen for instance|? Check it out! It absorbs in the ultraviolet, but not in the infrared.
Gases at atmospheric pressure do not approximate to blackbodies.
Let’s write it down.
Nitrogen is not a blackbody and does not absorb nor radiate in the long wave infrared.
Oxygen is not a blackbody and does not absorb nor radiate in the long wave infrared.
CO2 is not a blackbody but does absorb and radiate at a wavelength of around 15 microns.
Jim D is correct. “The atmosphere cannot cool radiatively without GHGs”
Some good comments Dave, but I have trouble with that one statement. Sounds to me like you are relying on intuition, for that (which doesn’t mean it is wrong). I think you could be correct for ice age equilibrium, but I don’t consider that normal for the Earth. We may be establishing a new equilibrium, that will finally end the cyclic ice age glaciation, for the benefit of all. Of course, that is merely my intuition. In any event it would be interesting to note how you arrived at 280 ppm. GK
harvey says:
December 10, 2011 at 9:15 am
You seem to be in the camp that believes that warming is a good thing. That nothing bad can come from it. Probably not for you. But talk to the people in the Netherlands and Bangladesh.. oh but they are of no concern to you…
================================================
Since the Netherlands are sinking, and Bangladesh is gaining land mass due to sedimentation…
….what’s your point?
How much would we have to lower CO2 levels to create another ice age….to catch up with sinking land?
Blackbodies, which are idealized objects emit at all wavelengths and produce a blackbody spectrum. No object is a perfect blackbody as they are limited in what wavelengths they can emit by the behavior of their molecules. Gases are the least perfect having few or no thermal wavelengths where they can emit. Try detecting thermal radiation from pure O2 and N2. You won’t.
G. Karst says:
December 11, 2011 at 8:10 am
From Dave Springer:
My take basically boils down to there being a natural equilibrium point in the typical interglacial regime of 280ppm CO2.
Some good comments Dave, but I have trouble with that one statement. Sounds to me like you are relying on intuition, for that (which doesn’t mean it is wrong).
That is a matter of looking to the past levels of temperature and CO2. Over the glacials/intergalcials of the last 800,000 years the ratio between CO2 levels and SH ocean temperature proxies (dD and d18O) is about 8 ppmv/°C. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/Vostok_trends.gif
The correlation gets even better if one takes into account that CO2 lags the temperature changes.
In the high(er) resolution ice cores of Law Dome can be seen that the difference between the MWP and the LIA is about 6 ppmv less for ~0.8°C cooling. Since then the temperature increased with about the same amount. Thus the current CO2 level without human emissions would be around 285 ppmv. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_1000yr.jpg
Part of the previous interglacial (the Eemian) was 2°C warmer than this one, the CO2 levels reached 310 ppmv…
Jim D says:
Try detecting thermal radiation from pure O2 and N2. You won’t.
Satellites measure temperature of the atmosphere, based on the radiation intensity of… oxygen,
Ferdinand, no they don’t, unless you mean ozone.
Ferdinand,
What are your thoughts on the Japanese satellite map that shows China, Africa and India [and many more of the less developed nations] emitting all of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere, while The U.S. and Europe are net CO2 sinks [CO2 absorbers]?
The satellite appears to show conclusively that we in the West are not the “carbon” problem [even if CO2 is a problem, which is unlikely, and for which there is no evidence]. Should reparations for carbon emissions be paid to the U.S. and Europe by China, India, Africa and the other net CO2 emitters? Or is this just a political scam under the guise of “carbon pollution”?
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
December 11, 2011 at 9:21 am
“Satellites measure temperature of the atmosphere, based on the radiation intensity of… oxygen”
That is correct. Satellites estimate the temperature of the atmosphere by sensing microwave radiation from the oxygen18 isotope in the atmosphere. The frequency of this microwave radiation is about 60GHz, it is not infrared and is irrelevant to greenhouse warming.
It is very useful though for establishing a satellite temperature record.
BtC, thanks, I stand corrected. Spencer’s AMSU does it this way. They use the very low energy in the microwave rotation bands. Microwave is about two orders of magnitude longer than IR thermal radiation, and emission there is at least ten orders of magnitude below the IR emission of GHGs, since Planck’s Law goes as wavelength to the fifth power. My statement about no thermal radiation from O2 and N2 is still correct, because microwaves are not thermal radiation by its normal definition.
Dave Springer says:
December 11, 2011 at 6:37 am
Nonsense. A fundamental law of physics is that all matter with a temperature above absolute zero emits thermal radiation. This applies to subatomic particles to say nothing of whole elements or compounds. All matter in motion emits thermal radiation. Write that down.
Better yet write down that it is false, it does not apply to subatomic particles nor does it apply to gas molecules in the IR frequency range.
Smokey says:
December 11, 2011 at 9:47 am
What are your thoughts on the Japanese satellite map that shows China, Africa and India [and many more of the less developed nations] emitting all of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere, while The U.S. and Europe are net CO2 sinks [CO2 absorbers]?
What the Japanese satellite measures are mainly the natural flows. Human emissions are too small to be detected, except where relative huge emissions are concentrated (e.g. in and around towns with a huge concentration of cars, houses and factories). But indeed it is very interesting to see that the main natural sinks are in the temperate and near polar forests, while the tropical forests seems to be net emitters.
But one need to be cautious: the satellite measures the whole air column for CO2. In the equatorial band, the oceans emit huge quantities of CO2, while the polar oceans absorb a lot of CO2. This is spread from West to East over the same latitude band, thus what you see over the land parts is already a mix of what happens in the oceans in the same band plus over land locally. Land clearing may be measurable if concentrated in relative small areas…
The rise and fall of sunspot activity over a 110 year period is shown in Vukcevic’s charts along with the temperature response. This is not what the “Greens” and governments, trying to push carbon tax, want to want to hear. Government agencies like the CSIRO, ABC, NASA,, NOAA, and BBC along with the varies government weather channels are commissioned to debunk any correlation. So expect lots of junk data and weather forecasts.
Jennifer says:
December 10, 2011 at 10:18 am
You need to be a bit careful with the data in Woodfortrees. I have used GISS temperature anomalies data from the site for about 10 years and starting to lose faith in the data. Basically the 1860’s has miraculously become cooler and the later years warmer. I am not sure where the problem lies.
Check out Vukcevic’s charts that shows the approximate 110 year sunspot cycle harmonic
Sunspot: “I have used GISS temperature anomalies data from the site for about 10 years and starting to lose faith in the data. Basically the 1860′s has miraculously become cooler and the later years warmer. I am not sure where the problem lies.”
1. The site has been running for less than four years. How have you been using it for ten years?
2. Have you tried reading any of the many papers describing how the GISTEMP record is constructed?
Alan Statham says:
“Have you tried reading any of the many papers describing how the GISTEMP record is constructed?”
Have you?
click1
click2
click3
Explain why GISS always “adjusts” the temperature record to show a more alarming chart.
Alan Statham says:
December 11, 2011 at 5:39 pm
Alan I may have overstated the time frame. However when I line up GISS temperature anomalies in columns for years 2008, 2009, 2010 the monthly figures (rows) don’t match. Temperature anomalies between 2008 and 2010 were progressively updated to show cooler temperatures for the 1800’s and warmer for later years. This of course steepens the trend line.
I would be happy for you to enlighten me on the reason for this alteration in the baseline.
Smokey, none of those charts look terribly alarming to me. Are you alarmed? You must be quite a sensitive soul.
Sunspot, I could enlighten you perhaps, but have you tried to enlighten yourself? Have you read any of the many papers describing the GISS methodology?
fredj says
Presumably you mean the IPCC. The last report has two sections dedicated to water vapour (tropospheric/stratospheric) and the greenhouse effect. A few years ago I searched the third and fourth assessment reports for mentions of water vapour. I got several hundred hits in both reports, WG1.
BTW, here’s a graph of 11 year running means for sunspots and sea surface temps.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1900/mean:132/normalise/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1900/mean:132/normalise
The correlation is terrible. Jim’s got it wrong.
GISS gets it totally wrong again, re: it’s SST predictions. And CO2 follows SST’s very closely. This gif shows what’s happening.
And this graph clearly shows the major effects of the MWP and the LIA. The planet is still recovering from the LIA. Sea levels are also moderating. CAGW “theory” predicts steric sea level rise due to CO2-induced warming. Wrong again. Empirical evidence contradicts the CO2=CAGW conjecture because the conjecture is wrong.
fredj,
Mauna Loa CO2 measurements began in the 1950s.
80ppm is an increase of 0.0008%
That is a percentage of the entire atmosphere, not of just the greenhouse gases.
Nitrogen and oxygen make up more than 95% of the dry atmosphere, and neither are GHGs. As a proportion of the greenhouse effect, CO2 suddenly looms a bit larger, eh?
Water vapour is not well-mixed in the atmosphere, and can be found in trace amounts in arid regions, and up to 4% of the atmosphere in the most humid regions.
By my reckoning, CO2 currently is about 2% of total greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
But different GHGs absorb infrared radiation more and less strongly, and you need to sort that out to begin to get a handle on the contribution of CO2 to the greenhouse effect. For instance, nitrous oxide is 300 times more powerful than CO2 as a GHG per unit weight (over time), but is present in the atmosphere at 325 part per billion, and has increased by 25 parts per billion over the last 30 years or so.
This stuff is not straightforwardly intuitive.
Harvey,
RE your comment that the US Navy is worried about climate change.
Have you read the report you linked to?
For those who haven’t, it is important to note that
a) The authors were “directed” by the CNO to come up with the report.
b) The authors were “directed” to accept the conclusions of the IPCC with regard to expected future impacts from climaye change.
c) The conclusions of the report (at least the first few – I stopped after it became clear what the report was about) basically support current US naval policies and programs.
I no longer keep as current on naval and military issues as I once did, but I am still a member of the United States Naval Institute and read their monthly Proceedings publication (an outstanding source for current views concerning naval matters). If climate and change and global warming is a concern, it certainly is not showing up there.
So Harvey, I’m willing to make a wager that the SecDef told the Chief of Naval Operations that climate change was an important issue and he wanted to know what the Navy planned to do about it. The CNO said “Yes, Sir. When would you like this by?” After determining who it was he needed to task this assignment to, he sent them the order. To which the authors (or more likely their CO) replied “Aye, Aye Sir.” and proceeded to write the requested report. They could have been asked to evalute the effects of a large asteroid impact or alien invasion and they would have responded in the same way. None of which means they or the Navy, is worried about any of it. The are simply following orders.
And when you think about it, why would the Navy worry about a rise in sea level? It will still float their boats. In fact, rising sea levels would extend their reach ashore, something the Navy IS concerned about.
“””””” Sean Peake says:
December 9, 2011 at 5:34 pm
With all due respect to Mr Goodridge, what he wrote could have been set down over 10 years ago. He believes that correlation is causation. He focuses on the minor variability TSI and sunspots whilst ignoring that solar magnetics is likely a much bigger influence. He relies on data that no longer shows what he states. To quote Bob Dylan, “Things have changed.” I hope he snaps out of it. “””””
Now Sean, how did you reach that conclusion from what Goodridge wrote ? He mentioned sunspots; they are something that can be observed about the sun. The observation of sunspots goes way back before Galileo ever thought about a telescope. The Chinese ancients didn’t know diddley squat about solar magnetism, yet they surely knew of sunspot cycles; one could almost imagine it was something they could observe. I have no idea whether the Chinese ancients could correlate sunspots with global climate; like they knew anything about the latter.
So where does Goodridge exclude solar magnetism as being involved in any way; that is known to be intimately related to the same processes that result in observed susnpots, and even tracks the same cycles (for that reason).
It seems to me the message of Goodridge is much simpler. Even our crudest measures of TSI, were already swamped by known atmospheric water variability, and now that swamping is known to be an order of magnitude worse.
So what do we do, instead of trying to lnk climate variability to H2O variability; we don’t even pay attention to TSI variability; it’s so small; so we look instead, at an even further removed variable; namely what happens to some small fraction of the “effluent” resulting from TSI, namely a small part of the LWIR radiant emitted energy from the earth, that just happens to get held up for a while by CO2 and other trace gases in the atmosphere. Yes we don’t claim that such GHG capture doesn’t occur; that’s silly. We just claim that is far more important, than interference with the solar energy input that is driving the whole system.
Sunspots, are just symptoms, of changes in TSI (small) and changes in solar magnetism, and any of that may affect global climate to some extent; but we already knew 100 years ago, that it was peanuts compared to known water content variabiloity.
“”””” Phil. says:
December 11, 2011 at 11:33 am
Dave Springer says:
December 11, 2011 at 6:37 am
Nonsense. A fundamental law of physics is that all matter with a temperature above absolute zero emits thermal radiation. This applies to subatomic particles to say nothing of whole elements or compounds. All matter in motion emits thermal radiation. Write that down.
Better yet write down that it is false, it does not apply to subatomic particles nor does it apply to gas molecules in the IR frequency range. “””””
So Phil, I’m surprised to see you say that.
At what point does an atom or molecule; that previously was part of a solid or liquid; and freely emitting electromagnetic waves, as a direct consequence of its “non-zero” Temperature, meaning it has a non zero kinetic energy, as measured as a statistical disrtibution of kinetic energies of a large collection of nearby atoms or molecules, with which it is in constant collisions, suddenly become aware that it has “evaporated” from its solid or liquid safe house, and must therefore cease and desist immediately from emitting any such EM waves, until such time, as it once again properly joins a solid or liquid “Emitting” club and is once more allowed to emit THERMAL radiation.
An individual neutral atom or molecule of ANY kind, may be excused from emitting electromagnetic waves, when it is in “free flight” under the influence of only gravitational fields, and sufficiently remote from any other thing, so as to undergo NO collisions with anything else; but if it collides with other things, it emits.
I don’t know whether the force of gravity fields will cause it to emit or not; but likely not much in the IR, if that is your main concern.
OOoops !! Silly me; I almost forgot. If it doesn’t collide with anything else; it doesn’t have any Temperature at all, does it ?
As for well known IR emitters (and absorbers) such as CO2, supposedly they emit(or absorb) because they have a non-zero electric dipole moment (aka antenna length).
Well C=O=C, or C-O-C, or C=O-C, or C-O=C, or however you want to draw it has exactly zero dipole moment, so it couldn’t possibly emit or absorb EM radiation. Well of course, Heisenberg taught us that CO2 does not remain as C=O=C or any of the others for very long, since, anything with such a precisel;y known position, will have a very unknown momentum, so those bits and pieces will move around creating a non zero dipole moment.
Given that some very interesting physics happened, in just the first 10^-43 seconds after the big bang, the amount of time involved in the collision between two neutral atoms or molecules at Temperatures in the range of interest to earth climate, amount to an entire geologic age time scale in the general scheme of things, and is plenty of time for all kinds of interesting physics to happen, and the acceleration of the electric charges (probably of both signs), which can alternatively be described as varying electric currents,in a non zero length path, is all that is required to emit electromagnetic radiation in accordance with Maxwell’s equations; or as explained by Heinrich Hertz, if I recall correctly. And as described by Planck’s radiation formula, some of that emission(or absorption) is likely to be in the IR range.
So if one were to point a spectrometer upwards on a dry clear air cloudless moonless night, where one might reasonably presume, that solids and liquids were essentially absent from the atmosphere, and sunlight was no longer present, then the observed detected spectrum, would be nothing but the LWIR spectral bands of CO2, and O3, and other GHGs, since other gases are forbidden to radiate IR.
Why would such observed spectra seem to have a boundary envelope, that looks remarkably like the limiting envelope of Planckian style Black Body Radiation, since gases simply cannot emit such spectra.
“”””” Jim D says:
December 11, 2011 at 11:03 am
BtC, thanks, I stand corrected. Spencer’s AMSU does it this way. They use the very low energy in the microwave rotation bands. Microwave is about two orders of magnitude longer than IR thermal radiation, and emission there is at least ten orders of magnitude below the IR emission of GHGs, since Planck’s Law goes as wavelength to the fifth power. My statement about no thermal radiation from O2 and N2 is still correct, because microwaves are not thermal radiation by its normal definition. “””””
Well Jim, wouldn’t that be dependent on one’s definition of “normal” ?
For example, when I first started studying electromagnetic radiation; my first textbook on the subject, knew nothing at all about the existence of something called a neutron. Luckily, neutrons don’t seem to have much to do with microwave emission from the atmosphere, so I wasn’t steered to far wrong by that erroneous textbook.
But even back then, in 1938, when “The Admralty Handbook of Wireless Telegraphy” edition I had was published, when one referred to “Thermal radiation”, it had nothing whatsoever to do with the wavelength of the radiation; in fact it claimed that such radiation extended from down to but not including DC, up to nearly infinite frequency. Oddly, Chadwick discovered the neutron in 1938; too late to include in my first textbook.
It was called “Thermal radiation” simply because the physical origin of it was taken to be the TEMPERATURE of the source material.
It would be instructive for people to read what Max Planck and others actually wrote and derived, including Sir James Jeans, and Lord Raleigh, about “Thermal Radiation”, because as far as I can tell, none of them actually tied any of it to any specific material, or any atomic or molecular configuration of matter, or to the physical state of that matter, such as the particular “phase” that the material was in.
Only its Temperature, and the presence of a statistically large number of interracting “particles”, seemed to be required in their derivations.
The approximately 3K microwave “background” radiation remnant of the “Big bang”, IS thermal radiation.
“”””” Jim D says:
December 11, 2011 at 8:55 am
Blackbodies, which are idealized objects emit at all wavelengths and produce a blackbody spectrum. No object is a perfect blackbody as they are limited in what wavelengths they can emit by the behavior of their molecules. Gases are the least perfect having few or no thermal wavelengths where they can emit. Try detecting thermal radiation from pure O2 and N2. You won’t. “””””
Well actually Jim, “Black bodies” are defined as bodies that absorb ALL electromagnetic radiation
that falls on them. That means they can absorb any sort of EM radiation, regardless of its origin, or its spectral composition. Since they absorb ALL ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION, they have NO ABSORPTION SPECTRUM.
What Planck showed was that “black bodies” DO have a specific EMISSION SPECTRUM, that is immortalized in the Planck radiation formula; and depends ONLY on the TEMPERATURE of the body, and is unrelated in any way to its material compositionor the state of matter it is in.
OOoops, isn’t that inconvenient; apparently a black body emits only a certain amount of radiation in a specific spectrum, at a specific Temperature, yet it absorbs ALL em radiation of any amount and any spectral content. Ergo BBs at fixed Temperature DO NOT obey Kirchoff’s Law.
Well Kirchoffs law of course is VERY restrictive; it ONLY applies to systems in Thermal equilibrium at some Temperature
“”””” Bomber_the_Cat says:
December 11, 2011 at 8:05 am
Dave Springer says:
December 11, 2011 at 6:37 am
With respect Dave,
Jim D is correct. “The atmosphere cannot cool radiatively without GHGs”
Here we go again; So Bomber, I wouldn’t dismiss Dave quite so fast, if I was in your shoes.
Now why didn’t you simply say that without GHGs (in the atmosphere), the LWIR radiant emission from the earth surface, approximating a black body spectrum corresponding to about a 288 K black body Temperature, would simply bypass all of the atmosphere and escape directly to space, in about one millisecond or less, and be done with it.
So LWIR radiation would NOT heat the atmosphere (much), and the atmospheric gases warmed by conduction from the surface would simply rise to higher and higher altitudes. Apparently they could never give up the energy they aquired, since they can’t radiate, so they would simply gain in kinetic energy as they rise, and be lost to space. Problem solved; no atmosphere, so the surface radiation simply exits, per Planck’s mechanism.
barry says:
December 12, 2011 at 6:12 am
By my reckoning, CO2 currently is about 2% of total greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
More like 10%, over 90% of the dry atmosphere.
George E. Smith; says:
December 12, 2011 at 1:05 pm
“”””” Phil. says:
December 11, 2011 at 11:33 am
Dave Springer says:
December 11, 2011 at 6:37 am
Nonsense. A fundamental law of physics is that all matter with a temperature above absolute zero emits thermal radiation. This applies to subatomic particles to say nothing of whole elements or compounds. All matter in motion emits thermal radiation. Write that down.
Better yet write down that it is false, it does not apply to subatomic particles nor does it apply to gas molecules in the IR frequency range. “””””
So Phil, I’m surprised to see you say that.
At what point does an atom or molecule; that previously was part of a solid or liquid; and freely emitting electromagnetic waves, as a direct consequence of its “non-zero” Temperature, meaning it has a non zero kinetic energy, as measured as a statistical disrtibution of kinetic energies of a large collection of nearby atoms or molecules, with which it is in constant collisions, suddenly become aware that it has “evaporated” from its solid or liquid safe house, and must therefore cease and desist immediately from emitting any such EM waves, until such time, as it once again properly joins a solid or liquid “Emitting” club and is once more allowed to emit THERMAL radiation.
When it becomes a gas George, because it no longer has a mechanism to emit thermal radiation!
A homonuclear diatomic like N2 or O2 has no ability to emit rotational or vibrational radiation.
As for well known IR emitters (and absorbers) such as CO2, supposedly they emit(or absorb) because they have a non-zero electric dipole moment (aka antenna length).
Well C=O=C, or C-O-C, or C=O-C, or C-O=C, or however you want to draw it has exactly zero dipole moment, so it couldn’t possibly emit or absorb EM radiation.
No George, it usually does have a dipole because it spends its time continually bending and is only straight for a very short period (which is the only time that it has a zero dipole).
Bending frequency of CO2 ~20THz
Phil. says:
December 12, 2011 at 2:16 pm
barry says:
December 12, 2011 at 6:12 am
By my reckoning, CO2 currently is about 2% of total greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
More like 10%, over 90% of the dry atmosphere.
========================================
Ah, that (your misinformation) raises an interesting point – the ppm of CO2 is less than half a percent of dry atmosphere – so what is the CO2 as ppm of all atmosphere including water vapour?
Dry air contains roughly (by volume) 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.039% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases. Air also contains a variable amount of water vapor, on average around 1%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth
Is that one percent accurate? The dry air figure is standard, but an artefact of the lab because water must be included in real life. Ah, and other bits and pieces floating around so the dry percentages have dust and stuff removed too, here it says water vapour varies:
“The amount of water in the air varies tremendously with location, temperature, and time. In deserts and at low temperatures, the content of water vapor can be less than 0.1% by volume. In warm, humid zones, the air may contain over 6% water vapor.
http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/chemweek/pdf/airgas.pdf
When AIRS first announced its findings, and then went very quiet, it said that carbon dioxide was insignificant compared with water vapour in the atmosphere – does anyone have that saved as page or URL?
Is this 1%? – http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/story_archive/Ghostly_Images_in_Earths_Water_Vapor/Ghostly_Images_Water_Vapor_Visualization/
Ermm, that is where the conversation started, when fredj noted the increase of CO2 (80ppm over 20th century) as a fraction of the whole atmosphere. My point was that over 90% of the atmosphere is not greenhouse gases, so the comparison misses the point. If you want to figure out how much CO2 contributes to the greenhouse effect, you don’t include nitrogen and oxygen – they aren’t greenhouse gases.
(CO2stands at about 390ppm today)
If water vapour is on average 1% of the atmosphere, then CO2 percentage (per unit volume) of total greenhouse gases is between 4% (my estimate, which I originally based on 2% water vapour), and 10% (via Phil, who from memory knows much more about this stuff than I do).
Just tallying up the per volume ratio of GHGs won’t give you much of an idea of how much CO2 contributes to the greenhouse effect either – you also have to consider the effectiveness of each gas – and that’s only the beginning of the story. There’s plenty of information on this online. If you google for your preferred point of view, you will of course find numerous blog pages to satisfy that.
I got to here … “Yet as skepticism survives it is not about facts” … and stopped reading.
barry says:
December 12, 2011 at 7:44 pm
the ppm of CO2 is less than half a percent of dry atmosphere – so what is the CO2 as ppm of all atmosphere including water vapour?
Ermm, that is where the conversation started, when fredj noted the increase of CO2 (80ppm over 20th century) as a fraction of the whole atmosphere. My point was that over 90% of the atmosphere is not greenhouse gases, so the comparison misses the point. If you want to figure out how much CO2 contributes to the greenhouse effect, you don’t include nitrogen and oxygen – they aren’t greenhouse gases.
(CO2stands at about 390ppm today)
If water vapour is on average 1% of the atmosphere, then CO2 percentage (per unit volume) of total greenhouse gases is between 4% (my estimate, which I originally based on 2% water vapour), and 10% (via Phil, who from memory knows much more about this stuff than I do).
Over the whole atmosphere water vapor is about 0.4%, we’re not just considering the lower atmosphere, on that basis CO2 contributes ~10%, but is more important in the upper atmosphere.
Simple logic has me starting to believe it is all the sun and oceans. Knowing how fast CO2 can leave a liquid, it seams man made CO2 is not what is causing the increase. I have some practical experience as a homebrewer. When I move my un-pressurized beer from the basement at 62F to the kitchen at 66F, it is only a matter of less than an hour when the airlock starts bubling like crazy as CO2 comes out of the beer due to the rise in temperature.
It is just plain common sense if you look at CO2 reading and the dramatic rise and increase seasonally.
barry says:
December 12, 2011 at 7:44 pm
“the ppm of CO2 is less than half a percent of dry atmosphere – so what is the CO2 as ppm of all atmosphere including water vapour?”
Ermm, that is where the conversation started, when fredj noted the increase of CO2 (80ppm over 20th century) as a fraction of the whole atmosphere. My point was that over 90% of the atmosphere is not greenhouse gases, so the comparison misses the point. If you want to figure out how much CO2 contributes to the greenhouse effect, you don’t include nitrogen and oxygen – they aren’t greenhouse gases.
Actually they are. The real ‘greenhouse’ is our whole atmosphere which is practically, I’m going with Phil here, 96% nitrogen and oxygen and 4% water.
Without this our real greenhouse surrounding us, the Earth’s temp would be -18°C, with these it’s 15°C.
But how does it get to 15°C?
With our atmosphere of real greenhouse gases including oxygen and nitrogen, but without the Water Cycle, the temp would be 67°C.
So, 4% water cools the Earth 52°C from the 67°C it would be without it, to get back down to 15°C.
Water vapour takes the heat away from the Earth’s surface where it condenses out in the colder heights to form rain and ice, giving up its heat to space. And, carbon dioxide spontaneously combines with water vapour in the atmosphere to form carbonic acid, all pure rain is carbonic acid, as is fog, dew, etc. Doesn’t matter how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere at the time, if there’s water around it will capture it, and bring it down to Earth’s surface again.
Carbon dioxide is part of the Earth’s cooling system.
AGW ‘global warming greenhouse gases’, is some imaginary world, not this one, since they exclude nitrogen and oxygen..
What I can’t understand here re the AIRS data, is why they haven’t released the CO2 figures for upper and lower atmosphere… /sarc
All we get is the mid-troposphere, between 3 and 7 miles, and no idea how the carbon dioxide got there, from the surface or from planes above and volcanic activity reaching that, like from Mauna Loa.
? But water vapour is the Earth’s main cooling mechanism – so how did they screw the data to fit in with the models?
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-196
But how are we going to understand the CO2 isn’t homogeneous but instead “lumpy”, if we don’t get all the data?
http://airs/science/significant_findings/
George E. Smith; says:
December 12, 2011 at 2:10 pm
So LWIR radiation would NOT heat the atmosphere (much), and the atmospheric gases warmed by conduction from the surface would simply rise to higher and higher altitudes. Apparently they could never give up the energy they aquired, since they can’t radiate, so they would simply gain in kinetic energy as they rise, and be lost to space. Problem solved; no atmosphere, so the surface radiation simply exits, per Planck’s mechanism.
Afraid not George, your rising atmospheric gases would cool due to adiabatic expansion and not be lost in the manner you describe. Also you neglected to consider the behavior on the ‘nightside’ of the planet.
“”””” Phil. says:
December 12, 2011 at 4:07 pm
George E. Smith; says:
December 12, 2011 at 1:05 pm
“”””” Phil. says:
December 11, 2011 at 11:33 am
………………………
When it becomes a gas George, because it no longer has a mechanism to emit thermal radiation!
A homonuclear diatomic like N2 or O2 has no ability to emit rotational or vibrational radiation.
Well C=O=C, or C-O-C, or C=O-C, or C-O=C, or however you want to draw it has exactly zero dipole moment, so it couldn’t possibly emit or absorb EM radiation.
No George, it usually does have a dipole because it spends its time continually bending and is only straight for a very short period (which is the only time that it has a zero dipole).
Bending frequency of CO2 ~20THz “””””
Well you can’t get off the hook that easy Phil. First let’s dispense with my molecule (CO2) diagrams. I dliberately drew them in that “diagrammatic” form (pick your own favorite), to present them as mathematically exact geometric models; that is I specifically placed the three component atoms in mathematically exact locations (mentally).. As such, the molecule does have zero electric dipole moment; precisely so it cannot radiate. It is also an isolated molecule, so nothing is going to disturb it and cause it to bend or distort in any other way.
And my point was simply that, by virtue of Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty, those three exactly located atoms, must have infinitely unce4tain momenta. In other words, simply due to Heisenberg, the molecule does not remain in that mathematically exaxt configuration; the molecule even when isolated from collisions with other molecules or atoms, will still occasionally exhibit some assymmetry, and hence a dipole moment; and the bending mode you mentioned is of course one such deviation from my exact model structure.
Now of course, the mode of oscillation you mention is a molecular resonance; and is unrealted to the Temperature; so one thing that radiation is NOT is “thermal radiation”, which depends solely on the Temperature ( of an assemblage of molecules).
Atomic line spectra, and molecular band spectra are not thermal radiation; they are phenomena, that depend on atomic or molecular structure; or if you like electron configurations in the case of atomic spectra.
So I said nothing about rotational or vibrational modes of oscillation, because “Thermal radiation” requires NO resonances or oscillations; it requires nothing more than intermoleculat or interatomic colisions. I’m sure Phil that you recall, that temperature is characterized by collisions between molecules, in a large assemblage. It does not matter, whether that large collection of atoms or molecules is constrained in position and volume as in solids, or merely in volume as in liquids, or unconstrained in volume as in gases; so long as the atoms or moleculaes can collide with each other in random collisions, and exchange mechanical motional energy among themselves, each of those atoms or moleculaes, regardless of species, can and will absorb and emit thermal radiation, in a spectrum determined only by the Temperature of the assemblage of molecules.
Nothing more exotic than Newtonian mechanics, and Maxwell’s equations for electromagnetic radiation (due to varying electric currents), is required for thermally agitated (and colliding) atoms or molecules to radiate EM waves.
In fact even isolated electric charges, such as electrons and protons (and their anti-particles) are perfectly capable of emitting EM radiation.
I’m about a 10 minute car ride from the world’s largest monument to that siimple fact; the Stanford Linear Accelerator; which was constructed solely because varying electric currents aka accelerated electric charges MUST radiate EM waves. The whole Bohr orbital atomic model was postulated, simply becaue Maxwell insisted that accelerated electric charges must radiate energy in the form of EM waves, and if you try to send electrons around in a circle continuously, they will radiate away their energy as EM radiation..
I’m perfectly willing to accept your declaration that molecules such as O2 and N2 or atoms such as Ar are incapable of rotational and vibrational resonance modes of EM radiation; or that those modes of oscillation may even be in the IR or LWIR or microwave regions; but they have nothing to do with thermal radiation, which is a consequence of interatomic or molecular collisions, and occurs at the individual atom or molecule level.
It is certainly true that solids, and liquids, have much higher densities than gases, so there are many more molecules in a given space in a solid or liquid, so naturally the thermal radiations they emit are much brighter than those from gases.
I’ll give you the cigar for my vanishing atmosphere; I figured someone would bite on that. It just seemed silly to me to be talking about the atmosphere not being able to cool without GHGs; there wouldn’t be any LWIR radiative heating of the atmosphere either without those GHGs, and the LWIR from the surface (THERMAL RADIATION) would simply escape promptly without bothering the atmosphere.
So solid near black body radiators, can me microns to mm dimensions and absorb essentially all incident radiation. The oceans need about a km of thickness to do likewise, and behave like BB radiators, so it is not surprising an atmosphere equivalent to about 33 feet of water, isn’t a very good black body absorber or emitter, but it still emits thermal radiation when it is above zero Kelvins; and I believe that is what Dave Springer originally said. I agree with him..
Myrrh,
It seems if you go to the NASA site and watch the animation, CO2 concentrations are heaviest at the equator and southeast Asia. Has anybody checked to see if they can be linked to higher watervaport and temperature in the same area? How about the lack of CO2 at the poles. So why does it matter if ice melts up there (or down there). It seems it isn’t due to CO2 because CO2 at the equator is not going to be a greenhouse gas at the poles.
George E. Smith says:
December 14, 2011 at 1:23 am
an atmosphere equivalent to about 33 feet of water, isn’t a very good black body absorber or emitter, but it still emits thermal radiation when it is above zero Kelvins; and I believe that is what Dave Springer originally said. I agree with him..
Well George I’m afraid you’re both wrong, gases emit only as a result of electronic, vibrational and rotational transitions, all of which are quantized.
Eric Seufert says:
December 14, 2011 at 8:39 am
Myrrh,
It seems if you go to the NASA site and watch the animation, CO2 concentrations are heaviest at the equator and southeast Asia. Has anybody checked to see if they can be linked to higher watervaport and temperature in the same area?
My animation isn’t working at the moment. Because they’ve been selling this on Carbon Dioxide being “well-mixed” in the atmosphere we don’t have any ready comparisons with water vapour or temps, and that’s apart from not releasing the upper and lower troposphere data. I wonder how much of that concentration is due to vegetation? Plants breath out CO2 when not in photosynthesis mode.
They’ve got tons of information, and clearly from past analysis not just this one released a couple of years ago, they saw to their surprise, because this “well-mixed” is so brainwashed, that CO2 was lumpy. Of course it’s going to be lumpy, it’s heavier than air so will stay local more than not. I can’t find it for the moment, will have a look tomorrow, but I wonder how this compares with the recent Japanese work.
Ah, just seached for some maps of the equator and reminded of what the equator is, could it be also in part that as the Earth’s centre of gravity it might be ‘pulling’ stuff towards it which doesn’t get caught up in the big wind systems?
How about the lack of CO2 at the poles. So why does it matter if ice melts up there (or down there). It seems it isn’t due to CO2 because CO2 at the equator is not going to be a greenhouse gas at the poles.
That’s mainly due, I used to think…, to lack of plant life, but could it also be affected by this centre of gravity thing?
http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/imagee.htm
Does it show this concentration around all the equator on the animation?
Myrrh says:
December 13, 2011 at 12:10 pm
barry says:
December 12, 2011 at 7:44 pm
“the ppm of CO2 is less than half a percent of dry atmosphere – so what is the CO2 as ppm of all atmosphere including water vapour?”
‘Ermm, that is where the conversation started, when fredj noted the increase of CO2 (80ppm over 20th century) as a fraction of the whole atmosphere. My point was that over 90% of the atmosphere is not greenhouse gases, so the comparison misses the point. If you want to figure out how much CO2 contributes to the greenhouse effect, you don’t include nitrogen and oxygen – they aren’t greenhouse gases.’
Actually they are. The real ‘greenhouse’ is our whole atmosphere which is practically, I’m going with Phil here, 96% nitrogen and oxygen and 4% water.
Actually they’re not! And if you’re going to claim to quote me get it right, it’s ~0.4% water.
Eric Seufert says:
December 14, 2011 at 8:39 am
Myrrh,
It seems if you go to the NASA site and watch the animation, CO2 concentrations are heaviest at the equator and southeast Asia. Has anybody checked to see if they can be linked to higher watervaport and temperature in the same area? How about the lack of CO2 at the poles. So why does it matter if ice melts up there (or down there). It seems it isn’t due to CO2 because CO2 at the equator is not going to be a greenhouse gas at the poles.
What ‘lack of CO2 at the poles’? The AIRS data indicates about a 10ppm reduction out of 390ppm.
“”””” Phil. says:
December 14, 2011 at 8:53 am
George E. Smith says:
December 14, 2011 at 1:23 am
an atmosphere equivalent to about 33 feet of water, isn’t a very good black body absorber or emitter, but it still emits thermal radiation when it is above zero Kelvins; and I believe that is what Dave Springer originally said. I agree with him..
Well George I’m afraid you’re both wrong, gases emit only as a result of electronic, vibrational and rotational transitions, all of which are quantized “””””
Well Phil, I’m not comfortable with your being afraid. If you say I am wrong, then of course I am wrong.
But what do I do about all of the references regarding “Thermal Continuum Radiation from Gases”, that popped up immediately on Bing. Well there evidently are even some Astrophysicists Teaching at Cal-Tech, who also have it wrong, and don’t know that gases can only radiate quantized spectra from vibrational and rotational states.
I don’t have a PhD, so I don’t know enough to understand why when electric charges accelerate in monatomic and diatomic gases (except HCL), they still don’t radiate EM radiation, because somehow the molecules know they are gases, and can’t do that. Perhaps I am wrong, in not believing that when charge symmetric atoms or molecules collide with each other they still retain their charge symmetry, despite the fact that the nuclei typically have 3675 (or more) times as much momentum as the electron “cloud” around them, and despite that they decelerate (during a collision) at exactly the same rate as the electrons; and of course all of this despite the fact that to the nucleus, the electron cloud tends to look somewhat like a charged spherical conductor, which by virtue of the Biot-Savart Law, contains no net electric field.
It’s amazing how many ordinary processes of Physics simply go out the window, when somehow an atom or molecule deduces, that it is gaseous, rather than liquid or solid, so therefore it may not radiate a thermal continuum spectrum, like everything else above zero Kelvins does (and must).
But I’ll take your word for it; obviously the former NASA PhD Physicist (and Medical Doctor too), that I discussed this with is also wrong, in believing that gases radiate thermal EM spectra, as a result of collisions.
My last line of investigation will have to be asking a Nobel Physics Laureate about it, next time we are at a party together. He might not know enough, Physics to know the answer; apparently does know something about quarks, if that helps, and he knows a lot about the Stanford Linear Accelerator; for all I know he could have been the designer of it, or had some function in its existence.
I’ll let you know what he says, when I get a chance to ask him.
George E. Smith; says:
December 15, 2011 at 2:20 pm
My last line of investigation will have to be asking a Nobel Physics Laureate about it, next time we are at a party together. He might not know enough, Physics to know the answer; apparently does know something about quarks, if that helps, and he knows a lot about the Stanford Linear Accelerator; for all I know he could have been the designer of it, or had some function in its existence.
I’ll let you know what he says, when I get a chance to ask him.
Feel free, although a Nobel Chemistry Laureate might be more useful, the AstroPhysics guys tend to think everything is a star or a dense plasma cloud. 😉 Rowland or Molina have the required backgrounds or Zewail, they are around your neck of the woods I think?
Don’t forget to mention that the pressure is less than 1bar and the temperature is 300K or less.
Season’s greetings.
Check out this analysis of the difference between an atmosphere of non-radiative gas and one with a wee sprinkling of CO2 or H2O:
http://jinancaoblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/physical-analysis-shows-co2-is-coolant.html
The latter radiates more to space. Huda thunk?
Brian H says:
December 15, 2011 at 7:42 pm
Check out this analysis of the difference between an atmosphere of non-radiative gas and one with a wee sprinkling of CO2 or H2O:
http://jinancaoblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/physical-analysis-shows-co2-is-coolant.html
The latter radiates more to space. Huda thunk?
Anybody who understands the absorption/emission of gases actually, Cao’s flawed analysis notwithstanding.
“”””” Phil. says:
December 15, 2011 at 4:38 pm
George E. Smith; says:
December 15, 2011 at 2:20 pm
My last line of investigation will have to be asking a Nobel Physics Laureate about it, next time we are at a party together. He might not know enough, Physics to know the answer; apparently does know something about quarks, if that helps, and he knows a lot about the Stanford Linear Accelerator; for all I know he could have been the designer of it, or had some function in its existence.
I’ll let you know what he says, when I get a chance to ask him.
Feel free, although a Nobel Chemistry Laureate might be more useful, the AstroPhysics guys tend to think everything is a star or a dense plasma cloud. 😉 Rowland or Molina have the required backgrounds or Zewail, they are around your neck of the woods I think?
Don’t forget to mention that the pressure is less than 1bar and the temperature is 300K or less.
Season’s greetings. “””””
Thanks for the suggestions Phil, and also for the Seasons’s greetings. It has always puzzled me how a season could have greetings; and today it seems to be more common to say “Happy Holidays.”
I always respond to that by saying I didn’t know it was a holiday; and what holiday they meant.
Maybe the Winter Solstice holiday, or the Druid Witches holiday; perhaps it is Gaiana Day holiday, or maybe Quanset holiday. For us Kiwi folk, it would be summer solstice holiday I suppose.
I grew up thinking it was actually Christmas, so I don’t buy greeting cards, unless they specifically say Christmas on them (and not xmas). Well for our Jewish friends, it is also Chanukah I suppose, although I forget how that all fits together.
Is it ok Phil, if I wish you a Merry Christmas , and a happy new year. I can tolerate the Santa Claus part, but happy holidays is a bit too commercial for me; even an ignoramus non believer like me knows the recorded history of Christmas, and less so of Chanukah.
As to the emission or non emission of a continuum radiation spectrum from gases, at non quantized frequencies; that is well documented; and one can find old photographs of such spectra in Text books, such as Herzberg “Atomic Spectra”. It commonly occurs in the case of a gas atom, that started out as an ion, lacking one (or more) electrons. The ion can capture a free electron, which can have any energy value whatsoever, non quantized, and become a lesser ion or a neutral atom, and subsequently emit a photon which can also have any frequency at all, depending on the energy or the captured electron.
So the energy or frequency of a photon is NOT quantized, in the sense of photons only being allowed to have certain frequencies and energies. It is not like the molecular specral bands that consist of many fine lines, that may broaden ionto bands due to Doppler and other effects; photons of ANY energy (and corresponding frequency) are allowed and common.
Even the Black Body Radiation spectrum is a continuum of all possible frequency values. Planck made no requirement that only certain frequencies are allowed in ther BB spectrum; only that the energy be emitted in finite sized chunks, rather than a smooth continuous stream; but those chunks are allowed any possible size.
Like the earlier Raleigh-Jeans derivation, the emitting “particles” are assumed to have some sort of Maxwell Boltzmann distribution (continuum) of energies; but Planck insisted that the value of that “mean” energy per particle be quantized into h(nu), or hf if you like, chunks. The individual particle energies are NOT discrete quantized values, which is why the BB spectrum goes continuously from zero to infinite frequency (almost).
Unless one believes that Newtonian mechanics (dynamics) and Coulomb’s Law for the force between electric charges; do not apply at atomic dimensions, and at velocities well below relativistic speeds, such as occur in ordinary (say atmosphere like) gases at ordinary Temperatures and pressures (say STP like); then a simple classical Physics model describing the collision (perhaps in cm space) of two neutral atoms; REQUIRES that the electric charge distribution shall become assymmetrical during the collision process. And at ordinary STP conditions, the time of collision between two gas atoms (or moleculaes) is pretty much equivalent to the age of the dinosaurs, in geology. A whole encyclopedia full of interesting physics can and will take place during that interminable time during which two molecules face off against each other.
For starters, in order that an atom or molecule in free flight, exhibit zero electric dipole moment, it is necessary that the “electron cloud” be essentially spherical, or a tleast have an axis of rotational symmetry. The single atom case is easier to see; the elctron cloud must be essentially spherical for the dipole moment to be zero, since the nucleus, is essentially a point at that scale. So there is no net electric field inside the elsectron cloud; per the Biot-
savart Law. Hence the nucleus is unaffected by the surrounding electron cloud.
An approaching second atom, would exhibit no external electric field at dfistances of the order of ten atomic diameters, so the first atom nucleus experience pretty much zero electrostatic Coulomb force. And assuming that the nucleus contains the same number of neutrons, as protons, then the nucleus is at least 3675 (1837 + 1838) times as massive as the entire elctron cloud; so it contains virtually all of the kinetic energy and momentum of the atom.
So the nuclei charge on towards each other largely unaware of each other’s presence; but the electron clouds do see each other, and start to mutually repel and decelerate. The nucleus can move virtually anywhere inside its electron cloud with impunity because of the Biot-Savart effect, and if the electron clouds are mutually decelerating, the atom must distort. In a head on collision, the elctron clouds will eventually reach zero velocity, in cm space, and then start to rebound, and accelerate in the opposite direction. The nucleons will not become aware of each other untill they are much closer, and the inverse square law of the Coulomb repulsion, starts to decelerate them too. At these thermal energies, the nuclei are not going to collide; they too will decelerate to zero velocity (cm), and then reverse direction.
In a general collision; not head on, the two atoms will bounce off each other in unpredictable directions, and with a continuum of energy exchange between them, as a result, but the whole time of the “collision”, the atom is going to be charge assymmetrical; and it WILL have a non zerto electric dipole, and will be singing a song by virtue of Maxwell’s equations for the radfiation from varying electric currents flowing a non zero distance (antenna length).
So Phil, ANY gas atom or molecule can and does obtain a non zero electric dipole moment during the eons that comprise the time of collsion, and can and will radiate (or absorb) EM radiation that is nOT quantized due to the continuum of energy exchanges that take place in collisions..
And you will recall Phil, that collisions are a part and parcel of the concept of Temperature; which is why the Black Body radiation spectrum; which is but a special case of THERMAL radiation, is a cointinuous non quantized spectrum covering all frequencies, and all materials which contain electric charges.
The absence of thermal radiation from neutral gases, is in the company of other “rules of thumb” such as “All electrically conducting materials are optically opaque.” Ergo, Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) is either non conducting, or else not transparent; since that would violate the rule of thumb. It doesn’t matter how many flat panel monitor screens are coated in ITO; they cannot be both conductive and transparent; it is not allowed. Also even gold and silver are optically transparent, in thin films where the numbers of atoms present is much lower than with bulk materials. Well isn’t that the situation with gases; they are simply not thick enough to exhibit strong optical absorption (and emission) in common earthly experience; but they certainly can and do at the individual atomic or molecular level.
Yes I do agree most of them don’t exhibit quantized emission spectra from vibration rotation states, that more complex molecules have; but then those are not thermal radiation.
And let’s not forget “Ohm’s Law” ; E = IR , as every electrical engineer or electronic technician knows from his first class. But don’t confuse that with “R = Constant”, which is the Ohm’s Law, that George Simon Ohm discovered. Well poor chap never realized that most electrical conductors don’t obey “Ohm’s Law”; he only studied a few substances, like pure metals; which somewhat obey his law (R = C). E = IR or, R = E/I, is simply the definition of R (electrical resistance); it isn’t “Ohm’s Law.”
Did I say Merry Christmas Phil or Happy Chanukah if you like.
PS my Ex NASA PhD Physicist/ Medical Doc told me, that Quantum mechanics can add nothing to the classical model, I outlined crudely above. Going to the Schroedinger Wave equation, or other, can only yield a statistical picture of the process, and can’t tell you what happens, when two specific atoms collide as I described above. Well of course, even the classical picture is statistical because of the uncedrtainty of any specific collision incident. I’m sorry I can’t tell you who he is; everybody in the world has seen him on television during his NASA years; and I certainly don’t have his permission to use his name. I’m happy to have the opportunity to chat with him occasionally.
I worked for 50 years around PhD Physicists et al, and never encounterd one of them that showed any interest whatsoever in talking about simple physics problems that should be in every elementary physics text book. They truly do learn more and more about less and less.
George E. Smith; says:
December 16, 2011 at 12:08 pm
“”””” Phil. says:
Season’s greetings. “””””
Thanks for the suggestions Phil, and also for the Seasons’s greetings. It has always puzzled me how a season could have greetings; and today it seems to be more common to say “Happy Holidays.”
Well it’s an abbreviation for greetings of the season, which gives you the choice.
As to the emission or non emission of a continuum radiation spectrum from gases, at non quantized frequencies; that is well documented; and one can find old photographs of such spectra in Text books, such as Herzberg “Atomic Spectra”. It commonly occurs in the case of a gas atom, that started out as an ion, lacking one (or more) electrons. The ion can capture a free electron, which can have any energy value whatsoever, non quantized, and become a lesser ion or a neutral atom, and subsequently emit a photon which can also have any frequency at all, depending on the energy or the captured electron.
Indeed, an excellent text I still have my copy from my undergrad days, not a very common event in atmospheric conditions, like I said beware the astro-physicists they think everything’s a star.
So Phil, ANY gas atom or molecule can and does obtain a non zero electric dipole moment during the eons that comprise the time of collsion, and can and will radiate (or absorb) EM radiation that is nOT quantized due to the continuum of energy exchanges that take place in collisions..
And you will recall Phil, that collisions are a part and parcel of the concept of Temperature; which is why the Black Body radiation spectrum; which is but a special case of THERMAL radiation, is a cointinuous non quantized spectrum covering all frequencies, and all materials which contain electric charges.
But that tiny distortion of the electron cloud as a result of the collision is not significant when compared with the ~1000 bending vibrations that a CO2 molecule will experience (~20THz) during the average time between collisions. I’m not sure why you don’t consider rovibrational emissions to be thermal since the population of those energy levels are determined by the gas temperature?
Well isn’t that the situation with gases; they are simply not thick enough to exhibit strong optical absorption (and emission) in common earthly experience; but they certainly can and do at the individual atomic or molecular level.
Really George? Check out NO2 or Iodine.
“”””” Phil. says:
December 17, 2011 at 6:20 pm
………………………………………
But that tiny distortion of the electron cloud as a result of the collision is not significant when compared with the ~1000 bending vibrations that a CO2 molecule will experience (~20THz) during the average time between collisions. I’m not sure why you don’t consider rovibrational emissions to be thermal since the population of those energy levels are determined by the gas temperature?
…
Well isn’t that the situation with gases; they are simply not thick enough to exhibit strong optical absorption (and emission) in common earthly experience; but they certainly can and do at the individual atomic or molecular level.
Really George? Check out NO2 or Iodine. “””””
I clearly don’t write anywhere near enough words, to explain very simple ideas; or else I presume too much of the reader.
Take your statement here Phil: ” I’m not sure why you don’t consider rovibrational emissions to be thermal since the population of those energy levels are determined by the gas temperature? ”
I AGREE with you that the population of states IS a function of Temperature; I actually studied solid state physics with Dr Andrew Grove (later Intel CEO) at Fairchild Semiconductor, 45 years ago.
The problem is Phil that the ENERGIES of those states; and the related absorption or emission LINES are a function of the atomic or molecular structure of the material; they are not set by the Temperature; well at least not first order anyway. They are still “line spectra”, not thermal spectra, where the frequencies are determined by the Temperature, and not by structure. The purely mechanical collision energies of individual atoms or molecules in a gas are strong functions of Temperature, which therefore sets the scale of the collsion interraction times, and the charge accelerations, and hence the (continuous) spectrum of frequencies of the emitted (or absorbed) radiation. In the time domain, the varying electric current flowing (during the collision) is some sort of transient pulse, and a Fourier Transform can give you the resultsnt frequency spectrum, which as a result is strongly Temperature dependent.
Your rotational and vibrational energy levels are not strongly Temperature dependent, although their population may be, which is why such spectra are still line spectra.
Thermal radiation is a continuum containing all frequencies.
“But that tiny distortion of the electron cloud as a result of the collision is not significant when compared with the ~1000 bending vibrations that a CO2 molecule will experience (~20THz) during the average time between collisions. ”
Are you sure about that ? Particularly in the bending mode, the CO2 molecule is a clumsy animal with a lot of moment of inertia. So what is the typical amplitude of the bend vibration; and the resulting velocity and acceleration of the O atom, in center of mass space..
So in the atmospheric case, we will have 2500 times as many other molecules, as there are CO2 molecules. Thats quite a few collisions while the CO2 does it’s knee bends
“”””” Really George? Check out NO2 or Iodine. “””””
Like I said Phil ; “there are no transparent conductors”. So I’ll be careful next time I encounter a cloud of iodine, in case I get lost in it.
I suspect that the time averaged electric dipole moment of an ordinary atmospheric molecule at STP conditions, will be shown to be non zero, long before they determine the electric dipole moment of the Electron. Well just a hunch.