I’m taking the rest of the weekend off – for two reasons:
1. With 100million views under my belt, I’ve earned it.
2. I’m rebuilding my home personal computer as it is becoming flakey, and such things take three times as long as you figure. Windows doesn’t take well to new mobos, and backup/prep must be done. So I’ll be down anyway.
Talk quietly amongst yourselves on any topic within site policy – don’t make me come back here until late Sunday night whenI start my regular work week. 😉 – Anthony
UPDATE: Sunday AM – My computer rebuild went well, and I learned some valuable things that I’ll share in an upcoming post. I went from an old AMDx2 64 dual core to a Intel I5 quad core CPU, doubled my memory speed, doubled my video card speed, and went from a SATA2 to SATA3 SSD. I can blog even faster now. Speaking of which, my email load this morning contained two stories (one quite dramatic) that I’ve put on auto-scheduled publishing that will appear soon. I’m still taking the rest of the day off though. – Anthony
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AGW advocates: rejoice, as here is absolute proof of the theory. Everyone else is encouraged to panic.
Spring arrives early in Britain following mild winter weather
“The first signs of spring are emerging weeks early in the countryside and in gardens as a result of the mild winter, experts said today.
The Woodland Trust, which manages Nature’s Calendar, a scheme in the public records signs of the changing seasons, said it already had reports of snowdrops and daffodils in bloom and silver birch, oak and hazel buds bursting.
The National Trust said fields were very green in comparison to last year, when they had suffered extensive frost damage, and the signs of spring were already emerging. …”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/9000650/Spring-arrives-early-in-Britain-following-mild-winter-weather.html
I thought people interested in censorship of discussions of climate science in the blogosphere might be interested in this: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2012/01/january_2012_open_thread.php#comment-6208696
Bomber_the_Cat says:
“Radiation emitted from the earth’s surface is in the long wave infrared region. Depending on its precise wavelength, some of it is intercepted by the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These gases initially absorb the energy and then, in turn, pass this on to the inert gases such as O2 and Co2 by collisions – a process called thermalisation. So all the atmosphere is warmed by radiation.”
No, very little net warming in the atmosphere is from radiation. Yes there is a little bit of thermilization, but you know that it works both ways with energetic non GHG transferring kinetic energy to the GHG which in turn radiates the energy out of the system. Thus radiations net effect is minor to non existent.
Convection directly from the surface accounts for 99.5% of the heating of the atmosphere. And because 99.5% of the atmosphere doesn’t radiate, very little of that heat is lost through radiation. The only way the atmosphere can lose heat is through convection back to the surface.
” The warm atmosphere becomes a source of radiation back to the earth’s surface.”
No, to repeat what I said above, the atmosphere convects heat back to earth. I can actually see the process out my window as a Chinook melts the snow.
“So at low altitudes, the action of greenhouse gases is to warm the atmosphere and the surface of the earth. At high altitudes, the greenhouse gases help cool the atmosphere by ‘collecting’ energy through collisions with other atmospheric gases and radiating this to space.
Convection and evaporation also play a part in re-distributing heat throughout the atmosphere.”
No, convection and evaporation primarily transport heat from the surface to the air, warming the atmosphere (and of course redistributing warm air from the tropics to the rest of the world). And to the first part of your statement, yes green houses gas reflect radiation back to the surface and out to space and provide a zero net heating of the atmosphere.
davidmhoffer says:
January 7, 2012 at 10:33 pm
My recollection is that “In Flander’s Fields” was written by Stephen Leacock?
————-
I could not pass that one by. Every Canadian schoolchild learns “In Flanders Fields” which was written by the Canadian John McCrae, who entered the First World War as a doctor and set up No. 3 Canadian General Hospital and died after he caught pneumonia on Jan 28, 1918.
Stephen Leacock was the English born humorist who came to Canada at the age of six with his family. He was more a writer of funny prose, but apparently wrote one book of poetry. He died in 1944 at a ripe old age.
I don’t know what will happen to the formatting when I submit this, but here are two examples of Leacock’s poems. The themes seem a propos to some of the discussions at WUWT.
I know a very tiresome Man
Who keeps on saying, “Social Plan.”
At every Dinner, every Talk
Where Men foregather, eat or walk,
No matter where, — this Awful Man
Brings on his goddam Social Plan.
The Fall in Wheat, the Rise in Bread,
The social Breakers dead ahead,
The Economic Paradox
That drives the Nation on the rocks,
The Wheels that false Abundance clogs —
And frightens us from raising Hogs, —
This dreary field, the Gloomy Man
Surveys and hiccoughs, Social Plan.
Till simpler Men begin to find
His croaking aggravates their mind
And makes them anxious to avoid
All mention of the Unemployed,
And leads them even to abhor
The People called Deserving Poor.
For me, my sympathies now pass
To the poor Plutocratic Class.
The Crowd that now appeals to me
Is what he calls the Bourgeoisie.
So I have got a Social Plan
To take him by the Neck,
And lock him in a Luggage van
And tie on it a check,
Marked MOSCOW VIA TURKESTAN,
Now, how’s that for a Social Plan?
The other poem, only the first stanza of which is reproduced here is “Oh, Mister Malthus”
“MOTHER, Mother, here comes Malthus,
Mother, hold me tight!
Look! It’s Mr. Malthus, Mother!
Hide me out of sight.”
This was the cry of little Jane
In bed she moaning lay,
Delirious with Stomach Pain,
That would not go away.
All because her small Existence
Over-pressed upon Subsistence;
Human Numbers didn’t need her;
Human Effort couldn’t feed her.
Little Janie didn’t know
The Geometric Ratio.
Poor Wee Janie had never done
Course Economics No. 1;
Never reached in Education
Theories of Population, –
Theories which tend to show
Just how far our Food will go,
Mathematically found
Just enough to go around.
This, my little Jane, is why
Pauper Children have to die.
Pauper Children underfed
Die delirious in Bed;
Thus at Malthus’s Command
Match Supply with true Demand.
Well, if we truly are open to discuss this, I think we must begin by admitting to ourselves that the power of the Sun has noting to do with this debate. The Sun has always been there. The debate is new. What’s new and what I think powers the debate I believe is all too obvious but will it be discussed?
evilincandescentbulb says: “If policy allows I would point out that the Sun does heat the air above the Earth. Of course a lot of the Sun’s energy is reflected away and much of the Sun’s energy in the spectrum of invisible light is not absorbed by the air at all. Most cooling is due to evaporation as most of the Earth is covered by water.”
You do understand that “cooling due to evaporation” is warming of the atmosphere?
Regarding the chart I posted, Lazy T asks: “…do you have the raw data up somewhere?”
Don’t be so lazy. It says “Hadcrut3 temperatures” right on the graph.
It’s GOT to be an ‘attention thing’ with R. Gates; Gates may even be a female which makes even more sense (i.e. the ‘drama queen’ phenom) …
The “R. Gates” imprimatur marks a “DO NOT READ” post in any case.
.
R. Gates says:
“Here’s a rough breakdown of where the heat in atmosphere comes from:
Short-wave radiation from the sun……………11.9%
Heat to atmosphere from condensation…………14.4%
Heat to atmosphere from convection/conduction… 4.4%
Long-wave radiation from earth………………69.4%”
Since you didn’t provide a source I am guessing that the figures are based on the incorrect S-B average calculated representing the earth as a spherical cross section. Which the UTC report thoroughly covered and debunked and presented an accurate S-B average temperature.
Using the UTC numbers Convection/conduction account for nearly all of the heat in the atmosphere.
“The atmosphere is hardly “transparent” to radiation (even Sir Hoyle knew that), either SW or LW, but certainly absorbs far more LW than SW as the above percentages indicate. To those who think and can prove that gravity and the ideal gas law explain the whole thing, there is a Nobel Prize in Physics waiting for you, and your name will be as famous as Newton and Einstein. Good luck…”
Actually physicists have known that convection is the primary source of heat in the atmosphere since before Arrhenius’s time.
If you actually think that your figures are correct you can experimentally test it by heating two containers each with an equal density of a GHG in one and a Non GHG in the other.
Do you really think that the gas in the GHG container will be 69.4% hotter than the non GHG? LOL
Here’s a thought while Antony got his srewdriver out.
Does the GHG effect also happen at night or is it just reduced.?
Gates may even be a female which makes even more sense (i.e. the ‘drama queen’ phenom)
R. Gates is a group of the AGW enthusiasts (using the same email address) who take it in turn to aggravate sceptics.
Spen says:
Does the GHG effect also happen at night or is it just reduced.?
Forget about GHG’s and radiation for a bit. The non GHG which has been warmed by convection during the day can only lose heat through convection back to the cooling surface. The surface of course is losing heat by radiation but its rate of heat loss is being slowed by the atmospheres transfer of heat back to the surface.
The GHG effect is the same but the action is different. Instead of reflecting kinetic energy it reflects radiation.
The newest solar power station (located in the south of Spain) is switched on.
Thanks to all those who responded to my query regarding Co2 molecules attaining sufiocient velocity to escape Earth
tonyb
Spen says:
January 8, 2012 at 1:33 pm
“Here’s a thought while Antony got his srewdriver out. Does the GHG effect also happen at night or is it just reduced.?”
The greenhouse effect works night and day. The amount of downwelling radiation from the atmosphere (‘back radiation’) is continually monitored by a network of BSRN stations (Baseline Surface Radiation Network) around the world. It is typically about 340 Watts/sq.m. There is some variation between night and day, but not much. http://scienceofdoom.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/dlr-billings-ok-1993-3days1.png
More informatively, there are also measurements of the spectral distribution of this ‘back radiation’ which show the strong fingerprint of CO2 centred on a wavelength of 15 microns. http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/07/24/the-amazing-case-of-back-radiation-part-two/
You see these things are actually measured. It is not just someone’s imagination or unsubstantiated theory. It is empirical data.
re Bomber_the_Cat, January 8, 2012 at 3:59 am :
Bomber, while you’re building your model of a planet with a GHG-free atmosphere (N2 and O2 only), there’s another thing to consider, namely that in addition to the lack of clouds giving things a boost, there is also the UV and almost-UV end of the incoming spectrum to think about. A couple of points regarding this:
(1) Blue sky: We get our blue sky from what’s called Rayleigh scattering. That happens when UV light bounces off the N2 and O2 molecules in the atmosphere and gets “downgraded” to the visible range. Some of the original UV energy thereby gets transferred to the molecules of the air, so they move faster, which means an increase in temperature.
(2) Ozone production: The reason we have an ozone layer in the first place is because regular O2 gets split into two single atoms by incoming UV. Most of these singles quickly recombine into regular O2, but some of them hook up with nearby neutral O2’s to form ozone. It turns out that O3 is also a good absorber of UV, but just a tad better than O2, and the amount of O3 is tiny, so the absorption of UV by ozone is the “tail of the dog”, while regular O2 is the big dog itself. Either way, however, some of the original energy has been transferred to the motion of the molecules, so again an increase in their speed and temperature.
As an aside, I have always been irritated by the “our ozone layer protects us from UV” line that’s become part of the modern belief system. It is a very modest effect, and in fact, the only reason we have O3 in the first place is because O2 is such a damn good absorber of UV in the first place. If O3 did not also happen to be a UV absorber, it would make little difference. The range of altitudes over which the UV is absorbed would just move downward a few meters (or maybe a few hundred), but on the ground, we wouldn’t notice a thing.
/dr.bill
Each Chevy Volt may have cost taxpayers up to $250,000, when adding together all grants, subsidies, incentives to assorted manufacturers, etc, with GM estimating to have sold about 6000 Volts total. Note the US Government still owns 26% of GM.
http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/16192
GM reported 1529 Volts sold in December 2011. Of these, 992 went to retail customers while 537 were fleet sales that were not to rental companies. GM is claiming 2600 dealerships have Volts ready for sale. 992/2600=0.38, only 3 in every 8 dealerships sold a Volt in December assuming retail sales were spread out evenly. GM is still insisting it will sell 60,000 Volts in 2012, while not saying who will be buying them.
http://nlpc.org/stories/2012/01/04/chevy-volt-fleet-sales-rise-retail-demand-remains-weak
There are many government purchases of the Volt. New York City on Dec 7 touted the buying of 50 units, 20 going to the police department. The US Government, part owner of GM, has provided for the buying or directly bought numerous Volts. The city of DeLand, Florida announced in November it was buying 5 with part of a $1.2 million federal grant. Funded with $30 million from Obama’s 2009 Stimulus bill, a coalition of 28 utility companies bought 64 units. In May, the US General Services Administration announced it was buying 116 units. The total amount of vehicles bought with funds from the US Government (read current and future taxpayers), which will partially be returned as revenue from taxes and the 26% ownership, is unknown.
And GE, purveyor of windmills, Smart Meters and Smart Grid equipment, and other Green tech, which enjoys having US Government contracts, had announced plans to buy roughly 3000 Volts per year from 2011 to 2015. That would be about half of 2011 sales, if they have done so.
http://dailycaller.com/2011/12/18/general-motors-chevy-volt-is-going-flat-in-business-and-politics/
In 2010, 5% of GM’s $150 billion revenue came from the US Government purchases (ref 3). There has been a 32% increase in US Government purchases from 2010 (ref 2).
Oh, a Republican US Representative, and former Chevy dealer, wants to scrap the $7500 tax credit for plug-in electrics, as they’re bought by people wealthy enough that they don’t need it.
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/201925-gop-lawmaker-and-chevy-dealer-looks-to-end-chevy-volt-tax-credit
Meanwhile, despite the post-NHTSA crash battery pack fires, the Volt is still considered perfectly safe, according to GM and numerous Volt apologists including “early adopters” who don’t want to look foolish. Why it is so safe, it is not even an official recall but merely a “polite request” as part of GM’s “customer satisfaction program” that owners get steel reinforcing pieces to better protect the battery, as well as additional stuff to monitor and control the pack’s coolant levels. This will even be done to the approximately 4400 Volts waiting to be sold, and will be done with all future production North America Volts and European Opel Amperas.
Refs: AFP, AP
This is a good thing, as an official US Government-mandated recall might have scared away potential buyers and reduced the market value of the US Government’s 26% ownership of GM. Isn’t it nice when the Federal Government does what it feels is best for current and future taxpayers?
re wayne, January 8, 2012 at 4:56 am :
Hey wayne,
I’m glad you’re happy, but I’ve been reading that tallbloke post myself, and it doesn’t seem to be a done deal. Lots of complications, but interesting nonetheless, as are most of the things that tallbloke posts about.
By the way, who the hell is Karl Maxwell?
/dr.bill
Bomber_the_Cat says: “The greenhouse effect works night and day. The amount of downwelling radiation from the atmosphere (‘back radiation’) is continually monitored by a network of BSRN stations (Baseline Surface Radiation Network) around the world. It is typically about 340 Watts/sq.m. There is some variation between night and day, but not much.”
You do understand that you are not measuring the air temperature don’t you?
The fact that the radiation is consistent and the air temperature has large fluctuations between daytime and nighttime temperatures in Billings demonstrates that fact. There is a reason why they shield thermometers from radiation.
Muhahaha! Unfortunately, the “R. Gates” sockpoppets [thanks, Vuk!] have left the building, so they won’t see me agreeing with him. Them.
R. Gates says: “Sorry, but this is rediculous [sic]. If you look at the patterns of sea level changes and match them up with prevailing winds and warm water over a long time period you get a nearly direct match.
I agree. Certainly true in the West Pacific Warm Pool!
He goes on: “Are you suggesting that the volcanic activity on the sea floor also follows the prevailing winds? “
Now that’s an interesting hypothesis. If I compress air, it gets hot. If I work iron with a hammer, it gets hot. What happens if the winds pile up a huge amount of water atop the border of a tectonic plate? Will the underlying material compress? Will it get hot as a result?
And on: “The area north of Australia is where the prevailing tropical easterly winds pile up the warm water from the equatorial Pacific. Nothing to do with volcanoes.”
Are you sure? Latitude’s link shows there’s an excellent coincidence of high seas above volcanism. Is this cause and effect? Or effect and cause? What do you think, Gates & Co.? And what says Latitude?
I found this very interesting particularly the part where the tanker ran into foot thick ice very early on.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/01/08/coast-guard-helping-icebreaker-reach-fuel-stricken-alaska-city/?test=latestnews
This is quite an interesting article. Sometime last week on another thread, in fact in a response to Steve Mosher, I cited an article by Walter Munk in which he had sampled sea level rise as measured by Poseidon/TOPEX at the sites of tide gauges, and found that these sites indicated a change in sea level twice as large as that Poseidon/TOPEX found. In other words the tide gauges offer a biased set of observations. I can offer a number of reasons why this should be so, but still it is surprising to find such bias in global data sets.
If it is true what Morner says, and there is no reason to doubt him, that the tide gauge results are being used to correct and adjust satellite derived data, then we likely do have some problems with satellite derived products.
1. Insular culture of associating for the most part with people who have the same values and world-view. I’ve always thought the professoriate should get away from the ivory tower a bit more often.
2. Siege mentality.
jorgekafkazar says:
January 8, 2012 at 4:08 pm
Are you sure? Latitude’s link shows there’s an excellent coincidence of high seas above volcanism. Is this cause and effect? Or effect and cause? What do you think, Gates & Co.? And what says Latitude?
===================================
😉
Latitude says you can’t have wind driven standing high water without something for it to push against, and that current goes around Africa and enters the Atlantic.
Height of sea level above sea floor volcanoes —— are you ready? ——- is how sea floor volcanoes are mapped…..they effect gravity and cause water to pile up above them
It’s not an excellent coincidence…it’s a fact. If you want to have even more fun, look at SST’s, Jason/Envisat sea level, ring of fire/volcano map…..and GOCE gravity maps
….they are all the same map
On a detailed sea level map you can even see the ones that cause the latest earthquakes in New Zealand. Even the little pin dot that was the tsunami in Japan…all of them
Again, higher sea levels is how sea floor volcanoes are mapped.
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/06/25/discussion-so-far/
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12218
Thousand of new volcanoes revealed beneath the waves
“”Satellites can detect volcanoes that are more than 1500 m high because the mass of the submerged mountains causes gravity to pull the water in around them. This creates domes on the ocean’s surface that can be several meters high and can be detected from space.””