Open Weekend Thread

“Science” at the Movies
I went to the movies yesterday and was confronted with a promo for “Happy Feet 2 from Robin Williams. The storyline for Happy Feet 2 is that global warming in Antarctica causes an ice floe to break off and strand a penguin colony and how the penguins work together to overcome the problem. See a message there?
Now I happen to like Robin Williams who I believe is one of the best actors and comedians in Hollywood. But why doesn’t he (and just about every other Hollywood actor) read a few facts before he starts getting too emotionally involved and starts pontificating on human induced pending catastrophe? And the same goes for Hollywood film makers.
In the promo Robin gave an example of St Marks Square in Venice and how the water has risen up to a foot – “Its happening baby.”
What Robin didn’t tell us was that St Mark’s Square is the lowest point in Venice and has been flooding since Venetian recorded history and is caused when there is a combination of high tides and storm surges in the Adriatic Sea.
The most severe combination of storms and high tides of recent decades happened during the Great Flood of 1966 that pushed up water levels in Venice by 1.94 metres above normal. And Venice is SINKING accentuated by the drawing of water from aquifers beneath the city between 1950 and 1970.
If Robin ever read history he would find that the first record of a large flood in the Venetian lagoon dates back to the so-called Rotta della Cucca, reported by Paul the Deacon[11] as having occurred on October 17, 589. According to Paul, all rivers with mouths in the northern Adriatic, from the Tagliamento to the Po, overflowed at the same time, completely modifying the hydro-geologic equilibrium of the lagoon.
The first documented description[12] of acqua alta in Venice concerns the year 782 and is followed by other documented events in 840, 885, and 1102.
In 1110 the water, following a violent sea storm (or, possibly, a seaquake and its subsequent tsunami), completely destroyed Metamauco (ancient name for Malamocco), Venice’s political centre before the Doge’s residence was moved to Rialto.
Local chroniclers report that in 1240 “the water (that) flooded the streets (was) higher than a man”[12]. Other events are recorded to have occurred in 1268, 1280, 1282, and on December 20, 1283, which was probably an abnormally significant event, since a chronicle reported that Venice was “saved by a miracle”[12].
Chroniclers report that high tides occurred in 1286, 1297, and 1314; on February 15, 1340; on February 25, 1341; on January 18, 1386; and on May 31 and August 10, 1410.
In the 15th century, high tides were recorded in 1419 and 1423, on May 11, 1428 and on October 10, 1430, as well as in 1444 and 1445. On November 10, 1442 the water is reported to have risen “four feet above the usual” (Wikipedia)
OK Robin? It’s happened before baby.
And did Hollywood ever look at the fact that Antarctic Sea Ice has been steadily increasing over the last 30 years? And there are fossil records of how penguins evolved going back 50 million years and the greatest threat to the penguin is COLD and lack of food. If sea-ice does NOT break away, or krill numbers are low, then huge breeding failures can occur, and few chicks survive.
OK baby? So can we please get a little balance from Hollywood on global warming? Or is that Mission Impossible?

R Gates on “divergence” between solar activity and temperatures recently
Tallbloke has flagged up stuff. So has Vuk. But I’m surprised nobody has really pointed the big finger:
Unregistered UHI.
What Anthony came in to show at WUWT. What BEST totally failed to get. Where CRU has hidden the decline and lost the evidence. What GISS uber-crank Hansen cranks up. Where I don’t just accept the calibration of UAH on account of pre-existing unaccounted-for UHI. Where all the WUWT-type studies point to

Everything a non scientist needs to know about climate and AGW
Milankovtich cycles dominate the long cycle
solar and hydrological cycles dominate the medium and short cycles
volcanoes and impacts cause short term perturbations of these cycles
CO2 has little effect on earths temperature but is the cause of the greening of the biosphere
AGW is an elitist power and money grab bunch of bollix
Team Hockey Stick are gravy train riders
Uber Greens are humanity hating sickos

My questions to R Gates is this:
1. What was the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere one million years ago today?
2. What was the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere one million plus 30 years ago today?
3. What was the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere one million minus 30 years ago today?
When you can give me the accurate answers to those questions you can start using the words unprecedented, divergence, anthropogenic, etc for the last 60 years.

What would happen if Earth had no H2O and CO2 in the atmosphere? Would O2 and N2 heat up to 100,000 degrees like the corona of the sun? ”
Of course not, why would it. The O2 and N2 are radiatively inert in the long wave infrared region and so they would not be able to interfere with radiation escaping from the earth to space. The atmosphere would heat by conduction from the surface and distribute this heat by convection. But the temperature of the atmosphere can never exceed the surface temperature – otherwise it would conduct heat back to the surface. The radiation balance between incoming solar radiation and outgoing infrared from the earth would now be at the planet’s surface – instead of being at the top of the atmosphere as it is now. If all other things were equal then the earth effective temperature would be -18 deg. C. However, all other things would not be equal, for example, there would no longer be clouds to act as a sunshield to reflect back 30% of the incoming insolation.

Well said tallbloke!
Everyone… yes, you do absolutely need to check this one out!
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/the-loschmidt-gravito-thermal-effect-old-controversy-new-relevance/
And tallbloke, you should check these out! I am finally vindicated!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/08/venus-envy/#comment-387272
And that very discussion goes all the way down that Venus Envy thread.
(in that skit dr.bill is playing Karl Maxwell ☺)
It has been going on in other threads for over a year and half. My persitent gut feeling was absolutely correct that low altitudes are warmer, high altitudes are are naturally cooler, but at that time I though it was JUST pressure and had not played in the acceleration of the molecules yet.
Well I owe it to you tallbloke for finding those papers…. you’ the man!

Markus – “I agree the bit about convection, but isn’t it thermodynamics and pressure that distributes the temperature averaging it out globally?”
Yes, it is certainly thermodynamics that governs how heat flows (from warm to cold), just look at a globe representation that show the air (heat) currents flowing from the tropics outward heating up the global atmosphere. And then of course it is the ideal gas law that explains where the temperature finally ends up according to pressure distribution (lapse rate).

tallbloke says:
January 8, 2012 at 1:45 am
R. Gates says:
January 7, 2012 at 5:10 pm
And the latest ocean heat content shows that once more, during the recent La Nina, the oceans are once more storing heat:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
From a scientific standpoint, I can’t see any conflict in any of this data. It all seems to make sense.
Yes, as I already told you, the oceans gain heat when the sunspot number is above 40. We are at the start of the peak of the cycle, and austral summer is when the Earth is closest to the sun. This pours an extra ~7.5W/m^2 into the southern oceans. So no surprise we see an upward blip in OHC.
But OHC is still pretty flat since 2004. This is more consistent with Envisat MSL results than colorado, which you prefer for obvious cherry picking reasons.
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Tallbloke,
I absolutely agree that OHC is “pretty flat” since 2004, but it currently at or slightly above the highert level in the past 30+ years. But are you stating this then do you generally think the OHC measurements are accurate enough to show the long-term trend or not?
Generally speaking, in looking in detail at the OHC (and allowing for recalibrations), the global oceans gain heat during La Nina periods, and release it during El Ninos. This makes perfect sense, and has nothing to do with sunspot number, but everything to do with what’s going on in the equatorial Pacific ocean. The general suppression of cloudiness during La Ninas when compared to the increase in clouds and evaporation in general during El Ninos is what drives the ocean heat content. We see the OHC drop sharply during a strong El Nino period and then rebuild during a following La Nina or ENSO neutral period. Of course this heat is transferred from the ocean to the atmosphere during the El Nino, such that atmospheric temperatures rise. What is interesting is the general increase in OHC over the 30+ year period, which can only mean that less heat is being lost during El Ninos than is being stored back in the ocean during La Ninas and ENSO neutral periods. I’m fully aware that some are expecting the OHC to peak around now, and begin heading downward for 30 years or so until the supposed cycle repeats itself. Others are still locked on the notion that this gain in OHC is still reflective of a “recovery” from the LIA. The first notion I find interesting and worthy to consider, but this later notion, related to recovery from the LIA, I find preposterous (and that’s being kind).

Genghis says:
January 8, 2012 at 5:29 am
Tallbloke – “For me, the big story this week is the outcome of our investigation of the controversy between Maxwell, Boltzmann and Loschmidt. It seems Maxwell and Boltzmann were wrong, and Loschmidt was right. This now has experimental support as well as theoretical underpinning.”
You are absolutely correct. The takeaway from that, for me, is that convection is what primarily heats the atmosphere. The atmosphere is largely transparent to radiation.
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Except that the atmosphere with greenhouse gaes present is not “largely transparent” the the LW radiation coming back from the ground, and in fact, the absorption by CO2 at around 15 microns is very nearly exactly at the same wavelength where the peak of the LW from the ground is. Water vapor also has absorption at around 15 microns, but the intensity of CO2 absorption in this region is greater. There are of course other LW aborption bands in the atmosphere as well. In addition to the LW radiation coming from the ground, there is of course some small amount of SW solar radiation that is absorbed by the atmosphere. Suggesting the atmosphere is “largely transparent” to radiation (if you’re including LW) is nonsense. Having clarified that point however, it is quite true that convection heats the atmosphere as well as conduction of course, but radiative transfer is a larger proportion of the heating than either of these.

UnReal Climate have an “Open Thread” which of course means it’s closed.
I thought I would provide some useful comments but closed minds are difficult to open. Anyway you can count their readers on one hand so I thought it would be good to replicate my post here.
“My highlight of the year was the release by the whistleblower the second tranche of emails which confirmed the mendacity and incompetence of The Fiddlestick Team. Certainly if I had a cause and wanted support the last people I would involve are The Fiddlestick boys.”