The chart from AR4 predicts a median temperature rise of 3.26 C caused by a doubling of he pre-industrial level of CO2 from 280 ppm to 560 ppm. However, this would imply that the current rise in temperature due to 390ppm is of the order of 1.56C; when it is half this figure. Since the current warming [from ALL sources] is about 0.7C, how do the IPCC, and cronies, justify their assumptions? It seems to me that this alone invalidates the claim that we face unpleasant GW from CO2.
If 3.26=k (ln560-ln280) then k =4.7. In which case the rise from 280ppm to current 390ppm should have been 4.7(ln390-ln280)=1.56C. How can anyone, be they in the Royal Society or elsewhere, argue against a factor of the order of 1.93, as used in the Modtran programme? such a value fits the data.
Do we need to go any further to show that current fears by the warmists are unfounded?
If we do then the fact that there are ample records that glaciers started to retreat [say late 18th century] long before mankind really got going burning fossil fuels about 70 years ago. This suggests to me that it is clear that some of the warming i.e. probably all the rise to 1940 is NOT due to CO2. My observations suggest that about half the warming to date in due to nature.
How do we convince others that spending our children and grandchildren’s inheritance on CO 2 abatement is a foolish waste of money? I bridle when I get an electric bill that tells me the raw price of electricity is 38% of my bill and that levies added, including GREEN levies, are half of this at 19%.. This with only 4% of the UK’s electricity from wind!
I really like this web site. Its so moderate and fair.
kadaka (KD Knoebel)
February 20, 2012 3:05 am
From Doug Cotton on February 19, 2012 at 7:13 pm:
Now, my point is that, if the long-term equilibrium surface temperature were to be raised, say 3 deg.C, then the whole (roughly linear) temperature plot from the core to the surface would have to be raised at the surface end. (…) There would be a massive amount of extra thermal energy that would have to be stored all the way from the core to the surface in order to fill the gap between the current temperature plot and the new one which would be 3 deg.C higher at the surface end. Need I say more? There is obviously a huge stabilising effect due to the huge amount of thermal energy under the surface and all the way down to that 5,700 deg.C core.
What is obvious is the Earth has about 6*10^24 kg of mass, a huge amount of thermal energy stored and more still being generated by various processes…
And about 20 feet or so (6 meters) below any land surface there are temperatures around 50°F all year long, exploitable for heating and cooling, while just a very tiny distance away, back on the surface of this sphere with a mean radius of 6371 km, the temperature can vary widely with the seasons or even be effectively permanently at a certain temp, like with the bitter cold of Antarctica. Using geothermal (ground source) heat pumps to tap the underground heat, it is possible to exclusively do heating, at a good savings versus other methods. But greater efficiency is found using the natural slow thermal diffusion rate of the ground for seasonal thermal storage, put the excess heat in the ground during summer when doing cooling, even store heat from solar thermal panels, then tap it in winter when doing heating.
Thus it is demonstrated that whatever great thermal energy is stored in the Earth, it is effectively sealed away and begrudgingly released at an exceedingly slow rate, and there can be no “…huge stabilising effect due to the huge amount of thermal energy under the surface and all the way down to that 5,700 deg.C core.”
Review this from the Wikipedia Geothermal gradient entry (I direct-linked the references):
Heat flows constantly from its sources within the Earth to the surface. Total heat loss from the earth is 44.2 TW (4.42 × 10^13 watts).[12] Mean heat flow is 65 mW/m2 over continental crust and 101 mW/m2 over oceanic crust.[12] This is approximately 1/10 watt/square meter on average, (about 1/10,000 of solar irradiation,) but is much more concentrated in areas where thermal energy is transported toward the crust by convection such as along mid-ocean ridges and mantle plumes.[13] The Earth’s crust effectively acts as a thick insulating blanket which must be pierced by fluid conduits (of magma, water or other) in order to release the heat underneath. More of the heat in the Earth is lost through plate tectonics, by mantle upwelling associated with mid-ocean ridges. The final major mode of heat loss is by conduction through the lithosphere, the majority of which occurs in the oceans due to the crust there being much thinner and younger than under the continents.[12][14]
An average of about a tenth of a watt per square meter can establish a huge stabilizing effect? With more that 60% of that heat loss from creating oceanic plate (see Reference 14) thus said heat flow is far from distributed evenly? Not likely.
And as there is this thermally distinctive zone through the atmosphere to the surface which extends to around six meters below the surface, followed by the distinctive geothermal gradient region, why would an extra 3°C in surface temps have to be accompanied by an increase in stored thermal energy all the way to the core? The answer is, it doesn’t, and the planet has been that much warmer in past Warm Periods like the Roman and Minoan ones without having such corresponding “to the core” increases. I mean, who would think all that mass could suddenly gain and lose that amount of energy before and after those geological eyeblinks? Couldn’t happen.
Myrrh says: February 20, 2012 at 1:29 am Doug – sorry, .. I’d responded to Stephen Wilde
______________________________________
That’s OK. Yes I have often said that the surface/atmosphere interface is entirely internal, not unlike the floor of the ocean. The only close thing to a blackbody is the whole Earth-plus-atmosphere system as seen from space beyond the thermosphere. A blackbody must be insulated from losses by conduction etc. The Earth’s surface loses more than half its thermal energy by evaporation, conduction, chemical processes and diffusion followed by convection. These processes bring about near thermal equilibrium and there is little energy left to radiate. In fact, correct application of SBL yields very low radiation when the temperature are, say, less than 3 degrees apart.
That (inaccurate) 255K temperature is just a mean and whatever it should be is sure to be found somewhere in the atmosphere. The natural adiabatic lapse rate ensures that the surface will be warmer than the mean, and nothing else (like WV or carbon dioxide and its colleagues) is needed to set the current surface temperatures. So much for that 33 degree C garbage!
Myrrh
February 20, 2012 4:08 am
Paul Vaughan says:
February 19, 2012 at 8:23 pm
“Coal, not oilsands, causes global warming: study” http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120219/bc_coal_oilsands_climate_change_120219/20120219
“One of the world’s top climate scientists has calculated that emissions from Alberta’s oilsands are unlikely to make a big difference to global warming and that the real threat to the planet comes from burning coal.
“I was surprised by the results of our analysis,” said Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria climate modeller, who has been a lead author on two reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “I thought it was larger than it was.””
“Burning all the oil in the world would only raise temperatures by less than one degree, the paper concludes.”
===================================
This has only ever been anti-coal – it’s the other fossil fuel industries supporting the demonisation of coal (cheap fuel). All the while deflecting from their own involvement by accusing the sceptics of being funded by big oil, fossil fuels.
[snip . . kbmod]
Ric, thanks for the ideas. I generally agree but would quibble with the term “reflected” in “reflected ground radiation”. The clouds absorb IR and re-emit it in all directions. We can call it reflection but it isn’t. Reflection seems to be much more complicated: http://www.theoryofabsolutes.com/photonreflectionindepth.html
Doug, here’s a site that shows downwelling IR measurements but not quite real time (about 3 or 4 days of lag): http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/surfrad/dataplot.html I will choose State College PA since it has more chances of random clouds and State College has an automatic reporting system that reports 3 times an hour. With the two sources of data I will be able to verify that the downwelling IR is primarily determined by cloud cover. You agree with that in principle anyway.
The harder part will be for me to demonstrate that the variations in downwelling IR result in changes in temperature, or more specifically, changes in the drop in temperature at night. So far the largest complicating factor has been wind which advects warmer or colder air into State College. I will obviously have to choose windless nights with variable cloudiness.
Eric (skeptic)
February 20, 2012 5:35 am
Here’s a link to the State College weather data: http://www.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KUNV.html I’ll grab the data when they get to the right meteorological conditions (i.e. windless night with varying cloud cover)
kadaka (KD Knoebel)
February 20, 2012 5:35 am
From Alexander Feht on February 19, 2012 at 9:51 pm:
Fowl in American supermarkets may not contain growth hormones (I doubt it — if it says so on the label, it ain’t necessarily so) but contains so many terrible things that even Russians banned American chicken (Russian wouldn’t buy American chicken even before the ban, so terrible is its taste; Tyson chicken is synonymous to “inedible” in Russia, they call it also “soap meat” and “Bush legs”).
Originally published November 2, 2010 at 3:30 PM | Page modified November 3, 2010 at 11:42 AM Once-banned U.S. chicken legs return to Russia
By Will Englund The Washington Post
…
Once, long ago, U.S. chicken imports were at the top of the market here, plump and yellowish at a time when Russian chicken tended to be scrawny, bluish and scarce. This was the early 1990s, to be precise.
Back then nearly a million tons of leg quarters flowed across the Atlantic every year — chicken parts that don’t command very high prices in the breast-meat-craving United States but that nicely filled a Russian preference for dark meat. And they were cheap. Russians liked them so much that they took to calling them “Bush legs,” after the first President Bush.
But in the new pecking order, they come in close to the bottom. For the first nine months of this year, they were banned outright, on the grounds that the chlorine disinfectant used by U.S. producers is unhealthful.
Now, after a relentless full-court press by the U.S. industry, and hard-nosed bargaining over Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), they’re coming in again, washed with a different antimicrobial solution. But Russian shoppers complain about their water content and worry, after a campaign in the Russian media, about hormones and antibiotics.
You won’t find Bush legs in the supermarkets of Moscow or almost any other major city. Who gets them? Poor people in the boondocks, schoolchildren and patrons of fast-food outlets that sell chicken. (Except not one of the largest chains, Rostik’s-KFC, which despite its U.S. affiliation says it sells only Russian chicken.) Go to a wholesale market here, with enticing displays of Russian and Brazilian chicken, and if you ask around enough a sullen vendor eventually will pull a 15-kilogram box of U.S. chicken out of the back freezer.
…
The bans smell like politics:
…
On the other hand, U.S. producers point out that they lost about $400 million in Russian sales because of this year’s ban, which followed several others over the past decade — bans that coincided with the revival of Russia’s domestic poultry business.
…
Russia Seeks to Cleanse Its Palate of U.S. Chicken
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ
Published: January 19, 2010
…
This has no doubt unnerved American producers, who gained a foothold in the Russian market in the early 1990s, in part, their Russian critics say, by swamping Russian producers with cheap chicken. Since then, Russian officials have angered American producers and officials with a raft of restrictions and quotas meant to help domestic producers.
The Kremlin has also used chicken as a diplomatic weapon with the United States, which, aside from poultry, has relatively little trade with Russia. Moscow imposed a similar ban in 2002, after the United States raised steel tariffs, and it banned several American chicken companies shortly after Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008, after accusing the United States of helping to instigate the violence.
…
But domestically, the restrictions, coupled with heavy government support of the poultry industry, appear to have worked.
“There has been a rapid rise in production consisting of 15 to 16 percent per year,” said Andrei N. Teriokhin, head of the Association of Russian Poultry Market Operators. Domestic production now accounts for 75 percent of demand.
“In the next four to five years,” Mr. Teriokhin said, “Russia will be able to support itself.”
…
And with politics comes propaganda, as in a FUD campaign boosting Russian poultry by raising suspicion about the cheaper American chicken. An example from the NY Times piece:
“This bird was running around yesterday,” said a burly vendor named Mikhail, pointing out a chicken that was clearly freshly plucked. “They showed us on television where those Bush legs come from,” he said. “They are all American military surplus.”
The rest of the WaPo piece is interesting. A poultry magnate who’s a member of the upper house of the Russian Parliament and a “former” political operative, brushes off that eight out of ten domestic chicken samples bought in Moscow had salmonella. They’re kidding, right? Here in the US they’ll recall a million pounds of meat on a positive finding of salmonella at a factory, and if 8 of 10 were found contaminated at a supermarket then that place would get closed right quick. Those boxes of deep-frozen American chicken legs sure sound a whole lot healthier.
I’m sorry, but there are too many contradictions from what you said. As you stated, you left in the 1980’s. Have you been keeping track of what happens there by following the Russian state-run media and accidentally got infected by the Soviet-style propaganda? Or by communicating with friends and family still there who’ve come to accept the anti-American fabrications?
Eric (skeptic) says:
February 20, 2012 at 5:32 am
> Ric, thanks for the ideas. I generally agree but would quibble with the term “reflected” in “reflected ground radiation”. The clouds absorb IR and re-emit it in all directions. We can call it reflection but it isn’t.
I’ll still call it reflection as in albedo. A big difference is that sunlight reflecting (i.e. photons match the wavelength emitted by the Sun, not the blackbody spectrum of the cloud) off cloud tops involves short wavelengths. The LWIR hitting the bottom of the clouds doesn’t “see” the cloud droplets as well as the solar SW light. I’m not sure how different the albedo is. (And I’m referring to the shorter IR that isn’t blocked by water vapor and other GHGs.)
> Reflection seems to be much more complicated: http://www.theoryofabsolutes.com/photonreflectionindepth.html
Cool site, I’ll try to spend some time with it tonight.
> Doug, here’s a site that shows downwelling IR measurements but not quite real time (about 3 or 4 days of lag): http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/surfrad/dataplot.html
Wow, another cool site – two gold stars for the day. I won’t mention anything about its display of downwelling IR lest I’m reminded I don’t understand basic physics. (Damn high school physics class only talked about index of refraction, polarization, the Brewster angle, and stuff like that. I guess those must be pre-basics.)
> The harder part will be for me to demonstrate that the variations in downwelling IR result in changes in temperature, or more specifically, changes in the drop in temperature at night. So far the largest complicating factor has been wind which advects warmer or colder air into State College. I will obviously have to choose windless nights with variable cloudiness.
The best radiational cooling is when a Canadian high pressure system is centered on the area. Of course, there are no clouds then. You might look for nights when a warm front is a couple hundred miles away, there are often some clouds with that. They tend to be stratiform clouds. You can also look for upper level lows that don’t have surface frontal systems. New England TV mets usually mention them, but we have good TV mets. Watching IR satellite photos and looking for clouds where there aren’t weather fronts on synoptic maps is a good way to look for that. The best case is some stray cumulus clouds above decent snow pack, that’s pretty rare.
Andrew Weaver’s recent “road-to-Damascus” statement is apparently more political than scientific – he appears to be shifting his position in response to changes in the political wind.
Why do I say this? Because Weaver’s conclusion is not new. This statement, which we wrote and published in 2002, puts it in context:
“The middle range forecast of future warming, based on expected growth in fossil fuel use without any curbs, is for a 1º C increase between now and 2050. The Kyoto Protocol would reduce that increase by an insignificant 0.06º C.”
So how did we know all this “recent” wisdom as early as 2002? Because it was not new even then – it was the state of actual climate science, before it was usurped and perverted for political and economic gain by the global warming gang.
What else did we say in this article?
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
I hope that was clear enough, even for our idiot politicians.
_________________________
CTV News write-up of Weaver’s Nature paper: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SciTech/20120219/coal-climate-change-study-120219/
“When only commercially viable oilsands deposits are considered, the temperature increase is only .03 degrees C.”
Our PEGG paper of 2002: http://www.apegga.org/members/publications/peggs/Web11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
Kyoto is Ineffective
Computer simulations of climate have yielded wide-ranging forecasts of future temperature increases from rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations, based on projections of future energy use. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has compiled these simulations. The middle range forecast of future warming, based on expected growth in fossil fuel use without any curbs, is for a 1º C increase between now and 2050. The Kyoto Protocol would reduce that increase by an insignificant 0.06º C.
@ur momisuglykadaka:
As to the ban, there certainly is a politicized commercial factor there but the crux of the problem is that Tyson “chicken” doesn’t taste like real chicken. Russians know that, Europeans know that, even in India, where there are many really hungry people, American “artificial” chicken doesn’t sell. It has a repulsive, chemical taste. Only people who never tasted anything better than McDonald’s food or Carnival cruise “stuff”, can eat that [snip].
I regularly visit Russia. I read Russian forum debates. I hear what people say there about American chicken, and I’ve tasted Tyson chicken myself. No more, thank you! It does taste like soap.
pauline
February 20, 2012 11:18 am
Foxgoose says:
February 19, 2012 at 1:15 pm
Anybody else had trouble voting in the Weblog Awards?
I’ve tried three times over the last few days and the process seemed to go OK – but I never got the confirmatory email on any occasion.
Neither have I and have tried a few times
[Reply: email them. This year there are numerous complaints similar to yours. Possibly the process has been internally compromised. ~dbs, mod.]
Foxgoose says:
February 19, 2012 at 1:15 pm
Anybody else had trouble voting in the Weblog Awards?
I’ve tried three times over the last few days and the process seemed to go OK – but I never got the confirmatory email on any occasion.
I had the same trouble, and eventually did a text search of my email files. Lo and behold, a post-dated verification email was there (future-dated) that my email client didn’t know how to display (I suppose) . Search for “Bloggi” and see what comes up.
Weaver’s article/position still takes CO2 forcing for granted. The statement that burning all the known coal reserves would warm the planet 15K is just the most ludicrous of his conclusions.
The man is systemically and systematically deluded.
Myrrh
February 20, 2012 1:00 pm
February 20, 2012 at 4:08 am
Paul Vaughan says:
February 19, 2012 at 8:23 pm
“Coal, not oilsands, causes global warming: study” http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120219/bc_coal_oilsands_climate_change_120219/20120219
“One of the world’s top climate scientists has calculated that emissions from Alberta’s oilsands are unlikely to make a big difference to global warming and that the real threat to the planet comes from burning coal.
“I was surprised by the results of our analysis,” said Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria climate modeller, who has been a lead author on two reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “I thought it was larger than it was.””
“Burning all the oil in the world would only raise temperatures by less than one degree, the paper concludes.”
===============
This is the oil industry which helped create CRU, which then tampered with New Zealand temperature records, in order to mobilise the greens against coal and so was born AGW and demonisation of carbon dioxide. Now trying to backtrack a bit, to distance themselves from coal fossil fuels, because they’ve been too successful anti-coal and the greenies are interfering in their new oil ventures.
It’s not the sceptics funded by big oil, but the greens. They’ve always been anti-coal because that’s the oil industry’s agenda. http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/2010/06/bp-greenpeace-big-oil-jackpot.html
“According to the Washington Post the green group Nature Conservancy – which encourages ordinary citizens to personally pledge to fight climate change – “has accepted nearly $10 million in cash and land contributions from BP and affiliated corporations over the years.”
Gee, didn’t Greenpeace build an entire ExxonSecrets website to expose the allegedly diabolical fact that, over a 9-year-period (1998-2006) ExxonMobil donated a grand total of $2.2 million to a conservative think tank?
$10 million versus $2 million. Who do we suppose has the cozier relationship with big oil?”
And Donna’s look at the subject with Heartland in mind: http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2012/02/17/big-oil-money-for-me-but-not-for-thee/
“The Sierra Club takes fossil fuel money. So does the Nature Conservancy and Rajendra Pachauri’s sustainability conference. So why is the Heartland Institute being torn to pieces for the same behaviour?”
And further:
“Two weeks ago Time magazine revealed that,
between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from…Chesapeake Energy – one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S… [backup link here]
In other words, what Time describes as the “biggest and oldest environmental group” in America felt morally justified in taking $25 million smackaroos from a fossil fuel company so that it could campaign against other fossil fuel companies – those that sell coal. A search of the BBC and the Guardian‘s website reveals absolutely no coverage of that news story. Not one word (see here and here).”
Andrew Weaver is one of ‘useful idiots’ for the oil industry, like Hansen and his death trains, it’s always been about anti-coal and here now they’ve found themselves the victims of their own success and trying to put a distance between ‘coal fossil’ fuels and ‘oil fossil’ fuels, because the greens are objecting to their new source of oil wealth.
Too funny.
How do you fit into this Paul?
Another link on this theme. http://www.disinfo.com/2012/02/how-the-sierra-club-learned-to-stop-worrying-about-the-99-and-love-wall-street/
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
February 20, 2012 at 3:05 am
___________________________________
I note that you do not understand the physics involved in the conduction process from the core to the surface as I explained in my post, and why the whole temperature plot would have to be raised.
Please go back to my post and try to follow why there is a huge stabilising effect. It has nothing whatever to do with the slow terrestrial heat flow.
See also the ‘Explanation’ page on my website.
If anyone else wishes to comment on my posts please at least read them in detail and try to understand the physics. If I haven’t explained clearly enough I am happy to try again, but kadaka obviously just didn’t try and spoke about something else of which I am fully aware of course.
Eric (skeptic) says:
February 20, 2012 at 5:32 am
_________________________________
I have read plenty of papers on downwelling radiation measures thanks, and don’t doubt that they fluctuate with humidity. What is your point? Have I not made it clear that any such radiation has absolutely no effect on climate?
PS kadaka The Earth can tolerate relatively small variations in a 1000 year cycle, but the stabilised surface temperature can draw temperatures back towards the long-term mean of such trends. There cannot be a runaway warming effect in time frames that short. It seems 2 degrees C is about the maximum it can vary from the mean. The mechanism is described on my Explanation page on my website,
However, for a whole new equilibrium to be established, let’s say 5 degrees warmer, the whole underground plot has to shift partly by banking up the terrestrial flow and maybe by inward flow. This would take perhaps hundreds of thousands of years.
There is clear evidence that temperature plots in hundreds of bore holes all extrapolate to base surface temperatures all over the world. This is not by chance. It is because sub-surface and atmospheric trends have to meet at the surface because of the thermal equilibrium established at that inteface most by diffusion – see Wiki “Heat Transfer.” The process of conduction ensures that the trend is set by the core temperature and the surface temperatures and there is a feedback mechanism in conduction that enables this.
Myrrh
February 20, 2012 2:44 pm
Is there a reason for the change to the front page – that it no longer the all the previous posts below the latest, and now without the “older posts” back button?
Do you, Eric, kadaka, or anyone, seriously believe that, when you turn on an electric radiator you could actually make it warm faster by holding a mirror beside it and reflecting its own radiation back onto itself? Try it if you do and time how long it takes to get to its maximum with or without the mirror. When it reaches its maximum, can you then make it hotter still with the mirror?
Backradiation would be even less effective than a mirror because it usually has lower frequencies than those originally emitted by the surface. It is ludicrous to imagine energy can be created this way. The Second Law of Thermodynamics would be so obviously violated.
Yet the IPCC says backradiation should be about a quarter as powerful as the Sun at noon. Well I know the Sun can heat sand on the beach until it blisters my feet, but when I tested the effect of backradiation on sand there was not even a tenth of a degree difference between it and the shielded sand in an identical wide necked vacuum flask.
Yet the IPCC says backradiation should be about a quarter as powerful as the Sun at noon. Well I know the Sun can heat sand on the beach until it blisters my feet, but when I tested the effect of backradiation on sand there was not even a tenth of a degree difference between it and the shielded sand in an identical wide necked vacuum flask.
I reviewed your “backyard experiment,” it has an obvious glaring error:
“Tape the screens together (along the long sides) to make a large square and suspend them (eg with piles of bricks in the corners) so they are only about 15cm above the top of one of the the flasks and centrally positioned of course. There should be a slight dish effect in the screens so warm air can escape by convection around the sides.”
You have established no valving effect. If warm air can leave, then warm air can enter. Thus the surrounding area having a decreased rate of cooling due to backradiation can distribute its retained heat to your wide-mouthed soup Thermos hiding under the two taped-together windscreen shields (windshield sunscreens).
Do you, Eric, kadaka, or anyone, seriously believe that, when you turn on an electric radiator you could actually make it warm faster by holding a mirror beside it and reflecting its own radiation back onto itself? Try it if you do and time how long it takes to get to its maximum with or without the mirror. When it reaches its maximum, can you then make it hotter still with the mirror?
*groan*
If I would place an electric radiator inside a thermally reflective box, of course I would expect the radiator to reach its maximum temperature faster. If it was surrounded by only half of a thermally-reflective box, reflecting back half of the emitted thermal radiation, I would still expect it to reach its maximum temperature faster than without the half a box.
Here’s an experiment for you to consider. Suspend two identical electric heating elements in two otherwise identical uninsulated vacuum chambers, the difference is one has a black interior coating while the other has a normal thermally reflective silver finish. The radiation emitted from the one element will hit the black surface, be transformed to heat that is absorbed by the heavy metal housing, which will then be released by the housing to the surrounding environment by the normal processes.
The elements are in vacuum so there is no convection, there is only negligible conduction by the electrical leads the elements are hanging from. You’re left with radiation to consider.
By what you’ve said, the element in the silvery chamber cannot possibly obtain maximum temperature faster than the element in the black chamber. You do not believe an electric radiator could be made to warm faster by reflecting its own radiation back onto itself. Thus the element in the silvery chamber cannot be made to warm faster by reflecting its own radiation back onto itself.
Thus by your reasoning, the element in the chamber retaining more thermal energy cannot possibly obtain maximum temperature faster than the element in the chamber that is shedding more thermal energy. Does that sound about right to you?
Kadaka: The problem you envisage with the backyard experiment is a red herring. Any such warm air would rise rather than fall to the sand. Think, man, think.
You are also wrong about the radiator. I have not said anything about a surrounding box which might trap and prevent warm air escaping by convection. Take the radiator outside with a long chord and just use a mirror at the side (as I said) not at the top.
Now read my next post.
Mike Mann Big Bang theory quote is from Grauniad
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/17/michael-mann-climate-war
The chart from AR4 predicts a median temperature rise of 3.26 C caused by a doubling of he pre-industrial level of CO2 from 280 ppm to 560 ppm. However, this would imply that the current rise in temperature due to 390ppm is of the order of 1.56C; when it is half this figure. Since the current warming [from ALL sources] is about 0.7C, how do the IPCC, and cronies, justify their assumptions? It seems to me that this alone invalidates the claim that we face unpleasant GW from CO2.
If 3.26=k (ln560-ln280) then k =4.7. In which case the rise from 280ppm to current 390ppm should have been 4.7(ln390-ln280)=1.56C. How can anyone, be they in the Royal Society or elsewhere, argue against a factor of the order of 1.93, as used in the Modtran programme? such a value fits the data.
Do we need to go any further to show that current fears by the warmists are unfounded?
If we do then the fact that there are ample records that glaciers started to retreat [say late 18th century] long before mankind really got going burning fossil fuels about 70 years ago. This suggests to me that it is clear that some of the warming i.e. probably all the rise to 1940 is NOT due to CO2. My observations suggest that about half the warming to date in due to nature.
How do we convince others that spending our children and grandchildren’s inheritance on CO 2 abatement is a foolish waste of money? I bridle when I get an electric bill that tells me the raw price of electricity is 38% of my bill and that levies added, including GREEN levies, are half of this at 19%.. This with only 4% of the UK’s electricity from wind!
I really like this web site. Its so moderate and fair.
From Doug Cotton on February 19, 2012 at 7:13 pm:
What is obvious is the Earth has about 6*10^24 kg of mass, a huge amount of thermal energy stored and more still being generated by various processes…
And about 20 feet or so (6 meters) below any land surface there are temperatures around 50°F all year long, exploitable for heating and cooling, while just a very tiny distance away, back on the surface of this sphere with a mean radius of 6371 km, the temperature can vary widely with the seasons or even be effectively permanently at a certain temp, like with the bitter cold of Antarctica. Using geothermal (ground source) heat pumps to tap the underground heat, it is possible to exclusively do heating, at a good savings versus other methods. But greater efficiency is found using the natural slow thermal diffusion rate of the ground for seasonal thermal storage, put the excess heat in the ground during summer when doing cooling, even store heat from solar thermal panels, then tap it in winter when doing heating.
Thus it is demonstrated that whatever great thermal energy is stored in the Earth, it is effectively sealed away and begrudgingly released at an exceedingly slow rate, and there can be no “…huge stabilising effect due to the huge amount of thermal energy under the surface and all the way down to that 5,700 deg.C core.”
Review this from the Wikipedia Geothermal gradient entry (I direct-linked the references):
An average of about a tenth of a watt per square meter can establish a huge stabilizing effect? With more that 60% of that heat loss from creating oceanic plate (see Reference 14) thus said heat flow is far from distributed evenly? Not likely.
And as there is this thermally distinctive zone through the atmosphere to the surface which extends to around six meters below the surface, followed by the distinctive geothermal gradient region, why would an extra 3°C in surface temps have to be accompanied by an increase in stored thermal energy all the way to the core? The answer is, it doesn’t, and the planet has been that much warmer in past Warm Periods like the Roman and Minoan ones without having such corresponding “to the core” increases. I mean, who would think all that mass could suddenly gain and lose that amount of energy before and after those geological eyeblinks? Couldn’t happen.
Myrrh says: February 20, 2012 at 1:29 am
Doug – sorry, .. I’d responded to Stephen Wilde
______________________________________
That’s OK. Yes I have often said that the surface/atmosphere interface is entirely internal, not unlike the floor of the ocean. The only close thing to a blackbody is the whole Earth-plus-atmosphere system as seen from space beyond the thermosphere. A blackbody must be insulated from losses by conduction etc. The Earth’s surface loses more than half its thermal energy by evaporation, conduction, chemical processes and diffusion followed by convection. These processes bring about near thermal equilibrium and there is little energy left to radiate. In fact, correct application of SBL yields very low radiation when the temperature are, say, less than 3 degrees apart.
That (inaccurate) 255K temperature is just a mean and whatever it should be is sure to be found somewhere in the atmosphere. The natural adiabatic lapse rate ensures that the surface will be warmer than the mean, and nothing else (like WV or carbon dioxide and its colleagues) is needed to set the current surface temperatures. So much for that 33 degree C garbage!
Paul Vaughan says:
February 19, 2012 at 8:23 pm
“Coal, not oilsands, causes global warming: study”
http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120219/bc_coal_oilsands_climate_change_120219/20120219
“One of the world’s top climate scientists has calculated that emissions from Alberta’s oilsands are unlikely to make a big difference to global warming and that the real threat to the planet comes from burning coal.
“I was surprised by the results of our analysis,” said Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria climate modeller, who has been a lead author on two reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “I thought it was larger than it was.””
“Burning all the oil in the world would only raise temperatures by less than one degree, the paper concludes.”
===================================
This has only ever been anti-coal – it’s the other fossil fuel industries supporting the demonisation of coal (cheap fuel). All the while deflecting from their own involvement by accusing the sceptics of being funded by big oil, fossil fuels.
[snip . . kbmod]
Up for review: Assessing climate model software quality.
Ric, thanks for the ideas. I generally agree but would quibble with the term “reflected” in “reflected ground radiation”. The clouds absorb IR and re-emit it in all directions. We can call it reflection but it isn’t. Reflection seems to be much more complicated: http://www.theoryofabsolutes.com/photonreflectionindepth.html
Doug, here’s a site that shows downwelling IR measurements but not quite real time (about 3 or 4 days of lag): http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/surfrad/dataplot.html I will choose State College PA since it has more chances of random clouds and State College has an automatic reporting system that reports 3 times an hour. With the two sources of data I will be able to verify that the downwelling IR is primarily determined by cloud cover. You agree with that in principle anyway.
The harder part will be for me to demonstrate that the variations in downwelling IR result in changes in temperature, or more specifically, changes in the drop in temperature at night. So far the largest complicating factor has been wind which advects warmer or colder air into State College. I will obviously have to choose windless nights with variable cloudiness.
Here’s a link to the State College weather data: http://www.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KUNV.html I’ll grab the data when they get to the right meteorological conditions (i.e. windless night with varying cloud cover)
From Alexander Feht on February 19, 2012 at 9:51 pm:
Strangely enough, I was able to Google a much more “balanced” piece about the recent ban, which even flips around “Bush legs” from what you said:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2013327523_bushlegs03.html
The bans smell like politics:
Russian poultry industry needs a boost, American chicken gets banned, America cries foul, ban gets lifted.
Even the NY Times agrees politics are involved:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/world/europe/20russia.html
And with politics comes propaganda, as in a FUD campaign boosting Russian poultry by raising suspicion about the cheaper American chicken. An example from the NY Times piece:
The rest of the WaPo piece is interesting. A poultry magnate who’s a member of the upper house of the Russian Parliament and a “former” political operative, brushes off that eight out of ten domestic chicken samples bought in Moscow had salmonella. They’re kidding, right? Here in the US they’ll recall a million pounds of meat on a positive finding of salmonella at a factory, and if 8 of 10 were found contaminated at a supermarket then that place would get closed right quick. Those boxes of deep-frozen American chicken legs sure sound a whole lot healthier.
I’m sorry, but there are too many contradictions from what you said. As you stated, you left in the 1980’s. Have you been keeping track of what happens there by following the Russian state-run media and accidentally got infected by the Soviet-style propaganda? Or by communicating with friends and family still there who’ve come to accept the anti-American fabrications?
Eric (skeptic) says:
February 20, 2012 at 5:32 am
> Ric, thanks for the ideas. I generally agree but would quibble with the term “reflected” in “reflected ground radiation”. The clouds absorb IR and re-emit it in all directions. We can call it reflection but it isn’t.
I’ll still call it reflection as in albedo. A big difference is that sunlight reflecting (i.e. photons match the wavelength emitted by the Sun, not the blackbody spectrum of the cloud) off cloud tops involves short wavelengths. The LWIR hitting the bottom of the clouds doesn’t “see” the cloud droplets as well as the solar SW light. I’m not sure how different the albedo is. (And I’m referring to the shorter IR that isn’t blocked by water vapor and other GHGs.)
> Reflection seems to be much more complicated: http://www.theoryofabsolutes.com/photonreflectionindepth.html
Cool site, I’ll try to spend some time with it tonight.
> Doug, here’s a site that shows downwelling IR measurements but not quite real time (about 3 or 4 days of lag): http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/surfrad/dataplot.html
Wow, another cool site – two gold stars for the day. I won’t mention anything about its display of downwelling IR lest I’m reminded I don’t understand basic physics. (Damn high school physics class only talked about index of refraction, polarization, the Brewster angle, and stuff like that. I guess those must be pre-basics.)
> The harder part will be for me to demonstrate that the variations in downwelling IR result in changes in temperature, or more specifically, changes in the drop in temperature at night. So far the largest complicating factor has been wind which advects warmer or colder air into State College. I will obviously have to choose windless nights with variable cloudiness.
The best radiational cooling is when a Canadian high pressure system is centered on the area. Of course, there are no clouds then. You might look for nights when a warm front is a couple hundred miles away, there are often some clouds with that. They tend to be stratiform clouds. You can also look for upper level lows that don’t have surface frontal systems. New England TV mets usually mention them, but we have good TV mets. Watching IR satellite photos and looking for clouds where there aren’t weather fronts on synoptic maps is a good way to look for that. The best case is some stray cumulus clouds above decent snow pack, that’s pretty rare.
Andrew Weaver’s recent “road-to-Damascus” statement is apparently more political than scientific – he appears to be shifting his position in response to changes in the political wind.
Why do I say this? Because Weaver’s conclusion is not new. This statement, which we wrote and published in 2002, puts it in context:
“The middle range forecast of future warming, based on expected growth in fossil fuel use without any curbs, is for a 1º C increase between now and 2050. The Kyoto Protocol would reduce that increase by an insignificant 0.06º C.”
So how did we know all this “recent” wisdom as early as 2002? Because it was not new even then – it was the state of actual climate science, before it was usurped and perverted for political and economic gain by the global warming gang.
What else did we say in this article?
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
I hope that was clear enough, even for our idiot politicians.
_________________________
CTV News write-up of Weaver’s Nature paper:
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SciTech/20120219/coal-climate-change-study-120219/
“When only commercially viable oilsands deposits are considered, the temperature increase is only .03 degrees C.”
Our PEGG paper of 2002:
http://www.apegga.org/members/publications/peggs/Web11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
Kyoto is Ineffective
Computer simulations of climate have yielded wide-ranging forecasts of future temperature increases from rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations, based on projections of future energy use. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has compiled these simulations. The middle range forecast of future warming, based on expected growth in fossil fuel use without any curbs, is for a 1º C increase between now and 2050. The Kyoto Protocol would reduce that increase by an insignificant 0.06º C.
Over at Bishop Hill, Andrew Montford has a very interesting article on how policy can be created by the judicious control of scientific “evidence” and a little self-interested zealotry..
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/2/20/the-entrepreneur.html
@ur momisugly kadaka:
As to the ban, there certainly is a politicized commercial factor there but the crux of the problem is that Tyson “chicken” doesn’t taste like real chicken. Russians know that, Europeans know that, even in India, where there are many really hungry people, American “artificial” chicken doesn’t sell. It has a repulsive, chemical taste. Only people who never tasted anything better than McDonald’s food or Carnival cruise “stuff”, can eat that [snip].
I regularly visit Russia. I read Russian forum debates. I hear what people say there about American chicken, and I’ve tasted Tyson chicken myself. No more, thank you! It does taste like soap.
Foxgoose says:
February 19, 2012 at 1:15 pm
Anybody else had trouble voting in the Weblog Awards?
I’ve tried three times over the last few days and the process seemed to go OK – but I never got the confirmatory email on any occasion.
Neither have I and have tried a few times
[Reply: email them. This year there are numerous complaints similar to yours. Possibly the process has been internally compromised. ~dbs, mod.]
I had the same trouble, and eventually did a text search of my email files. Lo and behold, a post-dated verification email was there (future-dated) that my email client didn’t know how to display (I suppose) . Search for “Bloggi” and see what comes up.
Weaver’s article/position still takes CO2 forcing for granted. The statement that burning all the known coal reserves would warm the planet 15K is just the most ludicrous of his conclusions.
The man is systemically and systematically deluded.
February 20, 2012 at 4:08 am
Paul Vaughan says:
February 19, 2012 at 8:23 pm
“Coal, not oilsands, causes global warming: study”
http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120219/bc_coal_oilsands_climate_change_120219/20120219
“One of the world’s top climate scientists has calculated that emissions from Alberta’s oilsands are unlikely to make a big difference to global warming and that the real threat to the planet comes from burning coal.
“I was surprised by the results of our analysis,” said Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria climate modeller, who has been a lead author on two reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “I thought it was larger than it was.””
“Burning all the oil in the world would only raise temperatures by less than one degree, the paper concludes.”
===============
This is the oil industry which helped create CRU, which then tampered with New Zealand temperature records, in order to mobilise the greens against coal and so was born AGW and demonisation of carbon dioxide. Now trying to backtrack a bit, to distance themselves from coal fossil fuels, because they’ve been too successful anti-coal and the greenies are interfering in their new oil ventures.
It’s not the sceptics funded by big oil, but the greens. They’ve always been anti-coal because that’s the oil industry’s agenda.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/2010/06/bp-greenpeace-big-oil-jackpot.html
“According to the Washington Post the green group Nature Conservancy – which encourages ordinary citizens to personally pledge to fight climate change – “has accepted nearly $10 million in cash and land contributions from BP and affiliated corporations over the years.”
Gee, didn’t Greenpeace build an entire ExxonSecrets website to expose the allegedly diabolical fact that, over a 9-year-period (1998-2006) ExxonMobil donated a grand total of $2.2 million to a conservative think tank?
$10 million versus $2 million. Who do we suppose has the cozier relationship with big oil?”
And Donna’s look at the subject with Heartland in mind: http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2012/02/17/big-oil-money-for-me-but-not-for-thee/
“The Sierra Club takes fossil fuel money. So does the Nature Conservancy and Rajendra Pachauri’s sustainability conference. So why is the Heartland Institute being torn to pieces for the same behaviour?”
And further:
“Two weeks ago Time magazine revealed that,
between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from…Chesapeake Energy – one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S… [backup link here]
In other words, what Time describes as the “biggest and oldest environmental group” in America felt morally justified in taking $25 million smackaroos from a fossil fuel company so that it could campaign against other fossil fuel companies – those that sell coal. A search of the BBC and the Guardian‘s website reveals absolutely no coverage of that news story. Not one word (see here and here).”
Andrew Weaver is one of ‘useful idiots’ for the oil industry, like Hansen and his death trains, it’s always been about anti-coal and here now they’ve found themselves the victims of their own success and trying to put a distance between ‘coal fossil’ fuels and ‘oil fossil’ fuels, because the greens are objecting to their new source of oil wealth.
Too funny.
How do you fit into this Paul?
Another link on this theme.
http://www.disinfo.com/2012/02/how-the-sierra-club-learned-to-stop-worrying-about-the-99-and-love-wall-street/
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
February 20, 2012 at 3:05 am
___________________________________
I note that you do not understand the physics involved in the conduction process from the core to the surface as I explained in my post, and why the whole temperature plot would have to be raised.
Please go back to my post and try to follow why there is a huge stabilising effect. It has nothing whatever to do with the slow terrestrial heat flow.
See also the ‘Explanation’ page on my website.
If anyone else wishes to comment on my posts please at least read them in detail and try to understand the physics. If I haven’t explained clearly enough I am happy to try again, but kadaka obviously just didn’t try and spoke about something else of which I am fully aware of course.
Eric (skeptic) says:
February 20, 2012 at 5:32 am
_________________________________
I have read plenty of papers on downwelling radiation measures thanks, and don’t doubt that they fluctuate with humidity. What is your point? Have I not made it clear that any such radiation has absolutely no effect on climate?
PS kadaka The Earth can tolerate relatively small variations in a 1000 year cycle, but the stabilised surface temperature can draw temperatures back towards the long-term mean of such trends. There cannot be a runaway warming effect in time frames that short. It seems 2 degrees C is about the maximum it can vary from the mean. The mechanism is described on my Explanation page on my website,
However, for a whole new equilibrium to be established, let’s say 5 degrees warmer, the whole underground plot has to shift partly by banking up the terrestrial flow and maybe by inward flow. This would take perhaps hundreds of thousands of years.
There is clear evidence that temperature plots in hundreds of bore holes all extrapolate to base surface temperatures all over the world. This is not by chance. It is because sub-surface and atmospheric trends have to meet at the surface because of the thermal equilibrium established at that inteface most by diffusion – see Wiki “Heat Transfer.” The process of conduction ensures that the trend is set by the core temperature and the surface temperatures and there is a feedback mechanism in conduction that enables this.
Is there a reason for the change to the front page – that it no longer the all the previous posts below the latest, and now without the “older posts” back button?
Eric – don’t waste your time. The only thing that will possibly convince you that backradiation has no effect is doing your own backyard experiment as I outline here …
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/11/open-thread-weekend-7/#comment-897444
Do you, Eric, kadaka, or anyone, seriously believe that, when you turn on an electric radiator you could actually make it warm faster by holding a mirror beside it and reflecting its own radiation back onto itself? Try it if you do and time how long it takes to get to its maximum with or without the mirror. When it reaches its maximum, can you then make it hotter still with the mirror?
Backradiation would be even less effective than a mirror because it usually has lower frequencies than those originally emitted by the surface. It is ludicrous to imagine energy can be created this way. The Second Law of Thermodynamics would be so obviously violated.
Yet the IPCC says backradiation should be about a quarter as powerful as the Sun at noon. Well I know the Sun can heat sand on the beach until it blisters my feet, but when I tested the effect of backradiation on sand there was not even a tenth of a degree difference between it and the shielded sand in an identical wide necked vacuum flask.
Doug Cotton said February 20, 2012 at 3:15 pm:
From Doug Cotton on February 20, 2012 at 4:56 pm:
I reviewed your “backyard experiment,” it has an obvious glaring error:
“Tape the screens together (along the long sides) to make a large square and suspend them (eg with piles of bricks in the corners) so they are only about 15cm above the top of one of the the flasks and centrally positioned of course. There should be a slight dish effect in the screens so warm air can escape by convection around the sides.”
You have established no valving effect. If warm air can leave, then warm air can enter. Thus the surrounding area having a decreased rate of cooling due to backradiation can distribute its retained heat to your wide-mouthed soup Thermos hiding under the two taped-together windscreen shields (windshield sunscreens).
*groan*
If I would place an electric radiator inside a thermally reflective box, of course I would expect the radiator to reach its maximum temperature faster. If it was surrounded by only half of a thermally-reflective box, reflecting back half of the emitted thermal radiation, I would still expect it to reach its maximum temperature faster than without the half a box.
Here’s an experiment for you to consider. Suspend two identical electric heating elements in two otherwise identical uninsulated vacuum chambers, the difference is one has a black interior coating while the other has a normal thermally reflective silver finish. The radiation emitted from the one element will hit the black surface, be transformed to heat that is absorbed by the heavy metal housing, which will then be released by the housing to the surrounding environment by the normal processes.
The elements are in vacuum so there is no convection, there is only negligible conduction by the electrical leads the elements are hanging from. You’re left with radiation to consider.
By what you’ve said, the element in the silvery chamber cannot possibly obtain maximum temperature faster than the element in the black chamber. You do not believe an electric radiator could be made to warm faster by reflecting its own radiation back onto itself. Thus the element in the silvery chamber cannot be made to warm faster by reflecting its own radiation back onto itself.
Thus by your reasoning, the element in the chamber retaining more thermal energy cannot possibly obtain maximum temperature faster than the element in the chamber that is shedding more thermal energy. Does that sound about right to you?
Kadaka: The problem you envisage with the backyard experiment is a red herring. Any such warm air would rise rather than fall to the sand. Think, man, think.
You are also wrong about the radiator. I have not said anything about a surrounding box which might trap and prevent warm air escaping by convection. Take the radiator outside with a long chord and just use a mirror at the side (as I said) not at the top.
Now read my next post.