Who Are You Going To Believe – The Government Climate Scientists or The Data?
By Dr David M.W. Evans (republished here with permission, PDF link below)
We check the main predictions of the climate models against the best and latest data. Fortunately the climate models got all their major predictions wrong. Why? Every serious skeptical scientist has been consistently saying essentially the same thing for over 20 years, yet most people have never heard the message – here it is, put simply enough for any lay reader willing to pay attention.
What the Government Climate Scientists Say
Figure 1: The climate models. If the CO2 level doubles (as it is on course to do by about 2070 to 2100), the climate models estimate the temperature increase due to that extra CO2 will be about 1.1°C × 3 = 3.3°C.i
The direct effect of CO2 is well-established physics, based on laboratory results, and known for over a century.ii
Feedbacks are due to the ways the Earth reacts to the direct warming effect of the CO2. The threefold amplification by feedbacks is based on the assumption, or guess, made around 1980, that more warming due to CO2 will cause more evaporation from the oceans and that this extra water vapor will in turn lead to even more heat trapping because water vapor is the main greenhouse gas. And extra heat will cause even more evaporation, and so on. This amplification is built into all the climate models.iii The amount of amplification is estimated by assuming that nearly all the industrial-age warming is due to our CO2.
The government climate scientists and the media often tell us about the direct effect of the CO2, but rarely admit that two thirds of their projected temperature increases are due to amplification by feedbacks.
What the Skeptics Say
Figure 2: The skeptic’s view. If the CO2 level doubles, skeptics estimates that the temperature increase due to that extra CO2 will be about 1.1°C × 0.5 ≈ 0.6°C.iv
The serious skeptical scientists have always agreed with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2. The argument is entirely about the feedbacks.
The feedbacks dampen or reduce the direct effect of the extra CO2, cutting it roughly in half.v The main feedbacks involve evaporation, water vapor, and clouds. In particular, water vapor condenses into clouds, so extra water vapor due to the direct warming effect of extra CO2 will cause extra clouds, which reflect sunlight back out to space and cool the earth, thereby reducing the overall warming.
There are literally thousands of feedbacks, each of which either reinforces or opposes the direct warming effect of the extra CO2. Almost every long-lived system is governed by net feedback that dampens its response to a perturbation. If a system instead reacts to a perturbation by amplifying it, the system is likely to reach a tipping point and become unstable (like the electronic squeal that erupts when a microphone gets too close to its speakers). The earth’s climate is long-lived and stable— it has never gone into runaway greenhouse, unlike Venus — which strongly suggests that the feedbacks dampen temperature perturbations such as that from extra CO2.
What the Data Says
The climate models have been essentially the same for 30 years now, maintaining roughly the same sensitivity to extra CO2even while they got more detailed with more computer power.
- How well have the climate models predicted the temperature?
- Does the data better support the climate models or the skeptic’s view?
Air Temperatures
One of the earliest and most important predictions was presented to the US Congress in 1988 by Dr James Hansen, the “father of global warming”:
Figure 3: Hansen’s predictionsvi to the US Congress in 1988, compared to the subsequent temperatures as measured by NASA satellitesvii.
Hansen’s climate model clearly exaggerated future temperature rises.
In particular, his climate model predicted that if human CO2 emissions were cut back drastically starting in 1988, such that by year 2000 the CO2 level was not rising at all, we would get his scenario C. But in reality the temperature did not even rise this much, even though our CO2 emissions strongly increased – which suggests that the climate models greatly overestimate the effect of CO2 emissions.
A more considered prediction by the climate models was made in 1990 in the IPCC’s First Assessment Report:viii
Figure 4: Predictions of the IPCC’s First Assessment Report in 1990, compared to the subsequent temperatures as measured by NASA satellites.
It’s 20 years now, and the average rate of increase in reality is below the lowest trend in the range predicted by the IPCC.
Ocean Temperatures
The oceans hold the vast bulk of the heat in the climate system. We’ve only been measuring ocean temperature properly since mid-2003, when the Argo system became operational.ix,x In Argo, a buoy duck dives down to a depth of 2,000 meters, measures temperatures as it very slowly ascends, then radios the results back to headquarters via satellite. Over three thousand Argo buoys constantly patrol all the oceans of the world.
Figure 5: Climate model predictionsxi of ocean temperature, versus the measurements by Argoxii. The unit of the vertical axis is 1022 Joules (about 0.01°C).
The ocean temperature has been basically flat since we started measuring it properly, and not warming as quickly as the climate models predict.
Atmospheric Hotspot
The climate models predict a particular pattern of atmospheric warming during periods of global warming; the most prominent change they predict is a warming in the tropics about 10 km up, the “hotspot”.
The hotspot is the sign of the amplification in their theory (see Figure 1). The theory says the hotspot is caused by extra evaporation, and by extra water vapor pushing the warmer wetter lower troposphere up into volume previously occupied by cool dry air. The presence of a hotspot would indicate amplification is occurring, and vice versa.
We have been measuring atmospheric temperatures with weather balloons since the 1960s. Millions of weather balloons have built up a good picture of atmospheric temperatures over the last few decades, including the warming period from the late 70’s to the late 90’s. This important and pivotal data was not released publicly by the climate establishment until 2006, and then in an obscure place.xiii Here it is:
Figure 6: On the left is the data collected by millions of weather balloons.xiv On the right is what the climate models say was happening.xv The theory (as per the climate models) is incompatible with the observations. In both diagrams the horizontal axis shows latitude, and the right vertical axis shows height in kilometers.
In reality there was no hotspot, not even a small one. So in reality there is no amplification – the amplification shown in Figure 1 does not exist.xvi
Outgoing Radiation
The climate models predict that when the surface of the earth warms, less heat is radiated from the earth into space (on a weekly or monthly time scale). This is because, according to the theory, the warmer surface causes more evaporation and thus there is more heat-trapping water vapor. This is the heat-trapping mechanism that is responsible for the assumed amplification in Figure 1.
Satellites have been measuring the radiation emitted from the earth for the last two decades. A major study has linked the changes in temperature on the earth’s surface with the changes in the outgoing radiation. Here are the results:
Figure 7: Outgoing radiation from earth (vertical axis) against sea surface temperature (horizontal), as measured by the ERBE satellites (upper left graph) and as “predicted” by 11 climate models (the other graphs).xvii Notice that the slope of the graphs for the climate models are opposite to the slope of the graph for the observed data.
This shows that in reality the earth gives off more heat when its surface is warmer. This is the opposite of what the climate models predict. This shows that the climate models trap heat too aggressively, and that their assumed amplification shown in Figure 1 does not exist.
Conclusions
All the data here is impeccably sourced—satellites, Argo, and weather balloons.xviii
The air and ocean temperature data shows that the climate models overestimate temperature rises. The climate establishment suggest that cooling due to undetected aerosols might be responsible for the failure of the models to date, but this excuse is wearing thin—it continues not to warm as much as they said it would, or in the way they said it would. On the other hand, the rise in air temperature has been greater than the skeptics say could be due to CO2. The skeptic’s excuse is that the rise is mainly due to other forces – and they point out that the world has been in a fairly steady warming trend of 0.5°C per century since 1680 (with alternating ~30 year periods of warming and mild cooling) where as the vast bulk of all human CO2 emissions have been after 1945.
We’ve checked all the main predictions of the climate models against the best data:
The climate models get them all wrong. The missing hotspot and outgoing radiation data both, independently, prove that the amplification in the climate models is not present. Without the amplification, the climate model temperature predictions would be cut by at least two thirds, which would explain why they overestimated the recent air and ocean temperature increases.
Therefore:
- The climate models are fundamentally flawed. Their assumed threefold amplification by feedbacks does not in fact exist.
- The climate models overestimate temperature rises due to CO2 by at least a factor of three.
The skeptical view is compatible with the data.
Some Political Points
The data presented here is impeccably sourced, very relevant, publicly available, and from our best instruments. Yet it never appears in the mainstream media – have you ever seen anything like any of the figures here in the mainstream media? That alone tells you that the “debate” is about politics and power, and not about science or truth.
This is an unusual political issue, because there is a right and a wrong answer and everyone will know which it is eventually. People are going ahead and emitting CO2 anyway, so we are doing the experiment: either the world heats up by several degrees by 2050, or it doesn’t.
Notice that the skeptics agree with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2; they just disagree just about the feedbacks. The climate debate is all about the feedbacks; everything else is merely a sideshow. Yet hardly anyone knows that. The government climate scientists and the mainstream media have framed the debate in terms of the direct effect of CO2 and sideshows such as arctic ice, bad weather, or psychology. They almost never mention the feedbacks. Why is that? Who has the power to make that happen?
About the Author
Dr David M.W. Evans consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part-time 2008 to 2010, modeling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products. Evans is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees including a PhD from Stanford University in electrical engineering. The area of human endeavor with the most experience and sophistication in dealing with feedbacks and analyzing complex systems is electrical engineering, and the most crucial and disputed aspects of understanding the climate system are the feedbacks. The evidence supporting the idea that CO2 emissions were the main cause of global warming reversed itself from 1998 to 2006, causing Evans to move from being a warmist to a skeptic.
Inquiries to david.evans@sciencespeak.com.
Republished on www.wattsupwiththat.com
This document is also available as a PDF file here: TheSkepticsCase
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References
i More generally, if the CO2 level is x (in parts per million) then the climate models estimate the temperature increase due to the extra CO2 over the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm as 4.33 ln(x / 280). For example, this model attributes a temperature rise of 4.33 ln(392/280) = 1.46°C to the increase from pre-industrial to the current CO2 level of 392 ppm.
ii The direct effect of CO2 is the same for each doubling of the CO2 level (that is, logarithmic). Calculations of the increased surface temperature due to of a doubling of the CO2 level vary from 1.0°C to 1.2°C. In this document we use the midpoint value 1.1°C; which value you use does not affect the arguments made here.
iii The IPCC, in their last Assessment Report in 2007, project a temperature increase for a doubling of CO2 (called the climate sensitivity) in the range 2.0°C to 4.5°C. The central point of their model estimates is 3.3°C, which is 3.0 times the direct CO2 effect of 1.1°C, so we simply say their amplification is threefold. To be more precise, each climate model has a slightly different effective amplification, but they are generally around 3.0.
iv More generally, if the CO2 level is x (in parts per million) then skeptics estimate the temperature increase due to the extra CO2 over the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm as 0.72 ln(x / 280). For example, skeptics attribute a temperature rise of 0.72 ln(392/280) = 0.24°C to the increase from pre-industrial to the current CO2 level of 392 ppm.
v The effect of feedbacks is hard to pin down with empirical evidence because there are more forces affecting the temperature than just changes in CO2 level, but seems to be multiplication by something between 0.25 and 0.9. We have used 0.5 here for simplicity.
vi Hansen’s predictions were made in Hansen et al, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 93 No D8 (20 Aug 1988) Fig 3a Page 9347: pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_etal.pdf. In the graph here, Hansen’s three scenarios are graphed to start from the same point in mid-1987 – we are only interested in changes (anomalies).
vii The earth’s temperature shown here is as measured by the NASA satellites that have been measuring the earth’s temperature since 1979, managed at the University of Alabama Hunstville (UAH). Satellites measure the temperature 24/7 over broad swathes of land and ocean, across the whole world except the poles. While satellites had some initial calibration problems, those have long since been fully fixed to everyone’s satisfaction. Satellites are mankind’s most reliable, extensive, and unbiased method for measuring the earth’s air temperature temperatures since 1979. This is an impeccable source of data, and you can download the data yourself from vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt (save it as .txt file then open it in Microsoft Excel; the numbers in the “Globe” column are the changes in MSU Global Monthly Mean Lower Troposphere Temperatures in °C).
viii IPCC First Assessment Report, 1990, page xxii (www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf) in the Policymakers Summary, Figure 8 and surrounding text, for the business-as-usual scenario (which is what in fact occurred, there being no significant controls or decrease in the rate of increase of emissions to date). “Under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A) emissions of greenhouse gases, the average rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century is estimated to be about 0.3°C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2°C to 0.5°C).”
ix http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/marine/observations/gathering_data/argo.html
x Ocean temperature measurements before Argo are nearly worthless. Before Argo, ocean temperature was measured with buckets or with bathythermographs (XBTs) — which are expendable probes lowered into the water, transmitting temperature and pressure data back along a pair of thin wires. Nearly all measurements were from ships along the main commercial shipping lanes, so geographical coverage of the world’s oceans was poor—for example the huge southern oceans were not monitored. XBTs do not go as deep as Argo floats, and their data is much less precise and much less accurate (for one thing, they move too quickly through the water to come to thermal equilibrium with the water they are trying to measure).
xi The climate models project ocean heat content increasing at about 0.7 × 10^22 Joules per year. See Hansen et al, 2005: Earth’s energy imbalance: Confirmation and implications. Science, 308, 1431-1435, page 1432 (pubs.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi?id=ha00110y), where the increase in ocean heat content per square meter of surface, in the upper 750m, according to typical models, is 6.0 Watt·year/m2 per year, which converts to 0.7 × 10^22 Joules per year for the entire ocean as explained at bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/giss-ohc-model-trends-one-question-answered-another-uncovered/.
xii The ocean heat content down to 700m as measured by Argo is now available; you can download it from ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/3month/ohc_levitus_climdash_seasonal.csv. The numbers are the changes in average heat for the three months, in units of 10^22 Joules, seasonally adjusted. The Argo system started in mid-2003, so we started the data at 2003-6.
xiii The weather balloon data showing the atmospheric warming pattern was finally released in 2006, in the US Climate Change Science Program, 2006, part E of Figure 5.7, on page 116 (www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/sap1-1-final-chap5.pdf).
There is no other data for this period, and we cannot collect more data on atmospheric warming during global warming until global warming resumes. This is the only data there is. Btw, isn’t this an obscure place to release such important and pivotal data – you don’t suppose they are trying to hide something, do you?
xv Any climate model, for example, IPCC Assessment Report 4, 2007, Chapter 9, page 675, which is also on the web at http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-2-2.html (Figure 9.1 parts c and f). There was little warming 1959 – 1977, so the commonly available 1959 – 1999 simulations work as well.
xvi So the multiplier in the second box in Figures 1 and 2 is at most 1.0.
xvii Lindzen and Choi 2009, Geophysical Research Letters Vol. 36: http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf. The paper was corrected after some criticism, coming to essentially the same result again in 2011: www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf.
xviii In particular, we have not quoted results from land thermometers, or from sparse sampling by buckets and XBT’s at sea. Land thermometers are notoriously susceptible to localized effects – see Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? by the same author: jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/corruption/climate-corruption.pdf.
@Bob_FJ, I’ve documented some thoughts on that under the section “An Even Deeper Look”
http://itsnotnova.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/the-nova-travesty-cherry-picker-ahoy/
“Thus a rise of a few hundredths of 1% of CO2 would not only be un-catastrophic but not even due to our tiny emissions. Can these two ‘sceptical’ positions be reconciled in a way that I can understand, please?”
“In the distant past, things were different. However around 1750, the CO2 was around 280 ppm and now it is around 390 ppm. About half of the CO2 that we put into the air ends up increasing the CO2 in the air. The other half goes into more photosynthesis or gets dissolved into the ocean. After all, the CO2 we humans emit has to go somewhere and for people to say we have no effect on atmospheric CO2 just defies basic science. But that is not the point of the debate which is how much warming this causes. And many people say the warming and feedbacks are nothing to worry about”.
Things were different? In what way, please? Life was pretty similar, CO2 is CO2 and the sun’s radiation must have been also similar. Forget the ‘distant’ past just 8 thousand years ago the CO2 concentration was higher, much higher so why no catastrophe then?
Perhaps it’s because there were no climate alarmists then ….
A genuine answer would be appreciated as I have a genuine problem with this.
Phil asked (on JoNova) whether anyone had written a rebuttal of the Skeptical Science rebuttal of David Evan’s article.
So I wrote a quick one of both, which SkS will probably delete as they usually do because they have no valid response. Anyway, I kept a screen capture which you can see at the foot of this page – click the small version to enlarge http://www.climate-change-theory.com/SkS_errors.html
As expected SkS deleted my posts (3 in total) and then banned me once again. As usual they tried to say I was off topic, but how can a direct rebuttal be off topic?
Here’s the final reply I wrote which was blocked automatically …
I was pointing out exactly where and why both your own article and his were incorrect in (both) your conjectures that water vapour would have the imagined feedback effect and that carbon dioxide or water vapour would have any effect other than possibly slowing radiative heat loss from the surface – but no direct warming of the surface.
I trust that, if you attempt to rebut any article I have published, that you will give me right of reply. That would seem to be what it is all about. In my mind, comments like “tragically flawed misunderstandings of physics” actually apply quite well to the greenhouse conjecture, and I can prove why they are such with standard physics which I have studied for over 50 years. How long have you studied it?
George E. Smith says:
February 28, 2012 at 9:46 pm
“”””” Myrrh says:
February 28, 2012 at 6:18 pm
George E. Smith says:
February 28, 2012 at 4:47 pm
“”””” Agile Aspect says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:14 am
George E. Smith; says:
February 27, 2012 at 12:10 pm
“Consequently RADIATION is NOT a process for transporting “heat”.
Is completely and utterly contrary to all of traditional teaching about heat transfer, always giving the three ways that heat can be transferred – conduction, convection and radiation.
Where do you get the teaching that radiation is no longer a method of transferring heat?
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Let’s try it this way Myrrh, in the hope that somehow you catch on.
Gosh, how exciting, thank you.
But having just read through it, I have some immediate problems. As the great man said, “if one fool can understand it, so can another”, but, I start with a disadvantage. I don’t have easy familiarity with most of the terms you’re mixing and matching, as it appears to me, I can’t be everyfool, I should be grateful if you would bear that in mind.
So let me first start with the problem I want to solve. The claim that shortwave light direct from the Sun actually heats the land and oceans of our good Earth. (Direct being the technical term for this, also known as beam.) As here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
“Solar radiation at the high frequencies of visible light passes through the atmosphere to warm the planetary surface, which then emits this energy at the lower frequencies of infrared thermal radiation.”
This is where I get totally flummoxed. That sends my head into a spin. How?!, I ask. How can visible light heat land and oceans?! And the claim that thermal infrared, heat, direct from the Sun doesn’t reach the Earth’s surface, so it’s visible light from the Sun heating the Earth and heat from the Sun not.. So, I should be grateful if you would direct all your explanations to be relevant to this particular question I’m looking to be answered; so far no one claiming this has managed to give me an answer that makes sense to me. And to this end: “Where do you get the teaching that radiation is no longer a method of transferring heat?”
Test #1 I have a photon; maybe many of them. They happen to have a wavelength of 10.6 microns, all of them in this bunch. So that is what we often will call LWIR.
Question: how do I know (or you) whether these photons were emitted by a bottle of ordinary water at some cool Temperature between zero deg C and certainly +15 deg C, or whther they were emitted by some 10.6 micron CO2 Industrial laser ?
Well there’s no way to know, those two sources of 10.6 micron photons emit exactly the same photons, indistinguishable from each other in all of their properties. One of them is a consequence of a molecular energy level transition in CO2, and the other is a result of the Temperature of the bottle of water; and would commonly be called “thermal radiation” (not meaning it is “heat”) but that it is emitted possibly by any material at all perhaps containing NO CO2 or even no C or O.
Well, here my first stumbling block. I haven’t the faintest idea what this means, you have brought in things which I can’t agree with and things which just seem weird.
As far as I would understand it, they are both thermal radiation. You are the one proposing that thermal radiation isn’t heat, contrary to all traditional physics. If one makes such a claim, against all traditional understanding, then one first has to prove it, doesn’t one? Until you can prove such a thing, that ‘heat isn’t thermal radiation, that thermal radiation isn’t heat’, wouldn’t it be better to go with traditional explanations?
Here is the traditional understanding of Heat and Heat Transfer. You cannot claim it is not this without something better than your say so that, ‘it’s not heat, it’s energy’ and ‘heat isn’t transferred by radiation’.
*******
http://thermalenergy.org/
Thermal Energy Explained
“What is thermal energy ?
Thermal Energy: A specialized term that refers to the part of the internal energy of a system which is the total present kinetic energy resulting from the random movements of atoms and molecules.
The ultimate source of thermal energy available to mankind is the sun, the huge thermo-nuclear furnace that supplies the earth with the heat and light that are essential to life. The nuclear fusion in the sun increases the sun’s thermal energy. Once the thermal energy leaves the sun (in the form of radiation) it is called heat. Heat is thermal energy in transfer. Thermal energy is part of the overall internal energy of a system.
At a more basic level, thermal energy comes form the movement of atoms and molecules in matter. It is a form of kinetic energy produced from the random movements of those molecules. Thermal energy of a system can be increased or decreased.
When you put your hand over a hot stove you can feel the heat. You are feeling thermal energy in transfer. The atoms and molecules in the metal of the burner are moving very rapidly because the electrical energy from the wall outlet has increased the thermal energy in the burner. We all know what happens when we rub our hands together. Our mechanical energy increases the thermal energy content of the atoms in our hands and skin. We then feel the consequence of this – heat.”
&
http://thermalenergy.org/heattransfer.php
Heat Transfer
Thermal energy and heat are often confused. Rightly so because they are physically the same thing. Heat is always the thermal energy of some system. Using the word heat helps physicists to make a distinction relative to the system they are talking about.
Heat: Term used to describe the transfer of thermal energy between two thermodynamic systems at different temperatures.
Take a small piece of ice out of your fridge and hold it in your hand. The thermal energy content of your hand is higher then the thermal energy content of the ice cube.
The atoms that comprise your hand are moving more rapidly then the atoms that make up the ice cube. Therefore, there will be a transfer of thermal energy from your hand to the ice cube. While this thermal energy is in transfer, it is called heat. This will cause the atoms in the ice cube to speed up while the atoms in your hand slow down.
The increase in speed of the ice cube atoms changes the state of water from solid to liquid. This transfer of thermal energy will continue until an equilibrium is reached between your hand, the ice (now water), and the air in the room.
When you put your hand over a hot stove you can feel the heat. You are feeling thermal energy in transfer. The atoms and molecules in the metal of the burner are moving very rapidly because the electrical energy from the wall outlet has increased the thermal energy in the burner. We all know what happens when we rub our hands together. Our mechanical energy increases the thermal energy content of the atoms in our hands and skin. We then feel the consequence of this – heat.
*******
Italics as in the original.
That is the traditional, well established, well understood in all fields working in heat, thermodynamics. So in a nutshell:
“Thermal energy and heat are often confused. Rightly so because they are physically the same thing. Heat is always the thermal energy of some system. Heat is thermal energy in transfer. Thermal energy is part of the overall internal energy of a system.”
My bold.
Heat is thermal energy energy of some system, as in the Sun, thermal energy in transfer is heat, heat is transferred by radiation, radiation is thermal energy in transfer, the radiation tranferring heat is thermal infrared, thermal infrared is thermal energy in transfer, thermal infrared is heat.
The heat we feel direct from the Sun, the heat we feel radiating out from a stove, is thermal infrared.
So, as I gave my answer, I say they are both heat, thermal energy, I don’t care, in this context, what generated that heat.
[Question: how do I know (or you) whether these photons were emitted by a bottle of ordinary water at some cool Temperature between zero deg C and certainly +15 deg C, or whther they were emitted by some 10.6 micron CO2 Industrial laser ?]
Further you say:
Now I have in my hand, a very well regarded, modern Physics “handbook”, and in this book, they also say that “heat” can be transported by radiation. They even call it “heat radiation”, which gets us back to Test # 1, How does this Physics handbook distinguish the 10.6 micron “heat radiation” from the bottle of cold water, from the 10.6 micron photons emitted as a result of electrons shifting energy levels in a CO2 laser. So it’s a good handbook; but it is also wrong at times. They should have used the term “Thermal Radiation”, and not “heat radiation”
Thermal radiation can be emitted by particles that are at 2.7 Kelvins Temperature, which would not constitute heat in your view (or mine).
Rather than they being wrong, I suggest you adjust your understanding to it and use the terms as they are using them, not as you would like them to be, which is what I am finding confusing, because you don’t explain how your terms are different. As the explanation I gave above:
“Thermal energy and heat are often confused. Rightly so because they are physically the same thing.”
So, I hope you can understand why I’m having a problem with your explanation. You are using these terms idiosyncratically, I can’t follow your reasoning, well, you haven’t actually given any reasoning, you’re just saying they’re different. So this:
One of them is a consequence of a molecular energy level transition in CO2, and the other is a result of the Temperature of the bottle of water; and would commonly be called “thermal radiation” (not meaning it is “heat”) but that it is emitted possibly by any material at all perhaps containing NO CO2 or even no C or O.
just doesn’t make any sense as anything to me. Please, stick with traditional physics as I’ve given, you’re creating differences where there is none.
Test #2 I have a stream of photons, each having a wavelength of 1.0 microns; now you would describe those 1.0 micron photons as “heat”.
No I wouldn’t! That is a Light energy, not a Heat energy. Heat energy begins in mid infrared, only mid and longwave infrared are thermal. Near infrared is not hot, it is not a thermal energy, it belongs in the category Light, not Heat. You can’t feel it. It is microscopic compared with longwave thermal infrared which is the size of a pin head.* It is reflective as is visible light; think near infrared cameras which capture the invisible near infrared light bouncing off a subject just as visible light cameras capture the visible light bouncing off the subject. Bouncing not a technical term.., in optics this would reflection/scattering. These cameras are different from the thermal infrared cameras which measure the heat emanating from a subject.
The “Solar” energies of the ‘energy budget’, are Visible and and the two shortwaves either side of UV and Near Infrared – these are Light energies.
This is why I have a problem with the ‘energy budget’ which claims that visible, a Light energy, heats land and oceans. How?!
I’m going to have to leave this for a while, I’ll post what I have so far and continue later.
* Some differences between near and longwave infrared: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/28/spencer-and-braswell-on-slashdot/#comment-711886
itsnotnova says:
February 29, 2012 at 3:07 am
@Bob_FJ, I’ve documented some thoughts on that under the section “An Even Deeper Look”
I read the article and even IF we assume for discussion sake that everything in there is true regarding how fast the deep oceans can heat up due to heating of the air above it, then it would seem that we have nothing to worry about. All the presumed excess heat from CO2 would just dissipate into the deep ocean, never to return until the deep ocean reached a higher temperature than the atmosphere. How many tens of thousands of years would that take? In the meantime, we have more urgent things to concentrate on.
Peridot says:
February 29, 2012 at 4:18 am
Things were different? In what way, please? Life was pretty similar…
Life was similar from the beginnings of life until around 1750. But then the industrial revolution began and man, due to burning of fossil fuels, added much more CO2 into the air than ordinary respiration would account for. So before 1750, increases in atmospheric CO2 had all natural causes such as oceans heating up due to Milankovitch cycles or volcanoes emitting CO2. But now mankind is adding to the natural balance by driving cars and heating homes, etc. However our net additions are not harming the planet in any way.
Why do warmists like Gates ignore the more obvious reasons behind changes in ocean temperatures. Even if we agree that the deep oceans are getting warmer there’s a obvious scenario they ignore.
The oceans warmed during the MWP. The warmth went into the deep oceans during the LIA. The modern warm period is just a return of that warmth to the surface. Now, we are seeing some of that warmth cycling back to the deep oceans. Occam’s razor comes to mind.
Dr. Spencer discusses some things mentioned here at:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/02/ten-years-after-the-warming/
Point 3 seems of particular interest here.
There are 5 possibilities for the recent cessation of warming which are most discussed:
1) cooling from anthropogenic aerosols has been cancelling out warming from more greenhouse gases
2) natural cooling from internal climate fluctuations or the sun is cancelling out the GHG warming
3) increased ocean mixing is causing the extra energy to be distributed into the deep ocean
4) the temperature ’sensitivity’ of the climate system is not as large as the IPCC assumes.
5) there is something fundamentally wrong with the GHG warming theory itself
R. Gates says:
February 27, 2012 at 5:18 pm
One has to wonder what you expect to accomplish here by repeatedly and so pompously demonstrating your non-existent understanding of basic physics.
As I’m anonymous, my claiming any qualifications is meaningless, so I’ll leave it up to the guys at NASA and Caltech to inform you
Heat Transfer: how does heat
http://goo.gl/UxXl0
As for advection,
“Occasionally, the term advection is used as synonymous with convection. However, many engineers prefer to use the term convection to describe transport by combined molecular and eddy diffusion, and reserve the usage of the term advection to describe transport with a general (net) flow of the fluid (like in river or pipeline).[1][2] An example of convection is flow over a hot plate or below a chilled water surface in a lake. In the ocean and atmospheric sciences, advection is understood as horizontal movement resulting in transport “from place to place”, while convection is vertical “mixing”. [3][4] Another view is that advection occurs with fluid transport of a point, while convection may be considered as fluid transport of a vector.”
http://goo.gl/ErPQp
Don’t understand how you believe that you’re helping the warmist “cause” by continually demonstrating that not only do you not have no clue, but that you have no clue that you have no clue.
_____
So my question remains: what is [are] the mechanism[s] by which heat is transported down to 2000m, without warming the upper levels above, and how is this energy [heat] gradient maintained?
“Bart”‘s follow-up posts above on this question are certainly worth a read, unlike yours.
Werner Brozek says:
February 29, 2012 at 8:14 am
Dr. Spencer discusses some things mentioned here at:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/02/ten-years-after-the-warming/
…
4) the temperature ’sensitivity’ of the climate system is not as large as the IPCC assumes.
5) there is something fundamentally wrong with the GHG warming theory itself.
Personally, I think the last two are the most important. I also think they are related. The biggest reason the temperature is not sensitive to increased GHGs is that the GHGs themselves have an inherent balancing effect.
The initial influx of GHGs have a substantial warming effect. No doubt about it. However, once you start getting reasonable saturation the balancing effect takes over. A small warming is now balanced by the cooling effect of increased heat flow through the system. The GHGs actually work as little thermostats that keep our atmosphere quite stable.
Doug Cotton says:
February 29, 2012 at 6:19 am
Doug, you can’t even get people here, in what should be a sympathetic forum, to agree with you. You are just giving SKS ammo to say “see, this is the kind of dreck we are censoring” and justify it to their true believers. Please… stop helping us.
itsnotnova says:
February 29, 2012 at 3:07 am
“@Bob_FJ, I’ve documented some thoughts on that under the section “An Even Deeper Look”
From your post:
“Nova’s graph (she says it’s from Douglass and Keen 2010, but she’s wrong, it’s from Douglas and Knox) only plots a trend on “filtered” data between 2004 and 2008 and doesn’t consider more recent data.”
ONE of her graphs, the one from a cited source. The next graph she displays goes to 2012.
“Nova wants you to discard the XBT data too. I’m betting that would be the case if it showed a downward trend.”
And, you would then be arguing FOR discarding it. This is just being tendentious.
“Science is about using all of the data, regardless of whether it supports your personal political view or not.”
But, those XBT data are old and irrelevant. The question is, if GHG heating is ongoing, where is the heat going right now.
“Scientists know there is uncertainty in short term data, that’s why they look at long term data for real climate trends.”
Yet, you are certain that the data down to 2000m is significant?
“XBT and Argo data both show the ocean heat content is increasing.”
No, they don’t. There is no apparent heating at all in the 0-700m range in the past decade or more.
Look, you cannot get away from the facts. ARGO data was intended to show the heating of the ocean in line with atmospheric warming. What it instead showed was what we see in the atmospheric data as well: there has been no net warming since the ARGO array came on line. The only thing you have to hang your hat on is an apparent warming of the depths. And, here, you shot yourself in the foot, as the six “Basic Argo Facts” you list at the very beginning argue that there are reasons to suspect the data may not be representative.
I do not know why the deeper ocean measurements seem to indicate increasing heat content. It may be a statistical artifact, or mismodeling of some sort for the derived measurement (the bouys measure temperature and other variables, and these have to be converted to a heat measurement) at high pressure and depth. It may be due to underappreciated volcanic activity on the ocean floor.
But, it is not due to any recent (in the past decade or more) surface heating. There is no storage of latent GHG warming happening. We would see indications of the flux in the upper levels, and we don’t.
For a short period of time, such as our history of CO2 measurement, it appears as linear, but on the larger scale, not so much. – Anthony
Not correct, to show that it’s a linear function of ln(CO2) then the plot should be of ln(CO2) vs ΔT which would be linear, what’s been plotted is what a ln function looks like when plotted in lin-lin space. Constant doubling values is characteristic of a log curve, those curves are the ln functions indicated on the fig..
For CO2 the expectation is at low concentration a linear function trending to a log function at values around today’s concentration and ultimately a square root function at high concentration.
Werner Brozek says:
“All the presumed excess heat from CO2 would just dissipate into the deep ocean, never to return until the deep ocean reached a higher temperature than the atmosphere. “
Physics disagrees with you. The heat transfer rate depends on the temperature of both bodies. A warmer lower body (lower ocean) reduces the amount of heat transferring from above.
The one post by Nova I do agree with … http://joannenova.com.au/2011/05/why-greenhouse-gas-warming-doesnt-break-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/
@Climate-Change-Theory, you should probably look at the above link too. You seems to be at odds with climate science as well as David Evans and his wife Joanne Nova (both “skeptics”).
Doug Cotton says:
February 28, 2012 at 3:25 am
“Agile http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/26/the-skeptics-case/#comment-907118
This post and all of yours I have noticed display a serious lack of knowledge of physics which makes it quite clear that you could not pass exams for a B.Sc. in physics. Correct me if you once did, but you must never have understood the difference between radiation, energy and heat, for starters.”
An Ad Hominem reply – I accept your concession.
“What does UV radiation do, for example?”
In a vacuum, UV travels at the speed of light with frequencies in the range of roughly 100 nm and 400 nm.
These energies are high enough to cause electronic transitions in matter.
The Sun’s UV has it’s greatest impact is in the mesosphere and stratosphere where the high energy UV blows apart nitrogen in the mesosphere and the low energy UV blows apart oxygen where ever it can find it.
I leave it to you to figure out how the resulting chemistry impacts the mesosphere and the stratosphere.
George E. Smith says:
February 28, 2012 at 4:47 pm
I’m not even going to waste my time commenting on such inane drivel.
I have a rule about getting between suicidal people and the cliff they are racing to jump off.
So be my guest; go ahead and jump; the world will be a lot safer without such ignorance running loose.
;————————————————————————————————————-
This is the second Ad Hominem reply – I’m on a roll.
I accept your concession.
“”””” Myrrh says:
February 29, 2012 at 6:24 am
George E. Smith says:
February 28, 2012 at 9:46 pm
“”””” Myrrh says:
February 28, 2012 at 6:18 pm
George E. Smith says:
February 28, 2012 at 4:47 pm
“”””” Agile Aspect says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:14 am
George E. Smith; says:
February 27, 2012 at 12:10 pm
“Consequently RADIATION is NOT a process for transporting “heat”. “””””
Well Myrrh, I am NOT going to try to compete with the learned teachers who have instructed you in “The Traditional Physics” such as dubdubdubThermalenergy.org/
My own learning process, was far from traditional, since I actually got five full years of Physics study; and that was just while I was in “high school” (not likely the same as YOUR high school) and then I did another 6 years at a University); so I figured I could probably teach some of it; at least at an elementary level; such as Optics, and Atomic Physics. Well 150 of the 200 students I had in my class, the first year got good passing grades, so, somehow I muddled by; before deciding, that pulling teeth is easier than teaching Physics.
So then I went on to trying to use Physics to actually make some money for employers in industry; and so far I have been doing that for 51 years, without any of them discovering, that I don’t know what the hell I am talking about.
But I took a quick look at your “Thermalenergy.com ” University, and their two paragraphs of thermal physics, so maybe I can finally learn something from them.
I did think about getting a PhD; perhaps in ice cream making; Dr Laura has a PhD, and I don’t think she knows any Physics.
So maybe you should stick to Mr Connolley’s wikileaks or thermalenergy.com, as I clearly can’t teach you anything.
But perhaps Doug Cotton could help you to understand some of these things.
@Myrrh
Maybe this can help you.
“HEAT” is transported by RADIATION, in exactly the same manner, as the dearly departed are transported to their afterlife, by coffins.
DirkH says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:35 pm
nomnom says:
February 26, 2012 at 12:25 pm
“Obviously something has been shifted up or down. What though? and why?”
Consult the footnotes.
“vi Hansen’s predictions were made in Hansen et al, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 93 No D8 (20 Aug 1988) Fig 3a Page 9347: pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_etal.pdf. In the graph here, Hansen’s three scenarios are graphed to start from the same point in mid-1987 – we are only interested in changes (anomalies).”
Which leads one to wonder why the common zero wasn’t used for the ‘subsequent reality’ which it should have been if a fair comparison was being attempted?
Also why is Scenario A mislabelled, it was for a growth in emissions of 1.5%/year which way exceeds actuality as far as I can tell, (as Hansen said it would eventually).
Finally re-zeroing calculations of this type produces a plot which shows Scenario C warmer than B warmer than C which is not what the original calculations showed. Different assumptions about volcanic activity in the three scenarios also make this comparison inappropriate.
Bart says:
“ONE of her graphs, the one from a cited source. The next graph she displays goes to 2012.”
Correct. It ends at 2008 and doesn’t include more recent data.
“And, you would then be arguing FOR discarding it. This is just being tendentious.”
No, I maintain a consistent approach of including all available data.
“But, those XBT data are old and irrelevant. The question is, if GHG heating is ongoing, where is the heat going right now.”
Old data is by it’s nature, old. That doesn’t make it irrelevant. How would you ever see a long term trend if you kept throwing out old data?
“Where is the heat going right now” is a different question – we simply don’t monitor the planet well enough to track it’s flow in minute detail hence why there is much variation in short term data. Evans/Nova use of the Argo data to suggest the oceans are not accumulating heat is incorrect for a number of reasons as outlined before http://itsnotnova.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/the-nova-travesty-cherry-picker-ahoy/ .
“Yet, you are certain that the data down to 2000m is significant?”
I am certain the current trend is upward for both 700m and 2,000m – significant or not it does not support Evans/Nova’s claim that the oceans are not warming.
Here’s the latest data plotted for you.
http://itsnotnova.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/ocean-heat-content-700-vs-2000.gif
I used the exact same source as David Evan’s graph.
“No, they don’t. There is no apparent heating at all in the 0-700m range in the past decade or more. … there has been no net warming since the ARGO array came on line.”
The data disagrees with you – please see previous graph. As climate scientists repeat, the long term warming trend eventually wins over short term fluctuations.
“I do not know why the deeper ocean measurements seem to indicate increasing heat content. It may be …”
Good luck trying to support your theories with actual evidence. Report back when you have something substantial.
It also seems strange that you accept the data quite readily when short term cooling is observed, but when warming return you have problems accepting the data even though it fits in well with the laws of physics.
“But, it is not due to any recent (in the past decade or more) surface heating. There is no storage of latent GHG warming happening.”
Again the data disagrees with you.
http://itsnotnova.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/ocean-heat-content-700-vs-2000.gif
“We would see indications of the flux in the upper levels, and we don’t.”
Now you gained great confidence in the data and you’ve got your own ideas about how impossible it is. Astounding!
Tom_R says:
February 26, 2012 at 5:35 pm
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2012 at 5:02 pm
What’s the longest time frame of actual hard, instrumental (non proxy data) Global temperatures that we have? Seems we go back to:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
I would say the actual hard data goes back to 1979. I strongly question the graph you present, on an historical basis. In the late 1970s there was much discussion in scientific circles about catastrophic cooling. Although it wasn’t universally accepted among scientists, the fact that it was there at all shows that the temperatures at that time were anomalously cold. Yet the graph shows 1970′s temperatures comparable to the preceding decades.
Doesn’t this disagreement between GISS and history strike you as suspicious?
No, the data presented is global, the NH data from the same source shows the drop you mention, the SH data does not so the global data is flat. The discussion you refer to was mostly in the press and media and reflects their NH bias (Aussies on here won’t be surprised).
George E. Smith; says:
February 26, 2012 at 8:43 pm
So Pfffoooey !! there is NO theoretical basis for a Beer’s Law based logarithmic dependency on CO2 abundance.
Quite so George, it has nothing to do with Beer’s Law. Check out the ‘Curve of Growth’, a place to start is http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys440/lectures/curve/curve.html
For the ‘pay off line’ drag down to Fig 9.22 near the bottom, for CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere we should be in the central portion for the 15 micron lines. For that region a log function is a good match, for Freons the early part (~linear) is applicable.
itsnotnova says:
February 29, 2012 at 3:28 pm
“Correct. It ends at 2008 and doesn’t include more recent data.”
Correct. And, the graph after it goes until 2012. What is your point?
“No, I maintain a consistent approach of including all available data.”
So you claim. But, you don’t use bad data, and XBT data is inferior.
“Old data is by it’s nature, old. That doesn’t make it irrelevant. How would you ever see a long term trend if you kept throwing out old data?”
OK, fine. In that case, the prior data supports the contention that heat content rose in the latter third of the 20th century, and has now ceased. You would have been better off letting sleeping dogs lie.
The entire set of data suggests that there was an abrupt change of state near the turn of the century which was never anticipated, and for which there is no explanation under the AGW paradigm.
‘“Where is the heat going right now” is a different question – we simply don’t monitor the planet well enough to track it’s flow in minute detail hence why there is much variation in short term data.’
Well, isn’t that convenient. The heat is in the one place we can’t see it, and nobody has a clue how it got there. By, by gum, you’re just sure it is there, and you want us to accept it on faith.
“Evans/Nova use of the Argo data to suggest the oceans are not accumulating heat is incorrect for a number of reasons as outlined before http://itsnotnova.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/the-nova-travesty-cherry-picker-ahoy/ .”
The “outline” is, to put it gently, underwhelming. You got your choir stoked, though, so I guess you’d probably consider that a success.
“I am certain the current trend is upward for both 700m and 2,000m – significant or not it does not support Evans/Nova’s claim that the oceans are not warming.”
You are quibbling. It is nowhere near the expectation under the AGW hypothesis. And, what does it mean when you say “I am certain” and then couple that with “significant or not”? Are you certain or not?
“The data disagrees with you – please see previous graph. As climate scientists repeat, the long term warming trend eventually wins over short term fluctuations.”
Nine years is a long time. There is a LOT of catching up to do to validate the climate models. I’m sorry to inform you, it’s not going to happen.
“Good luck trying to support your theories with actual evidence. Report back when you have something substantial.”
I do not have to. The onus is on you to prove the AGW hypothesis. The stagnation in ocean temperatures severely weakens your case. It is not even close to being strong enough to justify wrenching changes to the global economy.
“It also seems strange that you accept the data quite readily when short term cooling is observed, but when warming return you have problems accepting the data even though it fits in well with the laws of physics.”
Cooling also fits well within the laws of physics due to the presence of feedbacks. Your “physics” is very basic. The real world is complex.
“Again the data disagrees with you.”
No, it disagrees with the expectations from the AGW hypothesis.
‘“We would see indications of the flux in the upper levels, and we don’t.”
Now you gained great confidence in the data and you’ve got your own ideas about how impossible it is. Astounding!’
We do not see indications of the flux in the upper levels. That is simply a statement of fact. The AGW hypothesis made specific predictions about the progression of ocean heat. The ARGO results were eagerly anticipated in the expectation that they would confirm them. They did not. Despite your desperate handwaving and pounding on the table, you have no evidence to support the hypothesis.
myrrh says:
February 28, 2012 at 6:21 am
[My tuppence worth on UV, Agile, I’ve just been discussing it, and because he always distracts by UV tangent.]
Okay, I see. I thought it was an odd question since it was wide open.
Also, in the future, it would be helpful to the reader if you specified the frequency range of the of UV you’re describing.
For instance, the UV bandwidth for generating vitamin D in your skin is opaque to glass (or Sun screen) but the UV from higher energy bands may not be opaque (I’d have to look up the frequency response of glass.)