I’m offline this weekend with travel and other projects.
Discuss anything with limits of the WUWT site policy. This will remain a “top post” for the weekend. Some auto-scheduled stories will appear below this one. Don’t forget to observe Earth Hour Human Achievement Hour 8:30 PM local time in your time zone.
U know what i like the most about WUWT and mostly this open thread?
People speak out.. As the wish for and for what they believe in..
Thanks everyone.. keep looking up!
Bomber_the_Cat says:
March 31, 2012 at 5:08 am
…Sun’s power reaches the Earth and by that time the amount of long wave infrared (longer than a wavelength of 4 micron) is negligible compared to the radiation that the Earth emits itself.
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Let me guess: this idea of yours is based on the measurements of the downward IR radiation AND the assumption, that it comes from the “greenhouse gases”, but not from the sun. This is the same kind of trick the AGW guys use to “prove” their 33K “greenhouse effect.
bair polaire says:
March 31, 2012 at 1:51 am
Why then is CO2 not considered to shield the earth more from the suns heat than warming the earth (actually just slowing heat loss) through a little back radiation from a dim source?
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There are a few things the climate “scientists” have made disappear:
1.The Sun sends a significant portion of IR radiation to the surface.
2. The air get warm via contact with the surface and convection.
3. The IR radiation the surface emits is because of (2) very weak and can not produce a significant amount of back radiation.
http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/wood_rw.1909.html
Macro Contrarian (@JackHBarnes) says:
March 31, 2012 at 11:49 am
WFT has CO2, in ppm. To plot well with temperature anomaly, you have to scale that and offset it.
Here’s what it looks with a 20X scale and 275 offset over the last 15 years.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1997/scale:20/offset:375/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997
At some point, Anthony must show diagram of the crown knot, that preventss the rope unwinding.
http://www.google.ca/imgres?q=crown+knot&hl=en&sa=X&biw=966&bih=453&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=pO4mfUpCQ6eKdM:&imgrefurl=http://doit101.com/knots/fancy.htm&docid=BxHMZa0HehodaM&imgurl=http://doit101.com/knots/images/fig111.gif&w=300&h=278&ei=Hpx3T9z0F4Ts0gH66tjKDQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=696&vpy=5&dur=2138&hovh=216&hovw=233&tx=145&ty=108&sig=118027714721289279439&page=1&tbnh=114&tbnw=123&start=0&ndsp=12&ved=1t:429,r:5,s:0
vukcevic says:
March 31, 2012 at 1:18 pm
> Is Svensmark correct ?
I don’t know, there’s ongoing research.
> Here I show data for the last 15 months for the Ap-max index, which when above 50 results in a decrease of the galactic cosmic rays impact, known as the ‘Forbush decrease’.
> Forbush decrease should be most noticeable in the polar regions.
Okay, but Svensmark’s effect should be most pronounced in clean air at low altitudes, in particular low maritime clouds after particulates have mostly washed out and DMS or SO2 is present. (And judging from early CLOUD results, where NH3 is prevalent.)
> Also is shown degree of cloudiness (%) for the area from 60N to 90N.
> http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Ap-Cl.htm
That seems pretty high and well into Chinese soot regions. Area-wise, pretty small, too.
> Cloudiness should significantly drop during the Forbush decrease. Allowing for variable delay between 3 and 6 days occasional (but not always) small reduction in cloudiness lasting 1-2 days could be observed, but no noticeable correlation can be established
Do you see anything interesting looking at temperate latitudes in the eastern Pacific?
@Greg House
Your sure are setting them straight. Good for you! Gee, Greg House, I also saw a Ron, brings back very old memories of hand pumped scoters and pulling taffy on 44. Probably just a coincidence… surely… -wayne
In the UK, where weather is a constant subject of conversation, this article shows that it has now become political.
http://climaterealists.com/?id=9376
Will, when the Watermelon Dictatorship is established, it become a capital crime to complain about the weather, especially cold weather.
As for the Hour Of Power, HOP, I even have my microwave on, though I am cooking my dinner on the stove, have my heating and lighting on, although I have doors and windows open. I consider this incredible luxury of cheap energy a boon to humanity. The way to get Africa out of poverty, aside from removing their “strong men”, is cheap, coal fired electricity.
And those Watermelons want to deny the poorest of humanity the same luxury as they, themselves, experience. I puke upon them. I despise them. They are the enemy of humanity.
Now, I will calm down and relax with a song by Adele.
Earth Hour, Earth Day, whatever… The first Earth Day (in 1970) and the second used a poster with the theme “We have met the enemy and he is us”, a Pogo cartoon drawn by Walt Kelly.
images here:
http://otegony.com/we-have-met-the-enemy
and a Google image search will find more.
This theme goes all the way back in the environmental movement and is even stronger today as the meaning of ‘pollution’ continues to expand.
NBC Nightly News had another piece tonight on extreme weather = climate change interviewing someone from NOAA saying it is so because of the massive increase in tornados and record temperatures in the eastern US. I guess he didn’t read the latest NOAA report on tornados. I figured he must have been lobbying for more funding.
Meanwhile I had another inch of snow this afternoon here at 2500′ in Northern California with a forecast of 52 F. Gotta love those models.
You know the debate over ‘cold’ down welling radiation, reducing the rate of cooling, or not, comes up over and over again and it seems there should have been some serious experimentation on this before now because it is so fundamental. I’ve not been able to find any documentation of such.
What would comprise a good experimental set up to put this issue to bed?
I would think you could pretty easily measure the energy flux in a solid target with a known conductivity and a constant energy source buried below the surface. Varying the incident ‘cold’ radiation should produce a measurable flux change in the target.
Has it been done? If not, why not?
I just saw where Keith Olbermann is suing Al Gore: http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/03/keith-olbermann-to-file-against-current-tv-119218.html
I found this statement interesting: “ In due course, the truth of the ethics of Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt will come out. Makes me wonder what dirt will be revealed.
I have a really important question regarding Sea Ice Volume anomaly, I wasreading the Luke Warm blog on Accuweather about how its a better indicator of arctic ice than Extent. He shows that The sea ice volume, which takes into account the area and thickness of the ice is still running well below normal across the Arctic as we continue to lose older, thicker ice and replace it with younger, thinner ice that is much more prone to completely melting away during the summer months. How much of this is important, and which is more important, extent or volume?
http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/climatechange/update-on-sae-ice-volume/63069
Craig Moore says:
March 31, 2012 at 7:08 pm
The only unethical thing they’ll find is that Gore and Hyatt hired Olbermann in the first place.
Ric Werme says: March 31, 2012 at 10:40 am
Trofim Lysenko Award
Science in Service to the Party
http://therealrevo.com/blog/?p=70900
Well Earth Hour seems to have done the trick.
Combined Arctic and Antarctic Sea Ice Cover is now 253,000 square kilometers greater than the 1979-2008 average.
Well done people. However don’t carry this too far or Toronto will be back under a kilometer of ice like it was just 10,000 years ago.
Once again, well done!
Mike Jonas says
In particular, there cannot have been any net gain in energy and the exact same amount of CO2 still goes into the atmosphere.
———–
Mike it looks like you learnt chemical equations ok but got confused about the conservation of energy thing.
There is a net gain of energy because the process has as an input solar energy. You do explain that later on, so it looks like the need to ridicule led to some pretty twisted wording.
This is a costly scheme, but any energy infrastructure is costly. So it would have been more informative to have said how costly in relation to other energy sources.
This scheme does solve the “solar and wind” are intermittent” problem so it’s not completely wacky as you are trying so, so hard to portray.
Daniel Vogler says: March 31, 2012 at 7:34 pm
[How much of this is important, and which is more important, extent or volume? ]
Generally measurements that can not be verified before 1979 are the most important. A secondary consideration is measurements that occur in the absence of people or measuring devices, both of which increase the importance. The third qualifier is the rate of decline, a high rate of decline (regardless of the time-frame) can often propel a value in to the realm of most important, even if it was actually measured and has a history.
Since satellites that can actually measure thickness and thus volume were only put in to service last year, volume is currently the most important. This could change if the satellite readings start to get the wrong values in the next few years. If coverage, extent and volume increase at the same time then we should expect people to start digging trees, ships or Vikings out of the permafrost to show us how cold it was in the past.
Mike Jonas says
At least they admit that the investment required would be “huge”.
———
They reckon around 180 billion dollars.
A replacement set coal power Stations would cost?
Daniel Vogler says:
March 31, 2012 at 7:34 pm
> I have a really important question regarding Sea Ice Volume anomaly, I was reading the Luke Warm blog on Accuweather about how its a better indicator of arctic ice than Extent.
The two metrics are good for different effects. It’s harder to measure sea ice from satellites, and ground (ice cap) studies are expensive and don’t cover a wide area.
Ice extent does a better job showing how much sunlight is reflected from the Sun now – more ice, higher albedo. Ice volume may do a better job telling how long ice will remain, though I assume thick old ice can be flushed out of the arctic along with thin young ice.
And a new power station is around 2B.
http://144.122.162.144/~itosun/data/energy/Coal-cost.pdf
bair polaire on March 31, 2012 at 1:51 am said:
Back radiation
I have to admit, that I’m still not sure if I really understand how the warming through back radiation from atmospheric CO2 really works. Can someone direct me to a website where they explain.
———–
Unglazed solar collectors, such as solar pool heaters, depend on IR radiation from atmospheric gases such as CO2 and water vapour for part of their inputs.
The engineering calculations factor this into the effiency calculations.
“My questions are:
1. Is it really true that stratospheric CO2 gets more energy from the surface of the earth than from the sun and the rest of the atmosphere combined? What are the percentages?”
Energy of gases is mostly the velocity of molecules of the gases. But the velocity of gas molecules is not the aspect one is referring to in regard to “greenhouse gases”, instead referring to vibrations of atom and of atoms in a molecule.
Sunlight is not going add much velocity to gas. If want warm or heat gas with sunlight, the sunlight heating a solid or liquid and these warming gas molecules via conduction and convection would be a more dominate factor.
An example would be to put hollow glass sphere in space and have a thin atmosphere of gas inside the sphere. The heating of the gas would seem to me to be to mostly caused by the temperature that sunlight warmed the glass of the sphere. Since volume increase more than surface area, the larger the sphere would have cooler air. If sunlight were to significantly warm gas molecules, than larger sphere would get warmer.
Though sunlight does increase the velocity of gas [the point is how much], one see sunlight accelerating gas molecules by looking at a comet- that is what makes a comet tail.
But back your point you seem to asking what causes CO2 molecule to vibrate the most- it seems to me the energy of Sun would do this more than energy of radiant nature of earth.
“2. What about the “horizon effect”: almost all CO2 molecules see more sky than earth. Thus more than 50% of their back radiation goes to space.”
Especially true at higher elevation. Therefore it seems if CO2 is important in terms it’s “greenhouse effect” it would tend to cool earth.
“3. If 1. and 2. are true, what is the effect? Shouldn’t CO2 be considered cooling the earth when it gets most of its energy from earth? Most of the CO2 is close to the warm surface thus helping the earth to radiate energy to space.”
The important factor is the term greenhouse affect- which defined poorly. But it includes water vapor. And water vapor is the more significant factor in causing “the greenhouse affect”.
And I would say that water vapor causing a greenhouse affect has to do more than it’s radiate properties. There a tremendous amount heat energy stored in the latent heat of water vapor.
There also clouds- the reason you see clouds isn’t because you are seeing water vapor, you seeing water droplets. So clouds in terms of greenhouse affect are billions of tonnes of liquid water suspended in the form droplets- it’s liquid, not gas. Or look at clouds as machines in which droplets and water vapor are being “processed”.
“4. What about the “umbrella effect”: As CO2 emits and absorbs energy at the same wavelengths it should to a certain degree shield the earth from the suns heat. Whatever energy the CO2 gets directly from the sun, more than 50% go to space and thus can not reach the earth.”
Shield is interesting term. Matter is either transparent, absorbs, or reflects. And does all them depending type of radiation and density and shape of the matter. CO2 is a trace gas. But even our atmosphere was mostly or pure CO2, it would not block much of the sun’s radiation. CO2 is a transparent gas. And it’s transparent to most the energy of sunlight.
It seems to me fairly obvious that somewhere around 90% or more of all sunlight intersecting earth, isn’t “absorbed” by earth. And in terms something like a shield, clouds or other particles of matter are mostly responsible for “shielding” the earth. Clouds are made of transparent water, but because of their size they scatter [bends] light.
Not including clouds, a clear atmosphere stops [shields, scatters, reflects, adsorbs] about 30% of sunlight from reaching the surface. At Noon in clear day of the 1300 watts per square of solar flux at the top of the atmosphere, only about 1000 watts per square meter reaches the surface. [I would guess if our atmosphere was pure CO2, more energy on a clear day would reach the surface]. Instead at noon, you measure sunlight at the surface at 9 am, one gets about 250 watts per square meter. If looking whole day-lit globe less than 1/2 of it reaches the surface. And because the surface a hemisphere, more half sunlight is hitting the surface of earth at angle greater than 45 degree [spread the sq meter at top of atmosphere area over large surface of a horizontal surface.
But returning to noon clear day and 1000 watts per square at surface a large percentage of that energy is not absorbed- humans can design systems that capture about 60% of the energy- the natural environment does absorb this much. The earth’s ocean which cover most of surface does do good job of capturing the sun’s energy, perhaps 50% whereas land areas absorb far less.
LazyTeenager says:
March 31, 2012 at 9:28 pm
Unglazed solar collectors, such as solar pool heaters, depend on IR radiation from atmospheric gases such as CO2 and water vapour for part of their inputs.
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Really? If this IR does not come from the Sun, but is just by the “greenhouse gasses” re-emited surfice IR radiation, then they should have turn the collectors in the opposite direction to the surface and get even more, right? But they do not do it, do they? Let me guess why: because the IR comes from the Sun and only extremely little comes from the “greenhouse gasses” or from the surface.
I strongly recommend to read this: http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/wood_rw.1909.html
Bair polair, Tall bloke
The surface heats the C02, the C02 returns some energy to the surface.
If you cannot realise this will slow down the heat loss from the surface and cause the surface heated by the sun to get hotter then nobody will ever explain it to you. This effect is overwhelmingly more important for water regardless of how water is transported into the atmosphere. The surface emits radiation no matter what your opinion or political view on climate might be.
I have just spent months of my life attempting to explain simple science ideas to people who show no willingness at all to learn.
And when i tried to get Wiki to have a better explanation of the Greenhouse effect, Wiki banned me. And banned my wife. Wiki want you to believe the moron version that the atmosphere heats the surface or else!
Evidently it seems important for people to be ignorant and there are limits to what anybody can do to change that against such overwhelming forces.