Note: This will be the top post for a day or two, new posts will appear below this one.
Readers may recall my original post, Nature’s ugly decision: ‘Deniers’ enters the scientific literature. followed by Dr. Paul Bain Responds to Critics of Use of “Denier” Term (with thanks to Jo Nova, be sure to bookmark and visit her site) Dr. Robert G. Brown of Duke University, commenting as rgbatduke, made a response that was commented on by several here in that thread. As commenter REP put it in the update: It is eloquent, insightful and worthy of consideration. I would say, it is likely the best response I’ve ever seen on the use of the “denier” term, not to mention the CAGW issue in general. Thus, I’ve elevated it a full post. Please share the link to this post widely. – Anthony
Dr. Robert G. Brown writes:
The tragic thing about the thoughtless use of a stereotype (denier) is that it reveals that you really think of people in terms of its projected meaning. In particular, even in your response you seem to equate the term “skeptic” with “denier of AGW”.
This is silly. On WUWT most of the skeptics do not “deny” AGW, certainly not the scientists or professional weather people (I myself am a physicist) and honestly, most of the non-scientist skeptics have learned better than that. What they challenge is the catastrophic label and the alleged magnitude of the projected warming on a doubling of CO_2. They challenge this on rather solid empirical grounds and with physical arguments and data analysis that is every bit as scientifically valid as that used to support larger estimates, often obtaining numbers that are in better agreement with observation. For this honest doubt and skepticism that the highly complex global climate models are correct you have the temerity to socially stigmatize them in a scientific journal with a catch-all term that implies that they are as morally reprehensible as those that “deny” that the Nazi Holocaust of genocide against the Jews?
For shame.
Seriously, for shame. You should openly apologize for the use of the term, in Nature, and explain why it was wrong. But you won’t, will you… although I will try to explain why you should.
By your use of this term, you directly imply that I am a “denier”, as I am highly skeptical of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (not just “anthropogenic global warming”, which is plausible if not measurable, although there are honest grounds to doubt even this associated with the details of the Carbon Cycle that remain unresolved by model or experiment). Since I am a theoretical physicist, I find this enormously offensive. I might as well label you an idiot for using it, when you’ve never met me, have no idea of my competence or the strength of my arguments for or against any aspect of climate dynamics (because on this list I argue both points of view as the science demands and am just as vigorous in smacking down bullshit physics used to challenge some aspect of CAGW as I am to question the physics or statistical analysis or modelling used to “prove” it). But honestly, you probably aren’t an idiot (are you?) and no useful purpose is served by ad hominem or emotionally loaded human descriptors in a rational discussion of an objective scientific question, is there.
Please understand that by creating a catch-all label like this, you quite literally are moving the entire discussion outside of the realm of science, where evidence and arguments are considered and weighed independent of the humans that advance them, where our desire to see one or another result proven are (or should be) irrelevant, where people weigh the difficulty of the problem being addressed as an important contributor (in a Bayesian sense) to how much we should believe any answer proposed — so far, into the realm where people do not think at all! They simply use a dismissive label such as “denier” and hence avoid any direct confrontation with the issues being challenged.
The issue of difficulty is key. Let me tell you in a few short words why I am a skeptic. First of all, if one examines the complete geological record of global temperature variation on planet Earth (as best as we can reconstruct it) not just over the last 200 years but over the last 25 million years, over the last billion years — one learns that there is absolutely nothing remarkable about today’s temperatures! Seriously. Not one human being on the planet would look at that complete record — or even the complete record of temperatures during the Holocene, or the Pliestocene — and stab down their finger at the present and go “Oh no!”. Quite the contrary. It isn’t the warmest. It isn’t close to the warmest. It isn’t the warmest in the last 2 or 3 thousand years. It isn’t warming the fastest. It isn’t doing anything that can be resolved from the natural statistical variation of the data. Indeed, now that Mann’s utterly fallacious hockey stick reconstruction has been re-reconstructed with the LIA and MWP restored, it isn’t even remarkable in the last thousand years!
Furthermore, examination of this record over the last 5 million years reveals a sobering fact. We are in an ice age, where the Earth spends 80 to 90% of its geological time in the grip of vast ice sheets that cover the polar latitudes well down into what is currently the temperate zone. We are at the (probable) end of the Holocene, the interglacial in which humans emerged all the way from tribal hunter-gatherers to modern civilization. The Earth’s climate is manifestly, empirically bistable, with a warm phase and cold phase, and the cold phase is both more likely and more stable. As a physicist who has extensively studied bistable open systems, this empirical result clearly visible in the data has profound implications. The fact that the LIA was the coldest point in the entire Holocene (which has been systematically cooling from the Holocene Optimum on) is also worrisome. Decades are irrelevant on the scale of these changes. Centuries are barely relevant. We are nowhere near the warmest, but the coldest century in the last 10,000 years ended a mere 300 years ago, and corresponded almost perfectly with the Maunder minimum in solar activity.
There is absolutely no evidence in this historical record of a third stable warm phase that might be associated with a “tipping point” and hence “catastrophe” (in the specific mathematical sense of catastrophe, a first order phase transition to a new stable phase). It has been far warmer in the past without tipping into this phase. If anything, we are geologically approaching the point where the Earth is likely to tip the other way, into the phase that we know is there — the cold phase. A cold phase transition, which the historical record indicates can occur quite rapidly with large secular temperature changes on a decadal time scale, would truly be a catastrophe. Even if “catastrophic” AGW is correct and we do warm another 3 C over the next century, if it stabilized the Earth in warm phase and prevented or delayed the Earth’s transition into cold phase it would be worth it because the cold phase transition would kill billions of people, quite rapidly, as crops failed throughout the temperate breadbasket of the world.
Now let us try to analyze the modern era bearing in mind the evidence of an utterly unremarkable present. To begin with, we need a model that predicts the swings of glaciation and interglacials. Lacking this, we cannot predict the temperature that we should have outside for any given baseline concentration of CO_2, nor can we resolve variations in this baseline due to things other than CO_2 from that due to CO_2. We don’t have any such thing. We don’t have anything close to this. We cannot predict, or explain after the fact, the huge (by comparison with the present) secular variations in temperature observed over the last 20,000 years, let alone the last 5 million or 25 million or billion. We do not understand the forces that set the baseline “thermostat” for the Earth before any modulation due to anthropogenic CO_2, and hence we have no idea if those forces are naturally warming or cooling the Earth as a trend that has to be accounted for before assigning the “anthropogenic” component of any warming.
This is a hard problem. Not settled science, not well understood, not understood. There are theories and models (and as a theorist, I just love to tell stories) but there aren’t any particularly successful theories or models and there is a lot of competition between the stories (none of which agree with or predict the empirical data particularly well, at best agreeing with some gross features but not others). One part of the difficulty is that the Earth is a highly multivariate and chaotic driven/open system with complex nonlinear coupling between all of its many drivers, and with anything but a regular surface. If one tried to actually write “the” partial differential equation for the global climate system, it would be a set of coupled Navier-Stokes equations with unbelievably nasty nonlinear coupling terms — if one can actually include the physics of the water and carbon cycles in the N-S equations at all. It is, quite literally, the most difficult problem in mathematical physics we have ever attempted to solve or understand! Global Climate Models are children’s toys in comparison to the actual underlying complexity, especially when (as noted) the major drivers setting the baseline behavior are not well understood or quantitatively available.
The truth of this is revealed in the lack of skill in the GCMs. They utterly failed to predict the last 13 or 14 years of flat to descending global temperatures, for example, although naturally one can go back and tweak parameters and make them fit it now, after the fact. And every year that passes without significant warming should be rigorously lowering the climate sensitivity and projected AGW, making the probability of the “C” increasinginly remote.
These are all (in my opinion) good reasons to be skeptical of the often egregious claims of CAGW. Another reason is the exact opposite of the reason you used “denier” in your article. The actual scientific question has long since been co-opted by the social and political one. The real reason you used the term is revealed even in your response — we all “should” be doing this and that whether or not there is a real risk of “catastrophe”. In particular, we “should” be using less fossil fuel, working to preserve the environment, and so on.
The problem with this “end justifies the means” argument — where the means involved is the abhorrent use of a pejorative descriptor to devalue the arguers of alternative points of view rather than their arguments at the political and social level — is that it is as close to absolute evil in social and public discourse as it is possible to get. I strongly suggest that you read Feynman’s rather famous “Cargo Cult” talk:
http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
In particular, I quote:
For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a
friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on cosmology and astronomy, and he wondered how he would explain what the applications of this work were. “Well,” I said, “there aren’t any.” He said, “Yes, but then we won’t get support for more research of this kind.” I think that’s kind of dishonest. If you’re representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to the layman what you’re doing–and if they don’t want to support you under those circumstances, then that’s their decision.
One example of the principle is this: If you’ve made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We must publish both kinds of results.
I say that’s also important in giving certain types of government
advice. Supposing a senator asked you for advice about whether
drilling a hole should be done in his state; and you decide it
would be better in some other state. If you don’t publish such a
result, it seems to me you’re not giving scientific advice. You’re
being used. If your answer happens to come out in the direction the government or the politicians like, they can use it as an argument in their favor; if it comes out the other way, they don’t publish it at all. That’s not giving scientific advice.
Time for a bit of soul-searching, Dr. Bain. Have you come even close to living up to the standards laid out by Richard Feynman? Is this sort of honesty apparent anywhere in the global climate debate? Did the “Hockey Team” embrace this sort of honesty in the infamous Climategate emails? Do the IPCC reports ever seem to present the counter arguments, or do they carefully avoid showing pictures of the 20,000 year thermal record, preferring instead Mann’s hockey stick because it increases the alarmism (and hence political impact of the report)? Does the term “denier” have any place in any scientific paper ever published given Feynman’s rather simple criterion for scientific honesty?
And finally, how dare you presume to make choices for me, for my relatives, for my friends, for all of the people of the world, but concealing information from them so that they make a choice to allocate resources the way you think they should be allocated, just like the dishonest astronomer of his example. Yes, the price of honesty might be that people don’t choose to support your work. Tough. It is their money, and their choice!
Sadly, it is all too likely that this is precisely what is at stake in climate research. If there is no threat of catastrophe — and as I said, prior to the hockey stick nobody had the slightest bit of luck convincing anyone that the sky was falling because global climate today is geologically unremarkable in every single way except that we happen to be living in it instead of analyzing it in a geological record — then there is little incentive to fund the enormous amount of work being done on climate science. There is even less incentive to spend trillions of dollars of other people’s money (and some of our own) to ameliorate a “threat” that might well be pure moonshine, quite possibly ignoring an even greater threat of movement in the exact opposite direction to the one the IPCC anticipates.
Why am I a skeptic? Because I recognize the true degree of our ignorance in addressing this supremely difficult problem, while at the same time as a mere citizen I weigh civilization and its benefits against draconian energy austerity on the basis of no actual evidence that global climate is in any way behaving unusually on a geological time scale.
For shame.
Brilliant! Thank you so much for this well-reasoned article, Dr. Brown.
When Greg House says to Dr. Brown “I am not going into details of moral implications of your position, but at least the logical contradiction should be obvious to you.” he is admitting that to him Skeptics, Deniers, etc of CAGW are IMMORAL. Greg’s sense of moral superiority is his sheild against the illogic of his position.
beng says
Well, the hole does prove warming. Obviously you lack understanding of what the spectrographs are showing.
Henry says
I am afraid you do not understand
you have to start thinking OUT of the box
not only LW (earthshine) being trapped but also SW (sunshine) being sent back to space…
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
either way, there is no warming, not since 1995
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/22/a-response-to-dr-paul-bains-use-of-denier-in-scientific-literature/#comment-1016786
Miss Grundy says:
June 23, 2012 at 10:26 pm
Greg House says: “No, give them a civilized alternative…
=================================================
Miss Grundy, I did not say that, it was Rogerknights.
Sorry George E Smith, there are engineers like me who can easily show why electromagnetic radiation cannot transfer energy to a warmer body contrary to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
There is a glaring hole in the understanding of most physicists.
Look, don’t think of it as transferring energy to a warmer body. That’s where everybody gets mentally screwed up. Think of it as slowing down the cooling of a warmer body.
Back when I was a boy scout (sadly, some 43 or 44 years ago at this point) NASA had just invented the “space blanket” — a very thin sheet of mylar with a metallic reflective coating. It worked two ways. One is that yeah, it was a plastic sheet and would block the wind and hence reduce convective/conductive heat losses to the air. But the other way it worked — the way you could rather dramatically feel — is that it blocked radiative losses. Here is a page that I’m pretty sure has not been sneakily planted by the global CAGW conspiracy:
http://faculty.stcc.edu/AandP/AP/AP1pages/Units1to4/skin/skin1.htm
Note well: Radiation is the primary way we lose heat!
If you wrapped your hand in a space blanket, it immediately got warm. A lot warm. You could feel your own radiated heat being trapped, unable to escape to “infinity” (the great cooler outdoors, en route to outer space at 2K). They put an aluminized reflective barrier on insulation for houses for the same reason. A Dewar flask (vacuum thermos) is aluminized and reflective for the same reason. It doesn’t “transfer energy from a cold body to a warm body” by equilibrating in between, it elastically reflects energy to inhibit the rate of transfer from warm to cold (the usual, correct, laws of thermodynamics specified direction).
Microscopically, the air is optically opaque in the IR bands of CO_2 with a remarkably short path length. If you could see in the CO_2-coupled IR bands, it would be very much like looking through fog — you could see some fairly short distance away, but beyond that it would all be opaque. When you turn a bright light — e.g. a headlight — on in a fog, it lights up the fog right in front of it very brightly. Some of the radiation emitted from the headlight is backscattered, is it not? In fact, quite a lot of it is. Very little of the radiation makes it through the fog to infinity (outer space, eventually) — it is multiply scattered and takes a long time bouncing around before it finally makes it through compared to the time it would take just doing it in one uninterrupted bounce. Furthermore, many of the “random walk” pathways of radiative diffusion through a dense collection of scatterers lead back to “the ground” — this is why a fog or the inside of a cloud “glows” somewhat in all directions. You cannot even see a source like the sun through a cloud — you just see the whole cloud, lit up diffusively.
Still, the easiest way to understand the GHE isn’t through these microscopic diffusive pictures that — I promise — both satisfy the 1st and 2nd law and furthermore can easily be modeled by the simplest of stochastic random walk programs (think online pinball game, only with photons and CO_2 molecules instead of pinballs and bumpers). It is by looking at the top of atmosphere infrared spectrum. This is the spectrum of radiative energy being lost to space. It is a direct measure of where and how radiation is being lost from the Earth (to balance, over time, incoming radiation from the Sun).
That outgoing radiation has a very clear hole (as one expects) in the CO_2 absorption bands. The radiation that does escape in this “hole” is emitted with a spectral characteristic of a much cooler “blackbody”, indicating that it is being emitted from and at the temperature of the top of the troposphere where the atmosphere above it finally thins to where it is optically transparent to IR. The things that determine the height and temperature of this radiation are pretty complex — the dry adiabatic lapse rate (and its many not so dry variations), CO_2 concentration, H_2O content of the stratosphere (which varies), and quite possibly things like O_3 (ozone) concentration in the stratosphere that aren’t always considered and may not be fully understood (IMO — I’m sure some climate scientists would disagree but there I think they disagree with each other as well).
The total heat loss must (on average) balance the heat gain (on average) or the Earth net warms or cools not gradually but rapidly, and as it warms it cools faster until it stops warming. The total heat loss is determined by the integral of the energy being lost over the entire spectrum. If you reduce/block radiation in one part of the spectrum you will increase it everywhere until net radiation again balances, that is, the baseline surface temperature will increase. End of story.
That’s why it is really amazingly silly to assert that the GHE doesn’t exist and isn’t an important factor in warming the Earth. One can directly observe TOA radiation in the entire spectrum and see the CO_2 hole. Ergo, the surface warms to maintain balance compared to radiation through a fully transparent atmosphere. How it warms — the mental picture you construct of backscattered radiation and so on — are pretty much irrelevant. That it warms is inevitable regardless of the details of the mechanism because the outgoing radiation is thermal and must balance.
Hope this helps, not just you but everybody on list who persists in this particular silliness. It isn’t being “a denier” — it is a lack of understanding, and that lack of understanding persists because of a lack of communication and effective education, but really, one can understand it if one tries. Whether or not one tries depends on whether or not this is a religious issue for you (as opposed to a rational one). And that, my friend(s), is up to you.
rgb
Robert Brown says
.”…that it doesn’t exist or is flat with regard to CO_2 concentration,”
Henry says:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/22/a-response-to-dr-paul-bains-use-of-denier-in-scientific-literature/#comment-1016820
Sorry, Robert, I donot regard it as proven that an increase in CO2 causes warming,
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
Technically, the IPCC climate models do not” predict.” They “project.” The two words reference different concepts.
Really?
In mathematics, projection means something very specific, so such a statement might have some objective truth. But IPCC climate models do not project anything from a high dimensional space on a lower one (save in the most esoteric of statistical phase space senses that cannot possibly describe what IPCC reports do).
What the IPCC does is project into the future. Which is to say, to predict. They do not “project” in any other sense. Indeed, they attempt to predict not just one thing, but an entire correlated spectrum of things. When they “project” 39 inch SLR in NC by 2100, they are predicting this. Money is then allocated and spent on this projection exactly the same way a corporation might allocate and spend money on sales projections, where the word projection in both cases is an absolute synonym of prediction, only it sounds better and more mathematical and scientific and everything, because psychics and priests also predict the future (often on little more of a basis).
rgb
The wattage of IR out…
Almost. The wattage of the entire integrated spectrum out must equal the total wattage from all sources in. The CO_2 hole is just a portion of the hole. But I explained (or tried to) in a lot of detail a moment ago — the explanation should be being refereed.
A suggestion for the site might be to have a few top level articles that very clearly explain things like the GHE so that this silly debate stops being a major time-waster. This is also a major factor in the use of the “denier” label — which I do not agree with or approve of — it enables a world full of logical fallacies that sadly are often highly persuasive on the part of those that support the CAGW “cause”.
rgb
Sorry, Robert, I do not regard it as proven that an increase in CO2 causes warming,
And that is your right and privilege as a free citizen of the world.
But you are wrong. And if you actually give up your religion and study the experimental evidence that conclusively proves that it does you might change your mind.
But I doubt that you will.
rgb
beng, the physics in your closed experiment are not debated. But in nature, we have no such closed experiment. If what you say held sway in nature, we would be able to detect the resultant warming, but it appears we are unable to do that in its entirety and are wringing our hands in search of the missing heat. Have you found it?
I think people are misspelling Dr. Bain’s name. Dr. Bane would be much more accurate lol.
rgb: You have become a terrific asset to WUWT. Thank-you for deciding to stick around and contribute to the dispelling of myths and encouraging rational thought. Keep up the good work and shine on you crazy diamond. GK
Is it a contradiction to say a colder object can absorb radiation from a warmer body and still agree with the second law of thermodynamics?
Certainly some people seem to think so!
This is because they are uncertain about what Clausius meant by the word ‘heat’.
Heat is not identical to radiation.
Carnot and Clausius were practical men who thought about the most efficient way to extract work from a heat engine.
They found that work (such as a moving piston output) can only be obtained between a high temperature source and a low temperature sink.
Its clear then that heat is a Macro Quantity
There is no spontaneous heat flow from colder to hotter object!
However;
1. There is a two way radiative exchange
2. There is a two way energy exchange
3. But there is only a one way heat transfer.
To test if an energy transfer qualifies as being a Heat transfer.
1. For a complete cycle extract energy at a higher temperature source do work then dump unused energy to lower temperature sink.
This is a HEAT TRANSFER and happens all the time!
2. From colder to hotter object, spontaneously extract energy do work and dump unused energy to higher temperature sink NEVER HAPPENS.
3.
So this cannot be called a Heat Transfer.
Need further proof?
Take 3 objects in local thermodynamic equilibrium with a vacuum separating them;
(Remember absorption of a photon by a particular molecule is a Micro Quantity)
A one at 270K
B one at 300K
C one at 330K
All three will include 10um radiation within their Planck spectrum
All agree that B can accept a 10um from C.
Some however think that B will reject an identical 10um photon from A
This makes no logical sense.
We’ve had a grudge matches on the predict/project semantics issue before, and personally I think it is a huge waste of time to argue about it.
I agree with Dr. Robert Brown. The official WUWT stance will be that IPCC models “predict” as I believe it more precise. The argument on the issue is closed, though anybody is welcome to argue the issue elsewhere and use the terms how they see fit, just don’t waste our time here arguing about it. Words convey meaning, and the meaning here is clear.
Correction should be
Is it a contradiction to say a warmer object can absorb radiation from a colder body and still agree with the second law of thermodynamics?
O H Dahlsveen says:
June 24, 2012 at 2:19 am
Please inform me of the various percentages. How much of the heat-exchange between the surface and the atmosphere happens by conduction/convection and how much happens by radiation?
=================================================
Your question was answered 103 years ago: http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2011/01/07/r-w-wood-note-on-the-theory-of/
I am afraid you do not understand
you have to start thinking OUT of the box
not only LW (earthshine) being trapped but also SW (sunshine) being sent back to space…
Sigh. Henry, I teach people the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, and once upon a time a long time ago I derived it (as do all physics majors and grad students). I teach graduate electricity and magnetism and have written a textbook on it. I don’t have to learn to think out of the box — I understand albedo and the complete mechanism of primary delivery of sunlight to the Earth and its reradiation back to space far, far better than you do, all the way down to the quantum microscopic level.
Which is why I know that CO_2 in the atmosphere (along with other GHGs, notably water) is a major factor in warming the Earth compared to its transparent atmosphere greybody temperature. It’s not the only factor, but it is a big one, and initially — going from no CO_2 to optically dense in CO_2 — it is the biggest one, the one that gets the Earth warm enough that water can help out.
As I said, all one has to do is look at the TOA IR spectrographs — actual photographs, to those who know how to read them (or learn) of the GHE — and the issue is closed. In the meantime, I suggest you meditate on the following. I realize that you are completely convinced that you are smarter and better educated than anyone else in the world. Armed with your trusty Excel spreadsheets, you are prepared to do battle with the dragons. And who knows, you could be right!
But maybe, possibly, perhaps, you could entertain the notion that somebody that spent 9 years of their life doing nothing but studying mathematics, physics, computer science, and statistics (well, and partying like a wild animal) and then spent the next 30 years working with mathematics, physics, computation and statistics doing research, writing papers, teaching graduate and undergraduates, writing textbooks, that sort of thing might not be a complete idiot. Certainly not so much of an idiot that you are likely to know more, better, more competently, unless and until you have spent at least half as long doing half as much. D’ya think?
Sigh. I didn’t think so.
rgb
Thank you Dr Brown, for the original post as well all the follow up posts. I was reminded, as I read through your words and all the other posts, about the opinions of perhaps the worlds most famous biochemist, Isaac Asimov. In a small short story called The Winnowing, he comments forcibly on the capture by hubris of powerful men assuming their knowledge superior and their value transcendent. (http://docs6.chomikuj.pl/679235734,PL,0,0,Asimov,-Isaac—The-Winnowing.rtf) It took an honest scientist with extreme courage to make a stand. We are never told whether to steps he took were successful, but Asimov was laying out his own views through the words of his character. (And of course he was not above making a scientist the hero, either.) When scientists and physicists and engineers are prompted by a search for truth, where ever that truth might take them we, as a species, can look at the future with hope. When instead those who have power look to the future with an eye to self promotion and empire building all of us are trouble.
Robert Brown says:
“Actually, they agree” [That RH and clouds dominate GHE?].” It’s just that they interpret the net effect of clouds and RH to be a substantial additional forcing of the GHE due to CO_2. As in 2-3x. “
I think there’s a subtle distinction between the relationship I was trying to communicate between RH, clouds, CO2 and GHE and the relationship that they assert. I haven’t seen any evidence that would lead me to believe that CO2 is anything more than a bit player, actually, the evidence suggests to me that RH and cloudiness are not majorly influenced by CO2 concentration; while they assert that CO2 dominates over the long term partially through it’s effects on RH and cloudiness (i.e.: feedbacks).
How Carbon Dioxide Controls Earth’s Temperature
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20101014/
“Water vapor and clouds are the major contributors to Earth’s greenhouse effect, but a new atmosphere-ocean climate modeling study shows that the planet’s temperature ultimately depends on the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide.” — Gavin Schmidt
While they do admit that RH and clouds are the “major contributors” they bestow CO2 with power over RH and clouds to ultimately determine the Earth’s temperature i.e. is the King and/or Queen, if you will, the dominant factor.
“This is the high “climate sensitivity” of the GCMs, and is somewhat debatable.
Well, that’s putting it politely but I definitely agree.
Bryan says:
June 24, 2012 at 8:27 am
Is it a contradiction to say a colder object can absorb radiation from a warmer body and still agree with the second law of thermodynamics?
Well done! Sadly, many of the people who learned the second law from a kiddie physics textbook never learned the microscopic statistical basis or nature of the law, so they do not understand this. The correct statement of the law might be that nature evolves from less probable global macrostates to more probable global macrostates (or “the entropy of the Universe increases”) for irreversible processes, and says little about reversible ones. It’s not terribly difficult to formulate good thermodynamic arguments using the 1st and 2nd laws, but it is also pretty easy to formulate terrible ones if you don’t understand what is happening at the micro level or try to apply reasoning that works fine for reservoirs in thermal equilibrium to open, non-equilibrium systems.
rgb
Robert Brown:
I would say that the response of climate to CO2 forcings via water vapor feedback (given the assumption of constant RH) is pretty well understood. Ramanathan’s work stands out in that regard. You get roughly 1°C/doubling of CO2 from direct forcing, the physics behind that are essentially unassailable at this point. You also get at least 1°C/doubling additional warming from water vapor feedback, and that’s pretty well understood, though not as bullet proof (more underlying assumptions).
I agree with you that the issue of cloud forcings is where one place where there is huge wiggle room (enough that this effect could have either sign though I wouldn’t hold my breath that the net effect is negative).
I would also say that uncertainties in past (and future) aerosols forcings also play a huge role in increasing the uncertainty associated with how sensitive climate is to anthropogenic CO2 forcing. Even today, the knowledge about sulfate aerosol emissions and their influence on climate remains very poor, and that a lot of the uncertainty in quantitatively assessing the impact of human activity on climate is rooted here.
beng, the physics in your closed experiment are not debated. But in nature, we have no such closed experiment. If what you say held sway in nature, we would be able to detect the resultant warming, but it appears we are unable to do that in its entirety and are wringing our hands in search of the missing heat. Have you found it?
Is this addressed to me? If so, by measuring the TOA radiation we are directly measuring the resultant warming. By examining the planets and moons we can directly observe the resultant warming as differential mean temperatures between planetary surfaces functional on atmospheric composition. We are not searching for any “missing heat”, as far as I know.
If this was addressed to somebody else, I apologize and ignore the response.
rgb
Robert Brown says
if you actually give up your religion and study the experimental evidence that conclusively proves
….experimental evidence that conclusively proves …..
Henry says
the reference to religion was uncalled for.
I have to challenge you
CO2 also causes cooling by taking part in the life cycle. Plants and trees need warmth and CO2 to grow – which is why you don’t see trees at high latitudes and high altitudes. There is clear evidence that there has been a big increase in greenery on earth in the past 4 decades.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/24/the-earths-biosphere-is-booming-data-suggests-that-co2-is-the-cause-part-2/
As far as I know, there are no measurements showing how much cooling is caused by the CO2 by taking part in the life cycle…. That being the case, please let us know how you can be so sure that the net effect of more CO2 is that of warming rather than cooling?
Quite apart from that, you (man) still have to prove quantitatively that the CO2 traps more LW (earthshine) energy then it re-radiates SW (sunshine) energy
…….learn to think OUT of the box
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
Regarding the distinction between the idea that is referenced by the term “prediction” and the idea that is referenced by the term “projection,” a “prediction” is an extrapolation from an observed state to an unobserved but observable state. You look up in the sky, observe cloudiness and predict rain, for example.
The two states are descriptive of a statistical event. Conventionally, the observed state is called the “condition” of the event while the unobserved but observable state is called the “outcome” of this event. Knowledge of the condition may provide information about the outcome. Without knowledge of the condition, one has no such information.
The complete set of statistically independent events is an example of a “statistical population.” A subset of these events in which both states have been observed is an example of a “statistical sample.” You will search the 2007 report of IPCC Working Group I in vain for a citation to the statistical population or sample underlying an IPCC climate model. There isn’t one.
Through reference to the dictionary definition of “prediction,” one might argue that a “projection” is a kind of “prediction”; some climatologists make this argument. However, under the scientific method of inquiry a “prediction” exists in a statistical framework that is not present for an IPCC-style “projection.”
I’d like to remind people of one other aspect of this debate. To wit, to many people on the other side, the science doesn’t matter in the least. To them, a conclusion of catastrophic warming is merely a luxury, but not necessary for them to maintain an anti-human being, political eco-rabidity that wants fewer (by far ) humans, and that those who do remain should not be carniverous, don’t “waste” the world’s resources, who emit nothing, and live completely on organic vegetables grown in communal plots in high density areas, policed by a totalistic (and ostensibly benigh, in their opinion) communalist utopian State, where everyone is equal, no one’s feelings ever get hurt, and human beings have transcended above notions like “competition” and “ownership.”
The CAGW scientists in this debate often forget that their coalition includes many such zealots, and I think they presume their (limitied) expertise somehow grants them veto power over those of their fellows with such extremist desires. This is a dangerous and silly presumption, and one of the things I always hope to see contradicted by rational scientists, no matter what they think they can prove, they slapping down of radical overreaching on their own side of the debate. But rarely is this done.
A scary case in point is Cass Sundstein, who sits at the side of the U.S. President as one of his “Tsars,” who wrote in an academic paper in 2007 that CAGW skeptics should be equated with conspiracy theory nutjobs, 9/11 Truthers, and Timothy McVeigh-like terrorists. We also see this same sort of smear coming out of the NCSE group that had hired Peter Gleick to run it’s CAGW indoctrination campaign for public school children, which seeks to smear it’s opponents by equating them to religiously inspired disbelievers in biological evolution. And the teachers unions, too, in the way they “debated” practical public policy issues in Wisconson. And they don’t see their own corruption and totalism in any way as threatening, and these Alinsky tactics as Good and Necessary.
CAGW science can fail, the entire theory of CAGW can fall flat on it’s face (as it seems now to be doing) , but there will still be a war with these eco-radicals over whether or not humans can and should live, breed, exist freely (more or less) on this planet without being under their control. CO2 may cease to be the primary driver of their argument, but they’ll find something else. The use of epithets to smear reasonable, science and freedom-loving people will survive this debate, I’m afraid.
There are times when I could use another 33C of increased average air temperature…to heat water or keep my house cozy and comfortable. Apparently the atmosphere does this effortlessly with small, diffuse, cold, rarefied concentrations of “GHGs”. Great. Tell me how use this heat engine to double this ambient 33C in my house. I’m not greedy. Just give me 20%, I’ll gladly enhance the GHE in my house for an additional 6.6C warming. I’ll reverse it to get 6.6C of cooling. This is going to be great. Please don’t make us wait–this would be life-saving technology in certain parts of the world.
Sure, it would be a pleasure. Go into your attic and install insulation. It does precisely the same thing that GHGs do — slows the heat added to your house from all sources en route to the cold dark 2 K of outer space (which is where all of that energy eventually ends up, less a tiny bit that might stick around longer). When you are cold you put in a jacket. The jacket slows your heat loss. If the jacket is transparent it will not work as well as a jacket with a reflective barrier (see my earlier remarks about a space blanket). In fact, a space blanket alone, wrapped around you so that it keeps out the wind, can warm you more than a down quilt, because under ordinary circumstances radiation is our primary heat loss mechanism from our skins.
A suggestion: Mentally differentiate between the following two propositions:
a) There is no such thing as the GHE, and GHG concentrations are irrelevant. Therefore AGW and CAGW theories are wrong.
and
b) The GHE is quite real, and is mediated by a variety of GHGs, the most important two of which are CO_2 and H_2O. However, this fact does not prove that the particular theoretical predictions of CAGW are correct, nor does it predict things upon which this prediction depends (such as the climate sensitivity). GW can directly and immediately be observed in the climate record, as can global cooling. It is entirely possible and reasonable that recent GW has an anthropogenic component. The question is: how much?
I’m happy to listen to people who propose a) as long as they present a quantitative, physically plausible argument to support their claims. Hey, I could be wrong. Convince me. But an anecdotal argument about it being cold in your house is not convincing — we all somehow think that the temperature or climate or weather in our time is extreme one way or the other, because of course at one time or another it is. To study global climate one has to use global tools. The UAH LTT, derived from TOA observations of the whole globe, are measurements made by a good, global tool. Weather station measurements and ARGO measurements are less global, more likely to be spurious or openly incorrect, and are not as good a tool, although they aren’t quite useless. A single measurement “at your house” isn’t even a tool, it is a single sample of a vast space, nearly meaningless.
What I would be most interested in hearing from proponents of a) is how to explain quantitatively TOA IR spectra, and the rate of heat loss inferred from these measurements with no GHE and consequent surface warming. Any takers?
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