This comment from Dr. Robert Brown at Duke University is elevated from a comment to a full post for further discussion. Since we have a new paper (Shepherd et al) that is being touted in the media as “certain” using noisy data with no stable baseline, this discussion seems relevant.
So wait, you are saying that fossil fuels do not cause warming, but that if we shift away from them to clean energies, there is a risk of the earth cooling? Uh, could you just think that through and try agan?
No, that’s just some people on the list who are “certain” — with no more grounds than those of the warmists — that the Earth is about to cool. In the long run, of course, they are correct — the current interglacial (the Holocene) is bound to end at some point soon in geological time, but that could be anytime from “starting right now” to “in a thousand years” or even longer. Some are silly enough to fit a sine function to some fragment of data and believe that that has predictive value.
The problem is that nobody knows why the Eocene ended and the Pleistocene (the current ice age) started, and nobody knows exactly where and why the Pliestocene is a modulated series of glaciations followed by brief stretches of interglacial.
There are theories — see e.g. the Milankovitch cycle — but they have no quantitative predictive value and the actual causal mechanism is far from clear. So we do not know what the temperature outside “should” be, with and/or without CO_2. We do know historically that the Little Ice Age that ended around 200 years ago was tied for the coldest century long stretch of the entire Holocene — that is, the coldest for the last 11,000 or so years (where it might surprise you to learn that the Holocene Optimum was between 1.5 and 2 C warmer than it is today, without CO_2).
So the fact of the matter is that there is a risk of the Earth cooling — in fact, there is a risk of a return to open glaciation, the start of the next 90,000 year glacial era — but it is not a particularly high risk and we have no way to meaningfully do much better than to say “sometime in the next few centuries”. CO_2 might, actually, help prevent the next glacial era (or at least, might delay it) but even that is not clear — the Ordovician-Silurian ice age began with CO_2 levels of 7000 ppm. That is around 17 times the current level, almost 1% of the atmosphere CO_2 — and persisted for millions of years with CO_2 levels consistently in the ballpark of 4000 ppm. If the Earth’s climate system (which we do not understand, in my opinion, well enough to predict even a single decade out let alone a century) decides it is time for glaciation, I suspect that nothing we can do will have any meaningful effect on the process, just as I don’t think that we have had any profound warming influence on the Earth so far.
The fundamental issue is this. We have some thirty three years of halfway decent climate data — perhaps twice that if you are very generous — which is the blink of an eye in the chaotic climate system that is the Earth. There has been roughly 0.3 C warming over that thirty-three year stretch, or roughly 0.1 C/decade. It is almost certain that some fraction of that warming was completely natural, not due to human causes and we do not know that fraction — a reasonable guess would be to extrapolate the warming rate from the entire post LIA era, which is already close to 0.1 C/decade. It is probably reasonable to assign roughly 0.3 C total warming to Anthropogenic CO_2 — that is everything, not just the last thirty years but from the beginning of time. It might be as much as 0.5C, it might be as little as 0.1C (or even be negative), but the physics suggests a warming on the order of 1.2 C upon a complete doubling of CO_2 if we don’t pretend to more knowledge than we have concerning the nature and signs of the feedbacks.
At the moment there is little reason to think that we are headed towards catastrophe. When the combined membership of the AMA and AGU were surveyed — this is surveying climate scientists in general, not the public or the particular climate scientists that are most vocal on the issue — 15% were not convinced of anthropogenic global warming at all, and over half of them doubted that the warming anthropogenic or not would be catastrophic. It’s the George Mason survey — feel free to look it up. The general consensus was, and remains, that there has definitely and unsurprisingly been warming post LIA, that humans have caused some part of this (how much open to considerable debate as the science is not settled or particularly clear), that there is some chance of it being “catastrophic” warming in the future, a much larger chance that it will not be, and some chance that it will not warm further at all or even cool.
The rational thing to do is to continue to pursue the science, especially the accumulation of a few more decades of halfway decent data, until that science becomes a bit clearer, without betting our prosperity and the prosperity of our children and the calamitous and catastrophic perpetuation of global poverty and untold misery in the present on the relatively small chance of the warming being catastrophic and there being something we can do about it to prevent it from becoming so.
So far, if catastrophe is in the cards, the measures proposed won’t prevent it even according to those that predict it! In fact, it won’t have any effect on the catastrophe at all according to the worst case doom and gloomers. We could stop burning carbon worldwide tomorrow and if the carbon cycle model currently in favor with the CAGW crowd is correct (which I doubt) it would take centuries for the Earth’s CO_2 level to go back to “normal” — whatever that means, given that it varies by almost a factor of 2 completely naturally from glacial era to interglacial. In fact, according to that model the CO_2 levels will continue to go up as long as we contribute any CO_2 at all, because they’ve stuck an absurdly long relaxation time into their basic system of equations (one with very little empirical foundation, again IMO).
Again, I suggest that you reread the top article carefully. I actually do not think it is the best example of Monckton’s writing — a few people have noted that its tone is not terribly elevating, and I have to agree — but I sense and sympathize with his frustration, given the content of the article. There is a stench of hypocrisy that stretches from Al Gore’s globe-hopping by jet and his huge house and large car all the way to a collection of people with nothing better to do who have jetted to Doha to have a big party and figure out how to continue their quest for World Domination, hypocrisy with king-sized blinders that seem quite incapable of permitting the slightest bit of doubt to enter, even when bold predictions like those openly made in the 2008 report come back to bite them in the ass.
I myself am not a believer in CAGW. Nor am I a disbeliever. The only thing that I “believe” in regarding the subject is our own ignorance, combined with a fairly firm belief that there is little reason to panic visible in the climate record, and that is before various thumbs were laid firmly on the scales. Remove those thumbs and there is even less reason to panic.
My own prediction for the climate is this. We will probably continue to experience mild warming for another ten to twenty years — warming on the order of 0.1C per decade. It will probably occur in bursts — the climate record shows clear signs of punctuated equilibrium, a Hurst-Kolmogorov process — most likely associated with strong El Ninos (if we get back to where strong El Ninos occur — the last couple have fizzled out altogether, hence the lack of warming). In the meantime, we will without much additional effort beyond existing research and the obvious profit incentives drop the cost of solar power by a factor of four, and it will become at least competitive with the cheapest ways of generating electrical power. We will also have at least one major breakthrough in energy storage technology. The two together will cause solar to become more profitable than coal independent of subsidy, for much but not all of the world. Without anybody being inconvenienced or “doing” anything beyond pursuing the most profitable course, global consumption of carbon will then drop like a rock no matter what we do in the meantime.
Beyond twenty years I don’t think anybody has a clue as to what the temperature will do. I don’t even have a lot of confidence in my own prediction. It wouldn’t surprise me if it got cooler, especially if the Sun enters a true Maunder-style minimum. Nor would it surprise me if it got warmer than my modest prediction. But either way, I think roughly 500 ppm is likely to be the peak level of CO_2 before it comes down, and it may well fail to make it to 500 ppm, and even the catastrophists would have a hard time making a catastrophe out of that given 0.3 C of warming in association with the bump from 300 to 400.
We could make it more likely to cut off before 500 ppm — invest massively in nuclear power. Nuclear power is actually relatively cheap, so this is a cost-benefit win, if we regulate them carefully for safety and avoid nuclear proliferation (both risks, but less catastrophic than the inflated predictions of the catastrophists). But I don’t think we will, and in the end I don’t think it will matter.
John West says:
December 3, 2012 at 12:03 pm
@Julian Flood
Ever hear of bacteria? Oil is biodegradable.
That’s why the Gulf of Mexico didn’t end up the catastrophe that some predicted. Yes, a lot of oil goes into the oceans both naturally and from human activities; but a lot of oil is consumed by bacteria as well.
_________________________
Yes
Mankind is returning all that lovely ‘carbon’ to the biosphere as hydrocarbons (bacteria food) and as CO2 (plant food)
If I was not an Agnostic, I would say God placed man on earth to help release all the bound up carbon and return it to the carbon cycle and thereby save the ecosystem: Carbon starvation in glacial trees recovered from the La Brea tar pits, southern California
Activists keep forgetting life on earth is carbon based (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen)
RGB, re. Cenozoic temperatures.
The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (c. 55 mya) was the warmest spell of the Cenozoic Era (past 65 ma). From there, global temperature steadily fell, then crashed about 30 mya, in the early Oligocene, when Antarctic glaciation occurred (at ~49 mya occurred the Azolla Event, when CO2 atmospheric concentration dropped from ~350 parts per 100,000 of dry air to 65). Climate fluctuated in a fairly narrow range through most of that epoch, then suddenly warmed up again, with Antarctic thawing, in the latest Oligocene & early Miocene. This event, about 25 mya, (maybe oddly) coincided with Antarctica’s final separation from South America, creating the circumpolar Southern Ocean.
Somewhat larger temperature fluctuation occurred during the rest of the first half of the long Miocene, until the secular cooling trend of our era resumed, with renewed Antarctic glaciation. This mid-Miocene iciness happened roughly around 15 mya. Grasslands spread, leading to evolution of many new animal forms, including our African ape ancestors.
At the end of the Pliocene about three mya, the cooling accelerated after tropical oceanic circulation was interrupted by the connection of North & South America at Panama. This initiated the present (Pleistocene & Holocene) glacial epochs, with longer phases when vast ice sheets cover the northern continents & montane glaciers extend down to lower elevations, alternating with shorter interglacial phases, such as for the past ~10,000 years.
Few times in the past 600 million years have been as cold as now, with CO2 concentrations so low (39 parts per 100,000 of dry air). Plants starve at about 15 pp 100K. During Pleistocene glacial phases, it got down to 19. Yet when the Paleozoic Era’s Ordovician glaciation began (447 mya, associated with a mass extinction event), CO2 levels were probably still at 700 pp 100K, as during the preceding Cambrian Period. Afterwards, concentration fell to around 440 pp 100K.
If there be any correlation at all between CO2 concentration & temperature, it’s that carbon dioxide lags, going up in response to warming climate, as more of this trace gas essential to life comes out of solution in the oceans.
Alex says:
December 3, 2012 at 12:15 pm
… Of those surveyed, 97% agreed that that global temperatures have risen over the past century. Moreover, 84% agreed that “human-induced greenhouse warming” is now occurring. Only 5% disagreed with the idea that human activity is a significant cause of global warming.[18][19]
^
from wikipedia is it me or is this something completly different then the Dr is saying about the survey? Perhaps it’s just another case of wikipedia bull we have seen before regarding climate articles.
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It is a very good example of how to lie using a poll. The devil is in the details as Lawrence Solomon showed on December 30, 2010 Deceitful claim: 97% of climate scientists think humans contribute to global warming
WUWT analysis:
Skeptical Science conspiracy theorist John Cook runs another survey trying to prove that false “97% of climate scientists believe in global warming” meme
What else did the ’97% of scientists’ say?
GMU on climate scientists: we are the 97%
dabbio
You asked for a visualization of CO2 in the atmosphere. See:
Human CO2 Is An Extremely Small Portion of The Entire Atmosphere – A Visual Depiction
Man’s Contribution to Global Warming
Source: A global warming primer National Center for Policy Analysis
Rgbatduke aka Dr. Brown
Re: “The discovery of patterns in data is an important first step in understanding the underlying causes of that data. . . .fitting an arbitrary function with any basis you like can often be done as closely you like in some finite interval and yet the fit have absolutely no extrapolative value whatsoever. ”
Loehle and Singer evaluated nine temperature reconstructions and found a climate cycle about 1500 years (or 1200) long that may correspond to the Pleistocene Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) oscillations. See: “Craig Loehle and S. Fred Singer, Holocene temperature records show millennial-scale periodicity. Canadian Journal Earth Science Vol. 47 pp 1327-1336 (2010).”
This could be part of the long term major temperature fluctuation which would underly a natural “accelerating” temperature from the Little Ice Age that would be part of the “null hypothesis”.
Do you have any thoughts on the validity of that evaluation and the possible physics relative to its potential predictive value?
BobG says:
December 3, 2012 at 12:39 pm
In pointing out that there is no scientific certainty about several things, you then write what I think is a non-scientific opinion, “there is a risk of a return to open glaciation, the start of the next 90,000 year glacial era — but it is not a particularly high risk …”.
I have not seen any paper about this and don’t really think the risk of another ice age is quantified in any scientific way…..
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Want a paper? It is from Warmists too.
Hre is another opinion:
This maybe bad news for us, it seems Sunspots DO correlate with climate…. Unless volcanic action interferes according to this study of dust in Greenland ice cores, sunspots, and volcanoes.
Just keep in mind there are at least two dozen opinions whenever you get a dozen scientists together in private without their bosses nearby.
Rgbatduke aka Dr. Brown – that should read “appear as a natural ‘accelerating warming’ of global temperature” from the Little Ice Age to now” (as a small portion of the sinusoid).
rgbatduke says:
December 3, 2012 at 9:06 pm
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Thanks for your reply. I’ve used the two shell model as an explanation myself. It doesn’t, however, answer the question I was trying to ask. This may be one of those things that requires a white board and an hour of drawing diagrams and discussing them just to frame the issue correctly in the first place. I’ll take another crack at it though.
First let’s make certain terms of reference. There’s the earth as a system which includes the atmosphere. Then there’s the surface of the earth which does not. When I ask how the photons get to earth surface to warm it, while I agree with the two shell model, I’m not sure it is completely valid to simply consider the atmosphere as the other shell.
The atmosphere would be many shells. But the problem is many fold. First, there would be a lot more shells in the tropics than in the arctic zones because the atmosphere is thicker at the tropics. Then you’ve got density of the shells changing with altitude, and with latitude. Then you have composition changing with altitude and latitude as well. (I’d like to see the model that can simulate all of those factors at once!)
So, when I start thinking about temperature of the earth SURFACE, I think there absolutely needs to be a physical mechanism by which extra photons are absorbed by that surface in order to raise the temperature of the surface. SB Law demands it. But, I come back to the same issue. Of the putative net downward flux of 3.7 w.m2 from doubling of CO2, how much can actually get to earth surface? Most of it is generated at higher altitudes at low latitudes. To get back down to surface, it has to pass through that “last leg” which happens to be 40,000 ppm of water vapour. Just as that water vapour suppresses upward LW by absorbing and re-radiating, requiring that some of the photons reach the surface and elevate the temperatures at surface, so must that same water vapour absorb and re-radiate downward LW, sending much of it back upward before it reaches the surface, substantially diminishing the warming that 3.7 w/m2 would otherwise have caused at surface.
mpainter says:
December 3, 2012 at 3:23 pm
The global climate models stand refuted by the temperature record of the past fifteen years, in my view. A resumption of warming is the hope and prayer of the modelers, but there is no basis for such an expectation….
________________________________________
Never underestimate the creativity of the desperate. We have already seen it: link
Thank you for the lesson. It was fun.
at the both surfaces, when the thickness of the oil is less than a wavelength of light you get constructive interference between the waves reflected from both surfaces and the surface becomes highly reflective. This is the mirror-like “sheen” associated with oil, and it is much higher in albedo than water.
And you, sir, are a gentleman, as so few people on list take to being corrected well:-)
I’m perfectly happy to believe that there are large slicks from both natural and manmade causes, as long as one puts that in the proper perspective. The ocean is huge (compared to the volume of oil produced).
The two other factors to consider (now that we seem to agree about the basic numbers) is the half life of a monomolecular layer and its probable effect on heating or cooling. Those two obviously go together, because any heating or cooling effect can be for little longer than the half life (although the volatiles that make it into the air may well be GHGs or aerosols in their own right and hence the effect of the spillage may persist through atmospheric chemistry and radiative effects, where they might be net positive or net negative I dunno).
Now I will say that a monomolecular layer is literally the limit of the surface to volume scaling with maximum surface per unit volume (it’s all surface). The evaporative rates will therefore all be their theoretical maximum values for the various volatile fractions, given the temperature of the underlying sea and assuming that the surface air is far from saturated. Furthermore, the molecules are all directly exposed to sunlight. Naturally, somebody (probably many somebodies) have studied this: http://www.iopan.gda.pl/oceanologia/48Skrol.pdf for example. Their findings suggest that the absorption cross section is not trivial even when the oil is in a droplet form, and (because by chance I once studied this very sort of thing) I can assure you that the molecules adsorbed onto the seawater surface can “borrow” bandwidth from the underlying substrate (energy bands) to broaden the natural molecular levels still further. As I consequence, I think that the rate of resonant induced evaporation would be quite high (where a molecule directly absorbs a photon and gets kicked off of the surface by the recoil). Then there is chemical removal because of the formation of lipid complexes (there is a lot of “stuff” in seawater that might bind to oil — sodium ions and hydroxy radicals (always present) for example can saponify it. Again, all surface, no volume, maximum rates. There is biological degradation as things sequester and eat the oil (very high energy content and hence food value). Maximum surface for the bacteria to attack.
I did a bit of web searching, and it looks like the bateriological half-life for oil DROPLETS is around a week to ten days. Another site I found here: http://oil.skytruth.org/site-23051/site-23051-cumulative-spill-report
suggests that the half life for a surface layer 1 micron thick from all sources of degradation — note well many, many times thicker than the monomolecular layer we are discussing — is again a week or less (consistent with droplets in the micron range). Dividing this out by a thousand, a monomolecular layer would have a half life of five to ten minutes and would be completely gone in a couple of hours.
This seems as though it would be pretty much irrelevant to global warming under any and all circumstances. But wait, there’s more.
A thin layer of oil, as no doubt you have observed, not only slicks the water, it makes the top of the water shine (often with rainbow colors). This is a phenomenon called thin film interference, and is discussed and explained in my online physics textbook if you care to understand it further. Because the index of refraction of oil is smaller than that of water, and there is a phase shift of
Light has wavelengths of around 0.4 to 0.7 of a micron. Micron plus thicknesses produce the swirly colors from a mix of destructive and constructive interference in particular wavelengths, but thicknesses of 0.1 micron or less will by quite shiny. This complicates the effect of a layer of oil — it interferes with evaporative cooling at the surface (although it itself is evaporating and hence cooling somewhat less efficiently) but it also reflects (at a guess) 30% or more of the visible light energy that would otherwise be entering the surface layer of the water. Note that IR has a much longer wavelength and the surface would have a high albedo in the IR range out to microns and beyond.
How all of this works out is anybody’s guess, but it is clear that the effects of an oil slick aren’t going to be consistently warming-only or cooling-only, but probably a partially canceling mix of the two. Again, this isn’t to encourage the dumping of oil into the ocean, especially in massive amounts — but a drop here, a drop there is well within the ocean’s ability to “digest” with little harm, and in particular the discussion above makes it nearly certain that oil arriving in the ocean by all means in a given year makes an entirely negligible contribution to climate, where even the sign of that contribution remains uncertain. I’d have to solve a boundary value problem with the known indices of refraction to compute the overall reflection coefficient, but at a guess based on the constructive interference “brightness” I’ve observed on oil slicks at least 30%, perhaps more, of incident IR through visible radiation is probably reflected from micron thicknesses on down.
As you say, an enjoyable discussion. Hopefully this puts this particular issue to rest. Oceanic oil pollution can be bad, and it can be locally dangerous or undesirable in various ways, but it is all but irrelevant to the climate.
rgb
davidmhoffer:
At December 4, 2012 at 8:13 am you assert
With respect, that is not correct.
If the result is some warming of the lower atmosphere (by molecules discharging to ground state collisionally) then heat loss from the surface will be inhibited by reduced heat loss from conduction and evapouration.
The magnitude of the reduced efficiency of surface heat loss may be small but it will not be zero. And it will result in some increase to surface temperature.
Richard
richardscourtney;
The magnitude of the reduced efficiency of surface heat loss may be small but it will not be zero. And it will result in some increase to surface temperature.
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I mis-worded as of course conduction plays a part, obviously. Nor do I contend that increase to surface temperature would be zero, in fact my position is the opposite.
What I do contend is that the 3.7w/m2 doesn’t exist in the normal sense that we use that term for. It is a “value” that is computed across the atmospheric column as a whole, it doesn’t exist in any one place. Does SB Law apply? I don’t know, I’m asking the question. My gut says…. maybe.
And if it does… we still have the issue I raised earlier, which is that the bulk of the 3.7 w/m2 is generated above the altitude at which water vapour is dominant (compared to CO2). While I think it would be insane to suggest that this results in zero warming, I think it makes sense to suggest that of that 3.7 w/m2, some lower amount (a bit, or a lot, I really don’t know) winds up at surface via all mechanisms. We simply cannot take that 3.7w/m2 and convert it to a temperature rise via SB Law. imho
Of the putative net downward flux of 3.7 w.m2 from doubling of CO2, how much can actually get to earth surface? Most of it is generated at higher altitudes at low latitudes.
I think you are misunderstanding the nature of diffusion. Let’s play photon pinball. Imagine the gas as being a bunch of perfectly elastic pinball bumpers, and the IR photons in question being a bunch of BBs that are grabbed by the bumpers and elastically fired out in a new direction. We can ignore the recoil, etc of the molecules as we’re not interested in thermalization process (I don’t think) in your question, you’re just wondering how a 3.7 w/m^2 flux downward flux can be maintained at the bottom. The bumpers are (as you have already ably explained to others) separated by some distance (a distance that increases with height until there are eventually no more bumpers) but there are so many of them that the chance that any BB fired up from the surface will go straight through the bumpers to “escape” without hitting a single one is enormously remote.
Now imagine the surface as being covered by an array of BB guns that fire a steady stream of BBs (each) into the bumper maze in random (but always upward) directions, really machine-gunning them into it. Some BBs will be scattered straight back down (50% of those absorbed by the first layer of bumpers). Some will be thrown up further into the maze. Some of those will be reflected down, some thrown further up still. To get the total integrated downward flux one has to consider all of the permutations of going up or going down by all possible paths from entrance until the BB either re-encounters the surface (and is absorbed with at least some probability, “cancelling” one of the outgoing BBs) or finally makes it to the top of the maze and is fired off into the Universe never to return.
If you increase the density of the bumpers uniformly, you effectively extend the height at which the BBs can escape. This increases the fractional number of permutations of the pathways that return, and decreases the fractional number of permutations of pathways that succeed in escaping (it’s fairly easy to see that the sign of the change is monotonic by starting with comparatively thin layers. Effectively, you have to load the entire layer with enough BBs so that the number exiting at the top exactly equals the net number entering at the bottom, and since some of those BB paths return to the bottom where they must be fired again the rate that the guns must fire has to be strictly greater than the rate that they leave the top. Firing rate is proportional to T^4, the only way to fire faster is to be hotter.
So you’re visualizing the problem backwards. Instead of thinking “I’ve added a few more CO_2 molecules at the top, but those molecules can’t possibly eject photons that can make it back to the bottom”, think “I’ve made the stack of molecules thicker and a bit denser — it is now harder to push photons in at the bottom against its backwards resistance in order to maintain the same rate of loss at the top because more bounce back at the bottom before they REACH the top”.
Note well that this is absolutely only a random walk model of the diffusion process, and details will differ as you make it more precise or introduce e.g. an actual differential cross section and so on. But I think it captures enough of the essential physics to help you see the answer to your question. Doubling the CO_2 raises the troposphere (the top of the maze) by a trifle, requiring a bit more pressure at the bottom to maintain the same outward flow at the top.
This really is where the simple shell model breaks down, of course — it doesn’t explain the logarithmic dependence on concentration, because the assumed superconducting shell has erased that kind of detail. A random walk diffusive model restores some of the dependence, but probably doesn’t produce the right functional form for that dependence. A random walk with a mean free path that varies with height (relative to a base separation at the bottom) is where it probably STARTS being close to right, and to get it right I’m guessing one has to actually use the DALR and pressure broadening (variation in cross section) in some self-consistent way.
And as you can guess, I (like you) am far from certain about the strict log dependence on concentration. I’m unwilling to state that this is incorrect because it is So Damn Complicated, and I’m sure that there is a simple model like this where this turns out to be the dependence. But is this is still very much an important question, even before hitting the feedbacks.
rgb
” John West says: December 3, 2012 at 12:03 pm
@Julian Flood
Ever hear of bacteria? Oil is biodegradable.
That’s why the Gulf of Mexico didn’t end up the catastrophe that some predicted. Yes, a lot of oil goes into the oceans both naturally and from human activities; but a lot of oil is consumed by bacteria as well. ”
True but that was warm water. Do those same bacteria live in cold water like NE Russia? Do they take longer to break down the oil in cold water compared to warm? Both of you raise interesting points but I for one would love to see some more serious science on the oil slick on the oceans and how long it lasts and what effect it has on things including climate. Just a SWAG on my part but maybe the oil going into the Arctic ocean has something to do with the continuing low levels of ice? In the end I’m sure nature will overwhelm it but until we measure it we don’t know what if any effect it is having.
Thanks
rgbatduke;
So you’re visualizing the problem backwards. Instead of thinking “I’ve added a few more CO_2 molecules at the top, but those molecules can’t possibly eject photons that can make it back to the bottom”, think “I’ve made the stack of molecules thicker and a bit denser — it is now harder to push photons in at the bottom against its backwards resistance in order to maintain the same rate of loss at the top because more bounce back at the bottom before they REACH the top”
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Strangely, I’ve used the pinball analogy before as well. Again, I don’t dispute anything you said. So let’s expand your analogy.
We start with pinball guns shooting pinballs upward from surface. Good so far. But instead of considering a uniform layer of CO2 bumpers from surface to TOA, let’s consider two layers of bumpers.
The lower layer is 40,000 H2O bumpers per unit whatever, + 400 CO2 bumpers. Ignoring for the moment that their absorption spectra are not an exact match, if we round off to three significant digits, that’s still 40,000.
The upper layer is 400 CO2 bumpers per unit whatever. There’s H2O bumpers too, but we’re not going to change their concentration in the next step, so let’s ignore them.
General Stefan-Boltzmann shouts “fire at will! but do it in a fashion proportional to the 4th power of T!” The pinball guns start hammering away until equilibrium is reached.
If we double the CO2 bumpers across both layers at this point, the lower layer, rounded to three significant digits, is now 40,100, an increase of .25%. The upper layer though is now 800 bumpers, an increase of 100%.
If I understand you correctly, what I’m suggesting is that the “extra” downward pinballs generated by the 800 CO2 bumpers is going to run into a wall of 40,100 H2O bumpers and not many of them are going to get to surface. Most of their energy will be absorbed and re-radiated at the upper portion of the H2O layer, with diminishing observable effects as you go lower. What you are trying to explain to me is that some of the upward pinballs from the lower H20 layer are not going to escape to the upper layer in the first place as they normally would have because of the downward pressure of the extra pinballs from the upper layer? (I think the analogy starts to break down here, hopefully I’m conveying my question correctly)
“In the meantime, we will without much additional effort beyond existing research and the obvious profit incentives drop the cost of solar power by a factor of four, and it will become at least competitive with the cheapest ways of generating electrical power. We will also have at least one major breakthrough in energy storage technology. The two together will cause solar to become more profitable than coal independent of subsidy, for much but not all of the world….. “ ~ Dr. Robert Brown
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Tsk Tsk says:
December 3, 2012 at 10:03 pm
That’s an article of pure faith. We’ve seen batteries improve at a glacial pace for a century and there isn’t enough pumped storage available to handle green energy at scale…..
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I am afraid I have to agree with Tsk Tsk. First solar and wind power are OLD technology.
1767: The First Solar Collector by Horace-Benedict de Saussure
1839: Photovolataic Effect Defined by Edmond Becquerel
1893: the First Solar Cell introduced
1947: Solar Power Equipment became popular in the US
1958: Solar Energy is Used In Space
1977: the US government embraced the use of solar energy by launching the Solar Energy Research Institute.
Info stolen fromHistory of Solar Energy
Both solar and wind are showing the earmarks of aproaching mature technology status.
or if you want from WIKI
People point out “Moore’s law” but the export of the solar industry to the sweat shops in China plus the horrible pollution caused by China’s rare earth mining is not represented in the curves I have seen. I doubt the curves includes inflation and all the subsidy programs or permitting, hook-up and inspection fees since they are ‘advertisements’ for the industry.
I am also surprised that Dr. Brown does not consider the Shockley–Queisser limit for a pn junction only 33.7% of the sunlight can be turned into electricity. we are at 22% with reflection from the surface playing a large part in limiting further gains without going to multilayers.
The last point is all the bankruptcies. It reminds me of the shake-out in the computer industry in the 1990’s when Prime, Digital, Wang and others went belly-up as the initial market explosion died off.
Of course the real problem with wind and solar is power storage. Without a reasonable and efficient means of storing power it can be nothing more than a niche market or political boondoggle.
The east and west coasts of the USA with mountains could use water and elevation for power storage but the NIMBYs and Activists would scream. (Wild Rivers Protection Act of 1973)
Sorry Anthony, but you just knocked down a big fluffy strawman.
All of what I read is right (skimmed a bit), but it misses the commenters point. If one assumes that GHGs have little or no affect on global temperature, then restricting them will not result in significantly more cooling or bring about the negative consequences of cooling significantly sooner. Conversely, releasing GHG will not prevent or significantly delay cooling.
What the commenter misses is that restricting GHG emissions constrains our ability to deal with the consequence of any kind of climate change.
Wow, those are some pretty extreme claims you’re making. Being ex-Navy and having circumnavigated the globe, I’ve never seen what you describe. Cover the entire world’s oceans every fortnight? Oil slicks to the horizon? Tens of thousands of square miles? The entire Mediterranean from end to end? Seriously?
An Exxon Valdez every 5 weeks? And this isn’t “front page” news? Sorry, you’re going to have to back-up these claims with something better than that Zeitgeist blip thingy.
The Pompous Git says:
December 3, 2012 at 11:15 pm
….The most obvious characteristic of climate is that it determines the vegetation type growing at a locality…..
_________________________________
Best and most logical definition that I have seen so far. Thanks for the links.
Gail Combs:
In your post at December 4, 2012 at 11:10 am you say
True.
But the real advantage of the needed power storage has nothing to do with windpower.
The power storage would be used to store excess power when available and to supply that power at times of high demand. This would reduce the need for power stations by about a third.
Reducing power stations by a third would be an immense reduction to electricity costs.
Incidentally, few countries aim to have more than a third of their electricity from ‘renewables’ so the power storage would completely remove the excuses for windfarms.
Sadly, there is no indication of such a power storage system being possible in the foreseeable future.
Richard
Do you have any thoughts on the validity of that evaluation and the possible physics relative to its potential predictive value?
Actually, no. I’d love to say “It’s the Sun”, or “It’s when the Moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter’s aligned with Mars”, but I have no idea. In fact, I can’t even imagine a halfway decent idea that isn’t basically science fiction (example — the Sun passes through a vast dust cloud in a 1000 year long orbit that heats the surface via infalling; a large pocket of radioactives is turning inside the Earth with a period of 1000 years; Space aliens return every 1000 years to visit and while they are here their dimension-twisting interstellar drive warps spacetime around the Earth and makes it heat up). I can’t think of any obvious way the Sun would do it, or has done it. Or planetary alignments. Or oceanic turnover. Or really, pretty much anything. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t something, only that I can’t think of what it might be.
Other than a coincidence, of course. A transient chaotic pattern that has emerged for a few cycles but is likely to disappear without warning just as unpredictably as it emerged.
rgb
Always a pleasure read RGB’s articles and the lively discusions that follow. Thanks, Anthony.
Gail Combs
Why be limited to PV? See the potential for optical rectenna:
Photovoltaic Technologies Beyond the Horizon: Optical Rectenna Solar Cell Final Report 1 August 2001–30 September 2002
For the true AGW believer Dr. Pratt of Stanford University has produced a real treasure.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/12/04/multidecadal-climate-to-within-a-millikelvin/
Julian Flood says:
‘humble pie calculation’.
LOL
Don’t feel like the lone ranger. I consider myself a pretty reasonable person that doesn’t jump to conclusions, but sometimes I do. I surf fish Holden Beach, NC regularly and go to the waterway to catch bait. Not long ago I went to the waterway and it was so turbid I had a difficult time catching bait. There was a lot of boat traffic that day causing a lot of waves along the sand/mud shoreline and I jumped to the conclusion the two were connected. The very next day there was just as much boat traffic and just as much wave action but the water was clear as a bell. Oops, I pulled a climate scientist!