Heh. In response to a ridiculous claim making the rounds (I get comment bombed at WUWT daily with that nonsense) which I debunked here: A misinterpreted claim about a NASA press release, CO2, solar flares, and the thermosphere is making the rounds
Dr. Roy Spencer employs some power visual satire, that has truth in it. He writes:
How Can Home Insulation Keep Your House Warmer, When It Cools Your House?!
<sarc> There is an obvious conspiracy from the HVAC and home repair industry, who for years have been telling us to add more insulation to our homes to keep them warmer in winter.
But we all know, from basic thermodynamics, that since insulation conducts heat from the warm interior to the cold outside, it actually COOLS the house.
Go read his entire essay here. <Sarc> on, Roy!
UPDATE: Even Monckton thinks these ideas promoted by slayers/principia/O’Sullivan are ridiculous:
Reply to John O’Sullivan:
One John O’Sullivan has written me a confused and scientifically illiterate “open letter” in which he describes me as a “greenhouse gas promoter”. I do not promote greenhouse gases.
He says I have “carefully styled [my]self ‘science adviser’ to Margaret Thatcher. Others, not I, have used that term. For four years I advised the Prime Minister on various policy matters, including science.
He says I was wrong to say in 1986 that added CO2 in the air would cause some warming. Since 1986 there has been some warming. Some of it may have been caused by CO2.
He says a paper by me admits the “tell-tale greenhouse-effect ‘hot spot’ in the atmosphere isn’t there”. The “hot spot”, which I named, ought to be there whatever the cause of the warming. The IPCC was wrong to assert that it would only arise from greenhouse warming. Its absence indicates either that there has been no warming (confirming the past two decades’ temperature records) or that tropical surface temperatures are inadequately measured.
He misrepresents Professor Richard Lindzen and Dr. Roy Spencer by a series of crude over-simplifications. If he has concerns about their results, he should address his concerns to them, not to me.
He invites me to “throw out” my “shredded blanket effect” of greenhouse gases that “traps” heat. It is Al Gore, not I, who talks of a “blanket” that “traps” heat. Interaction of greenhouse gases with photons at certain absorption wavelengths induces a quantum resonance in the gas molecules, emitting heat directly. It is more like turning on a tiny radiator than trapping heat with a blanket. Therefore, he is wrong to describe CO2 as a “coolant” with respect to global temperature.
He invites me to explain why Al Gore faked a televised experiment. That is a question for Mr. Gore.
He says I am wrong to assert that blackbodies have albedo. Here, he confuses two distinct methods of radiative transfer at a surface: absorption/emission (in which the Earth is a near-blackbody, displacing incoming radiance to the near-infrared in accordance with Wien’s law), and reflection (by which clouds and ice reflect the Sun’s radiance without displacing its incoming wavelengths).
He implicitly attributes Margaret Thatcher’s 1988 speech to the Royal Society about global warming to me. I had ceased to work with her in 1986.
He says that if I checked my history I should discover that it was not until 1981 that scientists were seriously considering CO2’s impact on climate. However, Joseph Fourier had posited the greenhouse effect some 200 years previously; Tyndale had measured the greenhouse effect of various gases at the Royal Institution in London in 1859; Arrhenius had predicted in 1896 that a doubling of CO2 concentration would cause 4-8 K warming, and had revised this estimate to 1.6 K in 1906; Callender had sounded a strong note of alarm in 1938; and numerous scientists, including Manabe&Wetherald (1976) had attempted to determine climate sensitivity before Hansen’s 1981 paper.
He says, with characteristic snide offensiveness, that I “crassly” attribute the “heat-trapping properties of latent heat to a trace gas that is a perfect energy emitter”. On the contrary: in its absorption bands, CO2 absorbs the energy of a photon and emits heat by quantum resonance.
He says the American Meteorological Society found in 1951 that all the long-wave radiation that might otherwise have been absorbed by CO2 was “already absorbed by water vapor”. It is now known that, though that is largely true for the lower troposphere, it is often false for the upper.
The series of elementary errors he here perpetrates, delivered with an unbecoming, cranky arrogance, indicates the need for considerable elementary education on his part. I refer him to Dr. Spencer’s excellent plain-English account of how we know there is a greenhouse effect.
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (April 18, 2013)
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richardscourtney says:
April 29, 2013 at 5:21 am
Richard, I agree. It is hopeless.
richardscourtney says
“Much IPCC so-called science is falsifiable; e.g. total loss of Himalayan glaciers within 35 years. But the reliance of much IPCC so-called science on not-validated computer models is pure pseudoscience.”
I agree but will they admit it?
Rhetorical question, because the answer is always no.
An excuse will be found to explain any departure from reality.
Historically CO2 fraction of atmosphere always lagged temperature.
Recent history shows that despite a large increase in CO2 fraction over the last 16 years temperatures have remained steady or decli ning.
Thats why I thought it as bit rich coming from Joel Shore that a test of falsification should be the mark that separates science from pseudoscience (or religion).
Yet Joel cannot give a test for AGW science.
We are therefore entitled to class it as pseudoscience (or religion).
Phil. says:
April 29, 2013 at 5:06 am
Myrrh says:
April 29, 2013 at 3:46 am
“Visible light from the Sun is not a thermal energy, it cannot heat matter. It works on the tiny electronic transition level not on the big molecular vibrational level which is what it takes to move matter into heat.”
More of your unscientific nonsense, the electronic transition is the large one and the vibrational transition which is the small one (although not as small as the rotational transition). See here and learn:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/molecule/molec.html#c2
Says nothing about electronic transitions being the bigger and vibrational being the smaller..
You’re full of AGWScienceFiction memes – the electron is considerably smaller than the whole molecule which includes the electrons; the whole molecule has volume, it is the whole volume of the molecule which has to be moved in order to heat it.
Visible light is tiny, much tiner than thermal infrared –
it’s much tinier than the shortwave non thermal infrared, the shortwave infrared is microscopic, the longwave infrared around the size of a pin head.
You have lost all sense of scale in these fake fisics memes, as the wavelengths get shorter they also get smaller.
All electromagnetic energy is not the same.. That’s why they have been given different names, and why real phyisics has been able to understand what they can and cannot do because they have different properties and processes from each other.
A big as a house radio wave is not the same as a very very very tiny gamma ray. They do not have the same effect on matter.
Sometimes joining up in sets, like gamma is ionising and some uv is ionising and so in the ionising set, but other uv not.
We can use the energy one non-ionising uv wavelength to convert to Vitamin D..
AGWScienceFiction has taken out all the properties and processes of energy and matter and dumbed this down to a series of lies, all electromagnetic energy does not create heat on being absorbed – photosynthesis proves that. Photosynthesis is the conversion of visible light to sugars, chemical energy not heat energy.
So come on, tell us how much visible light is heating the atmosphere by being absorbed by the electrons of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen? Which is how we get our blue sky.
“We cannot feel visible light from the Sun, it is not hot. What we feel as heat from the Sun is longwave infrared which is thermal infrared; of heat infrared and not of reflective light infrared, which is the not hot shortwaves of infrared.”
Which has all to do with the properties of our skin, not the properties of the light!
What? Our skin doesn’t create the radiating heat wave coming from the Sun – it measures it. It measures it by the effect the longwave infrared has on it. This thermal infrared is absorbed by the skin, matter, and because heat is a powerful energy it moves the molecules of the skin into vibration, so heating them up. We can feel this.
Rub your hands together, that is powerful mechanical energy causing the molecules in your skin to vibrate, which is kinetic energy which is heat, this is how powerful the direct heat energy from the Sun – and that is the bigger thermal infrared.
We cannot feel visible light, it is classed Reflected not classed Thermal in the class distinction Reflected/Thermal. It is classed as Light not Heat, in the class distinction Light/Heat.
Also, the direct heat energy from the Sun, which is longwave infrared which we feel as heat, penetrates several inches into our bodies and heats us up inside – heating up the solid and liquids in us, our flesh and bone and blood – especially because we are made up of a lot of water and water is a great imbiber of heat energy.
Look to real world industries to understand this. Humid air is cooler than dry air because of water’s known great capacity for absorbing heat energy before showing any change in temperature; this real world physics knowledge is used to keep rooms cool, put out a pan of water… And, conversely, if you have instead the problem of keeping a room warm in a cold wet climate then de-humidify your room – because the water sucks out the heat you’re putting in making the room feel colder..
So why do you think, there’s a post above, that real world industries make windows that minimise infrared and maximise visible to keep rooms cool and save on air conditioning costs?
Are they daft? Shouldn’t they know visible is the great heat energy which heats the land and water of the Earth..? Oh, maybe they’re still doing traditional science.
But if the people who created this technology were to disappear – those thinking AGW fake fisics is real wouldn’t have a hope in hell of understanding how to repeat it.
Myrrh says:
April 29, 2013 at 6:25 am
Phil. says:
April 29, 2013 at 5:06 am
Myrrh says:
April 29, 2013 at 3:46 am
“Visible light from the Sun is not a thermal energy, it cannot heat matter. It works on the tiny electronic transition level not on the big molecular vibrational level which is what it takes to move matter into heat.”
More of your unscientific nonsense, the electronic transition is the large one and the vibrational transition which is the small one (although not as small as the rotational transition). See here and learn:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/molecule/molec.html#c2
Says nothing about electronic transitions being the bigger and vibrational being the smaller..
So not only can’t you comprehend what you’re reading but you don’t understand graphs, no big surprise! In a graph showing energy on the y-axis the longer vertical lines representing electronic transitions correspond to greater energy change than the smaller vibrational transition.
Also from the text: “Vibrational transitions occur between different vibrational levels of the same electronic state. ”
So come on, tell us how much visible light is heating the atmosphere by being absorbed by the electrons of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen? Which is how we get our blue sky.
How we get our blue sky is elastic scattering, no absorption!
Bryan says:
(1) Trends over such a period are not statistically-significant different from zero but they also are not statistically-significant different from the long-term (post-1975) trend.
(2) The long-term trend (post-1975 to now) is not significantly different from the trend from 1975 through 16 years ago (March 1997) as this plot shows: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1975/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1975/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1975/to:1997.25/trend [In fact, the trend over the full period is slightly higher, although that detail is in the noise and depends on the exact endpoint.] Hence, there is no compelling reason to believe that we have fallen off the long-term trend that we have been following since ~1975.
These sorts of things are why respected scientific authorities like National Academy of Sciences think that the pseudoscience lies with “AGW skeptics” arguments and not with AGW. Unless you learn not to make such pseudoscientific arguments, you will not convince the scientific community of your arguments…But maybe that’s not really the goal?
Bryan says:
(1) Trends over such a period are not statistically-significant different from zero but they also are not statistically-significant different from the long-term (post-1975) trend.
(2) The long-term trend (post-1975 to now) is not significantly different from the trend from 1975 through 16 years ago (March 1997) as this plot shows: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1975/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1975/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1975/to:1997.25/trend [In fact, the trend over the full period is slightly higher, although that detail is in the noise and depends on the exact endpoint.] Hence, there is no compelling reason to believe that we have fallen off the long-term trend that we have been following since ~1975.
These sorts of things are why respected scientific authorities like National Academy of Sciences think that good scientific arguments lie in favor of AGW and. Unless you learn not to make such unscientific arguments, you will not convince the scientific community of your arguments…But maybe that’s not really the goal?
richardscourtney says:
April 29, 2013 at 5:21 am
Friends:
I strongly commend that posts from Myrrh be ignored.
It is not possible to address such complete nonsense as this irrational twaddle posted by Myrrh at April 29, 2013 at 4:40 am.
Agreed, I learned that about Myrhh several years ago and usually do ignore him, but every so often it’s necessary to refute some of his nonsense lest someone might actually think he knows what he’s talking about!
joeldshore says:
April 29, 2013 at 7:42 am
(2) The long-term trend (post-1975 to now) is not significantly different from the trend from 1975 through 16 years ago (March 1997)
The trend 1910-1945 is as steep as the trend 1976-2000, but CO2 levels in these periods increased resp. 10 ppmv and 50 ppmv. There is no fivefold increase in warming speed after 1946. Further, there was a slight cooling trend 1945-1975, which is caused – according to climate models – by the increased emissions of sulfate, cooling aerosols. But as I still remember from these times, London was fequently kept in green/black killing fog, thus warming black carbon aerosols were more important than cooling sulfates…
The current standstill seems quite identical to the 1945-1975 standstill, thus may extend over 30 years. There is a quite good correlation between the PDO cycle and global temperatures in the same periods. The PDO is a cycle of 60-80 years and now is in a cold phase…
The problem with current models is that they all are based on the increase over 1976-2000 and the near full attribution of all warming on CO2. There is no room in the models for natural variations like ENSO, PDO, NAO,… But if these are causing the variation around the trend, one has to halve the influence of CO2.
Bryan says:
But history is only a good guide if conditions are similar. Historically, animals have not been digging up and burning ~ 80,000,000 barrels of oil and 20,000,000 tons of coal per day. Conditions relating to CO2 *are* different than they were the last few times the earth transitioned in and out of glacial periods.
There is an old saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
There should be a corollary saying that it is also insane to do something completely unprecedented and to expect that things will continue to behave the same way as before.
Tim Folkerts:
Your post at April 29, 2013 at 9:17 am is misguided.
Atmospheric CO2 concentration is so low that plants struggle because they evolved at higher concentrations. And plants need atmospheric CO2 so everything up the food chain from plants needs it. Atmospheric CO2 is literally the ‘stuff of life’.
There are known benefits of higher atmospheric CO2 concentration: all the biosphere benefits. And there are no known problems.
Then, of course, there is the little fact that nature emits 34 CO2 molecules for each CO2 molecule emitted from human activity. So, you are saying you are afraid that a trivial increase to CO2 emissions will change CO2 from being the ‘stuff of life’ into being the harbinger of Armagedon.
Riiiiight.
Richard
richardscourtney;
could you please contact me via email?
davidDOThofferATmts.net
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
“The trend 1910-1945 is as steep as the trend 1976-2000…”
They are almost identical, despite the big difference in atmospheric CO2.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
April 29, 2013 at 9:10 am
joeldshore says:
April 29, 2013 at 7:42 am
(2) The long-term trend (post-1975 to now) is not significantly different from the trend from 1975 through 16 years ago (March 1997)
The trend 1910-1945 is as steep as the trend 1976-2000, but CO2 levels in these periods increased resp. 10 ppmv and 50 ppmv. There is no fivefold increase in warming speed after 1946.
Nor should one have been expected, the response to CO2 increase at present atmospheric levels is logarithmic not linear.
davidmhoffer:
re your message to me at April 29, 2013 at 9:44 am.
You may want to check your inbox.
If you don’t find my email then my email address is
richardscourtneyATaolDOTcom
Richard
richardscourtney says:
April 29, 2013 at 9:33 am
Tim Folkerts:
Your post at April 29, 2013 at 9:17 am is misguided.
Atmospheric CO2 concentration is so low that plants struggle because they evolved at higher concentrations. And plants need atmospheric CO2 so everything up the food chain from plants needs it. Atmospheric CO2 is literally the ‘stuff of life’.
There are known benefits of higher atmospheric CO2 concentration: all the biosphere benefits. And there are no known problems.
Then, of course, there is the little fact that nature emits 34 CO2 molecules for each CO2 molecule emitted from human activity.
And the other little fact that you omit mentioning that nature absorbs about 34.5 CO2 molecules for each CO2 molecule emitted from human activity, for a net natural sink effect.
dbstealey says:
April 29, 2013 at 9:46 am
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
“The trend 1910-1945 is as steep as the trend 1976-2000…”
They are almost identical, despite the big difference in atmospheric CO2.
But not such a big difference in log(CO2), about a 5% increase.
Phil. says:
And hence, we see a prime example of why the AGW skeptics don’t come off well with actual scientists. The sorts of arguments that Richard used here aren’t designed to convince knowledgeable scientists. They are designed to confuse people who don’t understand…particularly those who want to believe a certain thing.
joelshore says:
“And hence, we see a prime example of why the AGW skeptics don’t come off well with actual scientists.”
Therefore, Lindzen, Christy, Michaels, Spencer, etc., etc. are not “actual scientists” according to joelshore. Shows just how screwed up he really is.
joelshore is miserable because the planet is falsifying his belief system. It refuses to do what the alarmist crowd incessantly predicted it would do.
Most of us are ‘AGW skeptics’ for the simple reason that AGW cannot be measured. AGW amounts to an assertion. A conjecture. If it cannot be quantified with empirical measurements, it is only an unverifiable belief. Like a religion.
Richard,
I didn’t say anything about whether more CO2 is good or bad. Putting words in my mouth and then attacking those words is a very ineffective debate tactic.
I was simply pointing out a logical fallacy ….
Am I “misguided” because I object to this logic?
joeldshore:
At April 29, 2013 at 10:54 am you quote Phil. (i.e. another AGW-fanatic like you) trying to be clever by altering my words and you say of the alteration by Phil.
NO! We see a prime example of how you misrepresent AGW skeptics.
Actual scientists like me don’t do that sort of thing, Shore.
Only people like you who pretend to be scientists do it.
This is what Phil. said as a supposed correction of my statement.
You quoted those words as mine. But even Phil had sufficient honesty to quote what I actually said, so you cannot have made a simple misunderstanding.
You pretended Phil’s words were mine then slagged them off.
And I actually said simple truth in this post at April 29, 2013 at 9:33 am. Phil also quoted this post before making his suggested alteration which you have pretended were my words.
Richard
tjfolkerts:
I do not have a clue what you are talking about in your post addressed to me at April 29, 2013 at 11:18 am.
You say
What words did I put in your mouth, when and where?
Or are you trying the Joel Shore tactic of pretending I said other than I did?
Richard
It is somewhat amusing to note that this whole thread started precisely because some “AGW skeptics don’t come off well with actual scientists”. The “actual scientist” Roy Spencer was mocking “AGW skeptics” at PSI who have no clue about physics (or more precisely, they have just enough clue to be dangerous). PSI is so far over the line that even other skeptics are calling them out!
So, yes, there are enough really uninformed, really vocal “AGW skeptics” that they paint “AGW skeptics” as a whole in a bad light. (And, of course, there are plenty of “alarmists” who paint the other side in a bad light.)
richardscourtney says:
April 29, 2013 at 11:28 am
joeldshore:
At April 29, 2013 at 10:54 am you quote Phil. (i.e. another AGW-fanatic like you) trying to be clever by altering my words and you say of the alteration by Phil.
I didn’t alter what you said, I quoted it in italics as I normally do, and pointed out your omission where you pretend that the contribution of ‘nature’ is an increase of 35 molecules/molecule of CO2 emitted by human activity whereas it is in fact a net sink of 0.5 molecules/molecule.
This is what Phil. said as a supposed correction of my statement.
“And the other little fact that you omit mentioning that nature absorbs about 34.5 CO2 molecules for each CO2 molecule emitted from human activity, for a net natural sink effect.”
which is an actual correction of your statement.
richardscourtney asks rather emphatically “What words did I put in your mouth, when and where?”
Ummm …. how about the post I was referring to @ur momisugly April 29, 2013 at 9:33 am?
In fact, I said nothing of the sort.
Phil. says:
April 29, 2013 at 10:51 am
But not such a big difference in log(CO2), about a 5% increase.
That is exactly the problem: the temperature rise 1910-1945 is mostly attributed to natural factors in the models, where the 10 ppmv rise in CO2 has not much influence. The temperature rise 1976-2000 is near solely attributed to the 50 ppmv rise in CO2, which is a 5% log[CO2] increase. Still about 5 times even in log increase, compared to the previous period. But the temperature increases (speed and height) are quite identical. The inbetween period and the period since 2000 are even more interesting: slight cooling and flat temperatures with rising CO2 levels.
The first cooler period is argumented away by a nice tuning knob: human induced aerosols, of which nobody can tell for sure if they cool the world or warm the world. The brown haze over India probably warms the world. But the reduction of over 60% in SO2 emissions in the Western world didn’t show any temperature effect at places where the largest effect should be found: downwind the largest emitters.
The current period of standstill can’t be argumented by aerosols, as these didn’t change much over the recent decades: what the Western world cleaned up now is extra emitted in China, but even there one begins to clean up the emissions, because they have more and more problems.
Thus the main problem is what causes the current (and previous) standstill in temperature increase and what is its attribution to the warming in the other periods and what are the consequences for the sensitivity for 2xCO2.