Human shadow etched in stone from Hiroshima Atomic blast.These stone steps led up to the entrance to the Sumitomo Bank Hiroshima Branch, 260meters from the hypocenter. The intense atomic heat rays turned the surface of the stonewhite, except for a part in the middle where someone was sitting. The person sitting on the steps waiting for the bank to open received the full force of the heat rays directly from the front and undoubtedly died on the spot. The building was used for a time after the war. When it was rebuilt in 1971, these steps were removed and brought to the museum. Source: Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
Why comparing global warming to the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb is ridiculous
Some days, you just have to laugh. That’s what we’ll have to do today after reading the latest ridiculous scare story from cartoonist turned pseudo-psychologist now elevated to ‘climate scientist’ John Cook from the antithetically named ‘Skeptical Science’ website.
He’d like people to think the effect of global warming is as powerful as the effect of an atomic bomb, but as we’ll see, it is another one of those scare by scale stories where you grab some iconic image from the public consciousness and use it to make your issue seem bigger than it really is. For example, in 2010 normally calving glacier ice was compared to Manhattan Island to give it scale: Oh no! Greenland glacier calves island 4 times the size of Manhattan
Now, the same trick is being used by John Cook to try to scare people, because what could be more scary than getting vaporized by an Atomic Bomb? It just goes to show the depths of desperation used to try to sell the public on a problem that isn’t getting much traction.
Humans are emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any other time in history, says John Cook, Climate Communication Fellow from the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland.
“All these heat-trapping greenhouse gases in our atmosphere mean … our planet has been building up heat at the rate of about four Hiroshima bombs every second – consider that going continuously for several decades.”
Whoa, four Hiroshima bombs every second. How scary is that? Well not only is it not an original idea by Cook, compared to the amount of energy received by the Earth from the biggest fusion bomb in our solar system, our sun, it hardly registers a blip.
“…equivalent to exploding 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day 365 days per year. That’s how much extra energy Earth is gaining each day.”
That’s 278 atomic bombs worth of energy every minute – more than four per second — non-stop. To be clear, that is just the extra energy being gained each day on top of the energy heating our planet by 0.8 degree C. It is the rate at which we are increasing global warming.
Let’s do the numbers. First, let’s convert the extra heat into an iconic image people can understand that isn’t quite as scary: the incandescent light bulb (not the twisty kind). Willis Eschenbach calculated:
Hansen says increase in forcing is “400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day”, which comes to 2.51e+19 joules/day.
A watt is a joule per second, so that works out to a constant additional global forcing of 2.91e+14 watts.
Normally, we look at forcings in watts per square metre (W/m2). Total forcing (solar plus longwave) averaged around the globe 24/7 is about 500 watts per square metre.
To convert Hansen’s figures to a per-square-metre value, the global surface area is 5.11e+14 square metres … which means that Hansens dreaded 400,000 Hiroshima bombs per day works out to 0.6 watts per square metre … in other words, Hansen wants us to be very afraid because of a claimed imbalance of six tenths of a watt per square metre in a system where the downwelling radiation is half a kilowatt per square metre … we cannot even measure the radiation to that kind of accuracy.
What a 0.6 watt light bulb might look like when turned on.
So imagine the output of a 0.6 watt light bulb in a standard Edison base such as at right, with 1/100th the power of a common household 60 watt light bulb.
Could you even see its output?
And, more importantly, can that 0.6 watt of energy imbalance even be accurately measured on a global basis?
Note the figure on the Earth that I highlighted in yellow: Surface imbalance 0.6±17
That’s an uncertainty of 17 watts, or if you prefer Hansen-Cook parlance, 4 Hiroshima Atomic bombs an uncertainty of ±113 Hiroshima bombs every second.
The ±17 watts uncertainty of the 0.6 watt surface imbalance is two orders of magnitude larger than the claim! But, activists like Cook say global warming will “Cook’ us for sure.
Hmmm. Something bigger is needed to keep it scary. How about comparing Hiroshima bombs to the biggest fusion bomb in the solar system, the sun? From our article:
The Hiroshima bomb released ~ 67 TeraJoules (TJ) = 6E13J. source
The earths circular area is 3 * (6E6m)^2 = 1E14m2.
The suns TSI is ~ 1kW = 1E3 J/s, so the earth gets ca 1E17 J/s on the sunlit side, so the sun explodes about 1E17/6E13 = 1E3 Hiroshima atomic bombs on this planet EVERY SECOND.
(h/t to bvdeenen)
Gosh, a thousand Hiroshima bombs exploding on this planet every second? How frightening! With that sort of threat, one wonders why Obama isn’t going to announce taxing the sun into submission next Tuesday.
These calculation just go to illustrate that in the grand scheme of things, not only is the global energy associated with global warming small, it isn’t even within the bounds of measurement certainty.
Da bomb, it isn’t. Time to ‘Cook’ up a new scare story.
Here’s the funny thing though, as Donna Laframboise points out, in addition to the laughable statement that Cook plagiarized from Hansen above, somehow the amazing “postdoctoral fellow” without a PhD has somehow been elevated to the status of “climate scientist” by the French in a recent article. Climate Change Likened to Atom Bomb by Scientists.
Although that article talks about “climate scientists” it names and quotes exactly one person – Cook himself. Moreover, the claims here are nothing short of fantastical. It says that climate scientists
have given figures of rising and changing climate. These figures are almost like a warning that states that escalating temperatures are equivalent to four Hiroshima bombs in a week.
They’ve completely attributed the condition to human actions.
It’s clear that this reporter’s first language is not English, so I’m sure she has misunderstood. No official document of which I’m aware has declared humans 100% responsible for current temperature trends (see, for example, the discussion here).
UPDATE: Jo Nova also has a essay on the subject here: http://joannenova.com.au/2013/06/climate-scientists-move-to-atom-bomb-number-system-give-up-on-exponentials/
@Doug Huffman …“1000 to 2000 thunderstorms active at any time. … Water content 10^8 – 10^9 kg. Total energy 10^15 joule, electric energy 10^12 – 10^13 J.” And that is note as quoted from Atmospheric Electricity by H. Israel..
Um. so, working in orders of magnitude, thunderstorms are the equivalent of about 100 A-bombs per day. And global warming is 4000 times as big.
I wonder why I haven’t felt it yet?
PaddikJ
June 23, 2013 2:42 pm
Cam_S says:
June 23, 2013 at 7:36 am
Whenever somebody starts comparing the damage of global warming to atomic bombs, I say…
As human beings, we can adapt to a few degrees of temperature. But we cannot adapt to nuclear radiation.
Nonsense. There is no such thing as “nuclear radiation”; there is only radiation, whether from a thermonuclear bomb or a toaster oven (or the sun).
Dodgy Geezer
June 23, 2013 2:43 pm
I’ve found a ‘green’ site which claims that our energy usage across the planet is… well, here’s teh quote: …Global energy consumption for 2006 was a staggering 507 exajoules [5.07E+20 joules, the equivalent to the energy released by detonating 9.3 million Hiroshima-sized A-bombs throughout the year at the rate of 25,437 bombs each day, or one bomb for every 718 people.]..
Um. Our TOTAL energy usage is the same as 25,000 bombs a day, and yet the extra forcing is 400,000 bombs per day? Interesting…
davidmhoffer
June 23, 2013 2:57 pm
jai m
The scientific fact is that the .6 watts per meter squared of additional heat energy calculated as being the minimum of current warming going on IS equal to that number of Hiroshima bombs going off every day in the earth’s atmosphere. This is how one effectively shows what that amount of energy represents.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
While we’re waiting for your explanation of polar amplification, which you’ve now been asked for twice and not a peep, perhaps you could also explain your statement above? A nuclear bomb converts mass to energy, and hence adds energy to the planet, but only temporarily since this increases radiance to space until equilibrium is once against restored and energy in = energy out exactly the same as before the explosion. Similarly, doubling CO2 temporarily adds energy to the earth system which suppresses radiance to space temporarily, until equilibrium is restored and energy in = energy out, same as before CO2 doubled.
So, the effective black body temperature of the earth once equilibrium is reached is exactly identical. The processes by which additional energy are injected into the earth system are both temporary, but from a physics perspective, they are actually opposite processes.
Can you explain jai why both result in the exact same effective black body temperature despite being opposite processes, and why one at equilibrium results in a higher surface temperature but not the other?
Do you even know what “effective black body temperature” means? Can you explain it?
Max™
June 23, 2013 3:01 pm
Usually when someone says “nuclear radiation” they mean “ionizing radiation” as I doubt they would use such a vague term to specifically mean alpha particles, which are helium nuclei.
Seems we have evolved from:
“Trust but verify”
to possibly two camps:
“Trust and vilify”
and
“Verify before trust.”
The difference being how one filters and absorbs information. In this instance perhaps analogous to a rotating polarizing lens. If you leave your lens in one polarization as your only input, then that is all you have to go on. In the other, the same. Rotating the lens provides a continuous change in perspective, which should trigger re-analysis of what you are seeing.
The process of verification, the application of rational thought as the filter to changing perceptions. So you either accept a particular polarized perception without perspective thought (verification), or you are always rotating the “thinking lens”.
Polarization, of course, restricts things to vibrate in one plane. It does not restrict the frequency of those vibrations unless they are not vibrating in that plane. Or color.
So the color of our polarization can vary even within a single polarzation.
Which brings us to the color red: vilify. Being restricted to vibrate in a single plane and in a single color such as red (center of a watermelon for instance) restricts bandwidth to a very narrow data band. Necessarily affecting what there is to absorb.
I cite Jai, for instance, meaning no offense, but to demonstrate perhaps endpoints of the human spectrum:
From: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1102.3931.pdf
“We show how the prevailing majority opinion in a population can be rapidly reversed by a small fraction p of randomly distributed committed agents who consistently proselytize the opposing opinion and are immune to influence. Specifically, we show that when the committed fraction grows beyond a critical value pc ≈ 10%, there is a dramatic decrease in the time Tc taken for the entire population to adopt the committed opinion.
“Human behavior is profoundly affected by the influenceability of individuals and the social networks that link them together. Well before the proliferation of online social networking, offline or interpersonal social networks have been acknowledged as a major factor in determining how societies move toward consensus in the adoption of ideologies, traditions, and attitudes [1,2]. As a result, the dynamics of social influence has been heavily studied in sociological, physics, and computer science literature [3–7]. In the sociological context, work on diffusion of innovations has emphasized how individuals adopt new states in behavior, opinion, or consumption through the influence of their neighbors. Commonly used models for this process include the threshold model [8] and the Bass model [9]. A key feature in both these models is that once an individual adopts the newstate, his state remains unchanged at all subsequent times.
“In closing, we have demonstrated here the existence of a tipping point at which the initial majority opinion of a network switches quickly to that of a consistent and inflexible minority. There are several historical precedents for such events, for example, the suffragette movement in the early 20th century, and the rise of the American civil-rights movement that started shortly after the size of the African-American population crossed the 10% mark.”
“HIS STATE REMAINS UNCHANGED AT ALL SUBSEQUENT TIMES (caps mine)”. Polarization.
So the questions for each of us are simply this. Do you believe whatever you are told? Do you believe whatever you are told on a particular subject? Do you bother to verify (rotate your lens)? Can you reach a conclusion given even the most simple facts?
Relating all of this to the article, and in considering an even wider range of things than the speed at which I can type, the analytics of what Mr. Cook has espoused do not seem to withstand the numeric scrutiny (verification) Anthony and others have provided in the light of other rotations of the lens of knowledge (wider spectrum of information). In terms of disproving a hypothesis or theory, ones data and conclusions should at least reasonably constitute an anomaly. None is apparent here.
Beyond this is just vilification.
Max™ says:
June 23, 2013 at 3:01 pm
Usually when someone says “nuclear radiation” they mean “ionizing radiation” as I doubt they would use such a vague term to specifically mean alpha particles, which are helium nuclei.
======================================================
But working in the word “nuclear” sound so much scarier .. and keeps “Man” in the equation.
PatK
June 23, 2013 3:40 pm
Chris Y., it is even worse than you conclude, because even that energy converted into electricity will eventually be converted to heat as it is used to perform work, heat homes, etc. Now does it displace fossil fuels, nuclear, water, etc.? Possibly. But ultimately it is more energy into the system.
It too, however, is so down in the mud as to be negligible in the big picture.
Max™
June 23, 2013 3:59 pm
Never could understand why nuclear is a scary word, bomb is scary by itself, adding it to anything just about would make it scarier (I suppose kitten bomb wouldn’t be scary to anyone except dwarf fortress players, huh?) but nuclear by itself? I’d rather live near a nuclear power plant than a coal power plany any day, I’ve worked a brief stint cleaning out some of the dust collection plates in a coal plant, spending half an hour each night just getting dust off of/out of my skin and pores was bad enough, but starting to develop a mild cough after a week there? Yeah, $1000 a week is awesome when you’re 19… but not THAT awesome.
jai mitchell
June 23, 2013 4:21 pm
davidmhoffer says:
June 23, 2013 at 2:57 pm
jai m
The scientific fact is that the .6 watts per meter squared of additional heat energy calculated as being the minimum of current warming going on IS equal to that number of Hiroshima bombs going off every day in the earth’s atmosphere. This is how one effectively shows what that amount of energy represents.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
While we’re waiting for your explanation of polar amplification, which you’ve now been asked for twice and not a peep,
————-
RESPONSE
I’m sorry I get asked a lot of questions here, not sure which one you mean. the fact that there is polar amplification shouldn’t be a suprise to you or anyone.
I have posted peer review documentation that shows the arctic temperature will rise by 5-8C once the sea ice melts. That is probably what your question is about. Well there you have it.
decreased albedo and absorption of the suns energy in the arctic sea is the cause of the temperature increase, you probably don’t realize that the amount of solar energy hitting the earth’s surface north of the arctic circle right now per day is more than the amount of solar energy hitting the tropics per day right now (summer solstice)
—————–
perhaps you could also explain your statement above? A nuclear bomb converts mass to energy, and hence adds energy to the planet, but only temporarily since this increases radiance to space until equilibrium is once against restored and energy in = energy out exactly the same as before the explosion.
————-
RESPONSE
ok
————-
Similarly, doubling CO2 temporarily adds energy to the earth system which suppresses radiance to space temporarily,
————–
RESPONSE
sorry, no not temporarily, the suppressed radiance to space is permanently changed until the concentration of CO2 is reduced.
————–
until equilibrium is restored and energy in = energy out, same as before CO2 doubled.
—————
RESPONSE
Sorry, no, energy in never changes, energy in is based on solar insolation, unless you artificially dim the sun (as in a space-based shielding device) or artificially increase the reflectance of solar energy at the top of the atmosphere (by artificially increasing the amount of aluminum oxide at the upper altitude via high-altitude deposition) you will have the same energy in as we always have
Energy out difference only occurs once the temperature increases enough that MORE infrared wavelength radiation is emitted and the amount of heat energy lost to space reaches the new equilibrium. .. hence. . .global warming.
————————–
So, the effective black body temperature of the earth once equilibrium is reached
—————-
RESPONSE
once equilibrium is reached once the surface of the earth increases in temperature enough that the amount of heat energy re-reflected down from the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is equal to the increase in heat energy that is emitted due to an increase in surface temperature??? ok . . go on. . .
——————-
is exactly identical. The processes by which additional energy are injected into the earth system are both temporary, but from a physics perspective, they are actually opposite processes.
——————–
RESPONSE
similarly, your body gives off a steady amount of heat energy, when you lay beneath a blanket the air space between your body and the blanket reaches an equilibrium. put on more blankets and the temperature goes up. because heat OUT slows down and HEAT IN (your body’s respiration producing heat) stays the same
Until the difference in temperature under the blanket reaches a high enough temperature and balance is restored (at a higher temperature)
———————
Can you explain jai why both result in the exact same effective black body temperature despite being opposite processes, and why one at equilibrium results in a higher surface temperature but not the other?
————————-
response
Because CO2 acts as an additional blanket
——————–
Do you even know what “effective black body temperature” means? Can you explain it?
—————
RESPONSE
yes, and I have a basic conceptual understand of the physics behind global warming as determined by Svante Arrhenius back in 1893 when he calculated,
“any doubling of the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air would raise the temperature of the earth’s surface by 4°” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect
————————–
Now I have a question for you.
are you a regular poster, reader of this site, if this site is such an authority on the greenhouse effect and global warming, why is it that you seem to lack the most basic level of conceptual understanding of the science of climate change?
and
the reason that the Hiroshima bomb analogy is a good one is because the number of bomb explosions KEEPS happening every day over and over, it is a net increase in the energy deposition on the surface of the earth.
by the way if you took all of that energy an had 90% of that energy go into heating the ocean, about 8% heating the land and about 2% heating the atmosphere, you wouldn’t notice that much warming AND you would have much more variability if the ocean decided to take a small amount of extra heat for 15 years or so. . .
0.6 +/- 17? You gotta hand it to post-doctoral (w/o doctoral) climate scientists. Most of us laymen would have thought that indistinguishable from 0. I was so intrigued by this wisdom that I read Jo Nova’s blog and then looked Mr. Cook up. It all confirmed my awe of climate science and the true believers. Now for another not-so-wee dram of single malt so that I’m in the proper condition to fully appreciate Mr. Cook’s wisdom.
Cam_S says:
June 23, 2013 at 7:36 am
Whenever somebody starts comparing the damage of global warming to atomic bombs, I say…
As human beings, we can adapt to a few degrees of temperature. But we cannot adapt to nuclear radiation.
PaddikJ says:
Nonsense. There is no such thing as “nuclear radiation”; there is only radiation, whether from a thermonuclear bomb or a toaster oven (or the sun).
I call BS!
There is a huge spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. You can’t tell me that the infrared radiation from my toaster oven is the same as a Hiroshima type bomb being dropped on my town, producing high dose gamma radiation and neutron radiation.
And that’s the point that John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli are trying to make, isn’t it? The CAGW crowd wants the public to equate catastrophic global warming with nuclear armageddon.
KevinM
June 23, 2013 5:04 pm
Max, I think the same thing. There might be a regime change as the present ruling class ages out.
One pet hypothesis of mine is the TMI scare caught the hippies just as they were cutting back on pot and figuring out how to raise toddlers. People who were twenty-something in the Kennedy-Nixon-Vietnam-cold war-silent spring-population bomb-Beatles break up era are just now reaching the end of their peak political and economic influence.
The generation coming into power appears to be the Atari-Nintendo-play station-Iran contra- Berlin Wall – MTV era. They seem more interested in healthcare and phone aps than militarism and industry. I’m betting they are less adamant about nuke plants and third world invasions.
jai mitchell says: … if you took all of that energy an had 90% of that energy go into heating the ocean [arbitrary speculation], about 8% heating the land and about 2% heating the atmosphere, you wouldn’t notice that much warming AND you would have much more variability if the ocean decided to take a small amount of extra heat for 15 years or so…
We are now well past your “15 years”, and global warming remains stopped. But like other climate alarmists, you cannot admit that your conjecture has been falsified.
I would ask you what it would take to falsify your belief, but I have asked that same question of quite a few others in the alarmist crowd. The one time someone answered, he said it would be another twenty years before he would be willing to re-think his belief system. That, of course, is ridiculous.
By now any honest scientist will admit that the CO2=AGW conjecture has been falsified. The only ones who do not admit it are those who have a supernatural belief fueling their conjecture. That is not science; that is religion.
I suggest you post on religious blogs instead, since you have no understanding of how the Scientific Method, or the Null Hypothesis works. Your belief system has no basis in objective science. It has been debunked. Deconstructed. Falsified.
CO2 is simply not the magic gas you believe it to be. Its effect has been exhausted in the first 20 ppm, and at this point any added CO2 has an effect that is just too minuscule to measure.
Jai, you have had two days to reply to the question I originally asked you on a previous thread and repeated on this thread five hours ago, you have provided me with neither an answer, nor an acknowledgement of the question. This leads me to believe that your “science” is either wrong or not a subject for debate; ie it is still wrong. You have had every opportunity to debate AGW many times on this website, but at each time this opportunity has been turned into the usual illogical rant, characteristic of AGW supporters. Personally I do not have a problem with anyone, pro AGW or not, posting on this, or any other website, however I do have a problem if they cannot present their case rationally, which obviously you cannot.
You have had more opportunities to present and debate your views on this website than I would have had on the AGW websites; I would have been totally censored, because as you have so ably demonstrated, AGW is not debatable, because scientifically, it is wrong, only the belief in it is right!
I do not debate beliefs!
jai mitchell
June 23, 2013 5:38 pm
Andrewmharding
sorry, I wasn’t ignoring you, I promise the thing is, you answered your own question. I didn’t think you actually wanted an answer. Since you apparently do, I will answer.
“Jai, if the world was 8C warmer in the past with CO2 levels virtually identical to what they are now, why is the world not 8C warmer now? ”
—————-
The reason is quite complex. The short answer is that we are currently warming. It will take about 500 years before the earth reaches a new equilibrium. an additional 3.7Watts/meter squared on the surface of the earth is only a small increase from the 1,377 Watts per meter squared that the earth gets from the sun every day. The oceans circulate at depth and the effect of the ocean won’t reach equilibrium for a very long time.
That is the short answer.
the longer answer involves the change in the summer ice arctic albedo and the ability for the earth to produce lots of surface and subsea carbonaceous material (imagine the entire northern hemisphere covered in Nordic pine all the way to the arctic ocean and blooms of plankton so rich that the oceans have over 10,000 times the current mass of carbon-rich life organisms. How much extra carbon does all of those creatures hold by weight? (about half of the dry weight of a single tree can be considered carbon dioxide sequestered)
The simple fact that these temperatures are going up at such an incredibly fast rate now is that the slow growth/spread of trees and sea life won’t possibly make up for the rapid release (relatively–over several hundred years) of arctic methane and CO2 trapped in the earth.
in addition, the increase of drought and fire in current wetland, the drying and burning of boreal peat (carbon that was put into the earth during the last 10,000 years) and the change in chemistry composition of the arctic seas, preventing them from further sequestering carbon dioxide will lead to much higher future CO2 levels. So, the long term equilibrium will actually be more than 8C if we don’t change the situation right away.
————–
The amount of heat difference between the peak and trough of the Milankovich cycle is actually much less than can possibly produce the 8C temperature difference it has always been assumed that something else had to contribute to the additional warming/cooling and THAT is why CO2 LAGS temperature in the climate cycle.
because as the sun’s energy increases (milankovich) the co2 emissions increase and THAT is what causes additional temperature warming, always in steady equilibrium until the sun warms some more (slowly over thousands of years in the milankovich cycle)
——-
Their analysis indicates that CO2 concentrations and Antarctic temperature were tightly coupled throughout the deglaciation, within a quoted uncertainty of less than 200 years,” says commentator Edward J. Brook, of Oregon State University, Corvallis. http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/environment/carbon-dioxide-and-temperature-levels-are-more-tightly-linked
jai mitchell,
Astonishing. Now global armageddon has been pushed out 200 – 500 years! Of course, this flies in the face of the endless alarmist predictions of runaway global warming that were made with regularity.
This is a classic case of moving the goal posts. Anything can happen in 500 years, so your ridiculous speculation covers all possible eventualities. That is not science, that is witchcraft.
Predictions of runaway global warming were regularly made throughout the 1990’s and early 2000’s. But now that global warming has stopped, rather than admit that conjecture was falsified, the time frame has been pushed out so far that it can never be verified; not even your great-grandchildren will be around to point out how silly those predictions are.
You would salvage some credibility if you possessed basic honesty. Instead, your position has become so ridiculous that nobody accepts it. The fact is that the natural warming trend since the LIA has remained on the same long-term trend line; there has been no acceleration in the warming trend, despite the 40% rise in CO2. Is your refusal to admit that you were wrong so important to you that you are willing to forfeit any remaining credibility to maintrain the Narrative?
Dave, the dude is a troll. His area of expertise is in cognitive psychology and he is jerking everybody’s chain here. The models incorporate everything the AGW folk take to be true and reality shows the models are wrong.
If the models are wrong the theories built into them are wrong.
Jai’s a silly sausage isn’t he. Cook quotes energy in absolute terms using emotive units unrelated to the domain; Anthony quotes the same quantity in standard units relative to its domain.
Who’s being deceptive Jai?
Patrick
June 23, 2013 7:24 pm
“Justthinkin says:
June 23, 2013 at 11:55 am
Is jai mitchell cook posting under a pseudonym,or the other way around? Just curious.
REPLY: he appears to be using a real name, see: http://www.facebook.com/jai.j.mitchell
-A”
This “Jai” likes “The Consensus Project”, a Cook classic at SkS. Explains a few things if you are correct Anthony.
davidmhoffer
June 23, 2013 7:28 pm
jai mitchell
I have posted peer review documentation that shows the arctic temperature will rise by 5-8C once the sea ice melts. That is probably what your question is about. Well there you have it.
I asked you why polar amplification is expected to exist, and the physics that gives us reason to expect it to exist. I asked you to explain in your own words. Linking to things that other people have written demonstrates that you can link to things that other people have written. It says nothing about your comprehension of what they wrote, or that you have the technical skills to read what they wrote critically.
The answer is that equilibrium temperature is defined by Stefan-Boltzmann Law of physics, the formula for which is P=5.67*10^-8*T^4 with P in watts/m2 and T in degrees Kelvin. If you do the math, you’ll discover that raising the temperature of something at -40C requires only 2.9 additional w/m2 while raising the temperature of something at +40 C requires an additional 7.0 w/m2. So any given amount of increased energy flux should be expected to raise cold temperatures (ie polar) more than warm temperatures (ie equatorial). Learn this formula because it is fundamental to the science. decreased albedo and absorption of the suns energy in the arctic sea is the cause of the temperature increase,
Well it is more complicated than that jai. The albedo of open water at low angles of incidence is higher than that of water. So less ice coverage means less insolation absorbed, not more over the course of a year. Also, open water and land surface also are much warmer than ice and snow which by definition cannot exceed melting temperature of 0 C. Look at the formula for SB Law above. If the ice and snow are gone from the water surface and the land surface, the amount of energy radiated to space increases substantially, resulting in a cooling response in excess of the warming that caused it. I suggest you examine the ERBE data http://eos.atmos.washington.edu/cgi-bin/erbe/disp.pl?net.ann. which shows quite conclusively that the equatorial regions are net absorbers of energy and the polar regions are net losers of energy. Combine this with SB Law and you will see that equatorial temps will rise a lot less than polar temps (as the IPCC themselves admit) and the cooling response of the polar regions makes massive temperature rises very difficult to achieve. Similarly, doubling CO2 temporarily adds energy to the earth system which suppresses radiance to space temporarily,
————–
RESPONSE
sorry, no not temporarily, the suppressed radiance to space is permanently changed until the concentration of CO2 is reduced.
Oh dear no. Not even close. Not even the IPCC makes such a claim. I suggest you read Chapter 2 of AR4 very carefully so that you understand what the science you think you know so well actually says. I suggest you start here: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-2.html
You will see very quickly that the equilibrium temperature changes by precisely zero. What changes is the temperature profile between earth surface and TOA, with TOA becoming slightly cooler and earth surface becoming slightly warmer. But the net radiation absorbed and the net radiation emitted at equilibrium are precisely the same. This is why I asked you if you understood what the effective black body temperature meant. You should get an understanding of this concept before explaining it (wrongly) to others. Because CO2 acts as an additional blanket
Oh dear, that’s a terrible over simplification. First of all, a blanket also supresses convection which CO2 doesn’t. Second a blanket warms against your body partly by radiance from your body and partly by conduction from your body. CO2 as a well mixed trace gas acts very differently, the “blanket” analogy is a very primitive and misleading analogy. Crack some spectroscopy text books and you’ll see what I mean. Do you even know what “effective black body temperature” means? Can you explain it?
RESPONSE
yes, and I have a basic conceptual understand of the physics behind global warming as determined by Svante Arrhenius back in 1893 when he calculated,
“any doubling of the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air would raise the temperature of the earth’s surface by 4°”
Well your answer demonstrates clearly that you don’t. The effective black body temperature of the earth is the temperature as seen from space and is taken neither at the surface nor at the TOA. You quote Arrhenius calculations in response, not realising that these had nothing to do with the effective black body temperature of the earth. You are also quoting a number which even alarmist physicists will tell you is 4 times larger at a bare minimum than the physics predicts. The general consensus among both warmist and skeptic physicists today is that direct warming from a doubling of CO2 at earth surface, with the bulk of it coming in the polar regions in winter at night time lows and almost none at day time highs in the tropics is an average of about 1 degree. If you’re going to quote what he science says, then quote what the current consensus from your own side, which is 1 degree. If you read Ch2 of AR4 as I suggested, you’ll see that I am correct on this. Larger numbers that you see quoted include feedbacks, which AR4 estimates to be an additional 1 to 3.5 degrees and which AR5 will most likely estimate at less than half of that. Now I have a question for you.
are you a regular poster, reader of this site, if this site is such an authority on the greenhouse effect and global warming, why is it that you seem to lack the most basic level of conceptual understanding of the science of climate change?
Yes I am a regular, and I have spent countless hours on this site explaining to people who think that the GHE doesn’t exist at all that in fact it exists, we can easily prove that it exists. When you get off your high horse, you’ll discover that the skeptic community is largely in agreement with this and that we are far better versed in what the physics and the science actually say (versus what people like you THINK it says) than are most warmists. What we disagree on is the magnitude of the feedbacks, and the costs of mitigation versus adaptation. We are skeptical of the measures being proposed to combat global warming not because we don’t understand the science, but because we do. the reason that the Hiroshima bomb analogy is a good one is because the number of bomb explosions KEEPS happening every day over and over, it is a net increase in the energy deposition on the surface of the earth.</i?
Well there you go again, three glaring errors in a single sentence. The Hiroshima bomb's energy in the context of the earth's temperature changes it, rounded off to ten decimal places, by zero degrees. The process by which it injects energy into the system is precisely opposite of what CO2 does. And once agaim get familiar with SB Law before you make claims that even the IPCC doesn't make. by the way if you took all of that energy an had 90% of that energy go into heating the ocean, about 8% heating the land and about 2% heating the atmosphere, you wouldn’t notice that much warming AND you would have much more variability if the ocean decided to take a small amount of extra heat for 15 years or so. . .
Oh dear. That’s not what the IPCC says, that’s not what the CRU says, that’s not what NASA says. Why is it jai that you claim we skeptics don’t know what the science says, and then you make claims that the scientists you claim to be supporting don’t? I suggest you read up on the research of Jones, Trenberth, Hansen and others to find out what claims they are actually making, what claims the IPCC is actually making, and then come back to defend those claims. What you are defending now is a fiction based on your misunderstanding of over simplified talking points.
davidmhoffer
June 23, 2013 7:34 pm
mods ~ i blew an end italics at:
net increase in the energy deposition on the surface of the earth.</i?
question mark instead of a closed bracket. No need to fix it, just letting you know where it is in case it messes up following comments.
@Doug Huffman
…“1000 to 2000 thunderstorms active at any time. … Water content 10^8 – 10^9 kg. Total energy 10^15 joule, electric energy 10^12 – 10^13 J.” And that is note as quoted from Atmospheric Electricity by H. Israel..
Um. so, working in orders of magnitude, thunderstorms are the equivalent of about 100 A-bombs per day. And global warming is 4000 times as big.
I wonder why I haven’t felt it yet?
Nonsense. There is no such thing as “nuclear radiation”; there is only radiation, whether from a thermonuclear bomb or a toaster oven (or the sun).
I’ve found a ‘green’ site which claims that our energy usage across the planet is… well, here’s teh quote:
…Global energy consumption for 2006 was a staggering 507 exajoules [5.07E+20 joules, the equivalent to the energy released by detonating 9.3 million Hiroshima-sized A-bombs throughout the year at the rate of 25,437 bombs each day, or one bomb for every 718 people.]..
Um. Our TOTAL energy usage is the same as 25,000 bombs a day, and yet the extra forcing is 400,000 bombs per day? Interesting…
jai m
The scientific fact is that the .6 watts per meter squared of additional heat energy calculated as being the minimum of current warming going on IS equal to that number of Hiroshima bombs going off every day in the earth’s atmosphere. This is how one effectively shows what that amount of energy represents.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
While we’re waiting for your explanation of polar amplification, which you’ve now been asked for twice and not a peep, perhaps you could also explain your statement above? A nuclear bomb converts mass to energy, and hence adds energy to the planet, but only temporarily since this increases radiance to space until equilibrium is once against restored and energy in = energy out exactly the same as before the explosion. Similarly, doubling CO2 temporarily adds energy to the earth system which suppresses radiance to space temporarily, until equilibrium is restored and energy in = energy out, same as before CO2 doubled.
So, the effective black body temperature of the earth once equilibrium is reached is exactly identical. The processes by which additional energy are injected into the earth system are both temporary, but from a physics perspective, they are actually opposite processes.
Can you explain jai why both result in the exact same effective black body temperature despite being opposite processes, and why one at equilibrium results in a higher surface temperature but not the other?
Do you even know what “effective black body temperature” means? Can you explain it?
Usually when someone says “nuclear radiation” they mean “ionizing radiation” as I doubt they would use such a vague term to specifically mean alpha particles, which are helium nuclei.
Seems we have evolved from:
“Trust but verify”
to possibly two camps:
“Trust and vilify”
and
“Verify before trust.”
The difference being how one filters and absorbs information. In this instance perhaps analogous to a rotating polarizing lens. If you leave your lens in one polarization as your only input, then that is all you have to go on. In the other, the same. Rotating the lens provides a continuous change in perspective, which should trigger re-analysis of what you are seeing.
The process of verification, the application of rational thought as the filter to changing perceptions. So you either accept a particular polarized perception without perspective thought (verification), or you are always rotating the “thinking lens”.
Polarization, of course, restricts things to vibrate in one plane. It does not restrict the frequency of those vibrations unless they are not vibrating in that plane. Or color.
So the color of our polarization can vary even within a single polarzation.
Which brings us to the color red: vilify. Being restricted to vibrate in a single plane and in a single color such as red (center of a watermelon for instance) restricts bandwidth to a very narrow data band. Necessarily affecting what there is to absorb.
I cite Jai, for instance, meaning no offense, but to demonstrate perhaps endpoints of the human spectrum:
From:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1102.3931.pdf
“We show how the prevailing majority opinion in a population can be rapidly reversed by a small fraction p of randomly distributed committed agents who consistently proselytize the opposing opinion and are immune to influence. Specifically, we show that when the committed fraction grows beyond a critical value pc ≈ 10%, there is a dramatic decrease in the time Tc taken for the entire population to adopt the committed opinion.
“Human behavior is profoundly affected by the influenceability of individuals and the social networks that link them together. Well before the proliferation of online social networking, offline or interpersonal social networks have been acknowledged as a major factor in determining how societies move toward consensus in the adoption of ideologies, traditions, and attitudes [1,2]. As a result, the dynamics of social influence has been heavily studied in sociological, physics, and computer science literature [3–7]. In the sociological context, work on diffusion of innovations has emphasized how individuals adopt new states in behavior, opinion, or consumption through the influence of their neighbors. Commonly used models for this process include the threshold model [8] and the Bass model [9]. A key feature in both these models is that once an individual adopts the newstate, his state remains unchanged at all subsequent times.
“In closing, we have demonstrated here the existence of a tipping point at which the initial majority opinion of a network switches quickly to that of a consistent and inflexible minority. There are several historical precedents for such events, for example, the suffragette movement in the early 20th century, and the rise of the American civil-rights movement that started shortly after the size of the African-American population crossed the 10% mark.”
“HIS STATE REMAINS UNCHANGED AT ALL SUBSEQUENT TIMES (caps mine)”. Polarization.
So the questions for each of us are simply this. Do you believe whatever you are told? Do you believe whatever you are told on a particular subject? Do you bother to verify (rotate your lens)? Can you reach a conclusion given even the most simple facts?
Relating all of this to the article, and in considering an even wider range of things than the speed at which I can type, the analytics of what Mr. Cook has espoused do not seem to withstand the numeric scrutiny (verification) Anthony and others have provided in the light of other rotations of the lens of knowledge (wider spectrum of information). In terms of disproving a hypothesis or theory, ones data and conclusions should at least reasonably constitute an anomaly. None is apparent here.
Beyond this is just vilification.
======================================================
But working in the word “nuclear” sound so much scarier .. and keeps “Man” in the equation.
Chris Y., it is even worse than you conclude, because even that energy converted into electricity will eventually be converted to heat as it is used to perform work, heat homes, etc. Now does it displace fossil fuels, nuclear, water, etc.? Possibly. But ultimately it is more energy into the system.
It too, however, is so down in the mud as to be negligible in the big picture.
Never could understand why nuclear is a scary word, bomb is scary by itself, adding it to anything just about would make it scarier (I suppose kitten bomb wouldn’t be scary to anyone except dwarf fortress players, huh?) but nuclear by itself? I’d rather live near a nuclear power plant than a coal power plany any day, I’ve worked a brief stint cleaning out some of the dust collection plates in a coal plant, spending half an hour each night just getting dust off of/out of my skin and pores was bad enough, but starting to develop a mild cough after a week there? Yeah, $1000 a week is awesome when you’re 19… but not THAT awesome.
davidmhoffer says:
June 23, 2013 at 2:57 pm
jai m
The scientific fact is that the .6 watts per meter squared of additional heat energy calculated as being the minimum of current warming going on IS equal to that number of Hiroshima bombs going off every day in the earth’s atmosphere. This is how one effectively shows what that amount of energy represents.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
While we’re waiting for your explanation of polar amplification, which you’ve now been asked for twice and not a peep,
————-
RESPONSE
I’m sorry I get asked a lot of questions here, not sure which one you mean. the fact that there is polar amplification shouldn’t be a suprise to you or anyone.
I have posted peer review documentation that shows the arctic temperature will rise by 5-8C once the sea ice melts. That is probably what your question is about. Well there you have it.
decreased albedo and absorption of the suns energy in the arctic sea is the cause of the temperature increase, you probably don’t realize that the amount of solar energy hitting the earth’s surface north of the arctic circle right now per day is more than the amount of solar energy hitting the tropics per day right now (summer solstice)
—————–
perhaps you could also explain your statement above? A nuclear bomb converts mass to energy, and hence adds energy to the planet, but only temporarily since this increases radiance to space until equilibrium is once against restored and energy in = energy out exactly the same as before the explosion.
————-
RESPONSE
ok
————-
Similarly, doubling CO2 temporarily adds energy to the earth system which suppresses radiance to space temporarily,
————–
RESPONSE
sorry, no not temporarily, the suppressed radiance to space is permanently changed until the concentration of CO2 is reduced.
————–
until equilibrium is restored and energy in = energy out, same as before CO2 doubled.
—————
RESPONSE
Sorry, no, energy in never changes, energy in is based on solar insolation, unless you artificially dim the sun (as in a space-based shielding device) or artificially increase the reflectance of solar energy at the top of the atmosphere (by artificially increasing the amount of aluminum oxide at the upper altitude via high-altitude deposition) you will have the same energy in as we always have
Energy out difference only occurs once the temperature increases enough that MORE infrared wavelength radiation is emitted and the amount of heat energy lost to space reaches the new equilibrium. .. hence. . .global warming.
————————–
So, the effective black body temperature of the earth once equilibrium is reached
—————-
RESPONSE
once equilibrium is reached once the surface of the earth increases in temperature enough that the amount of heat energy re-reflected down from the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is equal to the increase in heat energy that is emitted due to an increase in surface temperature??? ok . . go on. . .
——————-
is exactly identical. The processes by which additional energy are injected into the earth system are both temporary, but from a physics perspective, they are actually opposite processes.
——————–
RESPONSE
similarly, your body gives off a steady amount of heat energy, when you lay beneath a blanket the air space between your body and the blanket reaches an equilibrium. put on more blankets and the temperature goes up. because heat OUT slows down and HEAT IN (your body’s respiration producing heat) stays the same
Until the difference in temperature under the blanket reaches a high enough temperature and balance is restored (at a higher temperature)
———————
Can you explain jai why both result in the exact same effective black body temperature despite being opposite processes, and why one at equilibrium results in a higher surface temperature but not the other?
————————-
response
Because CO2 acts as an additional blanket
——————–
Do you even know what “effective black body temperature” means? Can you explain it?
—————
RESPONSE
yes, and I have a basic conceptual understand of the physics behind global warming as determined by Svante Arrhenius back in 1893 when he calculated,
“any doubling of the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air would raise the temperature of the earth’s surface by 4°”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect
————————–
Now I have a question for you.
are you a regular poster, reader of this site, if this site is such an authority on the greenhouse effect and global warming, why is it that you seem to lack the most basic level of conceptual understanding of the science of climate change?
and
the reason that the Hiroshima bomb analogy is a good one is because the number of bomb explosions KEEPS happening every day over and over, it is a net increase in the energy deposition on the surface of the earth.
by the way if you took all of that energy an had 90% of that energy go into heating the ocean, about 8% heating the land and about 2% heating the atmosphere, you wouldn’t notice that much warming AND you would have much more variability if the ocean decided to take a small amount of extra heat for 15 years or so. . .
0.6 +/- 17? You gotta hand it to post-doctoral (w/o doctoral) climate scientists. Most of us laymen would have thought that indistinguishable from 0. I was so intrigued by this wisdom that I read Jo Nova’s blog and then looked Mr. Cook up. It all confirmed my awe of climate science and the true believers. Now for another not-so-wee dram of single malt so that I’m in the proper condition to fully appreciate Mr. Cook’s wisdom.
Cam_S says:
June 23, 2013 at 7:36 am
Whenever somebody starts comparing the damage of global warming to atomic bombs, I say…
As human beings, we can adapt to a few degrees of temperature. But we cannot adapt to nuclear radiation.
PaddikJ says:
Nonsense. There is no such thing as “nuclear radiation”; there is only radiation, whether from a thermonuclear bomb or a toaster oven (or the sun).
I call BS!
There is a huge spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. You can’t tell me that the infrared radiation from my toaster oven is the same as a Hiroshima type bomb being dropped on my town, producing high dose gamma radiation and neutron radiation.
And that’s the point that John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli are trying to make, isn’t it? The CAGW crowd wants the public to equate catastrophic global warming with nuclear armageddon.
Max, I think the same thing. There might be a regime change as the present ruling class ages out.
One pet hypothesis of mine is the TMI scare caught the hippies just as they were cutting back on pot and figuring out how to raise toddlers. People who were twenty-something in the Kennedy-Nixon-Vietnam-cold war-silent spring-population bomb-Beatles break up era are just now reaching the end of their peak political and economic influence.
The generation coming into power appears to be the Atari-Nintendo-play station-Iran contra- Berlin Wall – MTV era. They seem more interested in healthcare and phone aps than militarism and industry. I’m betting they are less adamant about nuke plants and third world invasions.
jai mitchell says:
… if you took all of that energy an had 90% of that energy go into heating the ocean [arbitrary speculation], about 8% heating the land and about 2% heating the atmosphere, you wouldn’t notice that much warming AND you would have much more variability if the ocean decided to take a small amount of extra heat for 15 years or so…
We are now well past your “15 years”, and global warming remains stopped. But like other climate alarmists, you cannot admit that your conjecture has been falsified.
I would ask you what it would take to falsify your belief, but I have asked that same question of quite a few others in the alarmist crowd. The one time someone answered, he said it would be another twenty years before he would be willing to re-think his belief system. That, of course, is ridiculous.
By now any honest scientist will admit that the CO2=AGW conjecture has been falsified. The only ones who do not admit it are those who have a supernatural belief fueling their conjecture. That is not science; that is religion.
I suggest you post on religious blogs instead, since you have no understanding of how the Scientific Method, or the Null Hypothesis works. Your belief system has no basis in objective science. It has been debunked. Deconstructed. Falsified.
CO2 is simply not the magic gas you believe it to be. Its effect has been exhausted in the first 20 ppm, and at this point any added CO2 has an effect that is just too minuscule to measure.
Jai, you have had two days to reply to the question I originally asked you on a previous thread and repeated on this thread five hours ago, you have provided me with neither an answer, nor an acknowledgement of the question. This leads me to believe that your “science” is either wrong or not a subject for debate; ie it is still wrong. You have had every opportunity to debate AGW many times on this website, but at each time this opportunity has been turned into the usual illogical rant, characteristic of AGW supporters. Personally I do not have a problem with anyone, pro AGW or not, posting on this, or any other website, however I do have a problem if they cannot present their case rationally, which obviously you cannot.
You have had more opportunities to present and debate your views on this website than I would have had on the AGW websites; I would have been totally censored, because as you have so ably demonstrated, AGW is not debatable, because scientifically, it is wrong, only the belief in it is right!
I do not debate beliefs!
Andrewmharding
sorry, I wasn’t ignoring you, I promise the thing is, you answered your own question. I didn’t think you actually wanted an answer. Since you apparently do, I will answer.
“Jai, if the world was 8C warmer in the past with CO2 levels virtually identical to what they are now, why is the world not 8C warmer now? ”
—————-
The reason is quite complex. The short answer is that we are currently warming. It will take about 500 years before the earth reaches a new equilibrium. an additional 3.7Watts/meter squared on the surface of the earth is only a small increase from the 1,377 Watts per meter squared that the earth gets from the sun every day. The oceans circulate at depth and the effect of the ocean won’t reach equilibrium for a very long time.
That is the short answer.
the longer answer involves the change in the summer ice arctic albedo and the ability for the earth to produce lots of surface and subsea carbonaceous material (imagine the entire northern hemisphere covered in Nordic pine all the way to the arctic ocean and blooms of plankton so rich that the oceans have over 10,000 times the current mass of carbon-rich life organisms. How much extra carbon does all of those creatures hold by weight? (about half of the dry weight of a single tree can be considered carbon dioxide sequestered)
The simple fact that these temperatures are going up at such an incredibly fast rate now is that the slow growth/spread of trees and sea life won’t possibly make up for the rapid release (relatively–over several hundred years) of arctic methane and CO2 trapped in the earth.
in addition, the increase of drought and fire in current wetland, the drying and burning of boreal peat (carbon that was put into the earth during the last 10,000 years) and the change in chemistry composition of the arctic seas, preventing them from further sequestering carbon dioxide will lead to much higher future CO2 levels. So, the long term equilibrium will actually be more than 8C if we don’t change the situation right away.
————–
The amount of heat difference between the peak and trough of the Milankovich cycle is actually much less than can possibly produce the 8C temperature difference it has always been assumed that something else had to contribute to the additional warming/cooling and THAT is why CO2 LAGS temperature in the climate cycle.
because as the sun’s energy increases (milankovich) the co2 emissions increase and THAT is what causes additional temperature warming, always in steady equilibrium until the sun warms some more (slowly over thousands of years in the milankovich cycle)
——-
Their analysis indicates that CO2 concentrations and Antarctic temperature were tightly coupled throughout the deglaciation, within a quoted uncertainty of less than 200 years,” says commentator Edward J. Brook, of Oregon State University, Corvallis.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/environment/carbon-dioxide-and-temperature-levels-are-more-tightly-linked
somewhere between the second seal and the first woe. . .
http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/cryo_compare.jpg
jai mitchell,
Astonishing. Now global armageddon has been pushed out 200 – 500 years! Of course, this flies in the face of the endless alarmist predictions of runaway global warming that were made with regularity.
This is a classic case of moving the goal posts. Anything can happen in 500 years, so your ridiculous speculation covers all possible eventualities. That is not science, that is witchcraft.
Predictions of runaway global warming were regularly made throughout the 1990’s and early 2000’s. But now that global warming has stopped, rather than admit that conjecture was falsified, the time frame has been pushed out so far that it can never be verified; not even your great-grandchildren will be around to point out how silly those predictions are.
You would salvage some credibility if you possessed basic honesty. Instead, your position has become so ridiculous that nobody accepts it. The fact is that the natural warming trend since the LIA has remained on the same long-term trend line; there has been no acceleration in the warming trend, despite the 40% rise in CO2. Is your refusal to admit that you were wrong so important to you that you are willing to forfeit any remaining credibility to maintrain the Narrative?
Dave, the dude is a troll. His area of expertise is in cognitive psychology and he is jerking everybody’s chain here. The models incorporate everything the AGW folk take to be true and reality shows the models are wrong.
If the models are wrong the theories built into them are wrong.
dbstealey
We are now well past your “15 years”, and global warming remains stopped
———————-
just like it “stopped” here?
1980.4-1993.5 = RSS and UAH = cooling or slight warming for 13 years
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1980.4/to:1993.5/mean:13/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1980.4/to:1993.5/mean:13/plot/gistemp/from:1980.4/to:1993.5/mean:13/plot/rss/from:1980.4/to:1993.5/mean:13/plot/uah/from:1980.4/to:1993.5/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1980.4/to:1993.5/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1980.4/to:1993.5/trend/plot/rss/from:1980.4/to:1993.5/trend
or like it was REALLY WARMING here?
1985.0-1998.4 = RSS and UAH = about .29C increase per decade
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1985/to:1998.9/mean:13/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1985/to:1998.9/mean:13/plot/gistemp/from:1985/to:1998.9/mean:13/plot/rss/from:1985/to:1998.9/mean:13/plot/uah/from:1985/to:1998.9/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1985/to:1998.9/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1985/to:1998.9/trend/plot/rss/from:1985/to:1998.9/trend
You CAN’T play the selection bias game. it just isn’t science.
Jai’s a silly sausage isn’t he. Cook quotes energy in absolute terms using emotive units unrelated to the domain; Anthony quotes the same quantity in standard units relative to its domain.
Who’s being deceptive Jai?
“Justthinkin says:
June 23, 2013 at 11:55 am
Is jai mitchell cook posting under a pseudonym,or the other way around? Just curious.
REPLY: he appears to be using a real name, see: http://www.facebook.com/jai.j.mitchell
-A”
This “Jai” likes “The Consensus Project”, a Cook classic at SkS. Explains a few things if you are correct Anthony.
jai mitchell
I have posted peer review documentation that shows the arctic temperature will rise by 5-8C once the sea ice melts. That is probably what your question is about. Well there you have it.
I asked you why polar amplification is expected to exist, and the physics that gives us reason to expect it to exist. I asked you to explain in your own words. Linking to things that other people have written demonstrates that you can link to things that other people have written. It says nothing about your comprehension of what they wrote, or that you have the technical skills to read what they wrote critically.
The answer is that equilibrium temperature is defined by Stefan-Boltzmann Law of physics, the formula for which is P=5.67*10^-8*T^4 with P in watts/m2 and T in degrees Kelvin. If you do the math, you’ll discover that raising the temperature of something at -40C requires only 2.9 additional w/m2 while raising the temperature of something at +40 C requires an additional 7.0 w/m2. So any given amount of increased energy flux should be expected to raise cold temperatures (ie polar) more than warm temperatures (ie equatorial). Learn this formula because it is fundamental to the science.
decreased albedo and absorption of the suns energy in the arctic sea is the cause of the temperature increase,
Well it is more complicated than that jai. The albedo of open water at low angles of incidence is higher than that of water. So less ice coverage means less insolation absorbed, not more over the course of a year. Also, open water and land surface also are much warmer than ice and snow which by definition cannot exceed melting temperature of 0 C. Look at the formula for SB Law above. If the ice and snow are gone from the water surface and the land surface, the amount of energy radiated to space increases substantially, resulting in a cooling response in excess of the warming that caused it. I suggest you examine the ERBE data http://eos.atmos.washington.edu/cgi-bin/erbe/disp.pl?net.ann. which shows quite conclusively that the equatorial regions are net absorbers of energy and the polar regions are net losers of energy. Combine this with SB Law and you will see that equatorial temps will rise a lot less than polar temps (as the IPCC themselves admit) and the cooling response of the polar regions makes massive temperature rises very difficult to achieve.
Similarly, doubling CO2 temporarily adds energy to the earth system which suppresses radiance to space temporarily,
————–
RESPONSE
sorry, no not temporarily, the suppressed radiance to space is permanently changed until the concentration of CO2 is reduced.
Oh dear no. Not even close. Not even the IPCC makes such a claim. I suggest you read Chapter 2 of AR4 very carefully so that you understand what the science you think you know so well actually says. I suggest you start here:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-2.html
You will see very quickly that the equilibrium temperature changes by precisely zero. What changes is the temperature profile between earth surface and TOA, with TOA becoming slightly cooler and earth surface becoming slightly warmer. But the net radiation absorbed and the net radiation emitted at equilibrium are precisely the same. This is why I asked you if you understood what the effective black body temperature meant. You should get an understanding of this concept before explaining it (wrongly) to others.
Because CO2 acts as an additional blanket
Oh dear, that’s a terrible over simplification. First of all, a blanket also supresses convection which CO2 doesn’t. Second a blanket warms against your body partly by radiance from your body and partly by conduction from your body. CO2 as a well mixed trace gas acts very differently, the “blanket” analogy is a very primitive and misleading analogy. Crack some spectroscopy text books and you’ll see what I mean.
Do you even know what “effective black body temperature” means? Can you explain it?
RESPONSE
yes, and I have a basic conceptual understand of the physics behind global warming as determined by Svante Arrhenius back in 1893 when he calculated,
“any doubling of the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air would raise the temperature of the earth’s surface by 4°”
Well your answer demonstrates clearly that you don’t. The effective black body temperature of the earth is the temperature as seen from space and is taken neither at the surface nor at the TOA. You quote Arrhenius calculations in response, not realising that these had nothing to do with the effective black body temperature of the earth. You are also quoting a number which even alarmist physicists will tell you is 4 times larger at a bare minimum than the physics predicts. The general consensus among both warmist and skeptic physicists today is that direct warming from a doubling of CO2 at earth surface, with the bulk of it coming in the polar regions in winter at night time lows and almost none at day time highs in the tropics is an average of about 1 degree. If you’re going to quote what he science says, then quote what the current consensus from your own side, which is 1 degree. If you read Ch2 of AR4 as I suggested, you’ll see that I am correct on this. Larger numbers that you see quoted include feedbacks, which AR4 estimates to be an additional 1 to 3.5 degrees and which AR5 will most likely estimate at less than half of that.
Now I have a question for you.
are you a regular poster, reader of this site, if this site is such an authority on the greenhouse effect and global warming, why is it that you seem to lack the most basic level of conceptual understanding of the science of climate change?
Yes I am a regular, and I have spent countless hours on this site explaining to people who think that the GHE doesn’t exist at all that in fact it exists, we can easily prove that it exists. When you get off your high horse, you’ll discover that the skeptic community is largely in agreement with this and that we are far better versed in what the physics and the science actually say (versus what people like you THINK it says) than are most warmists. What we disagree on is the magnitude of the feedbacks, and the costs of mitigation versus adaptation. We are skeptical of the measures being proposed to combat global warming not because we don’t understand the science, but because we do.
the reason that the Hiroshima bomb analogy is a good one is because the number of bomb explosions KEEPS happening every day over and over, it is a net increase in the energy deposition on the surface of the earth.</i?
Well there you go again, three glaring errors in a single sentence. The Hiroshima bomb's energy in the context of the earth's temperature changes it, rounded off to ten decimal places, by zero degrees. The process by which it injects energy into the system is precisely opposite of what CO2 does. And once agaim get familiar with SB Law before you make claims that even the IPCC doesn't make.
by the way if you took all of that energy an had 90% of that energy go into heating the ocean, about 8% heating the land and about 2% heating the atmosphere, you wouldn’t notice that much warming AND you would have much more variability if the ocean decided to take a small amount of extra heat for 15 years or so. . .
Oh dear. That’s not what the IPCC says, that’s not what the CRU says, that’s not what NASA says. Why is it jai that you claim we skeptics don’t know what the science says, and then you make claims that the scientists you claim to be supporting don’t? I suggest you read up on the research of Jones, Trenberth, Hansen and others to find out what claims they are actually making, what claims the IPCC is actually making, and then come back to defend those claims. What you are defending now is a fiction based on your misunderstanding of over simplified talking points.
mods ~ i blew an end italics at:
net increase in the energy deposition on the surface of the earth.</i?
question mark instead of a closed bracket. No need to fix it, just letting you know where it is in case it messes up following comments.
Could always compare these, jai: http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/testimage.2.sh?first=20120621.jpg&second=20130621.jpg 2012 and 2013 same date.
“…equivalent to exploding 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day 365 days per year. That’s how much extra energy Earth is gaining each day.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Say What?
There are only two sources of heat. Sunlight and the heat from the core of the planet so the earth can not “gain extra energy” All a GHG like water vapor does is modify the temperature making the highs lower and the lows higher with a net lower temperature since some of the sunlight gets bounced back to outer space. see: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/21/some-thoughts-on-radiative-transfer-and-ghgs/#comment-1040071
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/21/some-thoughts-on-radiative-transfer-and-ghgs/#comment-1041066