Putting Sir Isaac Newton on the right path
Short story by Christopher Bowring
When lay global warming skeptics point out to alarmists that the recent seventeen year period of steady global temperatures invalidates their climate models which predicted runaway global warming, there is often a standard response.
‘How can you, global warming (or climate change) denier, who have no experience of climatology, dare to argue with me, a renowned expert in my field of science?’ Let us return to the England of the seventeenth century to see what is wrong with this rebuttal.
I am in Grantham in Lincolnshire. It is a sunny day. A respectable looking man in a wig is sitting under an apple tree. It is Sir Isaac Newton. I greet him. He smiles back, but looks agitated. ‘What is wrong?’ I ask. ‘I have made a wonderful discovery,’ he replies. ‘I call is my Law of Gravitation’. ‘What does it say?’ I enquire.
‘It says that any two bodies in the universe repel each other with a force proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of their distance apart’. ‘Really?’ I respond. ‘But that is nonsense!’ ‘Nonsense?’ explodes the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. ‘Nonsense? How can you, a nobody, a nonentity, dare to question the mind of the greatest living scientist in the world?’
‘Sir, I refute your law quite simply’. And with that I take an apple from the tree and drop it on Sir Isaac’s head.
On a global temperature…I think you are all correct. There is no such thing as a global temperature, but we can come up with a measurement that is significant and meaningful. The ‘ghost’ made the analogy of average wealth in a given population. The problem with that analogy is that ‘wealth’ and ‘population’ are both easily quantifiable. There will always be places on the Earth and in the atmosphere whose temperature we can not measure probably. So we can never
be sure if we have the true average temperature. As jbird points out, this is the excuse the warmests use when they say the heat is hiding in the oceans.
We can, however, measure the temperature of the same places consistently and over a period of time. If these places are significantly global, we can than draw some legitimate conclusions about whether the atmosphere is warming, cooling are just about the same. The specific number is indeed meaningless, but how the number changes over time does give us real knowledge about what is happening with the atmosphere of the Earth.
When the warmists say: “The heat is hiding in the deep oceans…” they are removing all meaning from the ‘global temperature’ metric, and all science from the AGW theory. If the ‘global temperatures’ start to rise, skeptics can now claim that the ‘cool’ is hiding in the deep oceans and that there is no global warming. Neither argument is legitimate, because the premise of the AGW theory is that the ATMOSPHERE will warm with increasing CO2. It is in the atmosphere that this additional energy first appears as heat, and it is in the atmosphere that we must quantify this ‘change in heat’ to determine the validity of the theory. The only way to do that is to average out the changes in a global network of temperature measuring devices over a long period of time.
When the average atmospheric temperature was rising, some skeptics tried argue that the number was meaningless. And they were/are right, but the change in the number is not meaningless. Now the warmists are trying to argue that the lack of change in the number is meaningless. They are wrong. The lack of change in that number is very significant. The AGW Theory, as proposed by the IPCC, is falsified.
(I am ignoring the question of the manipulation of the data in this post. That is another question all together.)
Mr. Bowring errs when he states that “…the recent seventeen year period of steady global temperatures invalidates their climate models which predicted runaway global warming…” Today’s climate models do not make predictions and are insusceptible to being invalidated. They make “projections” and are susceptible to being “evaluated.”
The word ‘probably’ in the first paragraph of my previous post should be ‘properly’.
O/T, but Real Clear Politics is carrying this Richard Tol article this morning.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100248380/extreme-weather-events-are-increasing-yet-another-green-propaganda-myth/
…. Make that Dellingpole. (too much stuff on the clipboard)
I think this is the dumbest thing you have posted since I have been reading WUWT.
Like box-of-rocks, the bag of hammers has a problem with the generates heat idea, and also with the idea that nitrogen and oxygen don’t absorb heat.
So the contention is that without CO2 (and other GHGs) the atmosphere would have no temperature? It would be at 0K? Would instantly freeze and fall to the ground, where it would remain, because even if the ground is warm, these gasses can’t absorb/hold heat?
When I go outside on a hot day, and feel the warm air on my skin, its just the trace CO2 carrying all that warmth?
“Don’t absorb heat” “don’t absorb infrared radiation.” Try this short and elementary introduction.
(whoops, should be…”don’t absorb heat” is not the same as “don’t absorb infrared radiation”)
The joke is on all of us because science NEVER agreed a crisis WILL happen and agreed on nothing beyond “could be” a catastrophic crisis. It’s not a crime to say “could be” but it is a crime when to say it WILL when science has not
sabretruthtiger says:
I think someone must have dropped a box of apples on your head.
The scientific method requires any hypothetical speculation to be supported by empirical evidence if it is to become worthy of consideration. There is no such evidence supporting the AGW guess; zip, zilch, zero, nada, none, in spite of 25 years and $billions spent in the fruitless search. If it existed, we would all know about it. Can’t we move on?
It’s been a clever ruse from day one. In order to change, politically and financially, the vast majority of the world and it’s populations’ way of life, what other subject could possibly be better than AGW? A subject that is and continues to be argued ad infinitum with the only recourse to a ‘solution’ that being the financial ruination of states whereupon they ‘must’ discard the theory in order to survive.
Philip Peake;
So the contention is that without CO2 (and other GHGs) the atmosphere would have no temperature? It would be at 0K?
>>>>>>>>
The sloppy use of terminology leads to confusion. There are multiple means by which energy moves through the system. One of these is radiated energy. Another is conduction. With or without ghg’s, the atmosphere would still be heated by conduction.
I am constantly disappointed in well educated people at or near the end of very successful careers in science fields, who assume the ‘expert climatologists’ with their peer-reviewed papers must be right, and won’t even look at the alleged data that props up unsubstantiated claims. Anything presented to the contrary of their view must be ‘cherry-picked’.
Apologies to Anthony (typed “Alan” instead above). Sometimes my fingers don’t always do what they are supposed to, especially when I get in a hurry.
Bob (Lord) May was my 4th yr Physics lecturer some 48 yrs ago at School of Physics Sydney Uni and he was a nauseating, arrogant s.o.b full of himself then with comments like “half of you shouldn’t be in this class”.
On the issue of constant temperature for 17yrs. We know a single temperature for the earth is a meaningless artefact, see paper by Essex et al J of Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics, so enjoy the beautiful and delicious irony of alarmists being hung on their on petard.
Re “meaningless average global temperature”
I agree, in many contexts this is a meaningless number. HOWEVER, if you had a theory that the globe was heating up, wouldn’t this metric be useful? The delta may not constitute proof nor failure of the theory but to suggest it is meaningless is to throw out one of many valuable tools.
Averaging a group of people’s heights could be said to be meaningless since perhaps no single person is that height, but if you were attempting to see if over time, the average height of people was increasing, this indeed would be a valuable tool.
Of course ascribing causal processes to said average is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish. In questioning this causality, the layman is prooving himself more than capable.
In reponse to Jeff Alberts November 29, 2013 at 10:48 pm:
There is a place to measure global temperature, but one needs a huge rectal thermometer to take to Norfolk, Virginia where, as the salors say, is the site to set up the equipment to give the world an enema.
My argument is here: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/globaltemp/GlobTemp.JNET.pdf
To Jean Meeus: I didn’t say you couldn’t average temperatures, I said it’s meaningless. Big difference. The average human has approximately one breast and one testicle. Is that meaningful?
Gravity? Hmm?
Just the other day I was lampooning AGW with my friend Chuck. I suggested that if I were a Gravitologist pitching a theory that human induced gravity change will lead to a catastrophic world wide death and destruction I would use the same kind of model based evidence and attribution of observations as the AGW cult does.
My PhD in Gravity, my expertise, models and peer consensus would surely be sufficient for all the world government to take action.
My theory goes like this. Because of mankind’s over population and altering of earth’s natural existence we are causing a reduced speed of rotation. That with this reduction of speed comes greater weight of all things due to the loss of centrifugal force. I am certain this will continue and lead to humans reaching unbearable weights of 2 tons by the year 2100 if this is not stopped.
My modeling shows the trend of increased gravity is increasing. While recent observations show a 17 year hiatus the increase will reappear stronger than ever in coming years.
Mankind, the animal kingdom, marine life and much of our plant life will not survive the multiplying of gravity.
The UN IPGC, Intergovernmental Panel on Gravity Change, has collected the data from all of the world’s scientific institutions and a consensus has been reached.
Gravity is increasing and humans are causing it.
We are already witnessing the effects throughout the world. Rain is falling harder, rivers run faster, birds fly lower, tree branches droop lower and many people feel heavier.
Every one of the observations needs increased research and monitoring to learn the effects and determine how to reverse the trend and/or adapt to a heavier world. It will take a much longer time scale than the current hiatus to know for certain if we are doomed or not.
So doing nothing is not an option. Even if we are wrong these recommended steps to preserve the planet are still worthy of taking.
Collecting more data is always good.
😉
No, I’m pretty sure the #&%-hole of the planet is somewhere in New Jersey. Snookie is proof.
Joseph W. says:
November 30, 2013 at 6:01 am
“Short answer – The sun heats things up. These things emit infrared radiation. Greenhouse gases (including CO2) absorb infrared radiation. Absorbing this radiation heats them up; they then heat up the atmosphere. (Oxygen and nitrogen don’t absorb infrared radiation, so if there were no greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, this infrared radiation would make it into space without heating up anything.)”
————–
IMHO, …. that t’was a wee bit too short of an answer.
Yup, the sun heats things up (rocks, sand, soil, etc.) and they get hot. And the rising air currents caused by those hot thingys when the Nitrogen and Oxygen molecules get hot when they make contact with those hot thingys. And as those hot Nitrogen and Oxygen molecules rise above the surface they make contact with more of the Nitrogen and Oxygen molecules and part of their hotness is transferred to them. And when they rise above the hot surface more Nitrogen and Oxygen molecules flow in to take their place and they absorb heat. Thus the near surface atmosphere starts heating up. The process is called “conduction of thermal energy”.
The Sun keeps heating the surface thingys up ….. and all air molecules that make contact with said surface will absorb thermal energy via said conduction.
The near surface air in desert locales such as southwest US, northern Mexico, Sahara Desert, etc., gets extremely hot during the daytime due to the above process of thermal conduction.
And there is CO2 in that desert air, at approximately the same ppm as everywhere else. But at 398+- ppm there is not sufficient quantity to make one iota of measurable difference in the air temperature. Even if you eliminated all the CO2 ……. or doubled the amount of CO2, …. you could not detect any measurable difference in the air temperature.
The desert air temperature will start to decrease just as soon as the temperature of those hot thingys on the surface start to decrease. Only if air currents containing H2O vapor (humidity) at say 12,000 to 30,000+ ppm flow into said desert areas will the air temperatures remain warmer longer into the night time.
And ps: anything that one can derive or obtain a number set from ……. then an average number can be calculated for said set.
An average number is a “one time” thingy of a past event and is only useful as a “reference” of said past event …… and has no actual quantative value other than to said number set via which it was calculated.
Measuring the temperature of small volumes (1 to 5 gallons) of water (or anti-freeze) is far, far more sensible than the silliness of measuring air temperatures.
Back to the future…..oh, i mean Reality.
If it keeps getting warmer on average than it might freeze more on average.
Watch out for the ‘Mpemba Effect’!
https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/d8a2f611e853
Thanks for the interesting articles and comments.
dang sin-tax errors…than-then
[Is a sin-tax error corrected when you get a cosine-tax rebate in the mail? Mod]
[Or does a cosine-tax rebate merely charge you again for the sin-tax? Mod]