(Note: this originally published on Dr. Spencer’s blog on April 25th, and I asked if I could reproduce it here. While I know some readers might argue the finer points of some items in the list, I think it is important to keep sight of these. – Anthony)
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
There are some very good arguments for being skeptical of global warming predictions. But the proliferation of bad arguments is becoming almost dizzying.
I understand and appreciate that many of the things we think we know in science end up being wrong. I get that. But some of the alternative explanations I’m seeing border on the ludicrous.
So, here’s my Top 10 list of stupid skeptic arguments. I’m sure there are more, and maybe I missed a couple important ones. Oh well.
My obvious goal here is not to change minds that are already made up, which is impossible (by definition), but to reach 1,000+ (mostly nasty) comments in response to this post. So, help me out here!
1. THERE IS NO GREENHOUSE EFFECT. Despite the fact that downwelling IR from the sky can be measured, and amounts to a level (~300 W/m2) that can be scarcely be ignored; the neglect of which would totally screw up weather forecast model runs if it was not included; and would lead to VERY cold nights if it didn’t exist; and can be easily measured directly with a handheld IR thermometer pointed at the sky (because an IR thermometer measures the IR-induced temperature change of the surface of a thermopile, QED)… Please stop the “no greenhouse effect” stuff. It’s making us skeptics look bad. I’ve blogged on this numerous times…maybe start here.
2. THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT VIOLATES THE 2ND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS. The second law can be stated in several ways, but one way is that the net flow of energy must be from higher temperature to lower temperature. This is not violated by the greenhouse effect. The apparent violation of the 2nd Law seems to be traced to the fact that all bodies emit IR radiation…including cooler bodies toward warmer bodies. But the NET flow of thermal radiation is still from the warmer body to the cooler body. Even if you don’t believe there is 2-way flow, and only 1-way flow…the rate of flow depends upon the temperature of both bodies, and changing the cooler body’s temperature will change the cooling rate (and thus the temperature) of the warmer body. So, yes, a cooler body can make a warm body even warmer still…as evidenced by putting your clothes on.
3. CO2 CANT CAUSE WARMING BECAUSE CO2 EMITS IR AS FAST AS IT ABSORBS. No. When a CO2 molecule absorbs an IR photon, the mean free path within the atmosphere is so short that the molecule gives up its energy to surrounding molecules before it can (on average) emit an IR photon in its temporarily excited state. See more here. Also important is the fact that the rate at which a CO2 molecule absorbs IR is mostly independent of temperature, but the rate at which it emits IR increases strongly with temperature. There is no requirement that a layer of air emits as much IR as it absorbs…in fact, in general, the the rates of IR emission and absorption are pretty far from equal.
4. CO2 COOLS, NOT WARMS, THE ATMOSPHERE. This one is a little more subtle because the net effect of greenhouse gases is to cool the upper atmosphere, and warm the lower atmosphere, compared to if no greenhouse gases were present. Since any IR absorber is also an IR emitter, a CO2 molecule can both cool and warm, because it both absorbs and emits IR photons.
5. ADDING CO2 TO THE ATMOSPHERE HAS NO EFFECT BECAUSE THE CO2 ABSORPTION BANDS ARE ALREADY 100% OPAQUE. First, no they are not, and that’s because of pressure broadening. Second, even if the atmosphere was 100% opaque, it doesn’t matter. Here’s why.
6. LOWER ATMOSPHERIC WARMTH IS DUE TO THE LAPSE RATE/ADIABATIC COMPRESSION. No, the lapse rate describes how the temperature of a parcel of air changes from adiabatic compression/expansion of air as it sinks/rises. So, it can explain how the temperature changes during convective overturning, but not what the absolute temperature is. Explaining absolute air temperature is an energy budget question. You cannot write a physics-based equation to obtain the average temperature at any altitude without using the energy budget. If adiabatic compression explains temperature, why is the atmospheric temperature at 100 mb is nearly the same as the temperature at 1 mb, despite 100x as much atmospheric pressure? More about all this here.
7. WARMING CAUSES CO2 TO RISE, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND The rate of rise in atmospheric CO2 is currently 2 ppm/yr, a rate which is 100 times as fast as any time in the 300,000 year Vostok ice core record. And we know our consumption of fossil fuels is emitting CO2 200 times as fast! So, where is the 100x as fast rise in today’s temperature causing this CO2 rise? C’mon people, think. But not to worry…CO2 is the elixir of life…let’s embrace more of it!
8. THE IPCC MODELS ARE FOR A FLAT EARTH I have no explanation where this little tidbit of misinformation comes from. Climate models address a spherical, rotating, Earth with a day-night (diurnal) cycle in solar illumination and atmospheric Coriolis force (due to both Earth curvature and rotation). Yes, you can do a global average of energy flows and show them in a flat-earth cartoon, like the Kiehl-Trenberth energy budget diagram which is a useful learning tool, but I hope most thinking people can distinguish between a handful of global-average average numbers in a conceptual diagram, and a full-blown 3D global climate model.
9. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GLOBAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE Really?! Is there an average temperature of your bathtub full of water? Or of a room in your house? Now, we might argue over how to do the averaging (Spatial? Mass-weighted?), but you can compute an average, and you can monitor it over time, and see if it changes. The exercise is only futile if your sampling isn’t good enough to realistically monitor changes over time. Just because we don’t know the average surface temperature of the Earth to better than, say 1 deg. C, doesn’t mean we can’t monitor changes in the average over time. We have never known exactly how many people are in the U.S., but we have useful estimates of how the number has increased in the last 50-100 years. Why is “temperature” so important? Because the thermal IR emission in response to temperature is what stabilizes the climate system….the hotter things get, the more energy is lost to outer space.
10. THE EARTH ISN’T A BLACK BODY. Well, duh. No one said it was. In the broadband IR, though, it’s close to a blackbody, with an average emissivity of around 0.95. But whether a climate model uses 0.95 or 1.0 for surface emissivity isn’t going to change the conclusions we make about the sensitivity of the climate system to increasing carbon dioxide.
I’m sure I could come up with a longer list than this, but these were the main issues that came to mind.
So why am I trying to stir up a hornets nest (again)? Because when skeptics embrace “science” that is worse that the IPCC’s science, we hurt our credibility.
NOTE: Because of the large number of negative comments this post will generate, please excuse me if I don’t respond to every one. Or even very many of them. But if I see a new point being made I haven’t addressed before, I’ll be more likely to respond.
Dr. Spencer wrote:
“4. CO2 COOLS, NOT WARMS, THE ATMOSPHERE. This one is a little more subtle because the net effect of greenhouse gases is to cool the upper atmosphere, and warm the lower atmosphere, compared to if no greenhouse gases were present. Since any IR absorber is also an IR emitter, a CO2 molecule can both cool and warm, because it both absorbs and emits IR photons.”
It is true that a non-white body object has the “capability” both to absorb and to emit IR photons. The question is, whether and however, how much it absorbs is determined by whether and how strong the radiation field is; while whether and how much it emits is determined by its temperature only. As a result,
a) in a high radiation field: a black body object is warmer than a white body object;
b) in a low radiation field : a black body object is cooler than a white body object.
Based on the principle of b), computer exterior is often designed black for heat dissipation to avoid over heating. For CO2 molecules in the atmosphere, the earth ground surface generates a low radiation field only, it thus cools.
We know that N2 and O2 have no radiation mechanism for heat dissipation in the atmosphere. We also know that hot air rises up and cold air sinks down.
Hot air rises – see your candle’s flames that are always up)
Cold air sinks – see a theater stage that uses cold air to imitate the heaven.
One thus shall expect a negative lapse rate (i.e. the higher the altitude, the hotter the air is), rather than the actual positive lapse rate (around 6.5°C/km) — N2 and O2 cool down by passing heat via molecular collisions to CO2, which emits the heat to space. (In current climate science, the positive lapse rate in low atmosphere is often interpreted in terms of adiabatic cooling. A close scrutiny of the theory shows it is problematic. There is a need for alternative interpretations that have merits in science)
There are no more CO2 and H2O molecules in high altitudes because CO2 has higher molecular weight (44 vs. 28 and 32 for N2 and O2) and H2O condenses. Also molecular collisions become less and less frequent as the air pressure goes down and down. The observation shows:
Altitude (km) Temperature (°K)
100 203
110 277
120 396
130 534
140 642
150 736
… …
Does the increase of co2 in the atmosphere cause more energy to be imparted into the oceans at a rate anywhere near enough to account for the observed change in the oceans temperature?
Can anyone here give a simple yes to this and then explain?
Phil. says:
May 3, 2014 at 11:47 am
“Actually it’s not true, the oceans are a net sink.”
Actually, that’s not true. The oceans are a net source.
“Follows the Van’t Hoff equation…So not proportional.”
So, you never studied Taylor series expansions, then?
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
May 3, 2014 at 11:50 am
“Thus the deep oceans are sinking ~3 GtC/year more than they emit, no matter how much they emit.”
Standard static accounting. Wrong.
Werner Brozek says:
May 3, 2014 at 12:27 pm
Occam’s razor does not state “that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.” It states that
“Plurality is not to be assumed without necessity.”
I.e., among competing hypothesis, the one with the fewest assumptions which explains all observations should be selected. This observation contradicts the hypothesis that human emissions drive atmospheric CO2. Occam’s razor actually argues that the next simplest explanation which is consistent with the observations is that nature is the driver.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
May 3, 2014 at 12:47 pm
“In this case, if you choose a factor that more or less fits the amplitudes of the variations, the slopes don’t fit.”
Your criticism is facile and irrelevant, as I have explained several times now.
“Over the past 800,000 years the empirical evidence is that the sensitivity is in ppmv/K NOT per unit of time.”
We are talking about the here and now, with the best, most reliable, and direct measurements ever available.
“… if you add increasing amounts of CO2 from the oceans, the 13C/12C ratio in the atmosphere MUST increase…”
Says who? There is nothing at all which says it MUST, only an expectation. There was an expectation in days long ago that heavier objects would fall faster to the ground than lighter ones. That expectation was wrong. Lots of expectations have proved wrong over time. Intuition is nothing without confirming evidence from controlled tests.
“The same for an increasing addition of 14C depleted ocean CO2: the decay rate of the bomb spike should accellerate, not stay even…”
No, it shouldn’t. For a system operating in a linear or quasi-linear regime, superimposition is maintained.
“Not at all:”
Yes it is. Even in your plot, which cheats by fitting the entire data set (which only confirms that least squares regressions are robust, something already very well known), your emissions are accelerating at the end, while the concentration is not.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
May 3, 2014 at 1:18 pm
“The oceans are currently net sinks for CO2, not sources. “
This is an assertion. And, it is wrong.
“Any increase of temperature gives not more than 8 ppmv/K”
Wrong units. It must be per unit of time.
“The 100 ppmv change over the ice ages…”
Speculative, based on sources whose reliability is incapable of being validated. Moreover, there is no requirement that this system be time invariant. What held in the past is not necessarily what holds today. That is why we must put the greatest weight on the best, most reliable, and direct measurements ever available.
“As long as there are no chemical or biological reactions which remove or create CO2 in the ice cores…”
And, you then go on to assume this is so.
“Historical measurements were reasonable accurate for that time, but a lot of them were taken at the wrong places…”
IOW, the data which support my view are reliable. Others are not. Sure thing.
“The release of CO2 from the oceans warming since the LIA is maximum 8 ppmv…”
No, because it is not a static relationship.
Phil says:
May 3, 2014 at 2:19 pm
Yes. I have skirted that by not specifically referring to my constant Kh as Henry’s constant, even though it suggests that. The analysis is still valid if we assume a multilinear relationship between upwelling concentration and temperature dependent diffusion into the atmosphere.
Werner Brozek says:
May 3, 2014 at 3:04 pm
Or, the system adjusted by absorbing essentially all of the human produced CO2, and maintained a dynamic equilibrium with the temperature dependent state of the overall system. That is consistent with the evidence. Your scenario is not.
Either there is a mechanism where AGW warms the oceans as well as the atmosphere or there isn’t. If there isn’t then why are the oceans warming and why would we assume that AGW is rational?
Yes or no is the answer to this question. Simply and straight foward.
Look, guys. This is so very, very simple.
The rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere is a temperature dependent process. The slope in that line is induced by temperature, as is the variation. You cannot say, as Ferdinand wants to do, that nature is getting the variation from the temperature, but ignores the slope and gets it from somewhere else.
Nature cannot ignore that slope. It must respond to the entire temperature time series. That slope in temperature is causing the slope in the rate of change of atmospheric CO2.
The rate of emissions also has a slope. There’s little to no room to fit it in. The slope in the concentration is already explained by the temperature dependence.
Furthermore, the correlation between the rate of emissions, and the rate of change of CO2 concentration, is diverging. Look at that plot, and compare it to the one at the first link above. The one above fits in every detail. The one here only has a superficial resemblance in slope, and that supreficial resemblance is now diverging as global temperatures have stagnated.
Don’t be afraid of acknowledging what is right before your eyes. Don’t get caught up in the rationalizations. There’s nothing extraoridnary going on here. This is how a regulated feedback system is expected to behave. It is how the data are telling us it is behaving. It is a slam dunk. Humans are not responsible for the observed rise in atmospheric CO2.
One more time…
Look, guys. This is so very, very simple.
The rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere is a temperature dependent process. The slope in that line is induced by temperature, as is the variation. You cannot say, as Ferdinand wants to do, that nature is getting the variation from the temperature, but ignores the slope and gets it from somewhere else.
Nature cannot ignore that slope. It must respond to the entire temperature time series. That slope in temperature is causing the slope in the rate of change of atmospheric CO2.
The rate of emissions also has a slope. There’s little to no room to fit it in. The slope in the concentration is already explained by the temperature dependence.
Furthermore, the correlation between the rate of emissions, and the rate of change of CO2 concentration, is diverging. Look at that plot, and compare it to the one at the first link above. The one above fits in every detail. The one here only has a superficial resemblance in slope, and that superficial resemblance is now diverging as global temperatures have stagnated.
Don’t be afraid of acknowledging what is right before your eyes. Don’t get caught up in the rationalizations. There’s nothing extraordinary going on here. This is how a regulated feedback system is expected to behave. It is how the data are telling us it is behaving. It is a slam dunk. Humans are not responsible for the observed rise in atmospheric CO2.
The evidence is before your eyes answer the question or ignore it, it’s up to you!
Tim Folkerts says:
May 3, 2014 at 7:57 am
——————————–
“Konrad, I think you badly underestimate the “Church of Radiative Climastology” “
Is that even possible? The fellow travellers have –
Short centred proxy data before PCA
Applied TOB adjustments to surface station data without supporting metadata.
Used S-B equations on moving gases and transparent liquids.
Called sceptics holocaust deniers, flat-earthers, big oil shills and equivalent of paedophiles.
Even called for the execution of sceptics.
I don’t underestimate the Church of Radiative Climastrology. I am well aware that nothing is beneath them.
“The main problem is that your actual experiment is VERY different from the Atacama desert experiment you describe — which in turn is rather different from the calculations you are comparing to. Your experiment IS interesting; it just doesn’t show quite as much as you want to claim.”
Were you referring to this experiment design? –
http://i42.tinypic.com/315nbdl.jpg
It’s better than the Atacama desert experiment.
“1) In your picture, there is probably 200-400 W/m^2 of DWLWIR helping to warm the system..”
Oh, I see. You chose instead to attack a simple demonstration of an evaporation constrained solar pond which has nothing to do with removal of DWLWIR rather than the experiment that removes both DWLWIR and atmospheric cooling.
And the hand waving about the Atacama experiment won’t do. Standard modtran estimates are no good. Atacama desert above 5000m is picked for IR astronomy specifically because there is so little DWLWIR from water vapour due to local climate. Most of the night IR air glow there is from above 70km. If climastrologists were correct there would be too little DWLWIR at night to stop the pond from surface freezing. Albedo the next day would be far higher leading to the pond turning to solid ice. But it won’t turn to ice. It will heat to near 80C because it cannot evaporatively cool.
There is no way around it. Climastrologists used blackbody calcs on the oceans, but empirical experiment – http://i61.tinypic.com/2z562y1.jpg
– proves standard S-B equations don’t work for transparent materials absorbing UV/SW at depth.
Climastrologists claimed that DWLWIR was preventing our oceans from freezing, but the simplest empirical experiment proves that LWIR cannot heat nor slow the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool –
http://i42.tinypic.com/2h6rsoz.jpg
Without atmospheric cooling, our oceans would super heat. And the only effective cooling mechanism for our atmosphere is radiative gases. AGW is therefore a physical impossibility.
The sun heats our oceans.
The atmosphere cools our oceans.
Radiative gases cool our atmosphere.
Bart says:
May 3, 2014 at 6:59 pm
The rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere is a temperature dependent process. The slope in that line is induced by temperature, as is the variation. You cannot say, as Ferdinand wants to do, that nature is getting the variation from the temperature, but ignores the slope and gets it from somewhere else.
Actually you can as has been told to you on many occasions!
The pCO2 increases as a result of fossil fuel emissions, temperature dependent absorption of excess CO2 causes modulation of the pCO2.
Phil. says:
May 3, 2014 at 9:03 pm
No, Phil. You’re not following the argument. If CO2 concentration is responding to the variation, it must also be responding to the slope, which is merely a longer term variation. Nature has no means of high pass filtering that slope out. And, if it did, it would leave telltale signs of phase distortion, of which there are none. Everything in the signal band is matched in phase between the rate of change of CO2 and the temperature.
Just helping you on the way to a thousand comments!
Good list. I have no objections to any of it.
Really all I need to know is should I move north or south for my old age retirement?
Everything in the signal band is matched in phase between the rate of change of CO2 and the temperature.
And that is why Occam’s razor comes down firmly on the side of a temperature dependent pumping mechanism being the root cause of essentially all of the variation in atmospheric CO2. You have on this hand a very simple, direct, ordinary, standard, usual, even banal system response to temperature. On your hand, you have an exotic, effectively impossible kluge, pasting together parts of this forcing and that one, and concluding that it is all some stitched together, Frankenstein monster, risen from the postmortem pre-Enlightenment bin of aphysical processes.
It’s really no contest. The notion is so firmly implanted that it is going to take some time for people to realize that the monster is still just a bunch of dead tissue. But, the day will come when it is realized that the human induced CO2 meme is about as rigorous as phlogiston.
Werner and Bart:
Occam’s Razor does not help to resolve the issue as to the proportions of natural and anthropogenic causes of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Occam’s Razor provides an either All NATURAL or ALL ANTHROPOGENIC indication when there is no reason to suppose the entire cause is either natural or anthropogenic.
And Occam’s Razor indicates that the cause of the recent atmospheric CO2 rise is NOT the anthropogenic cause asserted by e.g. the IPCC and Ferdinand and, therefore, the cause is probably natural.
This is because Occam’s Razor states that the hypothesis requiring least assumptions is most likely to be right, and the anthropogenic cause requires that the small anthropogenic CO2 emission overwhelms each of the dozens of different physical and biological CO2 sinks (i.e. the putative anthropogenic cause requires dozens of improbable assumptions).
Richard
Bart says:
May 3, 2014 at 10:34 pm
If CO2 concentration is responding to the variation, it must also be responding to the slope, which is merely a longer term variation.
Bart, as said so many times, the CO2 rate of change is responding to the variation, and its long term response is not more than 8 ppmv/K over very long term. There is not more than 0.1 ppmv/year over the past 50 years caused by the temperature increase and zero increase in the rate of change over time. That is all. The rest of the increasing slope of 0.7 to 2.1 ppmv/year is NOT from the temperature increase (which anyway is impossible without a non-observed increase in upwelling from the deep oceans), it is from the emissions.
That you can match two slopes of different nature is no deal, but it is circular reasoning to attribute the slope in rate of change to an unknown process and based on that exclude a known, non-temperature related process that can easely explain the whole increase in the atmosphere.
richardscourtney says:
May 4, 2014 at 12:12 am
and the anthropogenic cause requires that the small anthropogenic CO2 emission overwhelms each of the dozens of different physical and biological CO2 sinks
No, the anthropogenic cause only requires that the small anthropogenic CO2 emission overwhelms the net sum of all natural sources and sinks, which is proven:
9 GtC/year human emissions, 4.5 GtC/year increase in the atmosphere, 4.5 GtC/year net uptake by the natural carbon cycle…
Net contribution from the natural carbon cycle to the increase in the atmosphere: zero, nada,…
Bart says:
May 3, 2014 at 6:59 pm
The rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere is a temperature dependent process.
The variation in the rate of change is a temperature dependent process. That does NOT imply that the slope in rate of change is from the same process.
Even if there was zero change in deep ocean upwelling, the variability of the CO2 rate of change would be exactly the same, but around the zero line, whithout adding any CO2 over longer term, or with a minimum offset to accomodate for the temperature increase over the past 50 years.
There’s little to no room to fit it in.
To the contrary. Your attribution of the whole slope in rate of change has no proven physical cause: there is no observed increase in CO2 upwelling or throughput over the past 50 years, only a year-by-year variability. There is no temperature dependent process observed that would cause a positive change in natural CO2 releases, only negative…
Furthermore, the correlation between the rate of emissions, and the rate of change of CO2 concentration, is diverging.
Bart, as said many times before to no avail, that graph is highly misleading, because you use different units/scales for emissions and increase in the atmosphere. The graph using the same units for both is here:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em4.jpg
There is no indication within the temperature caused variability in sink rate that the increase in the atmosphere is decreasing. It still is largely within natural variability if calculated from the increase in the atmosphere above the temperature dictated equilibrium: the red line in the graph.
Bart says:
May 3, 2014 at 6:45 pm
Bart, if you reject everything that doesn’t fit your hypothesis, then it is impossible to have a reasonable discussion.
A few examples:
– 13C/12C ratio’s are measured. It is impossible to add CO2 from the oceans with a high ratio to the atmosphere, without increasing the low 13C/12C ratio in the atmosphere. The other main source of CO2, the biosphere is proven to also add more 13C to the atmosphere.
– Old direct measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere are unreliable if taken over land. Ice core measurements are reliable over the past 800 kyears, but have less resolution the further back in time.
– the dynamic relationship between atmosphere, oceans and the biosphere gives an astonishing fixed relationship of 8 ppmv/K between temperature and CO2 levels over the past 800,000 years with a resolution of 10-600 years, except for the past 160 years. The dynamic relationship between oceans and atmosphere for an average fixed upwelling/circulation flux is 17 ppmv/K. There is not the slightest indication of an increase in upwelling/circulation from the deep oceans over time.
– if humans add 9 GtC/year and the increase in the atmosphere is increasing with 4.5 GtC/year, the deep oceans are a net sink of 3 GtC/year (ocean surface 0.5 GtC/year, vegetation 1 GtC/year, proven). If the oceans were the only net source of the increase in the atmosphere, then the 9 GtC/year human emissions disappear into space?
All arguments above are about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
The GHE cannot work because it violates the laws of thermodynamics. ie. cold heating hot.
If you believe that then when you feel a bit cold you can hug a lump of ice and get warm.
I don’t think.
I would like to say i’m thankful for this discussion, and Dr Roy Spencer for writing an article about this, because the discussion was interesting in many ways. Unfortunately, my opinion hasn’t changed that there must be something wrong with the laws of thermodynamics and the way they’re used in climate models, in this way that it leads the greenhouse effect to be overestimated compared with natural factors of climate change. The “pause” of temperature rise observed since 10 years is the best proof that natural factors can cancel human induced warming, so natural variations are at least as important as CO2 greenhouse effect in the current conditions.
There are as well some quite obvious proofs that the temperature records are being altered in order to introduce artificially warming in places where there wasn’t any clear warming trends, without any clear scientific explainations or reasons for it.
There was some talk about layers of water but i’m still sceptic about this, as a simple real life test seems to prove the points found by the models wrong. I’d very much like to experiment with that more, though, to collect data at different water depths and see how they evolve hour by hour, during the daytime and night. Intuitions says that the cases where waters are colder in the depths are the majority of cases, and in a minority of cases the water may be warmer in the depths than at the surface.
Also, It could be nice to experiment with water pools, to see how their temperature evolves during the day. Pools of equal depth, but different sizes. My hypothesis was that, under equal incoming radiation, the volume of water being strictly *proportional* to the water body surface, we should see a slower rise of temperature in the larger body of waters. I.e. temperatures should be increasing logarithmically under the same radiative forcing, depending on the volume of water. From that we could extrapolate if greenhouse warming into H2O is significant or not for the whole planet oceans… The other hypothesis is that the incoming radiation angle affects the results (and to quantify how much).
Gentleman
You are building an indoor pool and you want heat it. How many of you would heat the air in the room to heat the pool. I am zero.
Ferdinand Engelbeen :
At May 4, 2014 at 1:25 am you quote my true statement made at May 4, 2014 at 12:12 am which said of your (and the IPCC) assertion
And you dispute that true statement by saying
Your response is twaddle.
Most CO2 emission to the atmosphere is ‘natural’. If the ‘natural’ emission is unchanged then there would be no rise in atmospheric CO2 caused by the anthropogenic CO2 emission If any one sink were able to sequester all of the small additional CO2 emission from the anthropogenic sources.
In other words, it is necessary for each and every of the different physical and biological CO2 sinks to be overwhelmed for the net sum of all natural sources and sinks to be overwhelmed such that part of the anthropogenic emission accumulates in the atmosphere.
Richard
johnmarshall:
At May 4, 2014 at 4:57 am you say
OK. So you “don’t think” an igloo can keep you warmer than you would otherwise be.
Fortunately, people who need to survive in icy conditions ignore the silly assertions of people who don’t understand thermodynamics and who admit they “don’t think”.
Richard
I guessing that the answer to AGW being the reason the oceans have warmed is a no.
So why is the atmosphere warming?
Why did co2 concentrations start rise at the same time the planet started warming?
Ferd you keep siting information that you say is proven, but its proven by the same people who are saying that AGW is the cause of the warming of the oceans which you know is not true!
The sun is the driving mechanism here whether the rise is co2 is an effect of that or man is the cause of the rise is almost irrelevant.
You yourself admitted there is no feedback loop causing a rise in temperature and you don’t know why the oceans are warming (you do but you don’t want to say it) AGW does not exist in any way that is harmful.
The rise in co2 I believe is due to the ocean process being disrupted by its warming cycle and as this cycle reverses this will change. I think if you look at the records of the earth cooling and what affect it had on co2 concentraions co2 drop as the temps drop over and over again.
Konrad says: “You chose instead to attack a simple demonstration of an evaporation constrained solar pond … ”
When you chose to SHOW a simple demonstration of a constrained solar pond, you can hardly blame me for addressing the topic as you presented it.
Yes, the new design for a “solar pond” experiment you show now is quite a bit better. I do have a set of related questions/comments.
1) The design shows 1000 W/m^2 incoming light. No one questions that full mid-day tropical sun will heat a black surface to very high temperatures. Even the not-quite-black moon gets above 100 C during the day. What is the actual temperature of the water in this experiment?
2) Have you run this experiment with 240 W/m^2 of incoming light? Is your water close to 80C?
3) Have you run this experiment with no incoming light? Ideally the water should cool to -150 C (the ‘cosmic background radiation” temperature in your experiment) — but I will guarantee that ‘geothermal heating’ through the insulation will keep the water well above -150 C. A better version of this experiment would add a similar temperature controlled ring around the ENTIRE water container to reduce the considerable ‘geothermal’ heating possible through the insulation.
“Climastrologists used blackbody calcs on the oceans … “
But they also include evaporation and convection in those calculations. Heck evaporation is even the largest process for transporting heat from the surface to the atmosphere. You can hardly say they ignore it when it is about 3x larger than the IR heat transfer (and almost certainly higher than 3x for the oceans).
“… the simplest empirical experiment proves that LWIR cannot heat nor slow the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool …’
Just out of curiosity, what temperature water did you use for your experiment(s)? Did you try it with hot water? ice water? Which container evaporated faster?
“The sun heats our oceans.
The atmosphere cools our oceans.
Radiative gases cool our atmosphere.”
The questions is not “does the atmosphere cool the oceans?” Everyone one acknowledges that heat flows up from the oceans to the atmosphere, so the atmosphere does certainly “cool” the oceans. The question (as related to the greenhouse effect) is “Would the oceans cool FASTER if we could remove could magically turn off the IR properties of the atmosphere (or remove the atmosphere but keep the current albedo)”.
For whatever reasons, the oceans currently absorb ~ 160 W/m^2 on average, and emit ~ 160 W/m^2 (mostly as evaporation, but also as IR and convection). Without an atmosphere absorbing incoming solar energy, the oceans would absorb more energy: ~ 240 W/m^2. The oceans would also emit more — close to 400W/m^2 of IR. Even with no evaporation or convection, there would be a net loss simply from IR. The surface of the oceans would cool.
@ur momisugly Richardscourtney
You said:
“The anthropogenic CO2 emission is a trivial addition to the CO2 circulating in the carbon cycle.”
Then later you say:
“As I have repeatedly pointed out, the available data does not indicate if the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is natural or is anthropogenic or is some combination of natural and anthropogenic effects.”
You and I are not in disagreement when I say:
“All I’m saying is that we skeptics should accept that there is an anthropogenic CO2 emission contribution to atmospheric CO2. From what I understand, it is indeed minor or trivial.”
I read what I said as almost a paraphrase of your above comment.
At least to me, this is one of those “bad arguments” that Dr. Spencer points out. Accept that we are adding to the atmospheric CO2 level while pointing out that the exact amount is highly debatable and not indicated in the available data.
/End of comment to Richard S. Courtney
Has anyone looked at the past data and determined that every time temp went up 1 degree C we saw a subsequent rise of X ppm of CO2 and every time temp drops 1 degree C we saw a subsequent drop in ppm of CO2?
It would seem to me, that based on the historical data, we should expect a certain amount of atmospheric CO2 increase which would correlate with the temperature rise since the end of the LIA. If what we are currently experiencing is within the historical range (+/-), then it is indeed nothing out of the norm or “unprecedented”. If, on the other hand, the current CO2 increase is above that range, then it would at least be reasonable to suggest that anthropogenic cause could be contributory. There has been many “natural” rise and falls, but we are putting an “unnatural” additional CO2 into the atmosphere, trivial as it may be, so it is reasonable to look for a possible “unnatural” effect.
Incidentally, I do not agree that all of the increase is anthropogenic. Based on the logic that historically there has always been an increase in the atmospheric CO2 correlated with a temperature increase, some, or all, of the recent increase may be typical. To suggest that “this time” it is not and the increase is all man’s fault, just adds to Dr. Spenser’s bad argument list.