Guest essay by Steven Burnett
Most of my income is derived from tutoring, with part being tied into the Google helpouts system. One of my most loyal customers for my physics and mathematics tutoring sent me a link to a $10,000 reward challenge for skeptics. Which is now up to $30,000, seen here.
Below is what I wrote back with minor edits. While I could have added more links, or graphs, I feel that this synopsis is the most compact skeptic’s case, without dropping off too many details. Perhaps I should submit it for $30,000.
These kinds of challenges pop up all the time here’s one for creationism:
The problem with the climate change challenge is that no one is denying that there is likely an anthropogenic signal. The question is how much.
This article probably offers one of the better overviews of the issue
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2014/06/20/global-warming-of-the-earths-surface-has-decelerated-viewpoint/
You can demonstrate in a lab that CO2 absorbs IR wavelengths within the same range as the earth gives off. The data shows that the northern hemisphere has had a shift in the mean temperature since before the industrial revolution.
Overwhelmingly the people pushing the issue like to try to box skeptics in by presenting it as an all or nothing issue, which those who don’t read skeptic statements take on faith. In reality the skeptic’s side has a much larger range of stances on the issues, I have tried to bold them out. There are some people who make ridiculously stupid claims that there is no anthropogenic signal but it’s a very small minority. Many skeptics feel that they are just internet trolls, we try not to feed them.
A better way to examine skeptics is to look at them as scientific critics, and more specifically to evaluate the criticisms as issues with each step of the scientific method in climate science fields. The standard scientific method goes:
Observations->Hypothesis->Experiment->Analysis. If we were to go back to the ’90’s Then we could state that this was doled out as…
Observations: A warming/CO2 concentration correlation and CO2 absorbs IR spectra, the same trend in the ice core data existed,
Hypothesis: Emissions cause global warming,
Experiment: Climate Model,
Analysis: a close approximation of the hind cast, statistically significant temperature increases, hockey sticks, etc. Through the late 1990’s and early 2000’s the conclusion that global warming is real was scientifically acceptable. The next stage is usually peer review and scrutiny and this is where the theory ran into problems.
The Problems:
The observations aren’t very good prior to the late ’70’s and they get worse as we go back to the earliest records. We weren’t looking for tenths of a degree trends and we weren’t controlling our instruments for them. Stations have been moved, cities have grown etc, all of which would induce a warming bias on those stations, the data is frankly of poor quality. But there are other problems that came up. The ice core data, using better instrumentation, actually shows CO2 lagging behind temperature changes. More importantly temperatures stopped rising on all data sets, but CO2 levels continued their upward expansion. We also have not detected the “hot spot” that was sure to be proof of an anthropogenic contribution.
Our Hypothesis for how the climate system operates is essentially coded into the climate models. There are 114 of them that are used by the IPCC all of them are going up, all of them are rising faster than observations and most of them have been falsified. But the work falsifying them is very recent.
This paper falsifies the last 20 years of simulations at the 90% confidence interval, within that blog entry you can find another paper that falsifies them at the 98% confidence interval. That paper cites a third that falsified at the 95% confidence interval. What this means is that there is less than a 10%, 2% or 5% chance that the models are wrong by chance.
As the models are mathematical representations of how we think the climate system operates, that means climate scientists were wrong. In response there has been a flurry of activity attempting to attribute the pause and explain it, but explaining a problem with mathematical models after it occurred and claiming that your hypothesis will still be born out requires its own period of time to validate.
There are well over 10 different attributions at this point for the pause, most of them entirely explaining it away. This means the pause in its current state is over explained and more than one of those papers is wrong. In science we aim for a chance at being wrong of 5%, apparently climate science gets a pass.
This divergence also has impacted the metric known as climate sensitivity. Climate sensitivities note a thermal increase of 1.2-1.5 C per doubling of CO2, as in if we went form the current 400ppm CO2 to 800PPM CO2 the temperatures would rise approximately 1.2-1.5 degrees, climate simulations produce much higher results typically between 3 and 4.5 degrees per doubling.
Digging even further there are major issues with the models, our experiments, themselves. Depending on the compiler, operating system and even hardware modeling output can change due to rounding errors. They can’t predict clouds. Nor do they have the resolution to see many of the atmospheric processes that transport heat. But that’s only the climate models themselves. The impact models, or integrated assessment models have almost no data upon which to base their claims. That’s why the IPCC stated that the costs of climate change for 2.5 degrees of warming range from .2%-2% of world GDP. This is again for predictions almost 100 years in the future, which at this time are untestable and unfalsifiable.
When evaluating the cost of a ton of CO2 emissions the integrated assessment models depend very heavily on the discount rate. The current administration cites a discount rate of 3% at 37$ per ton but the most appropriate discount rate, and the one which long term assessments are supposed to be performed at is 7%. This means the actual social cost of carbon is about 4-5$ per ton. As was discussed in an EPW senate hearing, the current administration has failed to produce the 7% discount rate as is required and instead produced 5%, 3% and 2.5% rates. The reason the cost varies so much is partially due to uncertainty in the integrated assessment models which are fed the outputs of the GCM’s. A common coding colloquialism is GIGO garbage in garbage out.
But the worst issue is the analysis. As part of the attempts to preserve the theory there have been some gross statistical practices and data torture employed. The first monstrosity to be slain was Michael Mann’s hockey stick which used a special algorithm to weight his tree samples. That was taken down by Steven McIntyre a statistician who proved not only the weighting issue, but also found the splice point of thermometer data when the proxy and thermometer temperatures diverged.
There have since been several other hockey-sticks, all of which go down as giant flaming piles of poo. Trenberth’s hockey stick, also from dendrochronology, died when it was pointed out that he was using a special sub-selection of only 12 trees, and that when his entire data set was used the hockey-stick disappeared. In 2013 Marcott et al published a hockey-stick on his graph that averaged multiple proxies except the the blade portion was generated using only about 3 of the proxies, that weren’t statistically robust, had some proxy date rearrangement issues, which coincided with the industrial revolution.
You have mentioned the 97% consensus papers which do exist but they are atrocious. Cook et al. has been rebutted several times actually I recommend further reading some of the issues that Brandon Schollenberger has pointed out as well, though it’s not peer reviewed. The earlier 97% paper by Doran and Zimmerman was equally stupid the wallstreet journal touched on both but I recommend this site for a thorough critique. Truthfully the number of abstracts and methodologies I have read that are complete garbage from this field is astounding so I’m not going to try to link them all.
The question ultimately becomes what piece of evidence is required before admitting that climate may not be as sensitive to anthropogenic emissions as once thought?
Outside of the problems with their scientific methodology there’s also some ethics issues that seem to keep cropping up. A statistician working for a left leaning think tank was just terminated because he wrote a piece about the statistically weak case for anthropogenic warming. About a month before that Lennart Bengtsson, a climate scientist tried to join a more conservative and skeptical climate change think tan. He had to resign due to threats, authors withdrawing from his papers and general concern for his safety and wellbeing.
A paper of his, focused on the discrepancy between models and observations, was rejected with the rejecting review stating they recommended it in part because they felt it might be harmful. The reviewer also mentioned that climate models should not be validated against observational data. A few years ago it was climate-gate.
A psychology paper tried to name skeptics as conspiracy nuts, when it was retracted citing ethical reasons, the researchers and their community cited it as being perfectly ok to debase your opponents and that the retraction was due to lawsuits. The clamoring defense got so antagonistic the publisher had to reinforce the rejection was due to the papers ethics violations, language and the failure or unwillingness of the authors to make changes. There’s also the paper that says lying and exaggerating results is OK.
If you read skeptical science they try to rebut skeptic claims but nine times out of ten they use strawmen, ad hominems or other logical fallacies. For instance a good argument can be made that cheap affordable fossil fuel energy can greatly improve the poorest nations of the world, and that denying them access to this resource is harmful. They rebut it by pointing out that projected climate damages, impact the poorest nations the most. That might be true but it’s not the same argument. Depriving impoverished nations of the energy they need to grow, enforcing poverty and mandating foreign dependence for 85 years, so that the poor might not have to suffer from as many storms in the future is frankly asinine.
But let’s say you’re not skeptical of the ethics, or their methodological flaws. Let’s say you decide you want avert the future risk now. You can still be skeptical of the proposed solutions. For instance let’s look at energy policy. The cheapest, most effective and simplest energy policy would be a carbon tax. Again 4$ per ton accurately prices future damages. It also allows countries and markets to work instead of hoping bureaucrats don’t screw it up. Essentially a carbon tax penalizes carbon for its actual cost instead of giving enormous power to unelected officials like what the EPA just did.
But maybe you don’t believe in markets, maybe you believe the government isn’t as incompetent as they seem to keep trying to prove. That’s fine, you can still be skeptical of how the money is being spent. In the US solar receives an unbelievable amount of market favoritism, you start by getting a 40% tax credit on every installation. Additionally while all sectors recoup their capital investments over time as the assets depreciate, solar recoups 100% of its cost in under 5 years, that’s less time than an office chair. With these perks solar is still the most expensive form of electricity generation.
When you correct for just the tax credit solar costs increase to almost 140$/mwhr for standard installations, that goes up for thermal solar. Correcting for wind’s tax credit this goes up to about 88$ MwHr. The intermittancy on the grid is an externality that should be accounted for, from there you have to factor in the degradation of wind and solar as a cost factor, which when integrated over their life span multiplies their cost by almost 4.5.
Nuclear at an approximate 96$/MWhr is substantially cheaper, has a lower life cycle carbon emission, lasts longer and is safer. But we only hear about improving renewable contributions when they are literally worse in every way.
These are issues that we can have with the scientific authenticity of the theory. The next step would be falsification, but It’s difficult to find a piece of falsifying evidence. No matter what happens now or in the future global warming/climate change seems to predict it. We have both warmer and cooler spring/summer/fall/winter. There’s droughts and floods, cold/hot. Literally in 2009/2010 we were hearing how climate change will totally cause more snow in winter when just a few years before it was the end of snowy winters. Hell that was four years ago and they were still blaming crappy Olympic conditions on global warming this year, ignoring entirely that the average temperature for that part of Russia in February is above freezing throughout the whole damn record.
We have almost 2 decades of no temperature trend, and a net negative for a little over a decade. That’s apparently not enough. There are periods within this interglacial that have been warmer, and periods that have been cooler. So what is the reference period of a climatic normal? A few hundred years ago temperature spiked without greenhouse gas emissions, the period of 1914-1940 showed a similar rate and trend as the 1980-200 period, why is the latter anthropogenic and the former not? How is CO2 the driving force this time when there is scant to no evidence that it has ever been the major force in the past?
Why should we believe the corrections or explanations for the pause, the same individuals hyping them were the same ones pointing out how perfect the models were just a few years ago? there is no mechanism by which heat remitted in the lower atmosphere magically descends to the deepest layer of the ocean. the one we just started to measure a few years ago and from which there still aren’t reliable measurements, also the region that is bounded by warmer upper oceans and geothermal heating. How does it get there without being detectable in the upper atmosphere, lower atmosphere or upper oceanic level? Nor is there a mechanism to describe how it could possibly all concentrate in the arctic where we also don’t have any measurements.
Where do we draw the scientific line between natural or artificial trends, and how do we know that line is accurate? Why shouldn’t climate science be required to validate? What is falsifying evidence? Faced with the mountain of problems surrounding uncertainty, poor methodology, awful ethics and analysis, most skeptics, myself included just call the whole thing bullshit.
As for the “paper” mentioned by rogerknights / latitude, if that is a quote from it, makes some pretty wild claims.
I don’t know of anybody who claims that GHGs such as CO2 and H2O (vapor) act as “true black bodies.”
For starters; what is a “true black body” ??
Well no such thing exists. Nothing physically real absorbs 100.000% of any and all electromagnetic radiation having wavelengths or frequencies from zero to infinity, not counting the two end points. It’s a purely theoretical concept.
But the Planck / Bose / Einstein BB spectral radiant emittance curve, is fairly accurately followed by many real objects at least over some Temperature range, and spectral range. The Planck curve predicts that 98% of the total energy, lies between 0.5 and 8.0 times the spectral peak wavelength, with only 1% beyond each end. The short wavelength end crashes very rapidly; the long end, much more slowly.
In practice, many objects absorb well over some 16:1 bandwidth, and look like quite respectable at least “gray” bodies.
But the specific absorption bands of GHGs are a consequence of molecular structure, and have nothing whatsoever to do with thermal (BB like) radiation. They don’t depend on Temperature.
So nobody sensible thinks GHGs are BB like. And they are so low density, they don’t come close to absorbing 100% of anything. Solids and liquids are much denser, and absorb more completely, so behave more BB like.
Other gases can and do radiate thermal continuum spectra, just like solids and liquids, but at very low intensities, because of the low molecular density. The entire atmospheric column, absorbs a miniscule amount of the solar radiation, so it is not even vaguely like a black body.
“””””…..davidmhoffer says:
July 6, 2014 at 10:16 pm
george e smith;
So have you ever heard of or seen anybody perform an experiment wherein such a source irradiating a sample of dry air containing 400 ppm by volume of CO2 (if necessary synthesized from pure N2, O2, Ar, and CO2) caused the Temperature of that sample to increase above its originally stabilized room Temperature, by any appreciable amount.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
From the archives of John Daly, on of he fiercest skeptics ever:
http://www.john-daly.com/artifact.htm…..”””””
So David, did you read my post at all ?? Your John Daly paper uses a 1200 deg C globar IR source.
Earth surface IS NOT AT 1200 DEG. C
And I already said nobody (sane) disputes that CO2 absorbs 15 micron LWIR (and others)
And they also added water vapor to their air sample. Their plotted spectrum, is incapable of resolving water lines from CO2 lines.
An increasing tone of disbelief I do detect, “…ignoring entirely that the average temperature for that part of Russia in February is above freezing throughout the whole damn record.”
The entire Climate Change/CAGW is going to go poof in the coming years in the eyes of the utility heating bill-paying public due to natural climate cooling of about a 1deg C or so by 2022. Get out those wool blankets and fire up the pop corn maker for the AGW histrionics from Pope Gore and Co.
A good bit of the HUG paper is beyond my ken. I note he mentions using the Beer-Lambert law. That law pre-supposes that the absorbed radiation stays dead. But he also asserts that the radiation gets thermalized by collisions.
I’m not a quantum mechanic, but it seems to me, that the resonant absorption, in this case at about 15 microns by the CO2 molecule puts the CO2 molecule into an internal excited state; in this case the degenerate bending mode (two perpendicular identical modes) . This energy is internal to the molecule, and independent of the laboratory space co-ordinates, so it is not involved in the “heat” content of the air mixture, and should have no effect on the Temperature.
Now the excited molecule will of course collide with something else, most likely a N2 molecule.
That collision could result in premature termination of that excited state, but it seems to me, that exit from that entirely internal molecular state, can only occur by emission of essentially the same energy photon, at 15 microns. Since the lifetime of the excited state is shortened, by the collision, it would seem that the transition energy might be slightly different, simply because of Heisenberg (dE.dt). But as near as I can fathom, the CO2 molecule re-radiates essentially the same 15 micron photon, but with a slightly broadened spectrum due to Doppler and collision broadening.
I’ve never seen any explanation as to exactly how this essentially line spectrum, due to molecular structure, can suddenly morph into a broad thermal spectrum, dependent on temperature, rather than simply a broadened but still line spectrum.
In any case, the absorbed photons, don’t stay dead, so Beer’s law does not apply.
A I said, I’m not a QM, but I don’t buy this “thermalization” of the CO2 absorbed radiation.
The extra-terrestrial emission spectrum of the earth, carries the signature of the emitting surface Temperature; not the stratospheric TOA Temperature, and the holes in it, are at the resonance spectral frequencies of the appropriate GHG species. (CO2 or O3 for example).
But a lot of stuff to read in that Hug paper.
And no he did not do the earth like experiment in the lab. He may have shown the basic CO2 molecular band we all talk about; but he didn’t use an earth like source at say 288 K. to measure any warming.
It is a scam. As soon as you engage him he starts changing the rules. Then, no matter what you say he simply dismisses it as “All lies”. .
Exactly my point. Without defining the terms, the exercise is useless…
Nick Stokes:
At July 6, 2014 at 7:21 pm you write in total
Your final paragraph is an historical error. It should say;
So we put a whole lot of CO2 in the air and it continued to warm from the Litlle Ice Age (LIA). If it had stopped warming, then at some stage the that might cast doubt on the physics. But – except for a pause in the 1040s and 50s – it didn’t stop warming until the late twentieth century.
Richard
Commenting on the discount rate used for the cost of the carbon impacts.
“…the most appropriate discount rate, and the one which long term assessments are supposed to be performed at is 7%.”
I have been using 7% as my middle rate of discount for at least 20 years. The logic I use is as follows.
Preamble that establishes the performance of the US economy as an adequate basis for establishing the discount rate:
The US is a mature economy with arguably the world’s most efficient markets. The US is self-contained enough that its economy is not greatly distorted by prices set in other countries. The US economy is open enough so that international trade reduces price distortion within the US economy. The US tariff regime tends to bring about efficient pricing of traded goods and services.
The logic for establishing the discount rate:
The long-term total return on the US stock markets is about 10%. The long-term inflation rate is about 3%. The real rate of return of capital invested in the US economy is 1.10/1.03 approximately equal to 1.07, that is 7%.
There are other ways to derive the long-term discount rate. This method is the simplest that I know of.
Based on the characteristics of described in the preamble above, a discount rate of 7% is also a reasonable global rate assuming average commercial risk.
Many foreign countries maintain a range of distorted prices by fiat prices, high tariff walls, bureaucratic restrictions on trade and capital movement, and currency controls. As a consequence, economists must calculate the shadow prices / border prices for many goods and services. The use of a relatively open economy like the US economy permits the shortcut method that I have shown above as a way of deriving 7% as a global discount rate.
Government projects that do not directly support private production should probably use a higher discount rate in order to avoid squeezing out private investment. In practice, governments use a lower discount rate in order to get preferential access to capital.
Nothing in my comment should be taken as endorsement of the well-known government subsidies and other economic distortions known to exist in the US economy.
The importance of this observation is that the economic cost of global warming in the Stern Review was set at 0.1% (one-tenth of one per cent) compared to his estimate of 1.5% for long-term social investments (schools, hospitals, etc.).
Some economists have argued that Stern should have used the risk-free economic rate used by the Treasury, which is around 3.5% in the UK.
In my opinion such a high risk-free rate is absurd. The risk-free rate for government bonds in the US is close to zero.
But is the application of the “precautionary principle” consistent with low risk? Or does the precautionary principle signify that climate policy should be based on ordinary business risk?
Do the wide confidence intervals of the IPCC signify low risk or high risk? In my opinion the economists have not reconciled the physical theories to their own theories.
Stern should have used not 0.1% discount rate, but 7% or something close to it. The cost-benefit analysis for CO2 should be “do nothing”.
I ignore here the fact that most cost-benefit analyses omit most of the benefits of CO2 emissions. .
OOps my final paragraph contains misprints. It should say
So we put a whole lot of CO2 in the air and it continued to warm from the Litlle Ice Age (LIA). If it had stopped warming at some stage then that might have cast doubt on the physics. But – except for a pause in the 1940s and 50s – it didn’t stop warming until the late twentieth century.
Sorry.
Richard
I read George.e.smith’s comments above with interest. My layman reading tells me that CO2 molecules will reach local air temperature. I understand this effect is termed ‘translational energy’ and effects primarily the bending modes. Thus CO2 molecules are able to radiate over some 3,800 lines of emission centered on 15 microns cooling the atmosphere. I read it is statistically possible for a CO2 molecule to absorb an occasional photon over that range but this does not effect the temperature of the molecule. This argument is used to claim that the absorbed radiation reduces the rate of cooling. I have to ask how CO2 ‘knows’ a photon from the surface as apposed to a photon from another nearby CO2 molecule. Or for that matter from a nearby H2O molecule? and what are they up to during this time? The H2O molecules I mean.
The guy has it the wrong way around. He’s the one proposing catastrophic global warming, he should have to prove his theory.
You know that the trial is rigged when the same party acts as judge and defendant.
Well the “Temperature” of a gas is based on the mean energy per molecule, or per degree of freedom. The equi-partition principle says that on average there is kT/2 kinetic energy (joule) for each of three axes of “translation”, and maybe another kT/2 for each of two (or three) axes of rotation. For dumbell like molecules such as N2 or O2. it is assumed that the moment of inertia about the axis, is very small, so they talk about 3kT/2 or 5kT/2 depending on the kind of molecule.
A bent molecule like H2O, probably has three significant moments of inertia, so it might get 6kT/2 energy on average.
Now these energies apply in the frame of reference of the gas volume, not the frame of reference of the molecule. So they energies relative to that frame. When a molecule such as CO2 absorbs or emits a photon, the energy change is in the reference frame of the molecule itself; it is internal to the molecule and doesn’t alter its kT/2 equi-partition average energy, or its Temperature.. Well an individual molecule doesn’t have a Temperature; that is a macro property of a very large assemblage of molecules.
I have argued that any single molecule, in time, will have any of the possible energy values given by the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution for a gas at any Temperature, so that arguably, we can say that the average Temperature of a single molecule, over some (long) interval of time, is exactly the same as the average energy of the whole assemblage, per molecule. But any single molecule in free flight, and not colliding with other molecules, does not have a Temperature (different from 0 K) so it doesn’t radiate thermal (bb like) radiation. But it can and does absorb, and emit photons at favorable frequencies, such as the 15 micron ones that CO2 likes, but such absorption or emission does not alter its Temperature..
“Heat” energy is the only form of energy that changes the Temperature. EM radiation, or Electricity(electric currents), do not change the Temperature. Note, an electric current flowing in a resistive wire, will dissipate energy in the resistance, turning it into “heat energy”, and that in turn, will change the Temperature of the wire. Currents flowing in a non resistive super conductor do not create heat.
And as for GHGs cooling the atmosphere, by radiating 15 micron photons. A 1 micron wavelength photon has about 1.28 eV energy, so a 15 micron photon, is about 85 meV energy.
A CO2 molecule can’t just go kicking out 85 meV of internal energy ad infinitum. It has to first absorb such a photon, to go from the ground state, to an excited state from which it can radiate, essentially the same energy it captured. That is why the Beer-Lambert law doesn’t apply; the absorbed photons, don’t stay dead, they are re-incarnated, at essentially the same energy.
Very few real situations actually follow Beer’s law. In such materials absorption leads to a non-radiative event, which ultimately manifests itself as heat; the photon stays dead. Well in good time the heated material (due to the absorbed energy turning to heat (probably phonons)) will emit thermal radiation, probably at some Infra-red wavelength.
I don’t see GHGs cooling anything, they simply absorb and re-emit, with no change in Temperature.
Yes the emission may not be spontaneous, but triggered by a collision.
The whole aim of this “bet” is to reject all information, evidence, observation, etc., and then claim that no skeptic was able to prove anything. It’s not about results, it’s about headlines claiming sceptical failure. It’s another attack on skeptics. Its another contrived “fact” they will wave around as “proof” we’re wrong and don’t know anything.
Konrad says:
July 6, 2014 at 6:06 pm
“…All of the AGW hoax can be disproved by just correctly answering one very, very simple question –
“given 1 bar pressure, is the net effect of the atmosphere over the oceans warming or cooling?”
////////
Konrad
This is your most complete post.
I have, for years, been expressing the view that it is all about the oceans, by which I would say it is all about the first few metres of the ocean, and the atmosphere above the oceans. I consider that it is this column that one needs to look at, and this is where research should be directed. So I would slightly extent what you say.
What heppens in the first few metres of the oceans is pivotal. Due to the absorption characteristics of LWIR in water, some 60% of all LWIR is absorbed within just 4 microns (MICRONS not millimetres), and since DWLWIR is omnidirectional such that approximately 20% of all DWLWIR interacts with the ocean at a grazing angle of 20% or below, it is likely that about 80% of all DWLWIR is absorbed within the first vertical 4 micron column (I have not done the maths since the precise result is not particularly important).
Irrespective as to whether about 60% or about 80% of all DWLWIR is being absorbed in just 4 microns, there is a huge amount of energy being absorbed in the top 1 or 2 microns. But what is happening to this energy, if it is being absorbed (in accordance with the accepted absorption characteristics of LWIR in water)?
Unless this energy can be dissipated to depth (thereby diluting the energy) at a rate faster than the rate that would drive evaporation, the oceans would effectively boil off from the top down. So what processes may be at work that dissipate this energy to depth thereby diluting the energy at the required speed?
Herein lies a difficulty. We know that the temperature gradient of the ocean is upwards in the top millimetres see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_temperature#mediaviewer/File:MODIS_and_AIRS_SST_comp_fig2.i.jpg . Accordingly, the energy in these top microns cannot be disipated down to depth by conduction as that would be acting against the energy flow.
The only other mechanism frequently raised is ocean over turning. But that is a a slow mechanical process (and which appears to be a diurnal proceesss at that), and that slow mechanical mixing cannot reasonably be seen to dispate the absorbed energy in the top microns down to depth at a rate faster than evaporation would be driven by the energy absorbed in the top microns of the ocean.
Of course, we do not see vast amounts of evaportation (the amount of energy theoretically being absorbed in the top microns is in the order sufficient to drive some 14 to 18 metres of rainfall annually!) so that suggest that DWLWIR is not actually being absorbed by the oceans (perhaps because it is a measured signal but without energy capable of performing sensible work) or that there is some other process going on (which is not fully known or understood) that disipates this energy at a rate faster than the absorbed energy can drive evaporation.
However, what appears clear is that something is up, and something needs a further explanation.
Why does everyone keep saying that AGW is real ? I have not yet seen a DEFINITIVE proof for this hypothesis. If their is an ‘A’ signal then it should be discernable, measurable, provable. As SteveMc said a very long time ago, “Where is the engineering standard proof that AGW is real”. If you don’t have it, stop making statements that suggest you do.
Just because you ‘feel’ it aught to exist doesn’t mean it does. And, yes I’m a physicist, yes I know that elements and molecules apsorb but that doesn’t mean they heat the planet. So, Please, Stop it or provide the proof.
Further to my last post, I stated “…since DWLWIR is omnidirectional such that approximately 20% of all DWLWIR interacts with the ocean at a grazing angle of 20% or below, it is likely that about 80% of all DWLWIR is absorbed within the first vertical 4 micron column (I have not done the maths since the precise result is not particularly important).”
This sentence was not tightly expressed, but the best way of visualizing matters is that about half of all DWLWIR is interacting with the ocean at a grazing angle of 45deg or less, and hence the vast majority of DWLWIR (which I have estimated at 80%) will be absorbed before one reaches a depth of 4 micron seen as a vertical column.
I dissagree with your unfounded and gratuitous scientific capitulation at the start of your piece of work here;
“The problem with the climate change challenge is that no one is denying that there is likely an anthropogenic signal. The question is how much.”
The author then goes further down the idiot’s branch of appeasement with the following sad sack of dog vomit;
“There are some people who make ridiculously stupid claims that there is no anthropogenic signal but it’s a very small minority. Many skeptics feel that they are just internet trolls, we try not to feed them.”
Just who is this mental midget trying to impress here? (My sincerest apologies to actual mental midgets. They are generally good people who are not as scientifically challenged as Steven Burnett apparently is.)
Mr Burnett displays his dyslexic logic with these two blisteringly imbecilic statements, in my never to be humble opinion.
“… no one is denying that there is likely an anthropogenic signal. The question is how much.”
Pardon me Stevie boy, I completely reject being lumped in with any smoldering dolt who buys that line of dog poo.
Couching your commentary with warmist cult pseudo-scientific sounding nonsence such as “anthropogenic signals” does not help your case. It just exposes what a disingenuous dolt you are.
By saying “anthropogenic signal” you are putting in facts not in evidence. A man made signal of a change in temperature is measured in what thinking people everywhere call “degrees.” A signal is what we put on street corners so that people like the author dont get hit by cars crossing the street without their mommys.
Measuring temperature in universally accepted scientific terms like degrees allows thinking people to observe, record, and reproduce experiments to buttress lines of actual reasoning Stevie.
We know that a blanket of cloud cover slows cooling as the sun sets on a cold winter’s night. But only an idiot would make the claim that a blanket actively heats or causes temp to increase. If co2 displyed any insulative ability then its “signal” would be measurable and observable and recordable and repeatable every winter’s night.
Your statement implies that everyone buys the bull that co2 has any measurable affect on tempurature. If so, then show us Stevie boy! You’ll be able to proudly stand side by side with intellectual giants in the field of science like Al Gore!
You cannot show any evidence because there is none.
I really really really dislike liars who insult intelligence by repeating worn out lies.
Speak for yourself troll boy, thinking people do not agree with your moronic premise that a trace gas affects atmspheric temps to any measurable degree whatsoever. If trace gasses did affect temps to any measurable degree, then one could actually measure this magical phenomenon is a thing we call “degrees,” not “signals.”
What? Only $30000? How about $billion for falsifying Russell’s teapot, pink unicorn or flying spaghetti monster? That would be entertaining at least.
Given IPCC’s notorious track-record, cutting their funding to 4 ppm is worth a try. Perhaps positive feedback and forcing will do the rest and everybody will win.
urederra says:
July 7, 2014 at 1:30 am
“You know that the trial is rigged when the same party acts as judge and defendant.”
A.D. Everard says:
July 7, 2014 at 1:41 am
“The whole aim of this “bet” is to reject all information, evidence, observation, etc., and then claim that no skeptic was able to prove anything.”
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You are essentially correct, Christopher was likely using this as a publicity stunt for the promotion of his book. He has indeed stated that he will be the judge. But there is a little problem.
He won’t.
I have given him the definitive empirical disproof of not just AGW but the whole idea of a net radiative green house effect –
“The oceans are a “selective surface”, not a “near blackbody”
and
“Given 1 bar pressure, the net effect of the atmosphere over the oceans is cooling of the oceans.”
Christopher has responded and accepted the submission. The acceptance has been screen shot. It was the first to point out the fundamental problems that invalidates the whole hypothesis. Now, no matter what he tries, he’s stuck. The AGW hoax depends on the two utterly false claims –
“The oceans are a near blackbody”
and
“Given 1 bar pressure, the net effect of the atmosphere over the oceans is Warming (slowing the cooling) of the oceans.”
He can change the rules or make a dismissal based on desmog blog links, but he cannot change the physical reality of climate on this planet, nor can he change the fact that on 02/07/2014 he was shown the experiments that prove AGW to be a physical impossibility.
It may take a little time, but the hoax cannot last forever. Soon folks will start to ask about why those climate models all failed. And a few more people are going to work it out. And the answer will be the same. Without atmospheric cooling our oceans would heat to near 80C and the atmosphere in turn has only effective cooling mechanism – radiative gases.
Christopher added a submission deadline, but had not added a payout deadline at the time of my submission. Tick tock, tick tock…;-)
Well tom,
Any deviation from 0 is an effect. So to make the statement that there is no effect requires evidence to that effect.
Considering a simple I spectroscopy experiment will show that co2 absorbs I bands, and that simple absorption increases the internal energy of the system, it would require some amount of evidence to show that a demonstrable absorption effect in a lab doesn’t carry over at all or in any way to nature.
Whether this effect is significant, detectable, or the primary cause of the detected trend is a very different argument. Onus probundi applies the burden of proof to the maker of a claim, IR spectroscopy validates the claim that co2 absorbs IR. To claim this trait doesn’t apply to the environment has its own burden of proof.
Tom Rowan. I hear you. Having driven late in the afternoon on a tarmac road, peppered with thermometers displaying air (+18 ± 2 °C) and road surface (+40 ± 3 °C) temperature all the 150 km stretch, I’m inclined to think modern humans do warm the air. Having said that and despite of the road being quasi-abandoned, parking the car for a stroll on that road without shirt and shoes wasn’t as tempting as cAGW implies.
I have seen some people writing about quantum mechanics, beer lambert and photon absorption/reemission. Here is how it actually works.
CO2 absorbs a photon which energizes the molecule. In most cases co2 will remit the photon generally along the same wavelength within a short period of time. However it is not instantaneous and there are other compounds that collide with CO2. Some of these collisions will transfer the absorbed energy and while it will eventually be remitted it is not guaranteed to be of the same wavelength.
For the photons that are remitted by the CO2 we can consider the trajectory to be completely random. Sometimes the photons will go up sometimes down and other times sideways.
Thus increased CO2 reduces the net photon flux away from the planet. Eventually the net flux reaches a new equilibrium. At equilibrium the net flux inot and away from the planet may be zero but the number of photons in play, and thus net thermal energy will be higher.
The problem is that this effect diminish logarithmicly with concentration. CO2 is also competing with other more effective absorption compounds such as water. Thus the net effect of co2 has will depend 9n factors such as existing concentration, concentration flux and water vapor c9ncentration.
In colder regions the effect from CO2 will increase in warmer regions it should decrease. It also makes it paradoxical that people claim it will increase the high temperatures. The coldest regions and lowest temperatures are likely to show the strongest signal, and more specificly in drier regions so as not to confuse dry/wet gas samples as having the same effect.
Beer lambert does not have the photon per Se die. The net absorption of a particular wavelength means it could be released at a different wavelength, by other compounds in the solution or for other reasons. All beer-lambert says is that a compound that absorbs a wavelength reduces the intensity of that wavelength per unit length traveled or per concentration increase. The only reason you couldnt use beer -lambert is it requires no mixing and a nifty atmosphere. However an approximation could be used to determine the same effect.
I think what we have here is a failure to communicate. Saying that there should be an anthropogenic effect of manmade CO2 is one thing. Pointing to said effect is quite another. The fact is that they can’t point to that effect, or what they like to call the “anthropogenic signal”. That doesn’t mean there is none. It is just like David said above about peeing in the ocean. Will it affect sea level? Of course it will! Can it be measured? No. Does it matter in the slightest? Absolutely not.
The burden of proof is entirely on them. That is the scientific method. Their attempted ploy of reversing the null hypothesis is both bogus and unscientific.
“Dr Christopher Keating is offering a cash reward to anyone who can provide him with proof that man-made climate change isn’t real.”
Dr Keating gets to decide the proof.
Anyway, he is deploying a juvenile fallacy, trusting his audience doesn’t catch it. An Argumentum ad Ignorantium. He is marketing his theory. Failure to prove his theory wrong does prove his theory right. It is not even evidence that his theory is right.
richard verney says:
July 7, 2014 at 1:56 am
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Do have a care Richard. You are straying from the “lukewarmer” path. Too much of that and you could be branded a “slayer”, a “skydragon” or worse an “AGW heretic”. Cries of “silence unbeliever” will surely follow…
I mean you are afraid of being falsely accused of being a “slayer” right? That still works doesn’t it?
Well, the few remaining “sleepers” still think so…
But back to less political matters. The reason DWLWIR cannot slow the cooling rate of the oceans is not too complex. As you are pointing out LWIR does not penetrate the skin evaporation layer of the oceans. About 100 microns is the limit. Within this layer, as with all water, not all molecules are at the same temperature (kinetic state). When an IR photon is absorbed by a cooler (slower) H2O molecule it can heat it. But when a photon is absorbed by a hotter H2O molecule, it can raise its energy state to the level where it can break surface tension and evaporate. In this manner incident LWIR can “trip” some molecules into evaporating sooner, creating cooling of the water in excess of the energy of the photon involved. In terms of heating (or slowing the cooling rate if you wish to play semantics) the net effect of DWLWIR over the oceans is….zip.
An this of course is why, when challenged, AGW believers cannot ever produce a replicable lab experiment showing that incident LWIR has a significant effect on the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool. (All they’ve got is that Minnett tripe, and I’ve already found out how they fudged that. Too easy 😉 )
DWLWIR is provably not what is raising the oceans above their “theoretical blackbody temp of -18C”. The oceans are a UV/SW selective surface, the sun alone is doing that. The selective surface effect is so powerful, that without atmospheric cooling the surface Tmax of the oceans would top 80C. The net effect of the atmosphere over the oceans is cooling, and in turn the atmosphere has only one effective cooling mechanism…