I’ve dished out plenty of criticisms here for bad behavior on the part of government scientists, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t carry this criticism from Retraction Watch:
U.S. gov’t researchers withdraw climate paper after using pseudonyms
Climate scientists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture have withdrawn a study they wrote under eyebrow-raising pseudonyms.
The withdrawn paper, about predicting surface temperatures of planets, appeared inAdvances in Space Research in August, 2015, and is authored by Den Volokin and Lark ReLlez.
Normally, a withdrawal wouldn’t raise our eyebrows, but climate scientist Gavin Schmidt pointed out on Twitter that the authors’ names are eerily similar to another pair who have published climate papers together: Ned Nikolov and Karl Zeller. Yes, that’s correct — Den Volokin and Lark ReLlez are Ned Nikolov and Karl Zeller spelled backwards. Nikolov and Zeller are currently listed as a physical scientist and a meteorologist, respectively, at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The notice doesn’t state the reason for withdrawal, and Pascal Willis, editor-in-chief of Advances in Space Research from the Earth Physics Institute in Paris, France, referred us to the study’s authors for more information. Elsevier, which publishes Advances in Space Research, confirmed that the paper was retracted due to an “authorship issue” — namely, that the authors had used pseudonyms.
We used the contact information listed on the paper for “Den Volokin,” and got this response:
The paper went through a normal blind peer-review and was accepted based on its scientific value. I might be able to discuss the actual reasons for the withdrawal at a later time with you, but not at the moment.
The notice for “Emergent model for predicting the average surface temperature of rocky planets with diverse atmospheres,” which was issued before the paper could be published in print, reads:
This article has been withdrawn upon common agreement between the authors and the editors and not related to the scientific merit of the study. The Publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause.
Volokin and ReLlez are listed as based at Tso Consulting; one version of the retracted paper includes an address in Salt Lake City. When we searched for the address, we found an apartment unit on realtor.com.
Volokin noted that the paper is now under consideration at “another major journal.”
Schmidt, who is a climatologist at NASA, told us he came across the now-retracted paper because it cites another paper co-authored by Volokin and ReLlez, “On the average temperature of airless spherical bodies and the magnitude of Earth’s atmospheric thermal effect,” published in 2014 in SpringerPlus. (A side note:SpringerPlus stopped accepting papers earlier this year.)
Top tip for climate contrarians: When you submit nonsense papers to journals, spell your name backwards so no-one knows who you are.
— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) September 12, 2016
More here: http://retractionwatch.com/2016/09/13/u-s-govt-researchers-withdraw-climate-paper-after-using-pseudonyms/
Submitting a paper with your names reversed? I’m sorry… This. is. just. stupid. And I agree with Gavin, the paper itself is nonsense. Their work has been the same sort of “pressure rules the temperature of planetary atmospheres” nonsense that the irascible Doug Cotton pushes…under multiple fake names to try to get attention, here and elsewhere. Now they seem to have followed his lead.
I’ve had experience with these two people, Nikolov and Zeller before….and it has not been a good experience. There’s some behind the scenes ugliness they presented in email that I don’t plan to talk about. That’s why I don’t carry their views anymore and never will again, that’s doubly true now after this sad move with the fake names.
Here’s an interview with Nikolov
Here are some blog bosts at WUWT discussing their claims:
(added) Travelling through other dimensions where Willis Eschebach takes on this paper with the reversed names directly.(h/t to Nick Stokes for the reminder)
N&Z reply to Willis at Tallbloke’s
And this is what got it all started, a poster that I now wish I never paid attention to:
The recent London Climate Conference put together by Nils Axel Morner featured their work:
A New Planetary Temperature Model and Its Implications for the Greenhouse Theory
Source: https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/london-conference-volume.pdf
When I saw that, plus the paper from Oliver Manuel, I knew then I would not attend this conference, even if invited.
Stunts like this gives fodder to critics. Had they just published their paper under regular names, it would have succeeded or failed on its own merits, that’s how science is supposed to work. Instead, the stunt has become the issue, not the science.
==========================================================
[UPDATE] I trust that Anthony won’t mind if I add a bit of backstory which even he doesn’t know. This is that I was the one who wrote to the Editor of the paper and notified them of the imposture. I couldn’t find an email address, so I sent it by their web contact form:
| Sujet : | FW: Feedback form submission |
|---|---|
| Date : | Tue, 8 Sep 2015 08:56:55 +0000 |
| De : | Stewart, Rosie (ELS-EXE) <r.stewart@elsevier.com> |
| Pour : | pascal.willis@ign.fr <pascal.willis@ign.fr> |
| Copie à : | Stoop, Jose (ELS-AMS) <J.Stoop@elsevier.com> |
| Name: | Willis Eschenbach |
| Comments: | Your support and contact page contains no contact information, so I am sending this information to you. If you’d be so kind, could you pass it on to the relevant editor(s) of Advances in Space Research. I write to officially inform you that the authors of the following manuscript are not who they claim to be: Advances in Space Research Available online 18 August 2015 In Press, Corrected Proof — Note to users “Emergent model for predicting the average surface temperature of rocky planets with diverse atmospheres” Den Volokin, Lark ReLlez http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117715005712 In fact, they are not scientists named Den Volokin and Lark ReLlez. They are two people named Ned Nikolov and Karl Zeller. You can confirm this in two ways. First, simply reverse the letters of the names. Or, you could take a look at at the post called “A Unified Theory of Climate”, by Nikolov and Zeller, at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/unified-theory-of-climate/ There you will find a similar (but not identical) claim that a multi-parameter model fitted to a small number of data points reveals climate relationships heretofore unknown to science. I have no idea why Nikolov and Zeller have chosen to perpetrate this deception. From the outside, it appears to be an attempt to validate their theory by making it seem like two independent scientists have discovered the same thing that they previously wrote about. But regardless of their motives, I find publishing original work in a scientific journal under false names to be a truly bizarre action on their part. I hope and trust that this was not known to you, and that you will take the appropriate steps to end their charade. Best regards, Willis Eschenbach |
| Email: |
The Editor replied:
Dear Eschenbach,
thanks for your email.
I am investigating this problem and should be able to come back to you soon.
Best regards
Pascal Willis, Ph.D.-habil.
And now, we have the denouement … so yes, folks, one person can indeed make a difference in this world, the web makes giants of us all.
Regards to everyone,
w.
Anthony there is no doubt that squeezing down a gas to a higher pressure causes the gas to heat up, or are you proposing to discard your refrigerator because it doesn’t work.
The energy of anything is its kinetic energy plus it’s potential energy all things being equal, if a molecule doesn’t lose or gain energy and is translated to a new height the kinetic energy MUST FALL.
Think about this, for a projectile (like a molecule of CO2 or water) eT = Ke + Pe and ponder on the implications of that, especially accounting for the extra PE and KE of the supposed extra CO2 and Water at 10 km up in the atmosphere.
I guess I’d like a simple explanation as to why temperature on our rocky ball is not in some part driven by the atmospheric pressure gradients. A little bit of googling suggests that the gas giants Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune all have increasing temperatures the further down the atmospheric column you travel. Speculative(?) estimates suggest many thousands of degrees difference between the top of atmosphere and the core of these planets. Not trolling just looking for an explanation
“the gas giants Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune all have increasing temperatures the further down the atmospheric column you travel.”
True, and these temperatures reach high enough to melt steel on Jupiter and Uranus, despite them being many times further from the Sun than Earth. The only explanation is a gravito-thermal greenhouse effect, not a radiative greenhouse effect.
hockeyschtick.blogspot.com /2016/06/new-paper-demonstrates-gravito-thermal.html
Forgive my ignorance, but I had always assumed that the core of Jupiter, and to a lesser extent the other gas giants, must contain, in addition to exotic materials like metallic hydrogen, more conventional materials like that of asteroids and comets, conventional matter and nuclear materials that generate heat from decay. In other words a hot rocky core like our own, that the Moon once had and that Mars and Venus may still have, but more massive. Above a certain size this seems to be the rule. This might also account for some part of the extreme radiation Jupiter puts out. I’m not able to do the calculations to determine what part, if any of Jupiter’s mass may be made up of various materials. I also wonder if tidal forces from the four larger and many (the count seems to keep changing) smaller moons could be a partial cause. I learned only recently that Jupiter is slowly compressing (from a commenter here at WUWT) and producing heat in this manner. Any enlightenment anyone can share will be greatly appreciated while simming flights to the moons in Orbiter.
“Not trolling just looking for an explanation”
The gas giants are still warm from their planetary formation. Or the sunlight is not warming them in any significant way
Earth is also still hot from it’s formation, but the rocky surface has cooled and is isolating the heat from the interior of the planet.
Earth atmosphere doesn’t retain heat very well or in comparison, Earth ocean retains heat a lot more than Earth’s atmosphere- if you were to increase the average temperature of oceans by a few degrees
they would retain this heat for more than thousand years.
In comparison to gas giants the thermal mass of our oceans are very small and they could be hundred or thousand times more liquid H20 in gas giant as compared to Earth’s ocean- despite gas giant mass being mostly Hydrogen, and then helium gas. And because of the pressure of the H2 and Helium the watery interior would be thousands of degrees.
Venus is faint shadow of gas giants, Venus atmosphere which more than 90 times more massive than Earth atmosphere and it would also retain heat far longer than Earth’s atmosphere, but about 1/10th as long as our oceans. Or if you were to shade and prevent any sunlight from reaching Venus it would take about a century to cool significantly. With earth within days it’s atmosphere would cool significantly, but thousand of years to freeze the oceans [if ever- due to geothermal heat of Earth- or one get put few meter ice over tropical ocean in few decades or a century- while above it is a freezing hell- hundreds of meter thick ice takes a lot longer and could be balanced at some depth [more than 100 meters] with the geothermal energy of interior of the earth. Or also hundreds of meter below the land surface also would remain warm from Earth’s geothermal heat. Or about a mile below the land surface it’s warmer than say 40 C and it has nothing to do with air temperature at surface- or without the sun, it might a few degrees cooler.
The issue is “necessary” vs. “sufficient” conditions. Adiabatic lapse effects are definitely “necessary” to explain planetary temperatures on planets with atmospheres. The issue is whether they are “sufficient” for the task. Among the more mainstream thinkers – those who advocate some degree of GHG effect, whether “warmist” or “sceptic” – adiabatic lapse is not considered “sufficient.” GHG effects need to be factored in. The more extreme “sceptics” however do consider lapse sufficient and that gas laws alone can do the job. It would be nice to see an empirical, ground-up discussion of the entire “theory space” for how different thinkers view how mechanisms of weather and climate. I can’t see anyone doing it though.
I agree that squeezing gas down to a higher pressure causes the gas to heat up. When I turn on my air compressor the tank gets hot as the pressure rises. That said, a few hours later the tank is once again cool but the pressure inside the tank is still the same. The heat must have radiated or conducted away and I suspect it works the same at sea level in the atmosphere.
“a few hours later the tank is once again cool but the pressure inside the tank is still the same.”
Of course, but if the tank has a leak and the air compressor is continuously compressing more air to refill the tank, then the temperature of the tank remans elevated above ambient temperature. This is what actually happens in our atmosphere which is free to convect and has a continous “leak” of air warmed by the surface, and is the basis of the gravito-thermal GHE.
[convection is transport in the atmospheric system, not loss of air to space. show us where that “leak” in the atmosphere actually is -mod]
As I understand things, Temperature is the average internal molecular kinetic energy of a substance. If you pressurize a gas, the molecular kinetic energy, temperature, of the gas doesn’t change. However, you get more frequent collisions, and therefore a greater transfer of energy, with the walls of the container causing the temperature of the container to go up… I’m sure I’ve assed this up, but, that’s how I understand it…
“[convection is transport in the atmospheric system, not loss of air to space. show us where that “leak” in the atmosphere actually is -mod]”
I am simply saying our atmosphere (unlike a closed container) is free to convect, and there is obviously no leakage of air beyond Earth’s gravitational field. Within this gravitational field, however, air parcels warmed by the surface are free to convect, rise and release latent heat into the upper atmosphere and thus cool. This process continually repeats with the cold air parcels descending, compressing, and warming to create the tropospheric temperature gradient/lapse rate, which by mathematical derivation is only dependent upon gravity and atmospheric heat capacity, and not upon radiation. This is far different from a static, closed container such as a tire or air tank because it involves the continual compression ad infinitum of air parcels (and thus increased “greenhouse” temperatures near the surface).
hockeystick,
I expect you to know how convection works. When air “leaks” or escapes from a given layer of the atmosphere upwards, it does so because it is WARMER than the remaining air in that layer. So you have hotter air escaping. The air that will come from above to replace it due to gravity, will indeed heat up while going down. But the reason it goes down is that it is COLDER than what is below. And it will only go down as long as this is true. It will stop going down as soon as it is as hot as its surroundings. Therefore we have hot air escaping and cold air replacing it. There’s no way this can cause an increase of the temperature of the atmospheric layer that you are talking about. Convection provides COOLING, not warming. Air may be free to convect, but the one that actually convects down is the one that is colder than its surroundings, and the one that convects up is the one hotter than its surroundings.
HS, you are forgetting to close your loop, and making an elementary thermodynamics mistake.
If you have a compressor that compresses air, then it does heat up by log (P2/P1). If you have a leak then yes it stays hot. However, the air rushing out is cold from the decompression. The heat is coming from the working of the engine using an external power source.
In the atmosphere, there is no such external source. Hot air rises, absorbing energy, cools off via radiation, falls, and then absorbs heat again. The pressure change is equal on both sides of the cycle as the air rises and falls, and so is neutral.
Come on, this is a freshman level problem.
In convection, some air is moving up, while a different patch of air is moving down. The patch moving down compresses and heats. The patch moving up decompresses and cools. The two balance and there is no net gain or loss of energy.
That “leak” contains energy that is leaving the system. If you account for the cooling going on in the air being leaked, you would easily compensate for the incoming air being heated by compression.
You are overlooking that our atmosphere is constantly being pushed and pulled. It is constantly being compressed and flexed by the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun. It is never in stasis.
The atmospheric bulge is a well known phenomena.
As the tides ebb and flow, the atmosphere constantly fills the void as the tides ebb, and then is later displaced as the tides flow.
All of this is small, but the issue is whether this constant on/off compression is sufficient to keep a warm atmosphere warm.
I don’t know, but I do not consider this matter (gravitational heating and heat lost through radiation) to be quite as simple as either Piere or hokeyschtick are suggesting.
I consider this is one of the areas where we have insufficient knowledge and understanding, and I keep an open mind both ways. Perhaps the Juno mission will add some further insight.
“In the atmosphere, there is no such external [power] source.”
Uh, the external power source to the atmosphere is the big yellow ball in the sky, And gravity is the conservative force which powers the conversion of kinetic energy to gravitational potential energy and back again.
Please read Feynman’s chapter 40 for all the relevant mathematics detailing why a long column of pure N2 would establish a temperature gradient within a gravitational field, independent of “radiative forcing.”
Did I read this claim correctly? We have a heated tank (from compression or not) with both air being removed and other air being added. Some of you claim that the temp stays high? That makes zero sense to me.
I would expect that if the same amount of air is inside then in and out cancel each other, and the temp would fall to match the outside temp.
“Did I read this claim correctly? We have a heated tank (from compression or not) with both air being removed and other air being added. Some of you claim that the temp stays high? That makes zero sense to me.”
The air temperature would indeed stay higher than ambient because the incoming air to the air tank is continually being compressed and therefore heated by the compressor. Likewise, cold air parcels that have released their latent heat in the upper atmosphere will then fall, compress, and warm and this cycle continues ad infinitum, producing the gravito-thermal GHE. No greenhouse gases are necessary for this process of convection, which dominates heat transfer in the troposphere. Please also read Feynman Chapter 40 which demonstrates a column of pure N2 in our gravitational field would indeed create a temperature gradient (Boltzmann distribution) based on atmospheric mass/pressure/gravity, not radiation from greenhouse gases.
Look up “fire piston,” The device has been around for millennia and reflects a practical application of adiabatic principles.
Piere
In the original example of the tank being pressurized by the compressor and no gas removed, yes the tank will heat since the gas has been compressed according to the laws of thermodynamics and with time the tank will cool down as the tank releases the heat to the outside air; but, if the compressor motor is shut off and no additional air is added the pressure will drop as the gas cools. This is basic thermodynamics, period. If the Compressor turns on again because the pressure has fallen, it will raise the pressure again to a set point. The temperature rise of the gas will not be as great as the first time less energy used, and the cycle will continue until it is in equilibrium. Keep in mind the pressure in our tires will rise as the tires are heated due to driving. It is the same principle, as the car is sitting still the pressure will return to the initial level assuming the ambient air temperature has not changed and no leakage has occurred.
I have some trouble with the theory that certain planets are warmer at their surface because of the pressure rise due to static head of the gas above the surface, unless there has not been enough time for the heat to transfer from hot to cold to take place or, the rate of heat transfer out from the planet is so much more rapid than the heat transfer between the layers of the atmosphere. This is apparently the same as that which occurs with the hot core of the earth being so well insulated from the earth surface so that little heat is transferred from the hot core to the earth surface. The heat transfer is occurring, it is apparently very small relative to earth’s heat transfer to space.
Another possible explanation is that the hot core of the subject planet s is not as well insulated from the surface as in the case of earth. Surely with a deeper atmosphere the heat is not transferred from the surface to space as with a thin atmosphere. Others more knowledgeable than I can better explain what’s actually happening.
True: Feynman explains this and the gravito-thermal greenhouse effect for an atmosphere of pure N2, and no greenhouse gases, in Chapter 40 of his Lectures on the statistical mechanics of the atmosphere.
HS, a late thread comment, but I call you out more strongly here than formerly more logically and simply below. Just took a while for my memory cells to kick in.. I Happen to own a well thumbed copy of Feynman’s Physics lectures 61-62, bought on a business trip maybe 15 years ago to Stanford. ‘The definitive edition’, published 1989. Am holding volume 2 chapter 40, your specific ‘supporting’ reference, as I now angrily input this comment.
Guess what you forgot to mention? Chapter 40 is titled ‘The flow of dry water’. It is an old physics joke. Dry water has no viscosity. Geynman did the whole chapter to teach what is theoretically ‘right’ when overlooking wrong physics because missing something important. Guess what the next chapter is titled? Chapter 41, ‘The flow of wet water’. Which happens to also contain not only his years of research Experiments concerning real Navier Stokes in rwal wet water with viscosity, but also the three last paragraphs considered his ‘Sermon on the Mount’ concerning the hidden meaning of equations. Specifically 41-6 Cuette flow, last three paragraphs. Of course, his research and chapter 41 was before Ed Lorenz at MIT discovered mathematical chaos. Feynman came real close.
You have misrepresented Feynman chapter 40 mightily here in this thread, and have thereby lost all credibility. Misciting Feynman to invoke him as supporting your own crackpot climate pressure/temp nonsense is unforgivable. You invoke dry water when water is not dry. Good luck trying to peddle your nonsense ever again anywhere credible. You are an oaf and will be forever called out as same wherever you are found to re-emerge.
re ristvan:
Chapter 40-1 of Feynman lectures is entitled “The exponential atmosphere”
http://oi68.tinypic.com/riw653.jpg
It seems that he deals with the temperature of compressed gases in previous chapters, though.
http://oi65.tinypic.com/qow36x.jpg
re ristvan:
Oh, I see what is the problem… Feynman Lectures are collected in three volumes. Volumen 1 Chapter 40-1 is entitled The exponential atmosphere, Volumen 2 Chapter 40 is entitled “The flow of dry water”
Do you have only Volumen 2 or the complete set?
“Anthony there is no doubt that squeezing down a gas to a higher pressure causes the gas to heat up, or are you proposing to discard your refrigerator because it doesn’t work.”
The theory fails because there is no “work” being done on a regular basis to do this. An atmospheric gradient is not “work”, and the existence of a gradient doesn’t prove anything. Unplug your refrigerator, does the compressor still do work to squeeze gas? Try it overnight and let us know.
Dr. Roy Spencer explains why this theory to replace the greenhouse effect is wrong.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2016/07/the-warm-earth-greenhouse-effect-or-atmospheric-pressure/
and here
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/12/why-atmospheric-pressure-cannot-explain-the-elevated-surface-temperature-of-the-earth/
When you unplug your refrigerator you stop adding the energy that performs the work. The sun, however, has not yet been unplugged… just sayin.
Gravity does continuously do work upon the atmosphere to create the tropospheric temperature gradient, a +33C gravito-thermal greenhouse effect from the center of the atmosphere at P=0.5 atm to the surface, and an even larger -35C anti-greenhouse effect from the P=0.5 atm level to the top of the troposohere where P= 0.1 atm and T=220K, far below equilibrium temperature with the Sun.
The well-known lapse rate equation = -g/Cp is in fact calculated with the assumption of the first law of thermo and Newton’s second law of motion F = ma = mg, and one thus could not even calculate the lapse rate without the assumption of the continuous work produced by gravity (g) upon the atmosphere. Here are all of the relevant and straight-forward mathematics:
How Gravity continuously does Work on the atmosphere to control pressure & temperature
hockeyschtick.blogspot. com /2014/12/how-gravity-continuously-does-work-on.html
and The Kinetic Theory of Gases explains why the Maxwell et al Gravito-Thermal Greenhouse Effect is Correct
hockeyschtick.blogspot. com /2015/10/the-kinetic-theory-of-gases-explains.html
Analogies such as bicycle tires and air tanks are false analogies because they assume a closed container without convection and at equilibrium, not a tire or tank with a “leak” that is being continually re-compressed by a compressor and would thus always be at higher temperatures than ambient, analogous to our atmosphere in which falling air parcels are continuously compressed and warmed near the surface to create the graito-thermal GHE.
“The theory fails because there is no “work” being done on a regular basis to do this. ”
There is no work done by back radiation.
There are thermals which lift glider all around the world at any given moment. And that’s actual work being done.
So in the model of earth supposed to be 33 K cooler without greenhouse gas, and greenhouse gases are suppose to warm the world- which mainly means prevent from cooling as quickly.
Accordingly it seems since thermals do actual work, they would likewise be something which warms- or prevents it from cooling as quickly as some imagine it would without the work of the thermals.
Personally the don’t believe the Earth needs greenhouse gases or other mechanism to warm Earth by 33 K. Nor do I think Earth’s average temperature is 15 C. Or present average temperature is a chilling
15 C, because we in ice box climate. And Earth is not normally in an ice box climate- but it has been in Ice box climate for last few million years- and this has little to do with greenhouse gases or some convectional-gravity theory.
“When you unplug your refrigerator you stop adding the energy that performs the work. The sun, however, has not yet been unplugged… just sayin.”
Except the Sun does not generate the Earth’s gravity.
Just sayin.
[snip -language -policy violation -mod]
I accept that the GHE exists and warms the atmosphere, both here and on Venus. But, pressure does affect the adiabatic lapse rate. Water vapor is a very powerful GH gas, so it lowers the lapse rate from 9.8 to 6.5, a huge effect. As pressure increases, the molecules (GH gases, O2 and N2) are closer together and through collisions transfer energy mechanically at a faster rate. Thus, kinetically they transfer energy horizontally at a slightly faster rate than vertically. This has an effect, it has to. Energy is transferred vertically through circulation, especially via water vapor transport until we reach the tropopause then nearly all of the water has already condensed out. So we are really talking only about the troposphere. How much is water vapor? How much other GH gases? How much is pressure and kinetic energy transfer? I have no idea. But, I’m pretty sure a proper 3D model needs to account for all three. Dr. Spencer’s 1D model does not account for the kinetic component, since the kinetic component works in 3D space. I really think both sides of this pressure debate need to acknowledge that both GHE and pressure are important. This is not either/or. Just my opinion as a newcomer to the debate.
HS, this “leak” of yours would only work if somehow atmosphere was being vented to space and new air being pumped in from somewhere else to replace it.
Since that isn’t happening, your analogy is invalid. The atmosphere is a closed system.
Hmm.. I, too, have been pondering this heavy stuff for quite a while and I’m still short of a definitive answer.
Can someone do better than Lev Zerdlink and Noel Karol? At least it obeys the Law of Conservation of Letters.
Thinking about it a little more. If there was a leak and new air was being pumped in to replace it, then the decompression caused by the leak would be exactly matched by the compression of new air into the system
Net change: none.
Energy in would equal energy out. No change in temperature.
The work is provided by the energy of position (potential energy) relative to the mass of the planet. Gravity and entropy, poorly understood in theory, but well known in practice; behave as if they are performing work.
A good example is in a river rapid where the descending water (gravity) curls back upstream to fill a void in the flow caused by a rock. In this case the tendency to find the lowest energy of position (entropy) prevails over gravity. It makes no sense to argue that the water does not curl back upstream because no work is being performed. It just does and you can see it in any rapid.
Same with the atmosphere. Under any regime of cooling and descending air (high pressure) the temperature is always higher by several degrees than under a regime of warming and rising air (low pressure) adiabatically. While tropical convection is probably the initial engine, all the subsequent motion in the atmosphere: the salient “ridges” from the equator and “”troughs” from the poles, the winds including jet streams, the various “cells” (Hadley etc.); result from the tendency to find the lowest energy of position–entropy.
Gravity is fighting with the Coulomb force between atoms, gravity tries to push them together, the coulomb force kicks them away.
That has to be at least some energy getting converted to work (ie heat), and we know the same thing happens else where (stars, gas giants).
And then I look at the surface data and I don’t see but rare occasions there’s excess warming, around the big el nino’s, I think it took two years for the 97, but it likely globally we lost energy from the planet.
“HS, this “leak” of yours would only work if somehow atmosphere was being vented to space and new air being pumped in from somewhere else to replace it.
Since that isn’t happening, your analogy is invalid. The atmosphere is a closed system.”
Ridiculous. The “leak” is the fact that the atmosphere is free to convect within the troposphere. Convection greatly dominates over radiation for heat transfer within the troposphere, and stops at the top of the troposphere where the atmosphere becomes too thin to sustain further convection.
In thermodynamics, a “system” only refers to a conceptual category.
For general purposes, then, the sun, earth, space system can be considered “closed.” Infalling plasma and asteroids don’t usually figure in. But in nature, everything is actually an open system, even black holes.
1) Open system: The system in which the transfer of mass as well as energy can take place across its boundary is called as an open system. Our previous example of engine is an open system. In this case we provide fuel to engine and it produces power which is given out, thus there is exchange of mass as well as energy. The engine also emits heat which is exchanged with the surroundings. The other example of open system is boiling water in an open vessel, where transfer of heat as well as mass in the form of steam takes place between the vessel and surrounding.
2) Closed system: The system in which the transfer of energy takes place across its boundary with the surrounding, but no transfer of mass takes place is called as closed system. The closed system is fixed mass system. The fluid like air or gas being compressed in the piston and cylinder arrangement is an example of the closed system. In this case the mass of the gas remains constant but it can get heated or cooled. Another example is the water being heated in the closed vessel, where water will get heated but its mass will remain same.
Curious about this statement in the article referenced above: “Why-atmospheric-pressure-cannot-explain-the-elevated-surface-temperature-of-the-earth”
“…And the Earth’s greenhouse effect reduces the rate of energy loss by the Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere…”
This can’t be correctly stated, can it? The GE increases the residence time of energy, but in the end the flow in must match the flow out or the Earth keeps getting warmer. So kind of like a battery, the greenhouse effect is storing some energy but one it in equilibrium (battery is charged) the energy in equals the energy out again.
Or am I wrong?
(I am NOT arguing that temperature is caused by the pressure, just questioning a line in a published article)
Anthony, there are lots of questions that no one seems to address in the detail that could actually settle the argument satisfactorily for those of us who are not meteorologists (who, I suspect, have a better grasp of atmospheric physics than say Michael Mann). In the links you provide, Dr. Spencer repeatedly cites a dry adiabatic lapse rate of 9.8 C / km. Looking at wikipedia’s entry on the stratosphere, the tropopause is described as about 18 km in altitude at the equator and lowering to about 8 km toward the poles. The problem with this is using Dr. Spencer’s figures, that would provide 9.8C/km X 18 km, or 176 deg C, of temperature difference between the tropopause and the surface at the equator, or nearly double what the difference is actually reported to be. That would appear to mean we are too cool at the surface rather than warmer than we should be. I believe that particular blank spot is the sticking point for many more extreme sceptics.
Anthony,
PV=nRT
Volume (V) is constrained to be relatively constant, by gravity – therefore P is proportional to T
If I take a gas with a certain temperature at the surface – warmed by the surface (Ie it is 100 % KE relatively speaking ) then release it in a gravitational field such that it stratifies what must happen? As the gas diffuses upward the Potential energy increases and the KE must correspondingly decrease on average resulting in a temperature gradient. The heat energy in the air column is introduced at the bottom by conduction and evaporation/transpiration. There must be an ongoing conversion of KE to PE because we aren’t adding energy on the way up (well actually there is some added energy which is why the lapse rate is NOT 9.8C/km). The lapse rate occurs because KE+PE is constant absent any added or subtracted energy.
There absolutely is a mechanism to sustain the gradient, the energy being introduced at the bottom of the air column.
As a result, anywhere there is a volume constrained gas envelope at an energy greater than absolute zero there must be a negative temperature gradient up the gas column. It’s why the gas giants have hot cores and venus has a higher surface temperature than it otherwise would have.
Remember that a gas is heterogeneous too, the gas molecules individually have vastly different energies (temperatures) what we feel and measure is an average of that.
I cannot rule this out, basic physics to me suggests that as height rises PE must increase and coincidentally KE must fall. isothermal heat transfer opposing the resultant gradient must come after the cause (the gradient) and generally therefore a gradient must exist. I only ask that you recognise that this IS actually a possible mechanism by which the temperature gradient/ and therefore the surface temperature is maintained – at least in part and that you maintain an open mind about it.
I note there are also some further interesting posts detailing other ways that gravitational (and presumably centripetal) energies might get reduced to heat to assist forming the gradient. One of my biggest issue is regarding the incorrect basic assumption that incoming shortwave should equal outgoing IR and therefore the difference represents accumulating heat
As an engineer it is dead seat clear
Incoming SW + Non Radiative energy gain = Outgoing IR + Non Radiative Losses. There is no such thing as a perfect perpetual motion machine there are always losses, why Climate science therefore expects Outgoing IR to be exactly equal Incoming SW is beyond me.
–….Spencer repeatedly cites a dry adiabatic lapse rate of 9.8 C / km. Looking at wikipedia’s entry on the stratosphere, the tropopause is described as about 18 km in altitude at the equator and lowering to about 8 km toward the poles. The problem with this is using Dr. Spencer’s figures, that would provide 9.8C/km X 18 km, or 176 deg C, of temperature difference between the tropopause and the surface at the equator, or nearly double what the difference is actually reported to be. ….–
“The adiabatic process for air has a characteristic temperature-pressure curve, so the process determines the lapse rate. When the air contains little water, this lapse rate is known as the dry adiabatic lapse rate: the rate of temperature decrease is 9.8 °C/km ”
And:
“The moist adiabatic lapse rate varies strongly with temperature. A typical value is around 5 °C/km ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate#Moist_adiabatic_lapse_rate
Tropics has moist air.
This lapse rate occurs in troposphere and ends in tropopause [which is transition to stratosphere in which the lapse rate reverses. daveburton
September 14, 2016 at 9:38 pm (below in this page) includes in his post a graph of lapse rate for troposphere and higher.].
So it’s something like 6.5 times 11 km in tropics. Or cools 71.5 C from around 20 C at surface, or roughly
-50 C at top of troposphere
It’s not the pressure per se . It is the gravitation force holding the pressure and temperature in equilibrium which is left out of the standard GHG spectral explanation .
The balancing of the gravitational energy is non optional . I see no alternative , additionally , because I have never seen quantitative spectral equations which “trap” a higher energy density on the side away from a radiant source . The equations in either case should be pretty straight forward and testable .
No argument justifies these bozos being such self-damaging bozos any more than any argument justifies Gleick’s use of false ID to pilfer Heartland documents . It is terribly unfortunate .
“No argument justifies these bozos being such self-damaging bozos any more than any argument justifies Gleick’s use of false ID to pilfer Heartland documents .”
Exactly.
Is there a real difference in what these authors with fake names did and with what people with fake names on blogs do? Or is it just a matter of degree?
The difference is as Anthony stated. These ‘scientists’ submitted a paper under false identity presumably to make it appear that other work they have done has been ‘replicated’ by other scientists, thus making their work (which is highly controversial) appear to be more credible. Some clown on a blog using multiple ‘nom de plume’ to try to convince others their argument is accepted by others is silly. Doing so in a scientific journal is fraud.
Leonard: The object seems to have been to get a second paper, by apparently independent authors, who agree with the real authors position.
IE, sock puppetry.
Again, if it is gravity why does the atmosphere cool at night? why is it cooler at the poles gravity is the same there?
Just today I’m getting a newsletter out , http://cosy.com/y16/CoSy20160915.html , bringing existence of my computing environment to a larger market now that the first few are out . The notation for expressing such relationships is more my core interest rather than these specific relationships . So a meaningful , ie : quantitative , answer will have to wait .
But the heat in the atmosphere dissipates to a near 0K sky at night . Nothing’s changed in that . The atmosphere doesn’t really hold that much heat , particularly starting at 2500m where I live .
” Anthony Watts
September 14, 2016 at 6:13 pm
“No argument justifies these bozos being such self-damaging bozos any more than any argument justifies Gleick’s use of false ID to pilfer Heartland documents .”
Exactly.”
One’s a crime and one is not.
Whether one would bother to try the case of fraud, does change that it is criminal.
Stealing is criminal whether one gets away with it, or not.
It’s not vaguely a crime to use a pen name- Shakespeare was not doing anything criminal
by making some plays and not using his real name.
You may hate people who use pen names- but your hatred does not make it criminal.
But you can dislike it- with safe zones and other criminal behavior there is attempt
to outlaw it. But what do you do about politicians? Which as a group have done the most
hideous stuff ever done.
And with banks to big to fail and Clinton too big to jail.
I’ve read Cotton’s stuff. It’s sort of “half true”. The adiabatic lapse rate is not a compulsory rule for how temperatures are related at different levels in the atmosphere. It is a limit on the maximum rate at which temperature can fall as height increases. But nothing mandates that, as height decreases, temperature must rise at the lapse rate.
This is easy to see. Start with the basic theory. A cylinder of gas, and a piston compresses the gas. The piston does work in compressing the gas, and that energy must go somewhere – it goes into raising the gas temperature.
Now, if a parcel of gas in the atmosphere falls, it comes under increasing pressure, thus compressing it, thus raising its temperature. But nothing mandates that parcels of gas must fall in a planetary atmosphere!
Suppose that a planet has an atmosphere set up somehow to be of the same temperature from bottom to top. The pressure will be higher at the bottom, of course, but so what? Suppose a parcel of air tries to rise through the atmosphere. As it does, it expands and cools, leaving it colder than the rest of the air at that level. Being colder it will be more dense, and thus will sink again. In short, there will be no convection in this atmosphere.
Now set up a planet with the temperature exactly matching the adiabatic lapse rate. An air parcel that rises will cool, but to exactly the same temperature as the air around it. This is like the critical slope on a pile of sand. Air will be free to “roam around” from level to level.
Now set up a planet with the slope greater than the adiabatic lapse rate. An air parcel at the bottom which rises will cool, but to a temperature higher than that of the air around it, so it will be less dense and will rise further. In short, convection starts up, which will rapidly circulate the air until it matches that adiabatic lapse rate.
Now what about infra-red interactive gasses (IRIGs), falsely and misleadingly called “greenhouse” gasses?
Suppose our planet contains no IRIGs in its atmosphere. Like all planets, in a steady state it must radiate to space all the energy it receives from the sun. But every photon that leaves the ground escapes to space. Ground level is the planet’s effective temperature. The only way heat can enter the atmosphere is via conduction from the ground at the very bottom. The bottom layer will heat (slowly) up to the temperature of the ground. As the bottom layer exceeds the adiabatic lapse rate relative to the layer above, convection starts until the critical temperature slope is reached. But remember, the bottom layer is the one defining the steady-state temperature, which is a low one.
Now put some IRIG into the atmosphere. The IRIG intercepts photons in its absorption bands. At those frequencies, the effective temperature of the planet is that at the height at which the atmosphere is so thin that photons get a “line of sight” to outer space and can make their getaway with low probability of being intercepted. This reduces slightly the total radiation of the planet, so the ground must heat up to make the balance.
Since the temperatures at various heights cannot be related by a steeper slope than the adiabatic lapse rate, there is a one-sided connection between the temperatures at these two levels (the ground cannot get “too hot”).
If more IRIG is added, the “line of sight” to space level rises into a colder region, the radiation in the IRIG absorption band decreases, and the ground must get warmer yet again to make up the correct balance. And that is the essence of the “greenhouse” effect.
As we have seen, the limit is one-sided: the ground cannot get hotter than the adiabatic lapse rate allows relative to a colder higher layer, but it can be cooler. The temperature can even rise as one gains height (and eventually does, in the real Earth’s atmosphere).
This seems to me to be the mistake in Cotton’s analysis. AFAICT, he assumes that the temperature envelope defined by the adiabatic lapse rate must be full. That is the only way he can claim that a planet’s temperature is defined entirely by atmospheric pressure. Quite simply, it need not be.
That’s the issue I have. They confuse something that happens on small scales (the lapse rate) and attributing it to something on the larger scale (the whole atmosphere). That’s obviously false as the net pressure change over time is zero. Every atom of alling air is replaced by an atom of warming air. That simple observation undoes their whole theory.
It’s just such a basic mistake that it’s infuriating.
“Now, if a parcel of gas in the atmosphere falls, it comes under increasing pressure, thus compressing it, thus raising its temperature. But nothing mandates that parcels of gas must fall in a planetary atmosphere!”
If a mass of air rises, and mass of air must fall- that’s a mandate.
But I would note that convection does not need to involve rising air masses, convection can cause air
masses to rise, but convection of air is not solely rising air masses. Or when mentioning parcels of gas
one referring to idea that it’s the kinetic of air molecules which rises rather than the air mass [or individual or groups/bodies of gas molecules].
gbaikie September 15, 2016 at 2:04 pm
Who says a parcel of air must rise? Your remark is frivolous.
–If a mass of air rises, and mass of air must fall- that’s a mandate.–
**Who says a parcel of air must rise? Your remark is frivolous.**
In the atmosphere, rising and descending air masses is common and one cause of
rising and falling air masses is convectional process and convectional heating which
involve a parcel of air to rise, though according to the theory do not involve movement
of air [ but rather movement of the kinetic energy of gas molecule] can cause upward movement
of air, and thereby such upward movement of air, must also cause descending movement of air.
more about **Who says a parcel of air must rise? Your remark is frivolous.**:
http://fas.org/irp/imint/docs/rst/Sect14/Sect14_1b.html
This probably explain it- parcel causing air movement- better than what I said- or
I don’t disagree with it.
Hmm lots of stuff in that reference I grabbed. I was browsing some it and I thought this is useful definition:
“A perfect Blackbody is the concept of an ideal material that completely absorbs all incident radiation, converting it to internal energy. Therefore it does not permit any transmittance or reflectance but emits (re-radiates) the absorbed energy at the maximum possible rate per unit area. The amount of this radiant energy varies with temperature and wavelength(s).”
http://fas.org/irp/imint/docs/rst/Sect9/Sect9_1.html
Yes, squeezing gas does cause it to heat up. But since gas is not a perfect insulator, that heat is quickly dissipated to the rest of the environment.
While I am uncomfortable with scientific papers being published under false names, such as “Nicolas Bourbaki”, it is perhaps unduly sweeping pompously to dismiss an entire scientific conference on the basis that one of the papers presented at the conference and another outlined in the conference volume are not thought meritorious.
The conference was very successful and will probably be repeated next year.
Niklas Moerner’s approach in organizing the conference was not to exercise any form of censorship, for there is far too much of that on the other side. Bad papers, presented at a high-level conference such as the London conference, will be rejected by the majority of the participants as not having justified their claims. The bad papers, however, do not make the good papers bad. So let us not become too intolerant. There is quite enough intolerance among the climate Communists.
“The bad papers, however, do not make the good papers bad.” +1 🙂
Indeed. My feeling on this is that WUWT is a private website and I suppose and the owner is entitled to post what he wishes. It is fairly easy to see when somebody has an axe to grind or has something of merit to say, yet can’t help but agree with M’lud that in science it is best to allow as much discussion as is possible and censor very, very little, lest one appear to be guarding the gate as it were. Lots of such on display on the “other side” of the climate debacle, that is for sure. Worrisome to see it here… However, personalities are highly subjective! I will still read up on the subject at hand regardless, but I am known for that. No slight intended to the author of this piece. I am sure he feels quite strongly as is his wont, but my curiosity has been piqued. I shall decide for myself on the merits.
Meh, I am not so sure stunts are harmful. It probably snuck past their list of “do not accept from” based on that, which is how i would spin it. Truth and real science is (or should be) considered based on its merits, not the authors.
In this case, it might fall on it’s demerits
That nobody seems to be able to point out with any certainty. Funny that…
While I completely agree that authors should not have submitted a paper using pseudonyms, perhaps the authors were attempting to avoid the bias against known “skeptics” publishing papers that present a serious challenge to the AGW “consensus,” and which their paper does IMHO.
The full (retracted) paper is available here, and was not retracted for scientific content, but rather the “authorship issue.” IMHO the paper confirms the gravito-thermal greenhouse effect on 6 planets including Earth, and thus in turn falsifies the radiative greenhouse effect in favor of the gravito-thermal greenhouse effect. This is the only theory that essentially perfectly explains surface temperatures on 6 (& currently 9) planets in our solar system including Earth and Venus, leaving no additional room for a radiative greenhouse effect.
hockeyschtick.blogspot. com /2015/08/new-paper-confirms-gravito-thermal.html
I don’t believe (from being the subject of numerous posts from Doug Cotton and his pseudonyms) that the findings of Nikolov and Zeller are “the same sort of “pressure rules the temperature of planetary atmospheres” nonsense that the irascible Doug Cotton pushes…under multiple fake names to try to get attention, here and elsewhere. Now they seem to have followed his lead.” Doug Cotton’s claims substantially differ from Nicolov and Zeller, which I am sure they would be happy to confirm.
I hope Anthony will consider a hearing for better or worse here at WUWT on the scientific merits of the paper, as it would be to the benefit of everyone. What do we have to lose?
[Nope, sorry. Nikolov and Zeller wore out their welcome with me with some abusive emails in the past, if they want to discuss “the scientific merits of the paper” they can do it elsewhere. I don’t want anything to do with them or with Doug Cotton, who has also worn out his welcome with abusive emails, and yet persists postign under fake names as if somehow that will convince me to let him have a forum here.- Anthony]
If Einstein had submitted papers on Relativity as Al Smith because systemic bias against Jews would have prevented his paper receiving fair consideration, would we reject the value of the papers? Would the world black list him?
Indeed. Names are just words – proper nouns. It’s the content that ALWAYS matters. Is the paper sound?
Had Einstein been publishing easily disproven nonsense, then yes.
There is actually quite a long tradition of using pseudonyms in science and mathematics for various reasons. Consider the history of how Student’s t-test acquired its name. In that case the creator considered the technique important enough to circumvent the imposed on hired staff by the Guinness brewery.
Schmidt, who is a climatologist
Is gavin a climatologist? I thought his training was in mathematics and computer programming.
His degrees are both in mathematics. Kinda makes it hard for alarmists to use the authority argument they so love.
Gavin is a climatist. He alters the observed long-term temperature records to produce anomalies tthat conform to an ideologically-preferred theory. He is paid very, very well for his effort and not for ethics. Paid with US tax dollars by NASA, run by presidential political, appointees. He knows who butters his bread. To wit: Hansen retired unprosecuted. Lois Lerner retired unprosecuted. Tom Karl retired unprosecuted. Gavin hopes to do the same. Also Kevin Trenberth is planning a tidy GS retirement. No ethics needed.
Huh. So thought just hit me. Hillary is unprosecuted. If she is elected, can she pardon herself?
No. Plus, a pardon does not preclude impeachment, and may actually guarantee such since it implies an admission of guilt.
David,
If she becomes the 45th President on 20 January 2017, she is immune from prosecution throughtout the US. She would have to be first impeached and removed from office to be prosecuted. Presidents can be indicted (as BillClnton was for perjury), but the indictment evidence would then an Article of Impeachment for the House to consider.
Once a President is no longer in office, he/she can be prosecuted. But the new President can pardon.
Nixon was pardoned by Ford, thus preventing any prosecution for his Watergate coverup crimes. If Hillary loses the election on November 8th, Obama still has over 2 months to issue a pardon for Bill and Hillary any and all criminal activities related to their Clinton Crime Syndicate and graft.
There is nothing in the constitution that precludes a president pardoning him/herself.
However there would still be political fallout from such an action. Pardons only apply to criminal consequences.
No official Pardon for Hillary C issued by Hillary C would be needed or required given the fact Hillary could sign and issue a Presidential Executive Order that absolved Hillary C of any wrongdoings that may have occurred during her tenure as Senator or Secretary of State …. and/or at any time prior to Hillary C being elected POTUS.
I expect that Obama will pardon all those involved with or without a hammer on the way out the door. Remember Bill Clinton sold pardons on the way out the door to many criminals including one who left the US to hide from prosecution.
She could pardon herself under the pseudonym “Yrallih Notnilc” so nobody would realize it’s her and thereby avoid all that impeachment nonsense.
“Submitting a paper with your names reversed? I’m sorry… This. is. just. stupid.”
Perhaps.
Btw, who are authors of GHE theory?
“Btw, who are authors of GHE theory?”
Here educate yourself…..
https://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
where is the paper with author’s name?
Why give me story without an author?
It is difficult to believe anyone could be that transparently stupid, but the evidence is out there that people are that stupid. Someone relying on the “big lie” theme?
When I started writing this, nobody had mentioned lapse rate yet.
Once the temperature lapse rate exceeds the dry adiabatic rate, we start getting convection which removes heat from the surface of the planet.
In other words, the first approximation to the surface temperature is determined by the lapse rate, provided that there is enough solar energy at the surface to reach that state. If the planet is sufficiently far from its sun, the surface and atmosphere can be so cold that the atmospheric gases that we think are normal are liquid on that planet.
It’s an odd one – I’ve wondered what they are up to, and it still isn’t clear. Usually authors are keen to claim credit for authorship. Maybe they thought they could say it was just a opyt.
The more serious issue is that Advances in Space Science published the paper, whatever the authorship.
“I’ve wondered what they are up to, and it still isn’t clear.”
“The more serious issue is that Advances in Space Science published the paper, whatever the authorship.”
Why would you claim that when the journal has stated that this is only a matter of “authorship,” and specifically not scientific merit?
Specifically, what do you claim is wrong with the scientific merit of the paper? Is it just a huge coincidence that the surface temperature of 9 planets in our solar system (all planets for which we have adequate data) including Earth and Venus can be accurately calculated by only knowing the surface pressure and solar forcing at the top of the atmosphere, as Nikolov and Zeller have done, and which is completely independent of GHG concentrations? N&Z also show that that radiative GHE theory fails spectacularly in trying to determine the temperatures of those same planets.
Is it just a huge coincidence that the surface temperature of Venus can easily be calculated using the same principles/Ideal Gas Law as N&Z and others have done?
T = PV/nR = 92000/(65000/43.45*0.083144621) = 739K
“Specifically, what do you claim is wrong with the scientific merit of the paper? Is it just a huge coincidence that the surface temperature of 9 planets in our solar system (all planets for which we have adequate data) “
You need only to refer to some of Willis’ posts listed by AW above:
“These guys are seriously claiming that with only eight datapoints and no less than five tunable parameters …
…
I mean … I can only stand in awe at the sheer effrontery of that claim.”
Well, it’s worse now, at least if the London version is a guide. They are down to six planets, one of which (Titan) had to be omitted from the regression. But it’s even worse. Two of them, Triton and Moon, have so little atmosphere that to speak of atmospheric pressure (or temperature) is a nonsense. They fail, by a long way, the requirement of local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) which makes these concepts meaningful. But even as a matter of algebra, they do not provide independent points for the curve fitting. Even Mars is dodgy. The reason is that any curve of the kind they are using would have a vertical slope as you approach zero, and these planets have to lie very close to it, so there is no information to help determine parameteters. They are down to Earth, Venus, and perhaps some scaling information from Mars.
I’ve seen dodgy papers in the past in that journal, but this seems a lot worse.
I asked Nick Stokes, “Is it just a huge coincidence that the surface temperature of 9 planets in our solar system (all planets for which we have adequate data) including Earth and Venus can be accurately calculated by only knowing the surface pressure and solar forcing at the top of the atmosphere, as Nikolov and Zeller have done, and which is completely independent of GHG concentrations? N&Z also show that that radiative GHE theory fails spectacularly in trying to determine the temperatures of those same planets.”
Your answer appears to be yes, it is just an incredible coincidence that the Poisson Relation relating temperature to pressure accurately calculates surface temperature enhancement or ‘gravito-thermal greenhouse effect’ of the 6 planets (Titan is within error limits) and without any consideration of GHG radiative forcing. There is nothing abnormal or amiss about the variables considered by the authors as obviously each planet is assumed to have only one “global” temperature, one surface pressure, and one TOA solar forcing. Willis’ suggestion (and yours) that this takes “effontery” on the part of the authors in using these variables to create a model is silly – they are demonstrating that a simple atmospheric model based upon the well-known Poisson Relation (and as originally proposed by Maxwell et al) outperforms a radiative model based on greenhouse gas partial pressures by a factor of more than 20 times.
It is beyond me how you can accept the clearly-inferior GHG partial pressure radiative model as demonstrated in N&Z’s top graph below in favor of the far more accurate Poisson Relation model on the bottom:
http://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0273117715005712-gr3.jpg
From N&Z: “Comparison of the two best-performing regression models according to statistical scores presented inTable 5. Vertical axes use linear scale to better illustrate the difference in skills between the models.”
Added: The top model incorporates greenhouse gas partial pressures and has a standard error over 20 times worse than the bottom model which does not consider greenhouse gas concentrations or radiative forcing whatsoever.
I see you haven’t answered the question, “Is it just a huge coincidence that the surface temperature of Venus can easily be calculated using the same principles/Ideal Gas Law as N&Z and others have done?”
T = PV/nR = 92000/(65000/43.45*0.083144621) = 739K
“using the same principles/Ideal Gas Law as N&Z”
Well, the matterial at the bottom of the Venus atmosphere certainly isn’t an ideal gas. It’s normally reckoned to be supercritical. But you don’t say where or how you got the density measurement there.
As to the lower plot, as Willis said, getting a regression to pass through four points is easy if you have parameters to twiddle, and can choose a model likely to fit. And that is accepting Triton as a valid data point. Who claims to have measured atmospheric pressure at the surface of Triton?
OK I see that the Venus data comes from the NASA fact sheet. I don’t see why you find it so surprising that the temperature on Venus can be derived from the Ideal Gas Law. If it’s an ideal gas, then the relation must be true. I find it a bit surprising, because I think it isn’t ideal. But maybe the deviations cancel. Or maybe even, dare I say, the density was not measured but calculated from IGL, maybe with corrections for deviation from ideality.
I see too that Willis wrote directly on this paper when it appeared Travelling through other dimensions, just over a year ago. He was not impressed. I see also that the author’s true identity was deduced in comments there.
The ideal Gas Law doesn’t apply under the conditions of the Venusian atmosphere!
I was thinking the same, but if the deviations cancel out, then it would be important to say the Venutian warmth is not simply GHE warmth. If the density is not reasonably measured, then NASA should stop spreading guesses on it. Lots of claims have been presented. I have still hard time attributing the warmth of Venus to GHGs and not to its position near the Sun with a very thick atmosphere.
Venus has been used to promote GHE alarm, thus it is vitally important Venus is understood right in the debate.
Nick Stokes September 14, 2016 at 9:07 pm
hockeyschtick September 14, 2016 at 8:14 pm
“Specifically, what do you claim is wrong with the scientific merit of the paper? Is it just a huge coincidence that the surface temperature of 9 planets in our solar system (all planets for which we have adequate data) “
Well, it’s worse now, at least if the London version is a guide. They are down to six planets, one of which (Titan) had to be omitted from the regression. But it’s even worse. Two of them, Triton and Moon, have so little atmosphere that to speak of atmospheric pressure (or temperature) is a nonsense. They fail, by a long way, the requirement of local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) which makes these concepts meaningful. But even as a matter of algebra, they do not provide independent points for the curve fitting. Even Mars is dodgy. The reason is that any curve of the kind they are using would have a vertical slope as you approach zero, and these planets have to lie very close to it, so there is no information to help determine parameteters. They are down to Earth, Venus, and perhaps some scaling information from Mars.
As rgb pointed out in the previous iteration of this nonsense what they have done by their choice of the form of the equation is to combine two functions: one which describes the case when P is approximately zero (Mars and below) and another which describes the situation where P is significant (Earth and Venus). Not surprising they get a good fit!
The zero P planets just depend on insolation and the average albedo they chose, the other two they use two free parameters to fit.
The science is as bad as it was before, only the numbers have been changed.
“I don’t see why you find it so surprising that the temperature on Venus can be derived from the Ideal Gas Law. If it’s an ideal gas, then the relation must be true. I find it a bit surprising, because I think it isn’t ideal.”
Just the opposite. I don’t find it surprising at all that the Ideal Gas Law accurately calculates the Venus surface temperature, based on the NASA Fact Sheet data. And the fact that atmospheric mass/gravity/pressure alone can be used to calculate this surface temperature essentially proves that only a gravito-thermal GHE, and not a radiative GHE, determines Venus temperatures. If a radiative GHE was also present, Venus temperatures would be far far higher than calculated on the basis of the IGL alone and far far higher than observations.
“And the fact that atmospheric mass/gravity/pressure alone can be used to calculate this surface temperature essentially proves…”
All it could prove is the Ideal Gas Law. The air pressure is much the same at pole and tropic, but not the temperature. The density adjusts to the pressure and temperature.
Using Bond albedo of Venus (most calculation I’ve seen use visual albedo of .67), and assuming no effects for pressure, IRI gases, or other, I get surface temperature of Venus is less than Earth. Add pressure/gravity. I get temperature of ca 500K. Adding CO2, 1.3 x 18 doublings, adds another ca 23K. Listed temperature is 735K. So either my calculations are wrong, positive feedback of 10x, or other factors are in play.
I’ve seen Bond albedo of Venus listed as .75 universetoday dot com .77 nasa dot gov or .90 Mallama, A.; Wang, D.; Howard, R.A. (2006). “Venus phase function and forward scattering from H2SO4”. Icarus. 182: 10–22 sciencedirect dot com. None of these get close enough to 735K to make me happy.
Anyone care to check the maths, using any/all listed Bond albedos?
[snip – policy violation -mod]
Mods: this post appears to violate site policy, do we need such rubbish?
“Welcome to my home on the Internet. Everyone who visits here is welcome to post, but please treat your visit like you would a visit to a private home or office. Most people wouldn’t be rude, loud, or insulting in somebody’s home or office, I ask for the same level of civility and courtesy here.”
[done. thank you for the tip /mod]
Two years ago I set up a 3 meter airtrack (essentially frictionless) in my lab to test an argument that Willis and Dr. Brown (at duke) were having regarding the lapse rate. I elevated one end of the track and put about half a dozen sliders on it. The sliders have magnetic springs (or metal springs in some cases) that simulate perfectly elastic collisions. In essence, this simulates a few particles in a very small gravitational field. It also isolates only the “vertical” components of motion. After giving each slider a random velocity, the system came to equilibrium. The particles at the low end had a higher velocity that at the higher end. After some frictional losses, they slowed down, of course.
I then used a drill with a small triangular block attached to a bit to offer a source of energy to the bottom slider (like the hot ground heating up air by conduction). Once this came to equilibrium, again, the speed of the bottom sliders was greater than the ones up high. When I added some more sliders and repeated this process (more gas), the sliders were able to reach a higher point on the air track, and the velocity of the sliders at the bottom were moving faster. The drill was at the same RPM (however, the contact frequency with the bottom slider increased).
This was a pretty basic experiment, but I think it illustrates what would happen if an ideal gas was placed in a gravitational field and only the vertical components of the motion are measured.
Then I thought, does this obey the equivalence principle? If you put gas in a cylinder and accelerated the cylinder at 1g, the bottom of the cylinder would be doing work on the column of gas, and at the top, the gas would be doing work on the cylinder. Thus, energy would be continuously be added to the bottom and removed from the top, setting up a temperature gradient.
This seemed to support Willis’ side of the argument. However, a few weeks later he changed his mind.
Interesting. If rgbatduke is out there I’d love to hear what I am missing.
Nice. Feynman’s Chapter 40 on statistical mechanics of the atmosphere explains how a cylinder of pure non-IR-active N2 in a gravitational field would likewise be expected to produce a temperature gradient. Feynman does not do any radiative calculations whatsoever since they are immaterial to establishing the temperature gradient/lapse rate, which in turn is a function of gravity and atmospheric heat capacity only, not radiation from GHGs.
hockeyschtick.blogspot. com /2015/07/physicist-richard-feynman-proved.html
–This was a pretty basic experiment, but I think it illustrates what would happen if an ideal gas was placed in a gravitational field and only the vertical components of the motion are measured.
Then I thought, does this obey the equivalence principle? If you put gas in a cylinder and accelerated the cylinder at 1g, the bottom of the cylinder would be doing work on the column of gas, and at the top, the gas would be doing work on the cylinder. Thus, energy would be continuously be added to the bottom and removed from the top, setting up a temperature gradient.
This seemed to support Willis’ side of the argument. However, a few weeks later he changed his mind.
Interesting. If rgbatduke is out there I’d love to hear what I am missing.–
It seems the main thing happening is you are increasing the density of the gas.
And it seems if you increase density of gas, you increase average velocity of gas molecules.
Or if decease the amount of molecules in given space, you lower the average velocity of the molecules.
And average velocity of molecule per a given volume is temperature of the gas.
Have cylinder of air at 1 atm, and then accelerate at 1 gee, so bottom will have warmer gas. But longer
the cylinder the bigger the effect. But the top of cylinder will be cooler, as compared to when not accelerating. So it’s not increase the temperature entire volume of air in the cylinder. And constant acceleration at 1 gee will have warmer air at the bottom- but it doesn’t get warmer the longer one is in 1 gee, but it will be warmer than the top.
What of Venus? It’s thick clouds of sulphuric acid prevent almost all sunight from reaching the surface, making any GHE negligible. The high surface temperature can only be caused by the pressure effect of its 90 atmospheres.
prevent almost all sunight from reaching the surface, making any GHE negligible.
Doesn’t have to get to the surface. Just has to get below the MRL.
–prevent almost all sunight from reaching the surface, making any GHE negligible.
Doesn’t have to get to the surface. Just has to get below the MRL.–
where is below MRL on Venus? And on Earth?
And what pressure effect is that?
As Anthony said above. A gas heats because of work done on it. The ACT of compression. That is NOT gravity. It is the process of the gas when uncompressed BEING compressed. In the case of Venus with a surface pressure ~90 bar IT’S BEEN COMPRESSED already.
Would you expect your bike tyre to stay perpetually hot afte you’d pumped it up?
It will loose heat to the surroundings, as does the Earth, which then gains heat from the sun.
Well the bike tyre differs from 100km thick atmosphere in 1g acceleration a great deal.
But if you immediately take the bike out for a ride the air in the tyre will remain hot since the tyre is constantly being slightly flexed as you ride over an uneven surface or as your body weight slightly shifts.
This flexing in the side wall of a tyre is only small but sufficient to keep the air temperature in the tyre hot.
This of course is well known in racing. Heat is got into the tyre by cornering. On the way to the grid, drivers move the steering wheel side to side causing the side wall to flex and thereby generate compression and thereby keep the pre heated tyre warm.
As I noted above, our planets atmosphere is constantly being compressed. The globe is spinning and has an uneven surface. Tides ebb and flow. This causes the atmosphere to constantly be displaced 24/7 some 365 days of the year. The atmosphere is also being pulled by the moon (and sun).
This continued flexing of the atmosphere is all quite small but may be it is sufficient to keep a warm atmosphere warm just like very small flexing of the side wall of a tyre can keep the air in the tyre warm.
The work is the conversion of energy into positional energy. In addition to solar energy though, you have rotational energy imparted through friction between the actual surface of the rocky phase of the planet and the fluid phases. Since no one argues that matter is not in motion when you look at the atmosphere, there can be no question whether work is being done. The sole point of dispute in the entire argument has to do with just how much that “work” is being augmented by GHGs. The range of responses varies from “lots” through “some” to “none.” “None” is quite clearly wrong, but there is no clear, empirically tested and proven solution of how far away from “none” the GHG effect really is. If there were, this web site would be focused on other interesting aspects of science and nature – as Anthony’s splash used to read.
Unless 100% of the sunlight is being reflected to space, the fact that energy isn’t reaching the surface just proves that it is being absorbed by the atmosphere on the way down.
“Unless 100% of the sunlight is being reflected to space, the fact that energy isn’t reaching the surface just proves that it is being absorbed by the atmosphere on the way down.”
The clouds which mostly don’t exceed 60 km in elevation, are apparently reflecting 75% of the sunlight,
so that leaves 25% of it being “absorbed by the atmosphere on the way down” from 60 km.
at 60 km Venus atmospheric pressure is 0.2357 atm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus
Or about 1/4 of Earth sea level air pressure or 14.7 times 0.2357 is 3.465 psi.
At peak of Mt Everest the air pressure is about 1/3 of 1 Atm- or close to 5 psi.
With oxygen mask at 60 Km elevation on Venus, a human can breath- less
than 2.5 psi requires a pressure suit to breath- so barely be able to breath from
a air mask. Or equal to about 30,000 ft on Earth- having higher air pressure than airline
passengers can fly at.
With Venus at 60 km and 0.2357 atm the air temperature is -10 C and on Earth it would be about -50 C
at 0.2357 atm.
Going down 10 km, Venus is 1.066 atm at 50 km elevation and 75 C, with Earth 10 km is sea level and 15 C. The change in 10 km eleation on Venus is 85 K, and on Earth it is 65 K.
At 55 km, Venus: 27 C and 0.5314 atm. Roughly a temperature and pressure on could get on Earth
if at the surface at higher land elevation- such Denver [the mile high city]. But if 5 km above sea level
which is at 15 C, the temperature is -17.5 C:
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/wstdatmo.htm
Of course in Denver or other high elevations in which people live the average temperature is generally
not -17.5 C. The reason is Earth is heated at the surface. Or one can have snow on the ground and
be in Denver and not have temperatures at -17.5 C during the day [it’s possible but not always the case
and not even at night].
Suppose one have a big hole on earth which was 20 km below sea level. Such a hole would be very hot
due to the heat of the earth- but give it a thousand or million years, and that heat from the earth would cool down a bit- it would need to cool about a mile rock. Probably quickest way [and practical- if digging 20 km deep large pit- is anywhere close to the term practical] is use the heat for power generation- and quicken the cooling of the rock [and get boatloads of energy]. But at some point the heat coming from
earth could be diminished so it might be similar to wandering around Yellowstone Park- it has to remain a hotspot of some sort. Anyways after it’s cooled, what would the air temperature be at the bottom of this
huge and improbable hole? Well it should be about 7 C per 1000 meters- 140 + 15 is 155 C average temperature. And with Venus at 30 km elevation : 9.851 atm and 222 C
And at bottom of 20 km pit on Earth the air pressure would also be about 10 atm.
Now it pretty close to impossible to dig such a hole on Earth. What find interesting is not quite so impossible digging such a hole on the moon or Mars- and with Mars one might dig 10 km hole which starts in region which has very elevation- such in middle of Hellas Basin. one use nuclear bombs, or guiding asteroids so they impacts at the right spot. On earth one would have to use nuclear bombs as a “practical” way to dig such big hole- and environment report itself, would require a century or so- or politically impossible.
[snip – fake name, submitted by proxy server, rant -multiple policy violations -mod]
“There’s no such thing as a ”GH” factor in gas physics”
Correct – there doesn’t need to be.
However you are applying that maxim to the Earth … And it most assuredly does here.
EN, you are quite wrong. Without the GHE of water vapor, Earth would be ~-18C rather than ~+14C and you would not exist to display your ignorance. You give knowledgable skeptics a bad name.
So does the whole gravitational pressure causes temperature thesis in whatever form. The two basic flaws have been explained in comments above (and several times by Dr. Roy Spencer), and no amount of posting to the contrary can fix them. 1. Gravity is not doing work now (it did during the planets formation, but like a once pumped up warm bicycle tire, that heat left by radiation long ago). So all compression heats arguments fail. 2. While it is true that descending air warms as it falls per the dry adiabatic lapse rate, it is falling because it is colder than its surroundings and will stop falling when it reaches the temp of its surroundings or the surface. It is sad to see presumably intelligent people stumble over logical basics and again give warmunists reasons to dismiss skeptics as flat earthers.
My maths suggest that the water cycle cools the surface of the Earth by moving energy in the form of evaporating water at the surface to an altitude of several km, where it condenses/freezes, releasing the energy above most of the water vapor layer. This effect also requires infrared absorption, whether from water vapor, CO2, or other, so that if we had x times CO2 for equal infrared absorption effect, and zero water cycle effects, but same Bond albedo, that the surface temperature would be close to 48C average. IOW, the water cycle effect of water, in isolation, cools the surface by about 33K. Coincidence? Or bad maths on my part?
It seems the main thing happening is you are increasing the density of the gas.
But are you? The gas molecules at the bottom have to accelerate all the molecules above them. One layer up, all except the ones below them. And a layer up from that… Seems to me you get a pressure gradient from top to bottom. Assuming a sealed cylinder, pressure goes up at the bottom and down at the top as the gas compresses due to acceleration?
sigh. The above in response to:
gbaikie September 14, 2016 at 8:27 pm
–davidmhoffer
September 14, 2016 at 9:09 pm
It seems the main thing happening is you are increasing the density of the gas.
But are you? —
Ah, yeah.
” The gas molecules at the bottom have to accelerate all the molecules above them.”
They don’t have to, but they do.
— One layer up, all except the ones below them. And a layer up from that… Seems to me you get a pressure gradient from top to bottom. Assuming a sealed cylinder, pressure goes up at the bottom and down at the top as the gas compresses due to acceleration?–
1 atm of pressure, means individual molecules are going a very short distance before colliding with another molecule and they going at about 400 m/s- or single molecule will have billions of collisions per second. And a single molecule can go in any direction, or billions of directions per second. And in terms of macro-scale, it goes no where.
Whereas a gas molecule with less pressure- say .001 atm can actually travel a distance in terms of the macro-scale.
For individual molecule going 400 m/s the acceleration 9.8 m/s [1 gee] in a second going distance of 4.9 meters.
400 m/s is .4 meter in 1/1000th of second. But with acceleration of gravity which is distance = acceleration / 2 times Time squared, it is distance in 1/1000th of second of 4.9 /1 million or .0000049 meters.
So at 1 atm and in 1/1000th of second a molecule will collide + millions times. And at .001 atm a molecule might not collide once within the 1/1000th of second time period.
Or roughly it matter how big the container is and it matters how many molecule are in a cubic cm- or in vacuum it’s say 5 to 10 molecules per cubic cm and at 1 atm it’s, well, in atoms it’s 5×10^19:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110705075155AAXJ8fG
Or reducing it from 10^19 to 10^16 per cubic cm makes a difference. As does have container 1 meter tall compared to 1 km tall.
And other part is gravity has little affect upon molecules which changing directions in terms of nanoseconds but it have more effect upon the body of zillions of these molecules if over a long enough distance. Or sort of like have small error in in decimal points in calculation if one constantly re-calculating this small error.
It’s sort of simpler if considering/pondering a smaller gas density, ie something less than 10^16 per cubic cm. And I think it fits your description above. But as one increases density the gas, this effect is reduced.
Apply this to an atmosphere, I would say stratosphere and above is pushing down upon lower atmosphere and lower atmosphere negates or diffuses this downward force.
Y’all will likely be amused by the addendum I’ve added to the head post …
w.
A belated return to a possible dead thread. Personal Kudos to you for spotting and acting on this.
I stopped notifying Nature and Science of clear scientific misconduct after having struck out 3 for 3 with absolute irrefutable written proofs. Marcott hockeystick, OLeary sudden SLR, Fabricious PNG corals. You didn’t and got results. Bravo. Very well done.
ristvan September 15, 2016 at 2:59 pm
Thanks, ristvan. I strike out a lot as well, but I play the game as though it was baseball—league-wide batting average is about .250, meaning even the pros only hit successfully one time out of four.
Plus I’m a stubborn sob, so I just keep plugging along …
w.
Not necessarily. Correlation still isn’t causation. I don’t believe for a moment that Willis was the only person reading the article who didn’t see the reversed names.
dickon66 September 24, 2016 at 3:14 am
Huh? I don’t recall ever saying that I was the only person reading the article who didn’t see the reversed names. Where did you get that idea?
And as far as I can tell, ristvan was congratulating me for my actions in notifying the Editor, not for whatever you’re talking about.
Sorry, but I don’t understand what you’re on about …
w.
Sorry if I misunderstood your series of comments but from the tone of them, it appeared as if you were taking responsibility for the editor withdrawing the article, which I felt was absurd. Again, apologies if I misunderstood your tone, but ristvan’s comment (which you didn’t deny, even agreed with) on “getting results” seemed to reinforce that impression. I mean no disrespect to you, I’m sure everybody who pointed this out to the editor probably felt the same way.
dickon66 September 24, 2016 at 5:19 am
This is why I ask people to quote what they disagree with. A claim that my “tone” was something or other is MEANINGLESS without a quotation to tie it to.
In any case, I took (and take) full responsibility for bringing the issue to the attention of the Editor. However, while I agreed with it, his decision was his own.
ristvan complimented me for “spotting and acting on this”, which I assuredly did. Why should I deny that?
And at the end of the day, my actions seem to have resulted in the paper being withdrawn, which I’m happy about. But I didn’t “get the paper withdrawn” or anything like that. I just informed the Editor of some undeniable facts that he was unaware of. All of the choices after that point were the Editors alone, I had no part in them.
w.
The atmosphere is a heat engine….. What so controversial about that?
The Sun is the heat source and the atmosphere is the engine.
Heat enters the top of the atmosphere and moves down.The further down it goes the denser the atmosphere.
The denser lower atmosphere warms faster than the tenuous upper atmosphere and convection currents begin taking hot packets of the lower atmosphere and replacing them with colder upper packets of the atmosphere.
Thus a vertical movement of the atmosphere through a gravitational field…. (important concept)
Gravity compresses those upper down welling packets, creating frictional energy and work while also expanding the up welling packets releasing that energy…. We have a fairly simple heat engine in motion.
There will be “Extra” energy in the system other than the Sun’s radiation and that “Extra” energy is frictional due to compression…. It is not “retained” energy from “extra” radiative gases.
Why is there any controversy about this very simple physical process?
“There will be “Extra” energy in the system other than the Sun’s radiation and that “Extra” energy is frictional due to compression…. It is not “retained” energy from “extra” radiative gases.”
No – because rising/descending in the atmosphere is a zero sum process EXCEPT when the air has condensing/evaporating H2O, and there is a net cooling to the upper atmosphere.
The LR is produced by mas air overturning (convection chiefly but also into baroclinic features), via the g/cp relation.
The LR is of course modified locally by LH real ease and subsidence.
Try this: bore a well insulated hole in Mars, deep enough to get 1 atm at the bottom. What would be the temperature down there? Assume no sunlight going in the small hole.
“Gravity compresses those upper down welling packets, creating frictional energy and work while also expanding the up welling packets releasing that energy…. We have a fairly simple heat engine in motion.”
This is the right thing to be thinking about. I’ve written about it here and earlier (links in post). But it doesn’t work quite like that. Gravity can’t do net work unless there is net loss of potential energy – the sky is falling. Heat engines get energy from temperature differences, and there are plenty, and they create wind.
But the up and down motion you describe requires energy, if the lapse rate is less than DALR. The down packet compresses, gets warmer than surroundings and is buoyant. It takes work to bring it down. But when down, it gives heat to what were warmer surroundings than where it started. It has moved heat against a gradient. That is heat pumping. And the up motions are the same. This time the air cools and has to be pulled up, and transports “coolness” upward, ie heat down.
The energy to drive this heat pump comes from the wind. The effectiveness of the pump depends on difference of LR from the critical -g/cₚ, and so pulls the LR toward that level, but not beyond. If it does go beyond, then it all reverses. The pump becomes an engine, with instability making spontaneous convection, and giving energy to the wind.
The Lapse Rate is a complex topic. Obviously, gravity is responsible for the pressure profile of the atmosphere, but I don’t see how anyone can suppose that gravity/pressure, alone, explains the atmosphere’s entire temperature vs. altitude profile:
http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/ees/slides/climate/atmprofile.gif
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=atmospheric+lapse+rate+temperature+altitude
Likewise, if it were supposed that gravity/pressure alone were responsible even for just the altitude vs/ temperature profile below the tropopause, how could the dependency of the lapse rate upon humidity be explained?
http://www.yachting-life.net/meteo/weather%20how%20this%20is%20effected%20by%20humidity%20and%20temperature_files/17.gif
The word “alone” is the key point. A one-size fits all approach, which climate science seems so focused on, is likely intractable.
“how could the dependency of the lapse rate upon humidity be explained?”
Because water vapor has a much higher heat capacity (Cp) than “air” and the
dry lapse rate = -g/Cp
Therefore an increase of Cp from water vapor decreases the lapse rate and thus surface temperature. The wet adiabatic lapse rate is only about half of the dry lapse rate, as confirmed by observations.
As to the atmospheric temp profile, the lapse rates (g/Cp) change in the different layers since the heat capacity Cp greatly changes between layers. See the 1976 US Standard Atmosphere, which can be perfectly replicated by the gravito-thermal GHE calculations:
hockeyschtick.blogspot. com /2014/11/the-greenhouse-equation-predicts.html
Hockeyschtick, you say that changing the atmosperic water vapor content changes the atmosperic heat calacity while arguing that there is no GHE. Isn’t that what a greenhouse gas is supposed to do?
Just saying…
He won’t reply because you are right and he is wrong.
That doesn’t make sense, hockeyschtick, because, at most, in the muggy tropics, at 100% humidity, the atmosphere contains only about 4.3% water vapor.
The heat capacity of a mixed gas is a weighted average of the heat capacities of the constituent gases.
H2O 1.93
Ar 0.52
N2 1.04
O2 0.919
Ref: http://catalog.conveyorspneumatic.com/Asset/FLS%20Specific%20Heat%20Capacities%20of%20Gases.pdf
Dry air = (.78 x 1.04) + (.21 x 0.919) + (.01 x 0.52) = 1.00939
Air w/ 4.3% H2O = (.957 x 1.00939) + (.043 x 1.93) = 1.04897623
(Please, no complaints about insignificant digits!)
So, going from bone-dry air to maximum possible water vapor content increases the air’s heat capacity by only (1 – 1.04897623/1.00939) = 3.9%.
The folks who think gravity & air pressure alone explain the lapse rate base that belief on the argument that when a gas molecule rises, it slows, because of gravity, thereby exchanging kinetic energy for potential energy. But they never try to quantify it.
“If you can’t quantify it, you don’t understand it.”
– Peter Drucker
I wrote, “The folks who think gravity & air pressure alone explain the lapse rate, base that belief on the argument that when a gas molecule rises it slows, because of gravity, thereby exchanging kinetic energy for potential energy. But they never try to quantify it.”
But that made me think, “but neither do I.”
Ouch. I hate realizing that I’m a hypocrite.
So I tried to quantify it — and what I learned is that I’m confused.
This is embarrassing, because it doesn’t seem like it should be very hard. But I’m swallowing my pride, and asking for help. Can someone please explain it to me?
Here’s what I tried to do. (Please be gentle.)
First, I did a google search, to discover the average speed of air molecules, at typical temperatures. The answer I found was that at room temperature and 1 ATM the rms average molecular speed is about 500 m/sec (which would be ~1118 mph).
So, let’s compare that to the velocity change which corresponds to a change in altitude of one km.
g = 9.8 m/sec^2
d = 1000 m
v = sqrt(2 g d)
= sqrt(2 * 9.8 * 1000 m^2/sec^2)
= sqrt(16,900) m/sec
= 130 m/sec = 291 mph
In other words, if an air molecule started out at the earth’s surface and happened to have its velocity vector pointing straight up, and had a typical speed of 500 m/sec, and if it miraculously managed to travel 1 km w/o colliding with another air molecule (which can’t happen, but bear with me), then at 1 km its velocity would be reduced from 500 m/sec to 370 m/sec.
That’s a big change!
Now, let’s compare that to what we know about the lapse rate below the tropopause.
The avg lapse rate = 6.49 K/km. (It varies a lot, of course.)
Temperature is proportional to molecular velocity squared, i.e., molecular kinetic energy.
So molecular velocity is proportional to sqrt(T).
So, starting at a nice, comfortable 300K = 26.85°C = 80.33°F, losing 6.49K temperature would reduce the temperature to 293.51K, and reduce the average molecular velocity by a multiplicative factor of:
sqrt(293.51/300) = sqrt(0.9783666) = 0.98912419173
Or, expressed as a percentage, 1 – 0.9891242 = 0.0108758 = 1.08758%
That would reduce 500 m/Sec to 494.56 m/sec, i.e., by 5.44 m/sec.
Not 130 m/sec, but 5.44 m/sec.
Obviously, I’m missing something.
Correction: 2 * 9.8 * 1000 = 19,600, not 16,900, of course.
I’ve oughta stop trying to do simple arithmetic in my head at 2 a.m.
The square-root is then 140, rather than 130.
Can somebody address what Dave Burton is saying? Thank you.
“Obviously, I’m missing something.”
Lapse rate is not determined by molecular velocities. It is a function of adiabatic expansion under gravity. A short-cut argument is that for a packet of gas rising dz in air, it is gaining potential energy ρgdz and that is balanced by internal energy
ρcₚdT+ρgdz=0
so dT/dz = -g/cₚ
A more thorough derivation is here. That shows the rate of cooling of rising adiabatic air; why actual lapse rates than converge to that is explained here.
Given a rough, rocky planet rotating within a gaseous atmosphere, I think we can assume work is being done.
Scientists posting under a pen-name is not unheard of, a good example being William Sealey Gosset, who published under the name “Student”. Would that have been a reason for retracting the paper on Student’s t-distribution? No, of course not, that would be absurd. Gosset published under a pen-name at the request of his employer, Guinness (which is why he was, for me, the most important statistician of the 20th century).
AcademiaSE is a good place to find out about academic practice, and they have several questions about publishing under a pen-name. I particularly like the answer to the question “is pseudonymous publication ethical”, which begins “The worth of scientific work is in the content, not in who wrote it.”, which hits the nail squarely on the head.
The best way to deal with perceived bias is probably double blind peer review, where the reviewers are not told the names of the authors of the manuscript. Of course this isn’t perfect as the reviewers are experts in the particular sub-topic and hence are likely to have seen the authors previous work and so may have a good idea who wrote it. However unless one chooses reviewers from outside the sub-topic (and hence don’t know the issues so well, which would reduce the value of the review) it is difficult to see how this can be avoided. I’ve published and reviewed double blind, and I don’t think it is really necessary, but it does at least demonstrate that the conference/journal is trying to do what they can to address the concerns.
Now I haven’t read the paper, but if it is factually incorrect, then I think it is a great pity if it has been withdrawn because of the use of pen-names (which is at best making a mountain out of a molehill), and it would have been much better if someone had written a comment paper pointing out why it is factually incorrect and submitted it for peer review. I looks like there has been a failure of the peer-review process, as a bad paper has apparently made it through peer review, but no real progress has been made by retracting the paper in this way.
BTW, it appears there have been quite a few famous mathematicians that published under a pen-name for a variety of reasons.
Paper is crap because it effectively combines two curves, one being on Earth and Venus, and uses five(!) free variables. “With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.” – John von Neuman.
Yep, something is up alright, and I suspect it is for the better. Unlike the climastrology gang.
A couple of observations regarding air pressure and temperatures: on a visit to the Dead Sea take a temperature at sea level on the way down and compare compare it with a reading at the bottom (an empty plastic water bottle will collapse under the additional pressure once you reach the bottom); or walk down into a deep underground mine and notice how the air warms as you descend.
The air in a deep mine warms because of Earths heat. And we can prove deep earth is hot by observing volcanoes. And that magma did not get hot because of gravity’s present pressure on the rock. It is energy left over from Earth’s formation, when gravity did do work.
The Dead Sea depression and Death Valley warm up at the bottom because they trap the suns heat energy like a reflector oven, not because the airmpressure is a little higher.
The energy from formation left long, long ago. The earth is currently hot from nuclear decay in the core.
Probably. I recall a famous scientist who claculated my comment and fot Earths age wrong. Good catch. Cannot win them all.
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), yes, that Kelvin, calculated the age of the Earth as between 20 million and 400 million years. His calculation did not include radioactivity or that pesky convection. The lower limit was set by the energy of the Sun, as he did not know about radioactivity there either. He calculated the age of the Sun at 20 million years. Including convection but ignoring radioactivity, the maximum is much less than 400 million years.
Until recently (after 2005), many sources claimed the main internal heating of the Earth was tidal forces. However, if you apply the current slowing of the Earth’s rotation rate – also caused by tidal forces, you get a maximum age of the Earth-Moon pair of about 1.1 billion years, as more than that, the Moon would be inside the Roche limit. However, before the Ice Ages of the last 3 million years, tidal slowing was much less due to higher sea level allowing water to flow more freely from the equatorial Atlantic and Pacific. Tidal heating cannot be more than 1/3 of Earth’s core’s current heating, so the rest is assumed to be radioactivity. I have yet to see a complete quantitative explanation that makes all these numbers fit.
The Dead Sea is 423 metres (1300 feet) below sea level and the dry adiabatic lapse rate is 9.8C per km or around 3C per 1000 feet. Would not this explain the difference in temperature at sea level compared with the temperature at the Dead Sea?
According to Wikipedia, the geothermal gradient away from tectonic plates is about 25 °C per km of depth, which would seem to explain the heat of mines without any atmospheric component. The paper they cite says:
“Geothermal energy, in the broadest sense, is the natural heat of the Earth. Immense amounts of thermal energy are generated and stored in the Earth’s core, mantle and crust. At the base of the continental crust, temperatures are believed to range from 200 to 1,000°C, and at the centre of the earth the temperatures may be in the range of 3,500 to 4,500°C. The heat is transferred from the interior towards the surface mostly by conduction, and this conductive heat flow makes temperature rise with increasing depth in the crust on average 25-30°C/km. Geothermal production wells are commonly more than 2 km deep, but rarely much more than 3 km at present. With an average thermal gradient of 25-30°C/km, a 1 km well in dry rock formations would have a bottom temperature near 40°C in many parts of the world (assuming a mean annual air temperature of 15°C) and a 3 km well 90-100°C. “
I was moderately surprised just how large the gradient is!
The statistical mechanical expression relating temperature and kinetic energy
specifies molecular velocities relative to center-of-mass coordinates. If all
molecules are subject to the same gravitational acceleration, so is the center-
of-mass. More generally, any nontrivial definition for thermodynamic equilibrium
invokes a uniform temperature.
In fact, the gold-standard 1976 US Standard Atmosphere temperature gradient can be calculated on the basic of the atmospheric center of mass (located where P=0.5 atmospheres, at about 5.200 km), gravity, atmospheric mass, pressure, and solar forcing, with NO contribution whatsoever from GHG “radiative forcing.”
hockeyschtick.blogspot. com /2014/11/derivation-of-entire-33c-greenhouse.html
[snip – fake name, submitted by proxy server, rant -multiple policy violations -mod]
Ed Norton “There’s no such thing in all physics as immersion and washing with cold fluid, that makes the temperature of the object being washed ultimately warmer, than if that cold fluid bath wasn’t there. ”
yes there is, it is called a “wetsuit”.
I hope you forgot the sarc. tag as your comment is so ridiculous. Aren’t you a professor?
As it happens I wasn’t being sarcastic. A wetsuit is a fairly good analogy for explaining why the greenhouse effect doesn’t violate the second law of thermodynamics. Most of the sun’s radiation is in visible or UV wavelengths to which the atmosphere is largely transparent. The suns radiation is therefore mostly absorbed by the surface, which warms up as a result and radiates in the IR wavelengths. The atmosphere isn’t transparent to IR, so it absorbs some of the outbound IR and so warms up as a result. So just like the water in the wetsuit is warmed from beneath by the body, the atmosphere is warmed from below by IR from the surface (not directly by the sun’s radiation). Being warm the atmosphere radiates IR in all directions, including downwards to the surface, where it is absorbed. This doesn’t violate the second law of thermodynamics, which only requires the net flow of heat to be from warmer to cooler, because there is a greater flow of energy from the surface to the atmosphere than from the atmosphere to the surface. This is just like the water in a wetsuit, which is warmed by the body, but returns some of this energy back to the body by conduction, but there is no second law violation because more energy goes from the body to the water than from the water to the body. Just like the energy that is returned by the water to the body, the “backradiation” from the atmosphere means the surface is warmer than it would be in the absence of GHGs. Of course this is only a very very basic analogy, but the point was genuine, without sarcasm.
Oh, so the water trapped in the wetsuit represents the atmosphere and the wetsuit itself represents……top of atmosphere? How much does the wetsuit itself insulate the body from conduction?
Not sure your analogy works without the thin layer of water being trapped in close proximity to the body.
Also, I never said anything about the 2nd law.
LOL, it is amusing that whenever I use an analogy in real world conversations to get across a specific point, generally it is effective and the person I am speaking to concentrates on seeing the truth of that single point (without getting bogged down in details irrelevant to that point) and are willing to acknowledge that they have understood it. Whenever I use an analogy to make a point on a climate blog, even if I point out that it is only “very very basic”, the person I am talking to instead just tries to find ways in which the analogy differs from the real world and hence avoid dealing with the point it is intended to make. Funny that!
The wetsuit analogy shows that you can become warmer than you would otherwise be by being surrounded by something that is cooler than you are. A wetsuit is a perfectly good example of that. Likewise the surface can be made warmer than it would otherwise be in the absence of GHGs, even though the GHGs are cooler than the surface. This point remains true regardless of the thickness of the atmosphere.
“Also, I never said anything about the 2nd law.”
I never said you did. You appear to have lost track of the conversation. You suggested that my wet suit example was sarcastic, I explained that it wasn’t and the point it was intended to convey (of which the second law was a part). So of course nobody said that you said anything about the second law, but by questioning my example, you invited me to introduce it.
‘The New Dawn of Truth’
And thus we see why Anthony has wisely banned this subject.
Sheesh, some guys are so eager to prove that CO2 isn’t a problem that they will latch onto any nut case theory.
@It is the Theory espoused by James Clerk Maxwell, based on the Poussin Relation as valid for atmospheres. Empirically proven refuting the likes of Arrhenius and Callendar by skilled people from Woods to Hartmann etc.. The Gas Laws are not just a hint to be ignored by people who cannot be bothered to work on their Physics. It does take work….
I’m surprised Nikolov and Zeller didn’t try to be a bit more hip and use “L33t” translations of their names. But I suppose signing your names N3d N1k0L0v and K4rL Z3LL3r might raise a few eyebrows, even amongst peer reviewers.
/snark
It is quite conceivable that today is no warmer than it was in the late 1930s/1940.
I say that since:
(i) If one considers the thermometer record say 20 years ago, it showed significant cooling post 1940. Of course it has since been adjusted to do away with this period of cooling.
(ii) In the late 1970s, NASA was claiming that temperatures had fallen by up to about 0.5degC between 1940 and mid 1970s.
(iii) The tree ring data does not suggest that there is any significant warming since the 1950s and that is why Michael M@ann had to disregard the tree ring data post this date, and splice on the adjusted thermometer record when performing his ‘nature trick.’
(iv) the Satellite data suggests that there may have been about 0.4degC warming since 1979 (the bulk of which is a one off warming coincident with the Super El Nino of 1997/98).
(v) The raw data for the USA suggests that there has been no warming since the 1930s/1940s. Indeed, it would appear slight cooling.
(vi) Greenland raw data also suggests that there has been no warming since the 1930s/1940s.
The upshot of this is that it may well be the case that between 1940 and 1975, the planet cooled by about 0.4 to 0.5degC and since 1975 it has warmed by about 0.4degC. IF that is the correct position then there has been no significant warming during the entire period when manmade CO2 emissions became significant.
This would put Climate Sensitivity to CO2 as zero or close thereto
When the cAGW conjecture collapses, it is likely that there will be a re-evaluation of the science. I envisage that this will include revisiting the GHE. One reason why Climate Sensitivity could be low is because the GHE is not as large as claimed, and the figure of 33degC claimed for this effect is wrong.
“It is quite conceivable that today is no warmer than it was in the late 1930s/1940.”
I think the rising sea level over last century continued beyond 1950s.
Or had about 8″ rise over last century, and had about 4″ since 1950s.
And of the 8″ rise, 2 to 3″ is due to warming of the ocean or about 1″ rise due to warming
ocean since 1950. So would say this evidence of global warming since 1950s.
But regionally I believe the US was a bit warmer in the earlier part of 20th century.
“This would put Climate Sensitivity to CO2 as zero or close thereto”
I think a doubling of CO2 at most will cause 1 C of global warming- I don’t think greenhouse gases
could do much warming. Nor could much higher levels of CO2 prevent earth from returning to something like the Little Ice Age and/or returning to glacial period. And generally rises in greenhouse gases follow warming and will not stop global cooling. And think this could proven in next couple decades, as cooler conditions could lower or at least reduce increase in global CO2 concentration- despite China’s mad yearly increase in CO2 emissions.
gbaikie
September 15, 2016 at 8:58 pm: It is easy to forget that past sea level deglaciation rises have left vast areas of ice formed on the dry land eg Antarctica to be washed by seawater and thus steadily melted underneath. This is your rise now, and when it stops again, we do have a problem for a change. But maybe not soon.
Personally, I consider that the various data sets are not ft for purpose; they do not withstand the ordinary rigours of scientific inquiry and that is why we are left debating the issue.
I do not dispute that sea level has risen from the 1940s, although there is contradictory evidence on this and I am familiar from my experience with shipping as to the difficulties inherent in ascertaining sea level/draft measurements that render question marks over the claimed accuracy of the various data sets..
The material point is that there has been no acceleration in the rate of sea level rise since the 1880s, and there is a not insignificant argument that the rise that we are measuring today is the aftermath of the melting that took place as the world came out of the LIA.
I stand by the statement that it is far from clear that there has been any measurable warming post the late 1930s/1940s (possible sea level rise notwithstanding).
IF and this is only an if, that is really the case then Climate sensitivity to CO2 is zero or close thereto.
IF Climate Sensitivity is truly close to zero, then the claimed GHE of 33 degC is open to question.
I am a sceptic which means that I am sceptical of almost all arguments in favour of AGW, and almost all arguments against AGW. Because of the poor quality of the data sets, I am not arguing that Climate sensitivity is about zero, but rather that one can not discount that possibility, and in which case the entire game is up for grabs.
— Brett Keane
September 16, 2016 at 1:48 am
gbaikie
September 15, 2016 at 8:58 pm: It is easy to forget that past sea level deglaciation rises have left vast areas of ice formed on the dry land eg Antarctica to be washed by seawater and thus steadily melted underneath. This is your rise now, and when it stops again, we do have a problem for a change. But maybe not soon.—
Not sure what you saying, but measuring sea level is complicated and has “noise” in the measurement.
But despite this I am fairly confident that a portion of rise in sea level measured, indicates earth surface [and/or ocean is most of earth surface] is still warming. Now during the Little Ice Age sea levels [as best that can be measured- which could revised if one has better measurement] did lower rather than rise.
I would explain that lowering and some significant part of the ocean cooling- but not go as far as saying the entire ocean cooled [mainly because this takes a very long time to do]. Or I would say generally speaking over the long period of our interglacial period [10,000 years] the entire ocean has been warming
and up and down of global average temperature, LIA, present period, Medieval warm, and ect has been warming or cooling a signifcant part of the ocean, but entire ocean is warming, and that generally during glacial periods, the entire ocean is cooling- though significant parts of ocean can warm or cool during shorter time periods of centuries.
Some people above make an analogy with a tyre and claim that once the tyre has been filled with air, the air in the tyre is warm but quickly loses its heat. I do not disagree with that proposition as long as no work is done on the tyre and as long as the side walls of the tyre are not being flexed.
However, if you immediately take the bike out for a ride the air in the tyre will remain hot since the tyre is constantly being slightly flexed as you ride over an uneven surface or as your body weight slightly shifts.
This flexing in the side wall of a tyre is only small but sufficient to keep the air temperature in the tyre hot.
This of course is well known in racing. Heat is got into the tyre by cornering. On the way to the grid, drivers move the steering wheel side to side causing the side wall to flex and thereby generate compression and thereby keep the pre-heated tyre warm.
As I noted above, our planets atmosphere is constantly being compressed. The globe is spinning and has an uneven surface (Everest is approximately 40,000 feet high). Tides ebb and flow. All of this causes the atmosphere to constantly be displaced 24/7 some 365 days of the year. The atmosphere is also being pulled by the moon (and sun).
This continued flexing of the atmosphere is all quite small but may be it is sufficient to keep a warm atmosphere warm just like very small flexing of the side wall of a tyre can keep the air in the tyre warm.
I am not saying this work is sufficient, I am just mooting the possibility.
“As I noted above, our planets atmosphere is constantly being compressed. The globe is spinning and has an uneven surface (Everest is approximately 40,000 feet high). Tides ebb and flow. All of this causes the atmosphere to constantly be displaced 24/7 some 365 days of the year. The atmosphere is also being pulled by the moon (and sun).”
It is under compression but it is NOT oscillating to/fro 0 bar and 1 bar. Even if it was ( hypothetically) – it is a zero-sum game. Any atmosphere will lose the same energy it gained during the cycle (neglecting LH effects).
Yes, there are small tidal effects but they are tiny and are far outweighed by dynamical forcings.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1002/wea.857/asset/857_ftp.pdf?v=1&t=it4k5by0&s=89092c00987e7578c800bf1d075ecbd70f1c53c1
I am in no way suggesting that the atmosphere is oscillating between 0 and 1 bar.
1 am suggesting that work is done, and whenever work is done, heat is an inevitable by product. In the practical world in which we live, whenever work is done we are not in a zero sum environ. If we were perpetual motion would be a possibility. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
It is tyre wall (sidewall) flexing that generates heat, not friction. See the comment made by Cristoph Knoche, the Racing Manager for Pirelli Tire North America’s Motorcycle Division. at http://www.sportrider.com/how-to-properly-warm-your-tires
my emphasis.
Huge sums of money go into motor racing and tyre development, and it is analysed in acute detail. Pirelli have for a very longh time beem the Formula 1 tyre supplier, I am confident that they know how heat is generated within their tyres.
The heating of the tire on the bike and F1 tires is due to friction, not the gas being compressed. The flexing of the side walls will compressed very a bit which heats it a bit but will also expanded the gas a bit when the side wall flexes the other way cooling it. The gas compression/expansion adds no energy (heat) to the system. Only the friction does.
This is the same as Toneb describes in his reply to your comment richard verney,
I addressed your point in my comment above.
A lot of research has gone into this issue, and the view is that it is flexing of the sidewall that generates the heat, not friction between tyre surface and race track/road.
“Acceleration and braking forces impart far more flex to the tire carcass, which is what generates the heat that then transfers to the tread compound as well”
Yes this is true and it is caused by friction of the rubber/steel/cord molecules in the side walls rubbing against each other. It has nothing to do with the compression/decompression of the air in the tire.
Thanks for the reply.
Richard you are being obtuse.
Of course tyres heat via flexing.
The ONLY point here is that a confined space (Earth) when it has its atmosphere compressed via gravity will exhibit the effect of that atmosphere heating. Yes?
Then the work is DONE. Yes?
SO it’s internal energy due to that work then radiates to space.
It does not remain.
Hence gravity does not create a LR of itself.
Matter heats up when it falls into a gravity well. Where does the energy come from?
The bigger the star or planet, the hotter its interior. The temperature eventually cools off and is lost to space let’s say (but it take an exceedingly long time to escape. The Earth’s interior has cooled by something like 0.000003C per year.) Why does it take so long? It should cool off very fast yet it takes billions or trillions of years to do so.
There is physics here that has not been explored by science thoroughly enough.
The earth’s core is radioactive. That’s where the heat is coming form. That’s been known for decades.
Matter does not heat up when it falls into a gravity well.
A falling object converts potential energy to kinetic energy as it falls. A comet that passes between the earth and the moon then goes out again, will gain energy (speed) as it falls into the gravity well, then lose that energy again as it climbs back out the other side. At no time does it’s temperature change.
If that falling object then hits something, some of the kinetic energy gets converted to thermal energy.
It is not radioactivity. This accounts for less than half of the heat in the Earth’s core. What about stars made up of hydrogen and helium only (ie no radioactivity) yet the cores heat up to 10 million C before fusion starts to take place.
How does potential energy get converted into actual molecular temperature energy. Where does the energy come from?
“It is not radioactivity. This accounts for less than half of the heat in the Earth’s core. What about stars made up of hydrogen and helium only (ie no radioactivity) yet the cores heat up to 10 million C before fusion starts to take place.”
It is via compression.
In this case gas in a cloud is compressed under gravity into a sphere. It heats. Most at it’s centre. If the gas cloud is big enough then that heat starts of fusion … And the star lights up. The force of gravity balancing the thermonuclear energy trying to explode to the surface.
How about the moon? It interior is not hot at all at 1/4 the size of the earth, As MarkW says it is the radioactivity that heats the earth core, not pressure.
I check and I was wrong, the moons core is warm. It appears the core of the moon is about1,270K~1,800K (molten Iron). The heating seem to be mostly form tidal forces keeping the moon from cooling down all the way.
The Moon’s interior is hot, and Moon is 1/80th of Earth’s mass.
There is heating caused by radioactivity, but it a portion of the source of the heat. And with gas giants
it would very small portion of the heat.
Toneb
September 15, 2016 at 10:53 am: Yes, we just have to open our minds a little to add the appropriate lapse rate per km to the final radius of any sun, starting at say 3K. Look at that figure, and understand. Maxwell and Feynman et al were not fools.
Got lads, the craziness here, some anyway, air molecules are hottest at the top of earth’s atmosphere.
If air was the same temp at ground level, we’d be incinerated in no time. Temperature and density folks.
I can have a sauna at 100c, but up the pressure, which means up the density of air too, and I’d be cooked in that same sauna.
Unfortunately, matters are not just that simple because the atmosphere is thin at altitude.
true my man very true
Note the amount of precipitable water controls how long you can be in the 100C sauna. At RH 100% 1 atm usually no time at all, while a dry sauna can be tolerable at 100C.
The reason is your skin which condenses at a high RH and that will boil you, but without the dangerous dihydrogenium monoxide, you’ll be ok.
my hydration level controls how long I can be in the Sauna mate, within a reasonable range.
Moisture also a factor, but if I throw water on the stones (i use beer) then obviously that moisture is transferred to the air in the Sauna and that increases density of the atmosphere in the Sauna increasing the heat transfer to my body.
I work with servers, liquid cooled and air cooled, obviously liquid cooling, the density is greater and so is the heat transport capacity, in fact 25 times greater.
The more energy you want to transport away per “whatever metric measure of medium you use” increases as you increase density of that medium.
For example liquid cooling using heavy mist with fans, will be better than air alone and not as good as liquid, simply because the liquid is more dense and so increased convection.
Also, at the top of the atmosphere, air molecules are well in excess of 100c. That is literally the hottest place in the atmosphere, because of the sun. The density is low, as I said, a molecule might have to travel kms to meet another one, so relatively it would be bloody cold, but increase the number of molecules and you will increase the relative temperature. Density
Sorry anthony, dunno what garbage I typed into my username.
Nick Stokes September 14, 2016 at 10:54 pm
“using the same principles/Ideal Gas Law as N&Z”
Well, the matterial at the bottom of the Venus atmosphere certainly isn’t an ideal gas. It’s normally reckoned to be supercritical. But you don’t say where or how you got the density measurement there.
As to the lower plot, as Willis said, getting a regression to pass through four points is easy if you have parameters to twiddle, and can choose a model likely to fit. And that is accepting Triton as a valid data point. Who claims to have measured atmospheric pressure at the surface of Triton?
Nick Stokes September 15, 2016 at 12:51 am
I see too that Willis wrote directly on this paper when it appeared Travelling through other dimensions, just over a year ago. He was not impressed. I see also that the author’s true identity was deduced in comments there.
As Nick points out Willis worked out who these guys were a year ago!
He also gave a very good critique of the ‘paper’.
It was even worse than he thought though. The fit was to only 5 bodies, however two of them had zero pressure which meant that the exponential terms were equal to 1, so that none of the four free parameters were involved. So the remaining three bodies were fitted using four parameters! Mars and Earth are effectively determined by the first exponential term whereas the second term is used to fit Venus.
It’s a junk paper and should have been rejected on those grounds, the pseudonyms are just a side show.
I find myself in agreement with Willis, Nick, and Phil.
Mark this rare moment in time. It may never come again
Perhaps Juno when it is crashed into Jupiter will shed a bit more light on this (although I am not holding my breath; Jupiter is no planet Earth).
I agree that one cannot read anything into the claimed fit of bodies where atmospheric pressure is close to zero.
Glad to see Nikolov and Zeller getting some publicity.
And of the right sort. Negative, exposing their nonsense.
Anthony,
‘Climate Skeptics Behaving Badly’
What the fruck is a climate skeptic?
” “Hurricane researcher-turned-climate denier” Really? Did Dr. Gray deny climate? Climate change? A human influence on climate?
Or did he just disagree with the human influence as the predominant climate forcing (still an open question), and that anthropogenic warming is a negative and potentially catastrophic one at that? …
Dear SP: Choose a better title or tell your editor that even a Monday is no excuse to denigrate a true scientist in the title of an obituary.”
That’s you speaking, Anthony, in an article I was loathe to speak up on, of course, but now I ask; Really? Are you skeptical of climate? Climate change? A human influence on climate?
Or do you just disagree with the human influence as the predominant climate forcing (still an open question), and that anthropogenic warming is a negative and potentially catastrophic one at that? …
Dear AW: Choose a better title or tell your editor that even a Thursday is no excuse to denigrate yourself and many others here . . again.
John Knight,
No, that is NOT ME SPEAKING about Dr. Gray. Read this article, where I reported his death and you’ll see it was Greenwire. My article pointed provided an excerpt from Robert Bradley where he questioned whether or not that was hate speech.
Jeez, learn to read correctly before you hurl wild accusations.
And I stand by the title ‘Climate Skeptics Behaving Badly’. Feel free to be as upset about it as you wish because honestly, when somebody puts up a fake name to a journal, they deserve to be called out on it.
Are you skeptical of climate, sir?
Wild accusations? . .
No sir, I say perfectly understandable pleas to stop using a label that if accurately applied, would render those it was applied to essentially morons.
Fully agree: there is no excuse for fake names.
That said, I consider that it is unfortunate that this site, which is the most important site regarding global warming, seeks to curtail debate. If their ‘science’ is wrong, it should be set out, debated, and exposed as right or wrong.
In due course, history will judge.
richard verney September 16, 2016 at 8:19 am
That said, I consider that it is unfortunate that this site, which is the most important site regarding global warming, seeks to curtail debate. If their ‘science’ is wrong, it should be set out, debated, and exposed as right or wrong.
It’s been done on here for each of their papers and again in this thread.
This previous post shows how bogus their ‘curve fitting’ is!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/14/climate-skeptics-behaving-badly/#comment-2300439
Their analysis is clearly wrong, what else is there to set out?
Mr. Knight of course I’m skeptical of climate, I’m also skeptical of fools that try to push through their science under fake names.
As for Mr. Verney’s concerns, we DID give Nikolov and Zeller a chance…per your “If their ‘science’ is wrong, it should be set out, debated, and exposed as right or wrong.”.
See the links in the body of the post where their science was debated.
We debated it here, it failed on its merits, miserably, and they failed to listen to that debate. Instead, they pushed it through a journal under fake names. That’s not science, it’s zealotry. We don’t do zealotry here.
I’m not concerned about how history will judge this, no not one bit.
Nikolov and Zeller have done good work while under heavy bombardment in a war zone. My only problem with them is first, the unnecessary deception and second, that they fail to adequately discuss radiation as the last step to space for energy thermalized by our planet. Radiation goes as the fourth power of temperature and thus furnishes a powerful negative feedback on any perturbation to our climate. Gravity controls the vertical distribution of gasses in the atmosphere, and following the laws of thermodynamics also controls the temperature profile of the troposphere through convective overturning. A complete theory requires proper consideration of both of these aspects. The existence of life on this planet stretching back billions of years, shows without question that life is resilient to whatever nature or mankind can throw at it, including that essential gas CO2 for which the plant life on this planet is always ravenously hungry.
pochas94 September 17, 2016 at 10:49 am
I’m awfully sorry to hear about the bombardment. Was it as heavy as the bombardment that Hillary landed under in Bosnia?
Seriously, pochas, what you call “heavy bombardment” is mostly the honest expression of people’s scientific problems with the Volokin and ReLlez parameter-fitting exercise.
And I object strongly to the characterization that scientific opposition is “bombardment”. People here, myself included, pointed out a large variety of large problems with their work. That’s not bombardment, THAT’S SCIENCE.
Finally, what kind of wimp finds it is hard to work in the face of some words written on the computer screen? That’s your excuse, that people wrote mean things about them?
Boohoo.
Man, if I found it hard to work because people disagreed with my science, I’d have stopped writing long ago. Just like Volokin and ReLlez, I’ve been putting forwards a new theory in the face of considerable opposition … so what? Seriously, what did they expect us to do, blow in their ears and whisper sweet nothings?
If they don’t have the moxie to push through scientific opposition, shame on them.
w.
[snip – off topic, appears to be denigration -mod]
@jon goldern
September 15, 2016 at 7:23 pm: OT, literally under the belt, foolishly casting the first stone like a good little troll.
Interesting article in Washington Post today about the subject of this post. Nikolov says they used false names because otherwise googling would lead to negative reviews in sceptic blogs (presumably Willis at WUWT):
Worrying news here:
” about this post”
I mean about the subject of this post.
Fixed. WordPress’s lack of a “Preview” function is a drag, but I do my best to fill the gap.
w.
All of this is interesting, and fun to read, but how do the authors explain rising world temperature? If the greenhouse gas entrapment theory is not correct, Is gravity increasing? That will play hell with my diet goals….
NZ results are for 30-year global mean planetary surface temperatures, warmer and colder wiggles from that ‘backbone’ stable value are due to changes in global cloud cover and solar activity. Their results do imply that past Earth atmosphere has varied greatly and not been fixed as assumed by most researchers.
@Cliff Forgaizer
September 22, 2016 at 11:09 am: The NZ temp record (7 Stations) was confessed to be faked by the ex-CRU types when real scientists took them to Court. So, we no longer have an ‘Official Record’. But, no idea how that might affect your posting.
Their claim below reflects a total misunderstanding of the scientific process:
Say what? Suppose the reviewers read my analysis of the V&R (Volokin and ReLlez) previous work. Surely, the reviewers would have the technical ability to read through my analysis and determine if they agreed with it or not. And if the reviewers agreed with V&R that my analysis was flawed, which V&R certainly argued on that thread, then it would increase the chance of the reviewers recommending publication. So what are V&R scared of?
From memory it was Freeman Dyson (and the beauty of this site is I’ll be informed if I’m wrong, and very soon) who said that in any scientific study you need to provide an assessment of all of the negative or opposing evidence that appears to contradict your theory. You need to bring up and discuss ideas and concepts that could indicate that you are wrong.
And V&R were certainly free to do that in their study. They could have said something like “It has been argued that there are too many free parameters, but we reject that argument on the basis of …”, and gone on to deal with the objections one by one in a similar manner.
But instead of following Dyson by acknowledging and dealing with the opposition to their ideas and the many valid objections to their work raised here at WUWT … they decided instead to hide the opposition to their work entirely. Not only that, but they’ve said that’s why they hid it—in order to prevent the reviewers from knowing that V&R’s ideas have a plethora of scientifically-based objections of a variety of types.
Regarding their attempt to hide the opposition to their ideas, I live my life in large measure by rules of thumb which have proven over time to serve me well. One of them is …
When you see a man hiding something … it’s because he has something to hide.
Like I said … a total misunderstanding of the scientific process.
w.
lNot having read this through yet, I’ll leave it for folks to digest: lhttps://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2016/09/25/ned-nikolov-in-science-new-messages-mean-more-than-the-messengers-names/#more-29088
So, Willis “went to town” on this paper and succeeded.
What is the next step, “redefining what the scientific literature is” ?
Deja vu 2009.
All scientific paper rewievs should be double blind.
CEH September 26, 2016 at 10:32 am
Regarding double blind, I have advocated that for a long time.
However, you seem to misunderstand my position in all of this. It appears that you think that when I realized that they had submitted the paper under false names I should have said nothing. Stayed quiet. Looked the other way. Stuck my head in the sand.
I fear I’m not built like that. If I say nothing, it makes me a co-conspirator, another participant in their deception of the Editor. I have no interest in being affiliated with anyone in deceiving the Editor of a scientific journal. It’s a game I’m unwilling to play.
In addition, I am absolutely opposed to participating in said deception in order to allow the publishing of their bozo-simple multi-parameter fit as though it were some scientific discovery. They are using more tunable parameters than the number of planetary bodies fitted to, with free choice of equations to connect the two. If they couldn’t fit those few points under those conditions, they should be fired.
Because given free choice of equations with that many tunable parameters and that few points to fit, in short order any half-competent researcher could produce three different equations that would do the job just as well as their equation does … and I’m damn sure I could do it.
So I told the truth to the editors, and left it up to them to decide what to do.
I see that you think I did the wrong thing. From my perspective, however, my choices were:
1. Participate in the deception of the Editor of a scientific journal in order to further the publication of a paper that is only a parameter-fitting exercise, or
2. Tell the truth.
From my perspective, that’s an easy choice. And since the worst you can possibly accuse me of is telling the truth, I stand by my choice. And while I agree with you that all peer-reviews should be double-blind … lying to the Editor is not the way to get there.
Best regards,
w.