Climate Craziness of the Week – @kurteichenwald: "I predicted Irma using 'climate equation' 100% correct"

BTW, a little background, for those who might care.
This equation that he’s mis-using was discovered during the Age of Steam. In the mid-1800’s steam was the Big Thing. People had been building steam engines since the 1700’s and by the 1800’s they were being used to power many things and had become important. Industrial economic development, railroads, ships, all were being powered by steam. The development of the science of thermodynamics was in part driven by the desire to figure out how to build better steam engines. A nation that had better steam engines would have more efficient factories and faster Navy ships. So some of the top scientists were working on what is now considered classical thermodynamics. Clausius and Clapeyron were among them.
What’s the deal with a “closed system” in the above definition?
“In thermodynamics, a closed system can exchange energy (as heat or work) but not matter, with its surroundings.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_system
Something that fits that definition is … a steam engine! Another thing that can fit the definition is a benchtop experimental apparatus in a scientist’s laboratory. But let’s go with the steam engine and you’ll get the point.
The steam engine takes in energy as heat from the fire under the boiler. It puts out work when high-pressure steam from the boiler pushes a piston in a cylinder, and the piston turns a crank which makes a shaft turn. This is called “shaft work,” a term also used for lame humor by sophomore geek engineering students. Finally, the engine outputs waste heat when the low-pressure steam coming out of the cylinder goes to a condenser, where the steam gives up its remaining heat and condenses back to liquid water. This is then pumped back into the boiler. Thus there is a closed loop for the matter involved (water) but with energy going in and out in the forms of heat and work. Hence, a “closed system” under the definition. Note again that a hurricane doesn’t fit this definition.
A couple of minor points: Nowadays steam engines use turbines instead of pistons to turn the shafts. Otherwise all the above still applies. Sometimes nuclear energy is used instead of fire to heat the boiler. Also, in all practical engines, there are occasions to open the system. The main one is the safety valve on top of the boiler, which opens if the pressure gets too high, letting out some steam (matter). Likewise, the operator of the engine, (think old-time locomotive engineer) can manually open the valve, which toots the train whistle. He may do this to lower the pressure in the boiler, or just for signalling. Water lost in this way has to be made up by water from a reservoir tank.
What about the business of constant temperature and pressure?
“The Clausius–Clapeyron relation characterizes behavior of a closed system during a phase change, during which temperature and pressure are constant by definition.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clausius%E2%80%93Clapeyron_relation
There are two parts of the steam engine where phase change occurs: the boiler and the condenser. In the boiler water changes from liquid to gas (steam, water vapor), in the condenser it changes from gas back to liquid.
Think of a well-operated train running on a straight and level track at constant speed. The engineer is keeping an eye on the boiler pressure and temperature gauges, and telling the fireman when to occasionally shovel a little more coal into the fire under the boiler. He’s keeping the pressure and temperature as constant as possible so as to maintain the constant speed of the train. As for the condenser, it’s rejecting the waste heat to the ambient air outside, which is “constant” for practical purposes, until the weather changes. Likewise the pressure in the condenser is approximately constant while the engine is running steadily at constant power output. In the practical situation of an operating engine in the 1800’s, all of these “constant” parameters are actually jittering around slightly all the time, but they’re close enough to constant to make the idealized math applicable enough.
As mentioned above, the benchtop apparatus for the scientist studying these phase transitions is also built to meet the criteria for constant temperature and pressure, and more accurately so than an operating engine would be. The scientists like Clausius and Clapeyron were figuring out the exact relationship between phase transition and heat energy under different temperature and pressure conditions for various substances, water the most important of them.
I hope that helps de-mystify the whole thing a little. It’s a complicated subject but for some of us it helps to relate it back to its humble origins in the science of steam engines.

Kurt Eichenwald, you have a degree in political science. You’ve spent most of your career in journalism, not science.
You admit that you are not a scientist.
Regardless of your lack of scientific credentials and experience, tell me, by what means and by what criteria did you decide that the Clausius–Clapeyron “equation” – by the way, it’s a relation, not an equation, a hint that you don’t know what you’re talking about – was the correct “equation” to use for predicting hurricane Irma’s intensity, growth, and timing?
Oh, by the way, have you ever been suckered by anyone, perhaps by Michael Mann? No, you wouldn’t be, now would you. You’ve got a degree in political science!