This happened a couple of days ago, where Gore quotes failed climate science promoter (note Dr. Mann that I didn’t say carnival barker as is your favorite slur) and while many rushed to cover it right away, because of the sheer ridiculousness of it, I wanted to wait and see what the fallout was. There’s plenty.
Al gore Tweeted this:
You can read Mann’s reasoning here.
But those darn climate deniers doubters see right through the excrement.
One of my Facebook friends (who is a cop, trained to detect people lying) said this in a Facebook post:
“Snake oil salesman quotes Penn data molester” should be the headline.”
Then there’s this observation by Marc Morano of ClimateDepot.com:
Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth did not warn of record cold and increasing snowfalls as a consequence of man-made global warming. And as recently as 2009, Gore was hyping the lack of snow as evidence for man-made global warming. Source: “Gore Reports Snow and Ice Across the World Vanishing Quickly.”
And who can forget this famous quote from Dr. David Viner, which was recently disappeared from the newspaper online archive, but I saved a copy here.
Morano further reports:
Predictions of less snow and less severe winters were hammered into the public by global warming scientists. But once that predictions failed to come true, the opposite of what they predicted instead became—what they expected.
If “climate change” is causing record cold and snow, then it would stand to reason that Gore is suggesting that if the U.S. had ratified the UN’s Kyoto Protocol treaty on “global warming” back in the 1990’s — the winter of 2018 would have been warmer?
‘Insanity…It’s Witchcraft’ – Meteorologist Joe Bastardi on claims that cold & snow caused by ‘global warming’ – WeatherBell Meteorologist Joe Bastardi on January 4, 2018: “This is flat out insanity and deception now To tell the public that events that have occurred countless times before with no climate change attribution, is now just that, is not science, its witchcraft. NO PROOF AT ALL. Its climate ambulance chasing, nothing more.”
Bastardi added: “This has happened countless times before and it wasn’t global warming then and is not now. Solid use of past patterns predicted major early cold from OCTOBER! I have tweeted that dozens of times showing the analog years I used, No co2 then.”
Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. also weighed in, explaining:
“For those who claim USA/Canada nor’easter is stronger because of ‘global warming’, they apparently do not realize that it’s so strong because of especially strong horizontal temperature gradient in troposphere. It ‘bombed’ because of usually cold air!”
Even Dr. Kenneth Trenberth panned the Gore/Mann stupidity alliance:
Global Warming Is Not Causing Harsh Winter Weather – Daily Caller – Excerpts:
Kevin Trenberth, a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said “winter storms are a manifestation of winter, not climate change.”
…
“Such claims make no sense and are inconsistent with observations and the best science,” University of Washington climatologist Cliff Mass said of claims made by Mann and others. “The frequency of cold waves have decreased during the past fifty years, not increased. That alone shows that such claims are baseless.” “And on a personal note, it is very disappointing that members of my profession are making such obviously bogus claims,” Mass said. “It hurts the science, it hurts the credibility of climate scientists, and weakens our ability to be taken seriously by society.” …
Every winter seems to reignite the global warming debate. Things got intense in 2014 when former White House science czar John Holdren put out a video where he claimed that year’s “polar vortex” was actually a sign of global warming. Holdren’s video was largely based on research by Rutgers University scientist Jennifer Francis, which claims that warming in the Arctic is making the jet stream more wobbly, making cold snaps and nor’easter storms more frequent. Holdren later admitted that his video was based on his “personal opinion” of the science, but the argument is still used every time cold Arctic air pours down through the lower 48 states.
Mann wrote that global warming may be “causing the jet stream to meander in a particular pattern” that causes cold spells in the eastern U.S. Mann suggested this pattern was being driven by “the dramatic loss of sea ice in the Arctic.” Yet, scientists aren’t sold on this theory. Mass noted how theoretical research shows the opposite happening, future warming would drive less undulation in the jet stream and heat up the area responsible for cold spells in the U.S. “Research documented in peer-reviewed journals has demonstrated that there is no evidence for their claims of increasing frequency of ‘lazy jet streams’ and blocking over time,” Mass said. “If you substantially warm the source region of cold air, cold waves will decline,” Mass said. A 2014 study led by Colorado State University climate scientist Elizabeth Barnes found no evidence to back up the theory that a lazy or wobbling jet stream was becoming more frequent. “There is much disagreement on whether we have already witnessed substantial impacts,” Barnes wrote in a Thursday blog post for the Climate Variability and Predictability program. …
Climatologist Judith Curry said the “bomb cyclone” currently hammering North America is nothing new. Those extra-tropical storms have undergone “bombogenesis,” or rapid intensification. “The term ‘bomb’ for such storms was coined almost 40 years ago by MIT’s Fred Sanders,” Curry told TheDCNF, “who spent much of his career studying such storms back when global warming most definitely was not a factor.” …
Curry said that while “warmer oceans can cause greater snowfall,” storm intensity is also influenced ” by the patterns of sea surface temperature not so much the average temperatures.” But Mann’s arguments are more based on expectations of what could happen with more warming, and have little to do with current trends in “bomb cyclones.” Weather.us meteorologist Ryan Maue, an expert on cyclones, pointed out there are between 50 and 60 “bomb cyclones” every year in the Northern Hemisphere, many of which we don’t notice because they are too far out at sea. But Maue’s research on “bomb cyclones” also don’t show any discernible trends from 1979 to 2010.
And Dr. Roy Spencer notes that this ‘bomb’ phenomena is nothing new:
For those wondering, the meteorological term “bomb” was coined by Fred Sanders in 1980 in a Monthly Weather Review article, it refers to “an extratropical surface cyclone with a central pressure that falls on the average at least 1 millibar per hour for 24 hours”.
It’s also not uncommon, as Dr. Ryan Maue points out:
https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/948623954591313920
Dr. Roy Spencer adds this – “My imagined conversation with Al Gore:”
MR. GORE: This cold wave and snowstorm are just what global warming predicted!
ME: And what if the weather had been unusually warm and snow-free?
MR. GORE: That would also be consistent with global warming theory.
ME: So warm winters, cold winters, snowy winters, and no-snow winters are all predictions of global warming?
MR. GORE: Yes, that is correct.
ME: Are you aware how foolish that sounds to many people?
MR. GORE: I am aware that there are deniers of the current climate crisis we are in, yes.
ME: Ugh.
I’ll just leave this here:
[snip – calls for death -mod]
The global warmening has unstabilised the jet stream wot used to be stabilised and that’s how you get the US divided into red and blue states wot you see-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/forget-politics—weather-is-now-dividing-america-into-red-and-blue-states/ar-BBHXfsS
That’s according to Mr Channing Dutton wot knows all about this sciencey stuff.
And the winner is Sidoneeeee! Oops… no it aint and as you were hot folks-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/not-a-record-but-mighty-hot-sydney-weather-reaches-47-degrees/ar-BBHX7FG
That was in Penrith Sydney.
A notable built up suburb sitting under an isotherm.
A welcome cool change has come up from the Bass Straight.
South of this, apart from Tasmania, there is open water to the South Pole.
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/national_radar_sat.shtml
The Curse of The Pregnant Chad
I’m still waiting for the tell all book by Tipper.
If record cold is predictably the result of Global Warming, where are the predictions of record cold temperatures in the IPCC or NASA early reports? I am too old and lazy to go back and look but I don’t remember them. It is nonsense to claim, after the fact, that record cold temperatures are an expected result of Climate Change if those expectations were not announced in advance.
I have my own theory about all of this, and it has to do with oscillations.
If something that wobbles back and forth begins to wobble with wider swings, at some point the swings become so wide that it is completely unstable. To reach stability, it will crash, flip over, do whatever is necessary to stabilize itself.
I’d compare the weather (past and current) to that, and add that since the Sun likes to be in a stable, steady state and has shut down, the weather we’re having is doing the same thing in lag time as a response to the Sun’s activities. At some point, the weather systems will crash, and yes, we’ll be in another glacial maximum. That old ‘snowball Earth’ theory is an exaggeration, but maybe the planet likes to be cold.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
I’m going to go fix pancakes and sausages now. You all have a good day.
Mann’s using Climate reanalyzer maps, here is what he writes:
Much more troubling is how Mann substitutes the synoptic reality showing colder air masses affecting north America, the Arctic, Siberia, Mongolia and the eastern half of China (pressure data and temperature data confirming this reality) with an anomaly map calculated from a 1979-2000 reference in order to claim this “weather bomb” is the result of global warming. Not only the temperature anomalies can change depending on the chosen base line, but on a synoptic level, that is explaining the process at work, this map is useless and misleading. I let the reader figure the motive…
Because of my upbringing, being blessed in having a father from the pre model generation, I was taught to study the past for hints about the future, Always look and listen to what the weather is saying. So I learned alot of things from those older than me about analogs. I always loved history, US, World and of course weather history and the knowledge of what has happened and because of that, what the weather can do, This put me in this debate, simply because I am a big mouth that when I see something I say something. But I really learned to rely on analogs based on the physical realitles of the current pattern and THEN go to modeling. So its past, present and then future that is my methodology and the attribution that these people are trying to push contradicts that since it ignores past events I use to set this up, that were equal to or greater than this in magnitude ( the target period we had Dec 21-Jan 10 which was analogged to 00-01, 83-84 from early Dec) Consequently, while I love and appreciate modeling the bitter sting of busted forecasts has me wary and skeptical all the time of any future event, especially the ones I am thinking are coming. My point: I live eat and breathe the past weather (climate related) and the events that have happened, that these people are telling me have never happened or a sign of something different, directly contradicts what I know . I think every Climatologist should be made to forecast long range ( the period 5 day to 6 months) for a year and see what happens in that period, understanding how wrong things can go in a short period of time. You see, if you do what I do, you know what its like to get the tar beat out of you by the atmosphere and to have to get back up. But the weather is there for you to face every day, so you use every tool you can. I happen to be blessed with a fascination for the past weather that my dad taught me about, so I use it. I can not compete with alot of people with some of their ability, but one is given strengths and weaknesses and so learns how to use them. Now what if your whole life is just one issue? That its not the every day fight and the new forecast, but instead a stance that everything you have invested your name in, if proven wrong, negates all that work. My chance to prove myself renews itself every day, with every pattern.Yesterdays forecast is gone, and I must face a new fight each day. If tomorrow I am convinnced co2 is warming the planet, it makes no difference to me as to having to deal with the warmer globe and the effects and how to adjust ideas about the past and how the models handle it. Its there, and its a factor. Does it change my life? No. Because I already know that no matter what the reason I have to know the implications. I am not out to save the planet or change people. But what if the shoe is on the other foot, for these people? That somehow this gets taken away, Their lifes work is destroyed. This also means that any questioning of their ideas becomes a personal attack, because to them it is personal. Its not an idea to be discussed, its a dogma that has to be forced upon everyone because if everyone does not march to it and its questioned, its a threat. In the end if I am right, So what? I know its warmer, I know the climate changes, I know we have to deal with changes constantly. Climate and weather is natures search for a balance she can never have. That is their problem! They think they can change it so it behaves in some grand uptopian form that can control, but everyone has to be on board..That to me is arrogant. So its a very simple plan, Use Orwellian ideas to erase the past, and then Alinsky tactics on those that disagree with you, ( Isolate, demonize and destroy.) I have my reasons for my ideas ( I am a sun, oceans, stochastic events, and design of the entire system far outweighing co2 as the climate control knob). But Its only when you can get rid of the baggage that blinds you can you actually discuss any situation. But when I see the attribution of this event, or others to something like this, when I can show and do before hand set ups I use to look for these things, then I speak up.
If you read this whole thing, you have my condolences haha,
[Request permission to insert a few carriage returns on logical places to make your reply a bit more readable. .mod]
joe says
I know its warmer, I know the climate changes, I know we have to deal with changes constantly
henry says
I would imagine that as the snow heaps up on your front door, you would conclude that it is getting cooler?
How on earth did you figure out that IT IS GETTING WARMER?
did you check what happens in your own back yard?\
You might get a surprise, like I did.
Concerned to show that man made warming (AGW ) is correct and indeed happening, I thought that here [in Pretoria, South Africa} I could easily prove that. Namely the logic following from AGW theory is that more CO2 would trap heat on earth, hence we should find minimum temperature (T) rising pushing up the mean T. Here, in the winter months, we hardly have any rain but we have many people burning fossil fuels to keep warm at night. On any particular cold winter’s day that results in the town area being covered with a greyish layer of air, viewable on a high hill outside town in the early morning.
I figured that as the population increased over the past 40 years, the results of my analysis of the data [of a Pretoria weather station] must show minimum T rising, particularly in the winter months. Much to my surprise I found that the opposite was happening: minimum T here was falling, any month….I first thought that somebody must have made a mistake: the extra CO2 was cooling the atmosphere, ‘not warming’ it. As a chemist, that made sense to me as I knew that whilst there were absorptions of CO2 in the area of the spectrum where earth emits, there are also the areas of absorption in the 1-2 um and the 4-5 um range where the sun emits. Not convinced either way by my deliberations and discussions as on a number of websites, I first looked at a number of weather stations around me, to give me an indication of what was happening:
The results puzzled me even more. Somebody [God/Nature] was throwing a ball at me…..The speed of cooling followed a certain pattern, best described by a quadratic function.
I carefully looked at my earth globe and decided on a particular sampling procedure to find out what, if any, the global result would be. Here is my final result on that:
Hence, looking at my final Rsquare on that, I figured out that there is no AGW, at least not measurable
henryp, You wrote: “Namely the logic following from AGW theory is that more CO2 would trap heat on earth,…” If AGW logic starts with the premise that CO2 “traps heat on the earth,” then it fails from the get-go simply because heat cannot be trapped. There is no substance known to man, including CO2, that will prevent the transfer of thermal energy from a region of higher temperature to a region of lower temperature. Such heat transfer cannot be stopped by surrounding the higher temperature object with any material known to man. If you disagree, please identify the material. I know the refrigeration industry would be happy to make use of such a subject.
It is undoubtedly true that adding matter to a system can affect the spatial distribution of temperature of that system; so increases in atmospheric CO2 levels may increase the earth surface temperature. But other examples exist where adding CO2 gas decreases temperature. Consider a simply vacuum thermos bottle. Place a heating unit and coffee inside the chamber of a thermos bottle and place the bottle in a room at a fixed temperature. The heating unit will cause the temperature of the coffee to rise, but the temperature of the coffee will eventually stabilize at a value such that the rate the heating element adds heat to the coffee is equal to the rate the coffee loses heat to its surrounding. Now fill the vacuum space of the thermos bottle with CO2 gas and repeat the procedure. With the exception of “spacers” that must be present to separate the thermos bottle chamber from the outer walls of the thermos bottle, CO2 gas surrounds the chamber. If CO2 gas “traps heat,” then the temperature of the coffee in the case of the CO2 should be higher than the temperature of the coffee in the vacuum case. Furthermore, using the logic that CO2 “traps heat,” adding more CO2 should result in ever increasing coffee temperatures. I don’t believe it. Furthermore, it appears that companies who manufacture thermos bottles also don’t believe it. Otherwise, instead of stocking vacuum thermos bottles, store would stock “CO2 thermos bottles.” Good luck finding such a thermos bottle.
Thx for the tip. We can make some money claiming the vacumated bottles contain the miraculous CO2?
Jokes aside. There is a gh effect. After showering and long after the water stopped running, heat is trapped by the water vapor. As you step out the booth you notice the cold?
This is where Arrhenius made the big mistake. He looked only at the closed box experiment and did not consider at all that there is also radiation deflected away from earth by the CO2.
Another way to experience the gh effect is to observe the minimum T in winter on a cloudless night. Notice how minimum T rises as clouds move in the next night.
Henryp, although when discussing the effects that atmospheric gases that absorb/radiate electromagnetic energy in sub-bands of the infrared (IR) band (i.e., greenhouse gases) have on the earth’s surface temperature I don’t like the term “greenhouse (gh) effect” because greenhouses keep their interiors warm more by restricting thermal convection than by restricting IR radiation, my main gripe isn’t the term “gh effect” it is the use of the word “trap” to characterize a thermal property of those gases. According to
https://www.google.com/search?q=trap&rlz=1C1EODB_enUS545US701&oq=trap&aqs=chrome..69i57j35i39j0l4.3399j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
when used as a verb, the word trap means:
verb: trap; 3rd person present: traps; past tense: trapped; past participle: trapped; gerund or present participle: trapping.
1. catch (an animal) in a trap. Synonyms: confine, cut off, corner, shut in, pen in, hem in, imprison, hold captive “a rat trapped in a barn”
a) prevent (someone) from escaping from a place.” “twenty workers were trapped by flames” Synonyms: snare, entrap, ensnare, lay a trap for
b) have (something, typically a part of the body) held tightly by something so that it cannot move or be freed. “he had trapped his finger in a spring-loaded hinge”
c) induce (someone), by means of trickery or deception, to do something they would not otherwise want to do. “I hoped to trap him into an admission” Synonyms: trick, dupe, deceive, lure, inveigle, beguile, fool, hoodwink
d) BASEBALL, AMERICAN FOOTBALL catch (the ball) after it has briefly touched the ground.
e) SOCCER bring (the ball) under control with the feet or other part of the body on receiving it.
Obviously definitions c, d, and e above do not apply to “heat” in any way. The wordings in 1, a, and b (“confine”, “shut in”, “pen in”, “hem in”, “imprison”, “hold captive”, “prevent from escaping”, and “cannot be moved”) clearly imply the inability to escape/leave. Your example of the temperature difference inside and outside a shower stall after the water has been turned off is an example of temporarily stored thermal energy, not trapped thermal energy. The heat isn’t trapped, it just requires some time to dissipate. If you stay in the shower stall long enough, you’ll be just as cold as stepping out of the shower. It takes time for the thermal energy stored in the shower stall to dissipate; but it will dissipate—it isn’t and can’t be “trapped.” If you put a large block of metal in the shower stall and heat the block of metal, the temperature inside the shower stall will stay elevated relative to the temperature outside the shower stall for an even longer time. If the time required to reach “room temperature” is what you mean by the greenhouse effect, then I guess it’s true that greenhouse gases (i.e., gases that absorb and radiate energy in sub-bands of the IR band) do induce a “gh effect.” But in that sense non-greenhouse gases inside, plumbing fixtures and the walls of the shower stall itself also induce a “gh effect.”
So let’s define the “gh effect” to be any phenomenon that increases the time required for the temperature of an object to reach the ambient background temperature of its surroundings. In that sense filling the vacuum space of a thermos bottle holding material at an elevated temperature with the greenhouse gas CO2 has the exact opposite effect. That is, the heated material inside the thermos bottle will reach room temperature much faster than a similar situation with a vacuum thermos bottle. Thus, it seems to me that for this situation I can claim CO2 is an “un-greenhouse gas” and CO2 causes an “ugh effect.”
So let’s define the “gh effect” to be any phenomenon that increases the time required for the temperature of an object to reach the ambient background temperature of its surroundings
Reed
I have no problem with that definition.
I am just not sure if you understand the mechanics of the process involved? I agree it is a delay, but it would still cause some heat to linger longer…
Namely we also have gasses that exhibit a decisive anti gh effect.
e.g.\ozone, that only constitutes a small percentage of the atmosphere [and is mostly manufactured from O2 and the most energetic particles coming from the sun, thereby protecting us], actually deflects about 25% of all [energy ]that is being deflected by the atmosphere.
going by an early report by Trenberth
Henryp. First, I’m getting pleasure from our discussion, and I hope you are too.
You wrote: “I am just not sure if you understand the mechanics of the process involved? I agree it is a delay, but it would still cause some heat to linger longer…” First, I don’t see the difference between a “delay” and the concept of “lingering longer.” Isn’t “lingering longer” a delay? Second, as to whether I understand the “mechanics of the process involved,” the jury is still out. I would, however, like to believe I do understand the mechanics of the process; but then self-delusion is rampant in humans and I’m as likely to be guilty of self-delusion as the next man. For what it’s worth, I do have a PhD in physics; so I have a basic understanding of the principles of heat transfer. As I understand the “mechanics of the process involved (i.e., the greenhouse effect)” at least as espoused by many people it goes like this.
Solar energy (electromagnetic radiation) impinges on the earth. A portion of the solar energy is reflected back to space by various components in the earth’s atmosphere. Effectively originating from a radiator at a temperature near 5,700 Kelvin (the sun’s approximate surface temperature), most of the incoming solar radiation that is not reflected back to space exists at frequencies that to a large degree pass unattenuated through atmospheric greenhouse gases to be absorbed by the earth’s surface. The absorption of solar energy by the earth’s surface causes the temperature of the earth’s surface to rise above absolute zero; and as a result the earth’s surface radiates energy. Because the earth’s surface energy-rate-equilibrium (ERE) temperature is near 293 K, a large portion of the earth surface radiation exists in the absorption bands of atmospheric greenhouse gases. [A system is in ERE if the rate energy leaves the system is equal to the rate energy enters the system.] Atmospheric greenhouse gases (a) absorb a portion of the earth surface outgoing radiation, (b) warm up, and (c) re-radiate some of their absorbed energy. The re-radiated energy goes in all directions, which means a portion of the atmospheric re-radiated energy returns to and is absorbed by the earth’s surface. The net result of this process is to increase the amount of electromagnetic radiation being absorbed by the earth’s surface from solar-only to solar plus greenhouse gas back radiation. It then follows that the increased rate of absorbed radiation will cause an increase in earth surface temperature—and voila, a greenhouse effect.
In all seriousness, how’s that for understanding “the mechanics of the process involved?” I agree with much of the above argument. One thing I don’t agree with is the conclusion that backradiation from greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere must produce an increase in the earth surface temperature. It might produce and increase; but it doesn’t have to. Other effects may more than compensate for the backradiation. For example, much of the earth’s surface is water. Evaporation (conversion of water to water vapor) requires huge amounts of thermal energy. To a large degree this thermal energy comes from the water itself. The net effect is to cool, not heat, the water that remains. This is the principle of evaporative air conditioning and is known to work. Since water vapor is a greenhouse gas, the presence of water vapor in the earth’s atmosphere might, via evaporation, have a surface cooling effect not a surface heating effect.
And if backradiation guarantees increased temperature of the material receiving the backradation, why is the temperature of the thermos bottle chamber and the material in that chamber for a vacuum thermos bottle higher than the temperature of the chamber/material in a similar CO2 thermos bottle? Shouldn’t the backradiation from the CO2 gas increase the temperature of the thermos bottle chamber and its contents?
I read every bit of it Joe and appreciate that you took the time to write it. Paragraphs would have been nice though. I watch every one of your free videos when possible and read what your have written when every it comes available online. As far as this layman is concerned, your more of a climate scientist than most of those who claim to be scientists hyping weather events as signs of a coming climate apocalypse. Thank you so much for what you do and please keep informing and educating us.
Best wished to you and your family.
Now I’m confused. Should the people in the US north east who are experiencing a severe cold snap be cursing or blessing AGW?
Argument for cursing AGW: Mikey Mann and Al Gore claim the current extreme cold in the north east US is “… exactly what we should expect from the climate crises”, which to me implies the “climate crises” (also known as AGW) is the cause of the cold and misery.
Argument for blessing AGW: Yeah, it’s cold in the north east US; but without AGW just imagine how much colder it would be.
Maybe the answer is to do both. Get down on your knees in supplication to AGW, but instead of giving thanks to AGW, curse AGW.
With last year’s Polar Vortex and this year’s Bomb Cyclone, I can’t wait till next year’s Godzilla Snow Flurry
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=godzilla+snow&client=safari&hl=en-au&prmd=ivn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiwqpLT8sbYAhXDjZQKHeucCWQQ_AUIESgB&biw=1024&bih=666#imgrc=zK9RQf63ZzQFbM:
It is ironic that both the historical record and the geological record strongly indicate that warm eras produce fewer and milder storms while times like the Little Ice Age produce more violent and severe storms.
Nice to see that March 2000 prediction of snowless winters again, climate prognosticators have a bad habit of taking the previous 2 or 3 years weather and projecting it far into the future, often with gratifyingly poor results. The following year 2001was for instance a vintage year for snow here in Scotland.
The finest exponents of this method are the UK Met Office. Following heatwaves in 2003 and 2006, they predicted more of the same, there then followed a series of washout summers until I think June 2012 when they said, actually, AGW would produce a moist Atlantic regime, wet cool summers etc. To be followed 20days later by a heatwave, and a summer that was among the top ten hottest.
Apologies if this is stale, but re “snow is a thing of the past”, do please see: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/12/10/david-viners-thing-of-the-past-comes-back-to-haunt-him-again/
Also featured in Booker’s Sunday Telegraph column, minus actual pictures, but including the famous last line. (No doubt other Brits will provide necessary translation).
Reed
I think you got it more or less right except for the part where the back- / re-radiation goes in all directions. It goes back 62.5% in the direction where the light came from. The effect is comparable to when you put your brights on in misty conditions: your own light is returned to you in your face [by the mist].
The best way to experience re-radiation is to stand in a moist dark forest just before dawn on a cloudless night. I mean: not misty or cloudy, just a bit higher humidity in the air than around your house. Note that water vapour gas also absorbs in the visible region of the spectrum. So as the first light of sun hits on the water vapour around you can see the re-radiated light coming from every direction. Left, right, bottom up, top down. You can see this for yourself until of course the sun’s light becomes too bright in the darkness for you to observe the re-radiated light from the water vapour.
A second way to experience how re-radiation works is to measure the humidity in the air and the temperature on a certain exposed plate, again on a cloudless day, at a certain time of day for a certain amount of time. Note that as the humidity goes up, and all else is being kept equal, the temperature effected by the sun on the plate is lower. This is because, like carbon dioxide, water vapour has absorption in the infra red part of the spectrum.
We can conclude from these simple experiments that what happens is this: in the wavelengths areas where absorption takes place, the molecule starts acting like a little mirror, the strength of which depends on the amount of absorption taking place inside the molecule. Because the molecule is like a perfect sphere, 62,5% of a certain amount of light (radiation) is send back in the direction where it came from. This is the warming or cooling effect of a gas hit by radiation.
Unfortunately, in their time, Tyndall and Arrhenius could not see the whole picture of the spectrum of a gas which is why they got stuck on seeing only the warming properties of a gas.
If people would understand this principle, they would not singularly identify green house gases (GHG’s) by pointing at the areas in the 5-20 um region (where earth emits pre-dominantly) but they would also look in the area 0-5 um (where the sun emits pre-dominantly) for possible cooling effects.
In all of this we are still looking at pure gases. The discussion on clouds and the deflection of incoming radiation by clouds is still a completely different subject.
So what one should be doing is looking at the whole spectrum of the gas molecule 0-20 um. Unless you come to me with a balance sheet of how much cooling and how much warming is caused by a gas, we don’t actually know what the situation is. So, all that we can say now is that we don’t know what the net effect is of an increase in CO2 is in the atmosphere…..
Seeing that CO2 also causes cooling by taking part in the life cycle (plants and trees need warmth and CO2 to grow), and because there is clear evidence that there has been an increase in greenery on earth in the past 4 decades, I think the total net effect of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could even be zero or close to zero. But unless we cone up with a test method and measurements, we will never know for sure.
For proof that CO2 is (also) cooling the atmosphere by back-radiating sunshine, see here:
http://astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/disksite/library/turnbull06a.pdf
They measured the re-radiation from CO2 as it bounced back to earth from the moon. So the direction was sun-earth-moon -earth. Follow the green line in fig. 6, bottom. Note that it already starts at 1.2 um, then one peak at 1.4 um, then various peaks at 1.6 um and 3 big peaks at 2 um.
This paper here shows that there is absorption of CO2 at between 0.21 and 0.19 um (close to 202 nm):
http://www.nat.vu.nl/en/sec/atom/Publications/pdf/DUV-CO2.pdf
There are other papers that I can look for again that will show that there are also absorptions of CO2 at between 0.18 and 0.135 um and between 0.125 and 0.12 um.
We already know from the normal IR spectra that CO2 has big absorption between 4 and 5 um. (at 4.6 is where we can measure with FTIR concentrations of CO2 in other gasses)
So, to sum it up, we know that CO2 has absorption in the 14-15 um range causing some warming (by re-radiating earthshine) but as shown and proved above it also has a number of absorptions in the 0-5 um range causing cooling (by re-radiating sunshine). This cooling happens at all levels where the sunshine hits on the carbon dioxide same as the earthshine. The way from the bottom to the top is the same as from top to the bottom. So, my question is: exactly how much cooling and how much warming is caused by the CO2? How was the experiment done to determine this and where are the test results? (I am afraid that simple heat retention testing might not work here, we have to use real sunshine and real earthshine to determine the effect in W/m3 / [0.03%- 0.06%]CO2/m2/24hours).
Henryp,
When you say “It [back- / re-radiation] goes back 62.5% in the direction where the light came from,” I think you’re confusing thermal radiation (i.e., electromagnetic energy emitted from a body because the body is at a non-zero Kelvin temperature) with reflection by a body (at any temperature) of electromagnetic energy incident on the body. The light you see from the mist in front of your automobile is reflected light, not emitted light. It can’t be thermally emitted light because the frequency of thermally emitted light is a function of the temperature of the emitting material; and since your headlights have negligible effect on the temperature of the mist, if the light from the mist was thermally emitted light, the mist would appear equally bright in all directions. The direction of reflected light is a function of the shape of the reflecting surface(s) and the orientation of that (those) surface(s) relative to the direction of the light incident on the surface(s). Although reflected light can exhibit a wide range of directional properties, light reflected off a planar surface is often characterized as being either specular (in a single direction) or Lambertian (in all half-plane directions with the intensity in any direction proportional to the cosine of the angle between the normal to the planar surface and the direction of the reflected light). As such, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the percentage of mist-reflected light in the direction of the light source (a car’s headlights) is greater than the percentage of mist-reflected light in any other direction.
Thermally emitted radiation from a differential planar surface can exhibit non-uniform directional behavior because the normal to the emitting plane defines a unique and identifiable direction. That is, as viewed from a point not on the plane, the size of the solid angle of the differential emitting planar surface changes as the cosine of the viewing angle off the normal to the plane. No such “defining direction” exists for light emitted from a differential volume of isotropic material. As such by symmetry, the intensity of light emitted from a differential volume of isotropic material cannot exhibit a preferential direction and must be the same in all directions.
Next, when determining the heating/cooling effect object “A” has on object “B”, one must consider all forms of heat loss/gain (radiation, conduction, convection, evaporation) and not just radiation. It’s true than when considering the earth/earth-atmosphere as object “A”, the overwhelming means of heat transfer (both to and from) is radiation, and convection/conduction can usually be ignored. But when considering the surface of the earth as object “A”, convection/conduction/evaporation cannot be ignored. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if the combination of convection/evaporation has a larger impact on the earth’s surface temperature than does radiation.
In summary, I’m don’t know the impact greenhouse gases have on earth surface temperature. If I had to guess, I would guess (a) water vapor via the processes of evaporation/convection has a cooling effect, and (b) CO2, which doesn’t transition between a liquid and a gas, has a warming effect. That, however, is just a guess.
Now for a footnote. This interchange of thoughts has been beneficial to me. I’d like to continue the discourse, but via an exchange of emails, not via comments on Anthony’s glob. Emails allow for attachments which are amenable to equations/pictures. Comments on Anthony’s blog are not as amenable. If you’d like to carry on this interchange of thoughts via email, I’d be happy to give you my email address. However, I don’t want to give the world my email address. In the past I’ve used Joanne Nova to transfer my email address to individual. Joanne runs a blog similar to this blog. If you would like to continue our discussion via email, so note in your next response on this blog and I’ll see if Joanne would be kind enough to again act as an intermediary.
Hi Reed
I only used the mist as an analogy. I realize that mist is water (l) which is not the same as water (g)\ so there are different reactions.
Nevertheless as you can see from the report I quoted, the gases in the atmosphere react to radiation to form earth’s albedo, and Turnbull made a good effort to get a picture of what is happening. Radiation always moves in straight lines and either the molecule is permeable, or, at certain wavelengths, it is not. If it is not, it is deflected / reflected / back radiated or whatever name you prefer. In the latter case, and assuming the molecule is close to a perfect sphere, 62.5 % is sent back in the direction where the light came from.
Seeing that no one actually has a balance sheet of how much warming or how much cooling takes place by the CO2 and H2O, I set out to find out for myself what the situation is.
My conclusion is that there is indeed no man made global warming. In fact, IMO it is not even warming anymore:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/01/06/goremongering-and-mannhandling-the-reality-of-winter-weather-bombs/#comment-2711327
That makes further discussion on the AGW theology (i.e. entrapment of IR radiation) a bit pointless, at least for me.