Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
[SEE UPDATE AT THE END]
Due to the recent posts by Lord Monkton and Nick Stokes, I’ve been thinking about the relationship between radiation and temperature. So I turned to the CERES dataset. Here is a scatterplot of the monthly global average surface temperature versus the monthly global average downwelling total radiation absorbed by the surface. The total radiation is the sum of the net solar radiation at the surface and the downwelling longwave radiation at the surface. I’ve removed the seasonal variations from the data.
Note that 3.7 W/m2 is the increase in downwelling longwave radiation expected from a doubling of CO2 …
When I saw that, I thought well, maybe the increase is small because there’s a lag between the absorption of the radiation and the warming. To see if that was the case, I did a cross-correlation analysis of the relationship.
No lag visible.
Now, I get busted regularly for drawing what I’m told are the wrong conclusions from the data that I present. So I’m just gonna say …
Comments?
——————————————————————————————————————
Me, I’m writing this from banks of the Kenai River in Alaska, one of my favorite spots in the world. When I got off the airplane, the aroma of the air was absolutely intoxicating. Summertime is short here but the days are long, and the air is full of the heady perfume of every plant and every animal growing and going at triple speed, making the most of the brief Alaska summer. Here’s what the sun is doing today this far north …
[UPDATE] Someone asked what temperature I’m using. I used the conversion of the upwelling longwave radiation from the surface. However, the answer is only slightly different if I use, for example, the HadCRUT surface temperature. Here is that result:
As you can see, there is no significant difference when I use the other surface temperature dataset.
My very best regards to all, may your days be as full of sunshine as mine,
w.
PS—My usual request: when you comment, please quote the exact words you are responding to, so we can all be clear about who and what you are talking about.
PPS—Bonus question. What latitude on the planet gets the most hours of sunlight per year?
It is interesting that the spread of temperatures is so markedly smaller at higher absorbed energies. This is probably near perhelion, i. e. during southern summer/northern winter.
A couple of decades ago, I was working on a MoS2 prospect just south of the Taku River, which is east of Juneau.
Arctic Char – fishing with a lure thing with a short casting rod, from a gravel bar.
Made four casts and caught four fish.
But one was a sideways snag with the hook.
As we used to say when out in remote streams.
“The fishing was so good, you had to go behind a tree to bait the hook.”
The barramundi fish in north Australian inland waters, billabongs, can go crazy like that. Four year old son caught an 8 pounder while standing in water up to his knees, rod over shoulder, lure dangling 6 inches above the water. It jumped up and hooked itself, so keen was it for food.
Then an hour later it all went quiet and no amount of casting would excite any interest at all.
But then, this was in 1976, before CO2 and its inexorable march altered every natural system ever studied by humans.
Willis, you continue to display one fascinating picture after another, of a type that raises two important questions. 1. How do the observations fit current hypotheses and 2. Why have they not received discussion by the current crop of climate science experts ( if indeed one of your many pictures has been under-discussed. I feel this is the case, but I have not had the means to check in detail).
Again, shall we see the harm being done by the standoff between Establishment scientists and other researchers with their”ignore them” policy? Geoff
The barramundi fish in north Australian inland waters, billabongs, can go crazy like that. Four year old son caught an 8 pounder while standing in water up to his knees, rod over shoulder, lure dangling 6 inches above the water. It jumped up and hooked itself, so keen was it for food.
Then an hour later it all went quiet and no amount of casting would excite any interest at all.
But then, this was in 1976, before CO2 and its inexorable march altered every natural system ever studied by humans.
Willis, you continue to display one fascinating picture after another, of a type that raises two important questions. 1. How do the observations fit current hypotheses and 2. Why have they not received discussion by the current crop of climate science experts ( if indeed one of your many pictures has been under-discussed. I feel this is the case, but I have not had the means to check in detail).
Again, shall we see the harm being done by the standoff between Establishment scientists and other researchers with their”ignore them” policy? Geoff
Must have been doubly good.
How can there be seasonal variations in a global plot? Does not the northern summer balance the southern winter?
I’m actually impressed that there is such a large increase in surface temperature on such a small increase in radiation, 1 degree C for a 7 watt per square meter irradiation increase.
Frankly, this document is very scary as reported. It suggests that truly small changes in irradiation will have major impact on overall surface temperatures.
I think you mean 9.7W/m2 for 1C.
So 9.7/340 = 2.9% increase.
As Mr Eschenbach hints at doubling of CO2 won’t get anywhere near it.
That’s one reason thinking people question UN IPCC climate models; cloud representation. Cloud variations have far more impact than minor GHG concentration changes.
etudiant
Using Q= 1/R A (Surf T – ToA T) my back of the envelope says a 1% change in albedo changes the surface temp 1 C.
Not something to mess with casually.
“1% change in albedo changes the surface temp 1 C.”
That doesn’t seem to be true in reality. A couple of times over the last several years, much of the northern hemisphere was covered in snow. It was certainly more than a 1% change in albedo, yet there was no corresponding major drop in temperature.
For Graph 1: Total Radiation Absorbed vs. Temperature what is the actual value for the correlation coefficient?
Willis,
This is a tough test of the data, but what happens to the scatter plot if you force the best fit through zero w/m2? Does it produce a meaningful temperature?
Fitting through the small range of 506-512 w/m2 and getting correlations better than 0.8 is remarkable and means that either the instruments are very high performance. – or that the preceding data treatment has induced circularity that finally shows up as (spurious, mathematically created) high correlation. These are mere impressions about numbers, I have no specific examples. We place a great deal of faith in these satellite numbers like TOA radiation and not much examination of errors, given their pivotal importance. Geoff
Could this be due to the T^4 nature of energy? We know it takes more energy to warm equatorial areas than it does polar areas.
At what temperature is the 3.7 w/m2 per degree calculated at? Could that be at the -18 C basic S-B temperature of our planet?
Assuming this is right then at the current temperature of Earth the warming should be only about 1/3 of what is claimed.
Willis. I’m not 100%sure the two radiation terms should be summed. But it would be interesting to see the same graph for just the down welling fraction vs temp as it is at the heart of the warming theories.
Totally agree, Terry.
Some quantities can’t be added. Eg. Two 20C objects don’t make an object in middle 40C.
SW 168W/m2 is ~ -40C. Emission ~240W/m2 is ~ -18C. So is Ghg effect really 33 or 55C.
I get burnt by UV in minutes…never by moonbeam IR.
As Willis said before, “The CERES surface datasets include a dataset of the upwelling longwave from the surface. But that’s not much use to me. I wanted surface temperatures rather than surface upwelling longwave emissions. However, the Stefan-Boltzmann equation lets us convert from longwave emission to temperature if we know the emissivity. The good news is that for natural substances, in almost all cases the emissivity is quite close to 1.0.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/06/man-i-hate-being-wrong/
So I guess that is where “CERES Surface Temperature” is coming from.
Why not compare CERES OLR with UAH TLT to see if there is warming? That looks like this:
?w=1000&h=569
The whole post at Okulaer is informative: https://okulaer.wordpress.com/2018/11/11/how-the-ceres-ebaf-ed4-data-disconfirms-agw-in-3-different-ways/
My synopsis is https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2018/12/12/no-ghg-warming-fingerprints-in-the-sky/
Thank you. Excellent summary.
Ronan and Michael Connolly studied radiosonde data and concluded in 2014:
“It can be seen from the infra-red cooling model of Figure 19 that the greenhouse effect theory predicts a strong influence from the greenhouse gases on the barometric temperature profile. Moreover, the modeled net effect of the greenhouse gases on infra-red cooling varies substantially over the entire atmospheric profile.
However, when we analysed the barometric temperature profiles of the radiosondes in this paper, we were unable to detect any influence from greenhouse gases. Instead, the profiles were very well described by the thermodynamic properties of the main atmospheric gases, i.e., N 2 and O 2 , in a gravitational field.”
While water vapour is a greenhouse gas, the effects of water vapour on the temperature profile did not appear to be related to its radiative properties, but rather its different molecular structure and the latent heat released/gained by water in its gas/liquid/solid phase changes.
For this reason, our results suggest that the magnitude of the greenhouse effect is very small, perhaps negligible. At any rate, its magnitude appears to be too small to be detected from the archived radiosonde data.”
Just wondering what is the value of the correlation coefficient between surface absorption and surface temperatures as plotted in a graph 1.
Richard, correlation is show in the second figure. Between 0.8 and 0.9.
w.
According to Willis’s data a change of 3.7 watts/sqM in surface radiation absorbed leads to 0.38C rise in temperature. The claim is that doubling CO2 will increase surface temperatures by 3C or more(actually the claim is 3C by 2050 which is well before CO2 would have doubled to 560 ppm). That would require an increase of about 30 watts/sqM. Truly remarkable, 3.7 watt/sqM from CO2 leads to 30 watts/sqM in total. Since most of the claimed feedback is through water vapour that means around 26 watts/sqM increase due to water vapour. Wow, the impact of GHG’s is logarithmic, the total impact of water vapour is supposedly around 80-100 watts/sqM and even if we assume constant humidity 3C would not double the water vapour content of Earth’s atmosphere. Then again, if we assume constant residence time for water vapour in the atmosphere, doubling water vapour content would double rainfall. Wow one would think that even at 400 ppm CO2 the change would stand out like – you know what!
But, you know what is even more remarkable, the claimed residence time of water vapour in the atmosphere is around 10 days (derived from the ratio of total water vapour content of the atmosphere to the annual global rainfall). So the water vapour feedback time constant should be of the order of days to at most a couple of weeks. But that means it should already be incorporated in Willis’s data and that means the impact of doubling CO2 INCLUDING FEEDBACK EFFECTS will be about 0.38C. Sounds plausible to me!!!
The striking discrepancy between the CERES-inferred surface temperature and the much higher values given by Stefan-Boltzmann for the indicated “total surface absorption” points to an ill-posed physical problem. What’s physically pertinent here is the NET heat flow, not the conjectured radiative absorption in the face of neglected non-radiative mechanisms. I doubt if the cross-correlation would suffer much if the DLWIR were simply ignored; it would be quite interesting to see a comparison.
If you can do that, could you also control for it in a plot of global average temperature vs. measured CO2 changes. That should be interesting, to say the least.
Just my eyeball estimates suggests that the uncertainty in measurements alone easily swamps any effect that could even potentially be attributed to CO2.
Willis,
What happens if you plot surface absorption vs. temperature? It might well give a very different result. Least squares routines are derived on the assumption of no errors in the independent (x) variable. Noise in that variable results in a slope that is too small. If you switch variables, you again get a slope that is too small, so then the inverse is too large; therefore, much larger than with the original arrangement.
What happens if you plot surface absorption vs. temperature? It might well give a very different result. Least squares routines are derived on the assumption of no errors in the independent (x) variable. Noise in that variable results in a slope that is too small. If you switch variables, you again get a slope that is too small, so then the inverse is too large; therefore, much larger than with the original arrangement.
Willis
Would you also have the total radiation vs time graphed and the total radiation vs net CO2 graphed?
The dashed line looks a little high at the extreme left and a little low at the extreme right. I’m not saying that the straight line fit is incorrect, just that it looks like something else is happening at the ends of the scatter plot.
You know that feeling, when the Doberman Pinscher finally breaks the chain and is closing the distance between you at 3 yards per stride.
Time to try to diffuse the situation.
Assume a nonaggressive position and entice it to engage.
Worked for me once…..
A request for some clarifications
1. Where did you get your “monthly global average surface temperature” and is it reliable?
2. Over what period was the data collected?
3. How did you remove the seasonal variation given that NH and SH have different seasons?
4. The temperature is a consequence of a large number of forcings spread over a large number of timescales and yet you imply that surface temperature is purely a consequence of “monthly global average downwelling total radiation absorbed by the surface”. Are you ignoring the other forcings or assuming them to be constant?
5. Some of the downwelling total radiation won’t contribute to heating the Earth’s surface but will instead be used in photosynthesis and evaporation.
6. How do you account for the difference between your finding and the more commonly used “conversion” from watts per sq m to temperature (2.4? 2.7?)?
7. How do you relate this to MODTRAN output regards CO2 and temperature, the link being the downwelling radiation from CO2?
8. And D. Cohen above raises a good question about the linear fit perhaps failing at the extremes. Maybe an exponential fit is more appropriate, which begs the question – why?
Please forgive me if I seem abrupt. I can assure you that I’m interested in these details. I’m just trying to keep this comment brief.
John McLean June 8, 2019 at 5:34 pm
From Ron Clutz’s comment below:
See the graph header
Yes, and they add together to give seasonal variations in the global average. That’s the variation that I removed.
I’m ignoring them to focus on the actual surface absorption of radiation.
True. I’m looking at the net effects.
The commonly used conversion is 3°C per doubling of CO2 (3.7 additional watts). Mine is observation-based. Theirs is generally model based. Finally, there’s not really an agreed upon value. Claims have been made that it is anywhere from about a degree C per 2X CO2 to about 6 degrees per 2X CO2.
MODTRAN doesn’t include any of the feedback.
Hard to tell if that is a real phenomenon or not … part of the problem with short datasets.
On my planet the only foolish questions are the ones I don’t ask …
Regards,
w.
@ur momisugly Willis E
Are you not adding up the same radiation twice (2X) to derive the “total” received at the surface?
I mean like can you add in the “echo” and then claim a louder noise was heard?
No, that’s the nature of the poorly named “greenhouse effect”. Some of the outgoing LW radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere, with ~ half going upwards and half going back to leave the earth warmer than it would be if all the radiation went straight to space.
See my post The Steel Greenhouse for a complete explanation.
w.
Willis, thanks anyway but I really don’t need a “complete explanation” of the, per se, “greenhouse effect”.
What I would like is an explanation of what I consider “questionable claims/assertions” in your posted commentary.
Such as your above response to me, …… excluding the 1st sentence with which I agree.
The “greenhouse effect” does not exist in nature ….. and it was a misnomer when it was first coined, and it is still a misnomer …….. and thus its only use it to scare the bejesus out of the gullible and/or miseducated.
Quoting Willis:
Now Willis, you should know very well that the radiation of the outgoing LW radiation from the surface it is not a “50-50” up and down re-radiation from the, per se, GHG molecules in the atmosphere.
And secondly, …… how is it possible for PART OF the re-radiated LWIR from an atmospheric GHG molecule make the earth’s surface “warmer” …… when it was the “warmth” from the earth’s surface that “warmed up” the atmospheric GHG molecule in the first place.
You can’t give away part of your money to someone, ….. and that someone gives you a wee part of it back, …. then you can’t possibly have more money than what you started with.
Samuel C Cogar June 9, 2019 at 4:57 am Edit
You don’t need an explanation of it … but you are certain it doesn’t exist. Yeah, that’s legit …
Samuel, if you truly believe that all the atmospheric scientists and the physicists are all participants in some giant scheme to pretend that a poorly-named “greenhouse effect” actually exists when it doesn’t, you are far beyond my poor power to add or detract.
Oh great picker of nits, you see the “~” symbol before my statement about half up and half down? It means “approximately”, and I put it in there specifically because I’ve dealt with folks like you before.
So let’s work with that … I give you a hundred dollars, you give me nothing. I’m broke.
OR, I give you a hundred, you give me ten, and I end up RICHER THAN I WOULD BE OTHERWISE.
Which is exactly what happens to the earth … because of the greenhouse effect, we end up WARMER THAN WE WOULD BE WITHOUT THE DOWNWELLING RADIATION.
Please, go bother someone else. I can deal with ignorance, and I can deal with arrogance, but your combination of the two is both frustrating and unpleasant.
w.
I’ve coined the term “pressure cowboy” for these types.
Willis Eschenbach – June 9, 2019 at 1:54 pm
Shur nuff, ……just post condescending “claptrap” and then …… “run n’ hide”, …… and everyone will just assume you are still the “never-wrong” expert.
And Willis, to appease your ego, I decided to read your cited The Steel Greenhouse ….. and quickly decided that it was just “more-of-the-same” tripe n’ piffle and of no intellectual value to me.
Also Willis, it is asinine, silly and idiotic to be measuring …. via use of an electronic frequency detector, ….. specific frequencies of LWIR that are radiating through the earth’s near-surface atmosphere, ….. then algebraically adding those “incoming” and “outgoing” totals, ….. and then converting the resulting “total” LWIR radiation to degrees F, C or K, …… simply because all radiation possesses kinetic energy but do not possess any temperature measurable thermal “heat” energy. So, you will have more luck at trying to “pee up a rope” than you will at correctly converting LWIR totals to degrees F, C or K.
“DUH”, the actual thermal or “heat” energy temperature of earth’s near surface atmosphere is actually determined by the two (2) most abundant gases therein, namely Nitrogen (78%) and Oxygen (21%). And that is a non-debatable scientific fact.
And Willis, I almost forgetted, …. iffen just a few years ago you had asked 2 or 3 million “expert” Medical Research professionals, Doctors and/or health care providers …..if stomach ulcers were caused by a bacterial infection, …. they would have all laughed at you and replied with an emphatic “NO”.
Samuel C Cogar June 10, 2019 at 10:20 am
Run and hide? What are you on about? I’m still here. It’s just not productive dealing with you.
And that quote perfectly exemplifies why I’d said:
You started by telling us that even though you hadn’t read my post, The Steel Greenhouse, it was wrong …
So I invited you to read it before criticizing it.
Your response? You read it “to appease my ego” … yeah, that’s totally legit. It’s so egotistical to ask that a man actually read your words before discussing them …
And then you apparently didn’t even finish it. Instead you’ve returned to tell us that you had “quickly decided that it was just “more-of-the-same” tripe n’ piffle and of no intellectual value” to you.
What that tells me is that no, you could NOT find one single scientific error in my work. If you had, you’d be rusing to point it out. So instead of observations about the science, you’ve blessed us with adjectives about your opinion. Great. Another fool who thinks that adjectives are a substitute for math, logic, and observations.
Please, go away until you have decided to discuss the science rather than make vague hand-waving attacks completely devoid of anything but an ugly view into your emotional state.
Don’t go ‘way mad.
Just go away … this is not the spot for personal attacks and adjective-loaded rants. I’m happy to discuss science with you, but I won’t be your punching bag.
w.
Willis Eschenbach – June 10, 2019 at 11:53 am
Now iffen I remember correctly I started out by explicitly telling you all, to wit: “Willis, thanks anyway but I really don’t need a “complete explanation” of the, per se, “greenhouse effect”.”
I made no mention that it was right, wrong, indifferent or otherwise.
And I also don’t remember you inviting me to read it “before criticizing it”, as you stated above.
On the contrary, it was you who attempted to personally defame my good name and reputation by sarcastically stating, to wit: ”You don’t need an explanation of it … but you are certain it doesn’t exist. Yeah, that’s legit …”
It appears that some people, selectively, …. don’t practice what they preach, to wit:
Thus, I see no point in any further discussion on this subject matter.
San C
The most sunlight is received at the latitude with the least ‘government’ and fewest “Journalists”.
Oh, very good …
w.
+42
Willis,
In the CERES data set, what does “surface temperature” represent? Is it the surface “skin temperature”, surface air temperature at 2 meters above the ground, or air temperature in the lower troposphere near the surface? And how is it derived? The answers could influence the interpretation of your first graph.
Likewise for the LW and SW absorbed at the surface. I presume these data are derived rather than measured directly and must have some associated uncertainty. How would this uncertainty affect the interpretation of your first graph? Are you confident that the uncertainties are low enough to yield a meaningful result from your first graph?
Maybe others here have thoughts on these questions as well.
Two other people have asked about the surface temperature. See above.
Regading the uncertainties, I’d have to look. However, while the accuracy of the CERES data is on the order of ± 5 W/m2, the precision is much better, and that’s what relevant for this type of analysis.
Do a google search on CERES EBAF, which is the dataset used. Sorry, running fast, life calls …
w.
Can you please explain what your X axis is showing?
The total surface absorption should be in a range around 240 W/m^2) yet this scale shows a center around 509 W/m^2.
During the period from 2000-2018, solar TSI changed by about 2 W/m^2 (1360.25-1362.25). Yet the chart shows a wider range of 6 W/m^2 in your X axis. And of course, most of the incoming solar radiation never even reaches the surface, so even showing a range of 2 W/m^2 would be overly generous.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod/from:2000.16/to:2018.16/scale:0.175
Bart, X axis is downwelling longwave + net shortwave (incident minus reflected) at the surface.
w.
How do you get a number that is larger than the standard ~240 W/m^2?
TSI includes all of longwave + shortwave.
OLR = ASR = TSI * (1-albedo) /4 = 1360 * (1-0.3) / 4 = 238 W/m^2
TSI is only downwelling solar at the top of the atmosphere. I’m using net solar at the surface plus downwelling LW at the surface.
HTH,
w.
Okay, I think I understand now. But I don’t think you can draw conclusions from that chart, since there is another variable (surface radiation) that is probably not just a constant that can be ignored. It could have been changing during this period as well, and very likely was.
Consider this chart:
https://scied.ucar.edu/radiation-budget-diagram-earth-atmosphere
If you used all three variables (absorbed by surface from sun + absorbed by surface from downwelling – surface radiation), then we could the net changes to the surface radiation correctly.
If you assume that 3.7W/M^2 increase is a result of a doubling of CO2 according to the 5.35 Ln (CO2b/CO2a) formula, then by using the Stefan Boltzmann equation you end up with a 1K change. However this is not correct because it ignores Holders inequality for integrating over a spherical body. As Willis found out,the answer is near to 0.38K for a doubling of CO2, hardly scary at all.
Interesting plot, I would interpret in the following way. Upward surface flux equals total downward flux (lw+ sw) minus total non-radiative surface to atmosphere heat transfers ( i.e. latent and sensible heat transfers) minus the radiative imbalance. So if you plot total down flux against surface up flux on y-axis, you can just plot a straight line with slope 1, then subtract the above quantities for each point. Doesn’t tell you anything about the cause of the changes in total down radiation. Your plot is the same, except you extract temperature from the upward flux on the y axis.
Willis, you wrote:
Yes. You still appear to believe, Willis, that radiation itself is all that’s needed to make the temperature of something go up (or down). You still seem utterly ignorant on even the most basic thermodynamic concepts and principles.
Simply put: “Atmospheric back radiation” (DWLWIR) does not constitute heat [Q] to or from the surface, and so can and does not in itself affect the internal energy [U] and thus the temperature [T] of same surface. The SOLAR flux (net SW, ASR) to the surface, on the other hand, does constitute heat to the surface, and so can and does, all by itself, affect its internal energy and temperature.
Radiation does not affect temperature, Willis. Heat does. Net thermal transfers of energy.
The DWLWIR simply goes up when the (lower) tropospheric temperature (T_tropo) goes up, and the (lower) tropospheric temperature in turn goes up when the surface temperature (T_s) goes up.
We can safely say that there is no evidence whatsoever of any gradual, systematic rise in DWLWIR over the TLT (T_tropo), going from 2000 to 2018:
If we plot the difference between the two curves in this graph to obtain the “DWLWIR residual”, this fact becomes all the more evident:
And here’s the important point:
The idea of “an enhanced GHE causing global warming” requires the DWLWIR to rise significantly and systematically more than T_tropo (TLT) over time, and its “null hypothesis” therefore postulates that such a rise should NOT be seen. Well, do we see such a systematic rise in the DWLWIR residual above? Nope. Not at all.
How the CERES EBAF Ed4 data disconfirms “AGW” in 3 different ways …..
https://okulaer.wordpress.com/2018/11/11/how-the-ceres-ebaf-ed4-data-disconfirms-agw-in-3-different-ways/#more-6562
“Radiation does not affect temperature, Willis. Heat does.”
My microwave oven thinks you might be wrong.
Is your microwave 750 W or 1000 W?
You do know how a microwave oven works, do you?
Microwaves effect rotation of water molecules. It is the rotation that causes the temperature change.
You will not see a temperature change in the air in your microwave only in solid or liquids.
Kristan, climate science ignores the well established specific heat of air and CO2, the idea that molecular energy states determine if absorption can take place, and my thermo profs admonition that something can only get as hot as the hottest supplier.
Joule’s conclusion of his experiment that internal energy is at most a function of temperature and Anthony Watt’s experiment with CO2 in a jar that failed to show a temperature increase with increased CO2 concentration should have put a nail in all this.
“experiment with CO2 in a jar that failed to show a temperature increase with increased CO2 concentration should have put a nail in all this.”
Really.
How about this one ..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge0jhYDcazY
And this one….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPRd5GT0v0I
And this
https://mrcc.illinois.edu/resources/edu_howto_greenhouse.jsp
This
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwtt51gvaJQ
There are many more.
Then there are Roy Spencer’s experiments ….
Such as the following…
(Quote)
“In my continuing battle to keep people from being led astray by bad science, I sometimes try to think of new ways to demonstrate the existence of the Earth’s so-called greenhouse effect (GHE).”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2016/08/suggested-backyard-experiment-to-measure-the-greenhouse-effect-of-more-carbon-dioxide/
That BBC experiment does not represent what is theoretically going on in Earth’s atmosphere, where tropospheric warming is reflected back to the surface. [Yes, an oversimplification. So sue me.]
And the chemical processes in creating the CO2 gas must affect the temperature in the CO2 bottle. A 6C differential is incredible; I know of no process by which that could happen in a closed bottle with a fixed heat source. Maybe the CO2 concentration is so astronomically high it affects the thermal properties of the system? I don’t know.
Any chemists out there with an opinion?
Exothermic reaction for generation of CO2 through tablets in water* = extra heat in the system for CO2 measurements. If bottle is sealed additional heating through increasing pressure. Dismiss these experiments.
Only mythbuster experiment tells one something but would have to be done in atmospheres purely of nitrogen and oxygen as control and then start adding low amount of CO2 until equilibrium is reached and then double again and again to show anticipated logarithmic function is real and at which concentration an effect would be measurable. Pressure has to be kept equal between chambers.
Though still no proof for “greenhouse heat trapping by CO2” as in the atmosphere there would be convection.
*depending on tablets it could be solvation energy so not a real reaction in chemistry terms but still probably exothermic given the kinetic of the process.
The bottle CO2 experimenters are concocting scientific lies to support CAGW. GHGs work, but not the way presented and certifiably not as strongly as implied.
Correct the GHE in the Earth’s atmospher works by way of emitting LWIR ultimately to space from colder molecules. They have a temperature of ~255K – the temp that the S-B law tells us is what the Earth’s temp should be due what energy it absorbs from the Sun.
The GSMT is ~288K.
255K is measured by satellite.
Go figure.
Oh, and a classic proponant of the “d” variety has to come up with “concocting scientific lies”.
Keep it up please… there is nothing that destroys that species credibility and that of it’s invented world than that denial of empirical science.
You could try it for yourself of course
It’s not difficult.
But that might shatter the need to bend the world to fit your ideological bias.
And no, I dont have a bias – other than to not think that scientists are either incompetent or frauds.
And certainly not that you know better than them.
Temperature differences between two bottles in no way reflects the physical reality of the temperature differences between the surface and the emission height. Prove me wrong.
That BBC video (the first linked YouTube video provided by Anthony Banton above) is a joke all around:
— obviously, no consideration for the variation in radiation levels on, and likely convection heating of, the two experimental bottles (note that the lamp on the right, illuminating the CO2-containing bottle, is visually closer to its bottle than is the lamp on the left, illuminating the air-containing bottle)
— no control on the how the thermocouple probes themselves were affected by direct illumination from the lamps
— no control (or even mention) on how the CO2-containing bottle was affected by the added water vapor carried over from the vinegar-baking soda that generated CO2 to fill the experimental CO2
— no control (or even recognition) of possible differences in convective cooling/heating of each of the two experimental bottles
— I could go on and on, but need I?
Bottom line, if this was a high school science fair project that I was judging, i would give it a grade of D (not an F only because a science experiment was PERFORMED and people can learn from mistakes).