Out in the webiverse someone asked me “Willis… do you consider yourself a denialist?”
Mmmm … an excellent question, with an answer which likely won’t go the direction that they think.
First, the term “climate denier”, or in this incarnation “denialist”, was specifically chosen for its overtones of “Holocaust denier”. It is used as a pejorative term for anyone who disagrees with any aspect of climate science, usually without any attempt to say what the person is “denying”.
Now, I know for a fact that the Holocaust was real, because immediately after the war my grandmother, the Captain’s daughter, was in charge of several camps for “displaced persons”, most of whom were Jews who had been in the slave labor camps and the extermination camps. She saw all of that almost while the crematoria were still warm … she talked with the people who’d suffered intolerably. Her testimony, along with a mountain of other testimonial, documentary, and photographic evidence, establishes the truth of the existence of the Holocaust far, far beyond reasonable doubt.
Here’s the sneaky part. The link between “climate denial” and Holocaust denial lies in what is said to be denied. The clear implication in both cases is the claim that the person is denying THE TRUTH. They’re not not saying people are denying some mere supposition. They’re not claiming that “climate deniers” are denying some half-baked theory.
The clear claim is that both “climate deniers” and Holocaust deniers are denying THE TRUTH.
Now, this is mondo sneaky because this framing entirely pre-empts the discussion of what might or might not be true about the climate. It does this by subtly but strongly implying that THE TRUTH about the climate is already established.
Riiiight …
Not only are they saying that THE TRUTH about climate is established, but the further claim in calling someone a “climate denier” is that the person using the term 1) knows THE TRUTH, and 2) knows that the person is “denying”, not just scientifically disputing but “denying”, some specific part of THE TRUTH.
And the final hidden claim is that THE TRUTH is not just established, but it is as solidly established as the undeniable truth that the Holocaust occurred.
So when a person calls someone a “climate denier” or a “denialist”, they are implicitly asserting that the following are true and valid statements:
• THE TRUTH about the climate has been established.
• THE TRUTH about the climate is as solid and fact-based as THE TRUTH about the existence of the Holocaust, i.e. it is 100% undeniably and inalterably true and backed by a mountain of evidence.
• They know THE TRUTH about the climate.
• They know that the person they are calling a “denier” doesn’t simply disagree about a specific scientific idea, but instead they “deny” something that is obviously and demonstrably THE TRUTH.
All of that makes the use of “denier” an underhanded attempt to get people to believe that climate science is settled … and that is absolutely not THE TRUTH …
It is also a term with very ugly overtones. As a result, I and others have repeatedly asked decent people to cut it out, because it is both untrue and insulting.
The response has clearly revealed that I greatly overestimated the number of decent people among the climate alarmists …
The proper term for folks that disagree with various aspects of the mainstream climate scientists’ claims about the climate is “skeptic”. They are properly skeptical of the unproven idea that the temperature of the earth is greatly affected by the CO2 going from three-hundredths of one percent to four-hundredths of one percent of the atmosphere.
That might indeed be true, although I don’t think so … but at present it is assuredly unproven.
Now, it has been shown that when CO2 increases, it increases the atmospheric absorption of outgoing radiation, and thus increases the amount of thermal radiation from the atmosphere, about half of which heads downwards towards the surface.
But it has NOT been shown that this increase in radiation is perforce accompanied by an increase in the surface temperature.
However, me, I don’t consider myself a skeptic. Instead, I consider myself a heretic, meaning that I do not agree with the current underlying fundamental assumption of how the climate works.
That underlying assumption involves what is called “downwelling radiation” or “radiative forcing”, meaning the radiation headed down towards the surface. This is the sum of solar radiation plus thermal radiation from the atmosphere and clouds.
The assumption is that if the downwelling radiation increases, the surface temperature perforce has to rise. Not only that, but the temperature rise varies perfectly linearly with the increase in radiation. If you double the change in radiation, it will supposedly give you double the change in temperature.
Now, intuitively you’d think that would be true, that the more radiation that hits some surface, the warmer it would get. We’re told that it’s just “simple physics”. And indeed, for a simple physical system like a block of iron that’s basically true.
However, the climate is an immensely complex system, with important phenomena occurring on a time scale from nanoseconds to millennia and physical scales from nanometres to planet-wide.
Not only that, but according to the Constructal Law as well as Le Chatelier’s Principle, the climate actively responds to the changing conditions by moving towards the status quo ante. We see this in the endless twists and windings of lowland rivers. They are always changing, jumping out of their beds and cutting new channels … but the overall length of the river hardly changes at all. Constructal law at work.
So as an example of the thermal response of another complex system to increased radiation, consider how much your core body temperature rises when you walk from the shade into the sun. Thermal input, aka “downwelling radiation” has gone up by hundreds of watts per square metre and the core body temperature has … done nothing …
The reality is that complex systems cannot be analyzed using just “simple physics”.
So no, I do NOT believe what almost everyone in the field believes, which is that global temperature is a linear function of the amount of incoming radiation. I say that the climate responds to changing radiation input just as the body responds to changing radiation input, by shifting and evolving in such a fashion as to negate the effect of the increase in radiation.
The climate is best modeled as a heat engine. Why? Because at the most basic level, that’s what it is. Like all heat engines, it has energy coming in at the hot end (the tropics) and is rejecting energy at the cold end (the poles). Like all heat engines, it turns energy into mechanical motion. The climate heat engine turns solar energy into the mechanical motion of the various circulations of the atmosphere and the oceans. The frictional resistance to these mechanical motions of ocean and air is equivalent to a brake on a heat engine.
And here’s the interesting part.
Over the last century, the average temperature of the planet-sized heat engine that we call the “climate” varied up and down from its century-long average by about one-tenth of one percent … and as a man who has been involved with a number of heat engines, I can say that that is shockingly stable.
This is particularly true when you consider a couple of things. First, the existence of the poorly-named “greenhouse effect” means that the global surface temperature is well above what it would be if there were no atmosphere. (For an explanation of how the greenhouse effect actually works, which has absolutely nothing to do with greenhouses, see The Steel Greenhouse, People Living In Glass Planets, and The R. W. Wood Experiment.)
Second, the clouds reflect about forty percent of the available sunlight back into space. This is a huge amount of energy, about a hundred watts per square metre.
So our temperature is balanced well above what it would be without an atmosphere. And even with that, clouds are shedding some 30% of the available energy back into space, so it could be much, much hotter … but it’s not. Thus, the temperature is controlled by nothing more solid than clouds, winds and waves … clouds and winds and waves that come and go … and despite that, the global temperature only varied by ±0.1% over the 20th century.
So I don’t study what almost all climate scientists study, which is why the global average temperature varies so much.
I study why it varies so little … which is why I describe myself as a heretic rather than a sceptic.
Here, life in the lockdown continues … if being free to work in my shop and wander through acres of protected forest out past my back yard can be fairly described as being “locked down”. I truly cannot conceive of, and I have great compassion for, what lockdown means for a family of four in some city apartment building, with both parents out of work and rent coming due …
As I’ve said since it started, end the American lockdown now. It is injuring and killing far more than the virus is, particularly at this late point in the game.
I do think, however, that we are coming to the end of both the coronavirus and the BLM riots. So I leave you all in hopes of a much brighter future for my granddaughter above, and for you and all of your family,
w.
As Usual: I ask that when you comment, you quote the exact words that you are discussing. This avoids most of the misunderstands that are so rife on the intarwebs.
The Math: For those interested in the faulty math behind the fundamental equation falsely claiming that temperature is a linear function of downwelling radiation, see my post The Cold Equations.
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Back in 2006 when I started studying this, my wife and I went on a trip which included Glacier Bay in Alaska. We were given a map by the park service which included data from old navigation charts documenting the melting of that 65 mile long glacier which originally completely occupied the bay. It had started melting prior to the year 1800 when earth’s population was about 1/7 of today and transportation was by horse, foot, and wooden sailing vessel. It was around 85% gone by 1900, prior to the invention of the airplane, a dozen or so years before the mass production of the automobile, and with population around 1/4 of today.
If we caused that melting, tell me how we are going to stop it today considering all of the above. If not, prove to me that what did cause the melting is not the same as what has caused any warming since 1900.
By the way, on the current Glacier Bay website I could see no indication of the melting data which I still have on copies of the literature I was handed back in 2006. I wonder why it has disappeared. Interesting!
Willis,
You still believe this is basically wrong?
Zoe Phin August 9, 2020 at 5:23 pm
Zoe, what I still believe is that you are either too arrogant, too stupid, or too uncaring to QUOTE THE EXACT DAMN WORDS YOU ARE DISCUSSING as I’ve requested over and over.
This is a perfect example of why I insist that people quote what they are talking about. You are alleging that somewhere, sometime, I said that the Britannica heat block conduction diagram is wrong … an underhanded allegation that I deny entirely.
Now, IF you can find where it is that you claim I said that the Britannica diagram is “basically wrong”, this would be the time to bring it up … and if you can’t find where I said that, this would be the time to apologize for flat-out lying about what I said.
And in either case it is time for you to grow up and show the common decency of quoting what it is you object to. I’m sick of your handwaving accusations without either any link to what I said or any scrap of evidence that I was wrong.
w.
Oh Willis,
I don’t need to quote you commenting on this specific diagram. You’ve made it abundantly clear that the flow from A to B “must” equal the flow from B to space to the right.
Don’t you dare claim otherwise right now.
Oh Zoe,
You really aren’t a rational human being, are you.
You cannot equate Willis’s discussion of the complex energy balance of the Earth’s climate system with a diagram containing two different blocks with different temperatures. The diagram shows a very simple linear system and a very simple linear process. It falls far short of being a model for the Earth’s ocean/atmospheric system. It’s as if Willis wrote an article on who will win the World Series and you accuse him of denying the physics of a ball hitting a bat. Reality is a lot more complex than extremely simple diagrams.
James,
Willis believes emergent radiation = conductive heat flux.
When I show two experiments at the end of this article:
http://phzoe.com/2020/02/20/two-theories-one-ideological-other-verified/
With a constant heat source, I’m still correct. As the EVIDENCE shows.
This recent diagram is not a constant heat source. I use this diagram as bait. When Willis wants to show I’m “wrong and stupid” he always takes the easy bait. He evades the hard evidence, but takes the easy bait.
But even in the easy bait, emergent flux != conductive heat flux. I can explain both scenarios. Willis can’t.
Zoe, If you are going to make a claim about what Willis said or believes, yes you do need to quote him. If you can’t quote him saying what you claim he said/believes, after being called on it, that just shows you CAN”T back up your claims. Making you either a liar or a fraud (or both).
Uhuh
You haven’t read any of my posted links.
What Willia believes is well known.
If it’s so well know, you have no excuse not to quote it. You don’t quote it, so you lose credibility. Bye Felicia.
Willis believes only a few unicorns are causing only a little damage in the forests rather than the alarmist view that forests are overrun by malevolent unicorns causing havoc.
Willis is a lukeunicornist.
It really is sad how some people, when they have lost on facts, lost on science, lost on logic, have only insults to fall back on.
to paraphrase from an old legal aphorism: When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. When the Science is on your side pound the science. when neither is on your side pound the table. The resorting to insults is mere table pounding. It’s as sad as it’s telling.
“It really is sad how some people, when they have lost on facts, lost on science, lost on logic, have only insults to fall back on.”
I know someone who can help you, MarkW. How long have you had this problem?
I know you are, but what am I?
Yet again, schoolyard taunts seem to be all you have.
Insults and ad hominem are loosers way to say “you win, I loose”. It´s actually a compliment.
Zoe,
A rationale, objective person would note that the Britannica figure that you linked is titled “heat bock conduction” and makes no reference to radiation or “radiative heat transfer” or to convection or “convective heat transfer”. Furthermore, Willis presented the actual figure that you referenced, and you might take the time to note that there are no arrows showing “heat flow” off the blocks by means of radiation or convection.
Clearly then, your referenced diagram cannot apply to anything other than an idealized, purely conductive heat transfer gedanken experiment. For example, the “purple blocks” end-state on the right has the note “. . . and heat flow stops” which, in the real world, would mean blocks A and B have zero radiation, and therefore constant temperature, for time going forward to infinity.
If you want to have a meaningful discussion of heat transfer process as they relate to the real world (let alone Earth’s energy balances and/or forcing functions), drop the harping on purely theoretical stuff—that is, there is no process in the physical universe that involves ONLY conduction—and try to argue with rational, appropriate understanding of the totality of the physics involved with the subject matter under discussion.
That is all.
Oh really, Gordon?
Most sane people would not think this is a gedanken experiment, but something they have observed in real life!
Have you attended 7th grade chemistry?
Although radiation is not mentioned it was there in the classroom.
Zoe, please cite one—just one will suffice—example of a “real life” situation of pure conduction in the absence of radiation or convection. You will need to search far and wide, given that all solid bodies (i.e., “blocks”) emit thermal radiation at temperatures above absolute zero and there is no such a thing as a perfect insulator.
But of course, you already knew those facts, didn’t you?
By the way, the block conduction example from Britannica that you referenced is all about thermodynamics and has nothing to do with chemistry.
I made it though a tough graduate school, culminating with a MSME degree, preceded by several undergraduate college-level chemistry classes bathed in thermal radiation; how about you?
I will await your response . . . but not for too long.
Britanica lack of mentioning convection and radiation doesn’t mean the blocks will not come to thermal equibrium in their presence. You just assume their lack of mention is really important to the problem.
I learned it in 7th grade chemistry before lesson was repeated in 9th grade physics.
I took 3 physics and 2 astronomy classes at uni. I aced them.
I have two experiments here that Willis ignores:
http://phzoe.com/2020/02/20/two-theories-one-ideological-other-verified/
Zoe, you are lying through your teeth when you falsely claim that
The VERY FIRST DAMNED COMMENT ON THAT PAGE IS FROM ME, so your claim that I “ignored” it is just more of the rancid lying bile that you endlessly spew forth.
Don’t go away mad. Just go away. Your endless puerile lies and your astounding ignorance are overpowering an otherwise interesting discussion. You have your own blog where you can discuss your ideas all day long. I implore you, go there, go somewhere, don’t go away mad, just go away.
w.
“The VERY FIRST DAMNED COMMENT ON THAT PAGE IS FROM ME, so your claim that I “ignored” it is just more of the rancid lying bile that you endlessly spew forth.”
Wow, Willis. The fact that I post A comment from you is proof that you are not ignoring the results of two later videos?
That’s some ingenious mental gymnastics right there!
I’m not mad at you, Willis.
Your goofiness (purely on this topic) is kind of adorable.
Conservation of heat flow! What a joke.
What could be more precise than the statement the science is settled? If true it leaves no room for denial. Yet a lot of people aren’t buying it because of lack of proof and not seeing the change claimed. If the science was settled it would be more than 95 percent certain and that is a high mark.
Laying shame on opposition is no way to win an argument yet the global warming crowd use it like a conditioned response.
Newtonian physics was about as close to settled science as science gets, right up to the time it was shown to be incorrect. No scientist worth their salt would ever proclaim that the science is settled. When you hear that, you are listening to a politician or an advocate, and you would be wise to hold on to your wallet.
But without energy flow into the metal, its temperature will drop until it reaches equilibrium with its environment, which for space is quite cold. Effectively its energy loss would stop if it reached absolute zero.
Everybody hopefully knows that
Temperature in this spot = Average translational kinetic energy in this spot.
But there are pseudoscientists that believe that
Temperature in this spot is function of Average translational kinetic energy in some other spot – Average translational kinetic energy in this spot = Average translational kinetic energy in this spot – Average translational kinetic energy a 3rd spot.
You got that?
You need to ignore common sense and basic physics and embrace conservation of heat flow. Once you set up unrealistic math equations, you will see the source needs to heat up to balance your nonsense math equation. Math can make molecules move faster! Gotta preserve the flow!
“Temperature in this spot = Average translational kinetic energy in this spot.”
When you start with an untrue statement, all your conclusions are bound to also be wrong.
Thermal energy has nothing to do with kinetic energy.
Your stupidity is unbelievable.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/temper.html
“Temperature in this spot = Average translational kinetic energy in this spot.”
Zoe, did you even bother to read—more importantly, understand— the Wikipedia article that you referenced?
It states: “The equipartition theorem of kinetic theory asserts that each classical degree of freedom of a freely moving particle has an average kinetic energy of kBT/2 where kB denotes Boltzmann’s constant. The translational motion of the particle has three degrees of freedom, so that, except at very low temperatures where quantum effects predominate, the average translational kinetic energy of a freely moving particle in a system with temperature T will be 3kBT/2. Molecules, such as oxygen (O2), have more degrees of freedom than single spherical atoms: they undergo rotational and vibrational motions as well as translations. Heating results in an increase in temperature due to an increase in the average translational kinetic energy of the molecules. Heating will also cause, through equipartitioning, the energy associated with vibrational and rotational modes to increase.”
Perhaps you missed the class in one of your three uni physics course that described the total energy of molecular gases being related to absolute temperature by E = 5kBT/2, not E = 3kBT/2.
There are far, far more molecular gases in real life than there are atomic gases.
And need I mention that in solid substances, there are no translational kinetic energy modes, just rotational and vibrational modes that yield temperature as a function of energy content?
Now, you were saying something to another poster about “unbelievable stupidity”? Mirror time!
“The proper term for folks that disagree with various aspects of the mainstream climate scientists’ claims about the climate is “skeptic”. ”
First, skeptic has positive comnnnotations, so the media and the warmist side will never agree to use it. Second, we “skeptics” are actually heretics—i.e., not mere doubters (the AP’s preferred term), but active disbelievers.
The only term that its fairly neutral (although still a bit negative), accurate, and that the media will accept, is “climate contrarian.”
From the article: “All of that makes the use of “denier” an underhanded attempt to get people to believe that climate science is settled”
I think that sums it up nicely, Willis That’s exactly what the word is, and why it is used.
Agreed.
However since the term remains semantically nonsensical, the claim falls over ab initio.
Colourless green alarmists woke furiously and all that.
Willis, if you stop focussing on the downwelling radiation, but instead look at the blocking of the outgoing radiation with increasing CO2, the the concept of global warming becomes simpler.
https://klimaathype.wordpress.com/2018/03/24/localised-instant-climate-sensitivity-for-2xco2/
“The assumption is that if the downwelling radiation increases, the surface temperature perforce has to rise. Not only that, but the temperature rise varies perfectly linearly with the increase in radiation. If you double the change in radiation, it will supposedly give you double the change in temperature.”
except that is not the theory
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slPMD5i5Phg&t=4s
1. The sun warms the planet
2. GHGS control the RATE at which the planet cools
Control either and you control the final temp.
BACK radiation is an EFFECT of the increased GHGs
but it is not the CAUSE of more warming
yes I know some people explain it that way, but they are being rather imprecise
“GHGS control the RATE at which the planet cools”
Which they don’t.
So your assumption is wrong from the start. !
Fred Flinstone,
No, Mosher is finally 100% right about something.
CO2 high in the atmosphere absorbs and re-radiates 15-micron radiation. More CO2 increases the height at which the atmosphere becomes transparent to 15-micron radiation, thus lowering the temperature at which the atmosphere radiates freely to space, thus lowering the amount of energy lost to space. The problem is no one can calculate the magnitude of this effect.
Lol, Mr. Moon.
http://phzoe.com/2020/03/04/dumbest-math-theory-ever/
Why, do you think I said something funny?
First of all, once a photon is absorbed, it is gone. It is never ‘reradiated’. When absorbed, the energy level of the absorbing molecule is raised. It can then radiate a photon OR, it can bump into one of its 2400 nearby non-radiating molecules and transfer energy through the collision. What do you think happens first?
Why do people make the stupid assumption that CO2 ONLY radiates or stays in a high energy state. Impossible.
John Has Had Too Many Shotskys,
Lower in the atmosphere a molecule of CO2 which absorbs a photon quickly Thermalizes it, as it collides with a neighboring molecule. Higher in the atmosphere it usually re-radiates, as the density is much much lower up high. This is basic physics. Back to school for you….
Steven Mosher August 10, 2020 at 2:55 am
Steven, I fear that your comment makes no sense. First, you claim that what I said is “not the theory” … not which theory? Not whose theory? What I said is certainly an accurate description of how many, many people think about the climate. It is encapsulated in the fundamental equation at the heart of modern climate science, which incorrectly states that
∆T = lambda ∆F
where T is temperature, F is forcing, and lambda is a constant called the “climate sensitivity”.
The paragraph of mine that you quote above is merely a translation of that mathematical equation into English … so I have absolutely no clue what you are on about.
Now, as you point out, if you wait for half a century the level of GHGs may change … so what? My description still stands for the current situation—increased downwelling radiation is indeed claimed to perforce warm the surface.
Finally, you say:
Umm … here’s a story about that …
As the Mulla Nasruddin once commented, anyone looking for both cause and effect in the same story is not following the story …
w.
The atmosphere cannot warm itself, nor can it warm the surface. The Sun warms both. The surface and the atmosphere both radiate to space. CO2 does effect just how much energy leaves the atmosphere due to radiating to space, thus controlling the COOLING.
Steven, I fear that your comment makes no sense.
Willis, you just described 99% of the English major’s drive-by posts. Frankly why anyone takes him seriously anymore at this point is a mystery.
I take Mosh seriously because he’s wicked smart, well educated, has interesting ideas, and was a major contributor to the Berkeley Earth project … and I hate his “drive-by” commenting style.
Anyone who thinks Mosh is just an “English major” is not following the story.
w.
He may once have been all those things. He’s long since devolved into drive-by nonsense that’s not worthy of being taken seriously. Anyone who thinks otherwise is the one who is not following the story.
you realize that the some people say Willis is a just a massage therapist?
and steve mcintyre is just a mining executive
and Anthony is just a weatherman?
Not me.
why?
cause I look at their work
Some folks judge other by their credentials.
you know the shit you cant check.
Me, I look at willis’ actual work, Mcintyres actual work, Anthonys actual work.
I dont ask for their resume or report card or ask them where they bought their sheepskin
call me a skeptic of credentials.
Mosh I look at your “work” ie your vapid drive-by posts. As long as you continue with your drive-bys, the only recognition you’ll get or deserve is your “credentials IE English-major. Don’t like it? then shape up.
And how long does it take for a quanta of energy to go from the surface, to a point high in the atmosphere, get absorbed, reemitted back towards the ground, and then be intercepted yet again and reemitted into an upward direction?
The speed of light is very fast, even at the reduced velocity of photons in air.
The delay is a tiny fraction of a second.
Besides for all of that, saying that GHG control the “final temperature” assumes that all else remains equal…IOW, it assumes that a warmer surface has no other means to become cooler, and so will just stay warmer.
But this is obviously false, for several reasons.
For one thing, a warmer surface will radiate more intensely, and this effect is instantaneous.
And a warmer surface will have more evapotranspiration of moisture, taller and more intense and more frequent thunderstorms, etc.
And on top of all of that…thermalization of photons is a two way street. CO2 can be excited to a higher energy state by molecular collisions and emit a photon. In any parcel of gas molecules, some are moving far faster than the average velocity of the molecules, simply owing to random collisions.
The fact is that at night, air will almost always cool to near the dew point, and there is plenty of excess capacity for cooling at night, if the day wound up getting slightly warmer than it otherwise might have. Heat is not “trapped”.
When Steven said this:
“1. The sun warms the planet
2. GHGS control the RATE at which the planet cools
Control either and you control the final temp.”
…even if one assumes that items #1 and #2 are exactly and always correct, the last sentence does not follow from the first two.
There is no “final temp”, for one thing.
And the statement would only be true if there was no other process taking place (clouds, evaporation, etc), or acceleration of cooling, on a warmer surface, and also would only be true if the cooling capacity of the surface was maxed out.
None of these things can be taken a priori as true.
The ability of the surface and of the atmosphere to radiate energy into space is nothing like maxed out at any given place and any given time…let alone for the planet as a whole.
In the Arctic, the long nights and dry air ensure any energy transported to those latitudes will quickly make it’s way to space. And there are two belts of dry air centered on latitudes 30° north and south with plenty of excess cooling capacity.
Even leaving aside any logical or factual discussion of physics, we have more than enough historical evidence to know for sure that CO2 has not, is not, and never will control the temperature of our planet.
And no reason to think the Earth is anything like “too hot” anyway.
And no reason to think that warmth is detrimental to life.
And absolutely no reason to suppose that the small amount of atmospheric CO2, which is the building block of the entire biosphere, is a dangerous thing to have more of.
–And how long does it take for a quanta of energy to go from the surface, to a point high in the atmosphere, get absorbed, reemitted back towards the ground, and then be intercepted yet again and reemitted into an upward direction?–
Very short period of time.
But radiant energy mostly does not go up and down- it goes in random direction. So, a “for a quanta of energy to go from the surface, to a point high in the atmosphere”. Such quanta of energy is rare. But let’s say it’s 10% of radiant energy [or 10% chance} and then the part “get absorbed, reemitted back towards the ground” again it’s very low chance, it would be radiated towards the ground. And finally, “and then be intercepted yet again and reemitted into an upward direction?” well there about 100% chance it goes in upward direction but low chance of it being in near vertical direction.
“Besides for all of that, saying that GHG control the “final temperature” assumes that all else remains equal…IOW, it assumes that a warmer surface has no other means to become cooler, and so will just stay warmer.”
Yes. spectrum of IR light is transparent to our atmosphere, so can cool radiantly directly into space. If surface warmer than air, one get convection heat transfer. And if surface is water {or ice], it can evaporate- a type convectional heat transfer.
Since our planet is mostly ocean surface, and ocean absorbs most of energy from sunlight… the tropical ocean is Earth’s heat engine, warms the rest of planet, largely by evaporation heat transfer. Another way it’s heat engine, is the tropical waters are transported poleward. Though the warming of land in not just limited to tropical ocean zone {within tropic of Cancer and Capricorn} but in tropics which is 40% of Earth surface area, has more 1/2 sunlight that reaches Earth surfaces. But tropical ocean has high average yearly surface temperature of 26 C or it has “summer time type sunlight” all year round.
Said differently, global land temperature is 10 C, global ocean is 17 C, though if exclude tropical ocean the 60% of rest of ocean averages about 11 C.
And in terms of control, one say it this 60% of rest ocean that can more variable. And 60% of rest of ocean is controlled by average temperature of entire ocean- which currently averages to about 3.5 C.
Or everyone knows we in Ice Age, and reason we are in an Ice Age is because we have a cold ocean. But even colder ocean or warmer ocean, doesn’t control tropics- “just” 60% of the rest of the world.
“The paragraph of mine that you quote above is merely a translation of that mathematical equation into English … so I have absolutely no clue what you are on about.
Now, as you point out, if you wait for half a century the level of GHGs may change … so what? My description still stands for the current situation—increased downwelling radiation is indeed claimed to perforce warm the surface.”
No thats a common misunderstanding in POPULARIZED simplified versions.
The presence of any GHGs will cause downwelling radiation. It’s an effect of the property of the
the GHG molecules. And if the atmosphere were isothermal ( no negative lapse rate) more GHGS and more back tradition would not warm the planet
the “warming” of the planet comes from a slow down in the rate of cooling at the top of
the atmopshere.
https://youtu.be/6kGY76DrIoA?t=519
Here
learn
this
by
heart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PAbm1u1IVg
Nothing to do with downwelling IR
For example.
IF you had a POSITIVE lapse rate and added more GHGS you would get more down welling IR
but you would not get a temperature increase.
Steven, I “learned that by heart” two decades ago.
However, I’ve also shown in “The Steel Greenhouse” that the poorly-named “greenhouse effect” can work without an atmosphere at all.
As a result, what Dressler is explaining is not how the greenhouse effect works. Instead, he’s explaining the EFFECT of the greenhouse phenomenon on the atmosphere.
But the basic reality is that whether there is an atmosphere or not, if some of the energy is absorbed on the way out, with the absorbed energy radiated both up and down, the surface has to heat up to maintain the balance, duh. And it works perfectly well with no atmosphere and thus no lapse rate.
Now, since I’ve known this for a couple of decades … why are you telling me this basic shit?
As you said, here, learn this by heart—DON’T CONDESCEND, AND DON’T PRETEND YOU CAN TEACH ME WHAT I’VE KNOWN FOR DECADES. Not a good look on you.
w.
So to understand the importance of the negative lapse rate
here
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/greenhouse-gases-are-warming-world-chilling-antarctica-here-s-why
Steven, I said that modern climate science believes that if GHGs increase downwelling IR, that the temperature must increase as expressed in the following equation:
∆T = lambda ∆F (Eqn. 1)
where T is temperature, F is forcing, and lambda is a constant called the “climate sensitivity”.
You say:
No, it is the equation discussed at length in one of the more cited climate science papers, Heat capacity, time constant, and sensitivity of Earth’s climate system by Steven Schwartz, 176 citations.
The equation is also embodied in the concept of “climate sensitivity”, which is taken to be the constant “lambda” in Equation 1 above. If you accept the concept of “climate sensitivity” you are buying into Equation 1 … that’s what “climate sensitivity” means, that temperature change is a linear function of forcing change, and thus if forcing changes temperature perforce must change as well.
w.
W.,
So since Schwartz says so, and 176 quote him, it must be true?
How can the atmosphere heat itself? There is no heat source, what we engineers call “Availability.”
The entire Trenberth comic strip with the atmosphere shooting hundreds of watts per square meter towards the surface is a botch. All Matter radiates All the Time, in All Directions. If some one would like to contradict me by mentioning that matter at Absolute Zero does not radiate, then show me some matter at Absolute Zero. There is none, not that I know about.
Up high the Atmosphere is cool, down low the Surface and the Atmosphere are warmer, but somehow the cool atmosphere at the TOA can warm the surface? No, the only thing that happens up high is that the C02 up there absorbs 15-micron radiation, preventing it from reaching Space, and containing this Heat, which is Energy no matter what you say about lakes, in the Atmosphere. Then the lapse rate takes over.
Mosh is correct.
Michael Moon August 12, 2020 at 8:05 am
I never said that, nor anything like that. In fact, I said that the fundamental equation he derives is NOT TRUE.
This is why I ask in every post for people to QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU ARE DISCUSSING!!!
But nooo, Mr. Moon is far too noble to do anything like that. He knows that the polite request is just for mere plebians, it doesn’t apply to a wonderful member of the elite like himself.
Piss off. Not interested. You don’t want to play nice, you can go play with yourself.
w.
About 30 years ago, “Holocaust denier” was used to describe historian David Irving who denied the scale of the Nazi Holocaust of Jewish people. As such, Holocaust denier is a synonym for both racist and fascist. The term climate denier was invented by Mark Lynas with the intension of associating climate realism with racism and Fascism. The point is to polorise the climate issue into 2 sides. To force everyone to one side or the other: “climate consensus” and everyone else. The term denier comes from pop psychology, and refers to individuals. Denialism is a fabrication of the Left and refers to groups.
“… despite that, the global temperature only varied by ±0.1% over the 20th century.”
Is that Fahrenheit, Celsius or something else?
Thank you
Global temperature decreased by ~0.2 deg-C over 1880-1910, increased by ~0.4-0.5C over 1910-1940, decreased by ~0.1C over 1940-1970, and increased by ~0.7C over 1970-2000.
It revealed a somewhat cyclic pattern that cannot entirely be explained by changes in greenhouse gas concentrations (e.g., CO2).
Dajake August 10, 2020 at 6:38 am Edit
If you are looking at percentages, or if as in this case you are analyzing a heat engine, you must, have to, have no choice but to use Kelvin. None of the equations work in any other units.
w.
The denier label is a psychological warfare technique to get people to dismiss anything someone so labeled has to say without consideration. It is an attempt to shame people into cognitive dissonance so they won’t look at the empirical evidence supporting the skeptic’s positions. It’s being used successfully to dismiss scientific truth.
I think the alarmist side is in a frenzy because there is a good chance of big money on the way. The drought could end on November 3.
From Encyclopedia Britannica:
“In this second warming interval, average global temperatures increased by up to 10 °C (18 °F) in just a few decades.”
The above is from an article about the Younger Dryas. GHGs can’t control anything!
The atmosphere cannot warm itself, nor can it warm the surface. The Sun warms both. The surface and the atmosphere both radiate to space. CO2 does effect just how much energy leaves the atmosphere due to radiating to space, thus controlling the COOLING.
The more one learns about climate science, the more one realises that the checks and balances, interactions and feedbacks are highly complex at one level yet obvious and simple at another. This is partly why technical discussions on WUWT rarely come to a conclusion agreed by all, or even a clear majority. There are always uncertainties, unknowns, experiments that cannot be performed and evidence that cannot be demonstrated.
This is what makes these discussions fascinating and frustrating. It is often a challenge just to articulate adequately a technical proposal in a manner that others can grasp. This is where, you, Willis, have an advantage, you are good at communicating complex concepts.
The reality is that our climate is very complex and poorly understood. We know enough about bits of it to be
reasonably sure that some ideas are correct and others are wrong. As we learn more, we update and modify these views, but we admit that we just don’t know as much as we would like. I think I have just described how many alleged climate deniers who frequent this site behave.
The Real climate scientists, in contrast, know exactly how everything works. The science is settled. They model it in great detail. They claim that the models work very well. They have all the answers and ignore all the questions that they consider unimportant. Many of them resort to unscientific actions, such a data manipulation, cherry picking and misleading claims, usually aimed at manipulating the public while brazenly ignoring more informed critics. This causes the rest of us to wonder why objective scientists paid for by the public are trying to mislead us.
So, who do you believe? If you are a left wing activist, longing to save the planet, redistribute wealth and bring mankind under control, climate change is the ultimate gift. If you are one of the other lot, you really need to get your act together because you are losing the PR battle.
Cheers, Willis, for another great writeup.
The one saving grace of the present situation is that the transparently self-serving interests behind cancel culture. CAGW and “expert” coronavirus pandemic handling are all getting reality handed to them in “undeniable” ways.
“Over the last century, the average temperature of the planet-sized heat engine that we call the “climate” varied up and down from its century-long average by about one-tenth of one percent … and as a man who has been involved with a number of heat engines, I can say that that is shockingly stable”
————–
Temperatures are on an arbitrary scale. one tenth of one percent of an arbitrarily scaled number makes no sense.
Sorry, WR, but that’s simply not true. All of the calculations for heat engines have to be done in Kelvin, because the OTHER temperature scales are arbitrary. Kelvin is not arbitrary (other than the size of the units which is immaterial), because it starts at absolute zero.
Best regards,
w.
Sorry, but that is incorrect. Units in Kelvin are on an arbitrary scale too, nothing to do with it having absolute zero set at 0K. If instead the Kelvin scale was defined such at absolute zero is 0K but the triple point of water was 10,000K(instead of 273K), then your percentage change calculation would be much lower, yet physically it would be the same situation.
WR2, I encourage you to do the actual calculation using a variety of lengths for one kelvin. The percentage change is totally independent of the units. It depends solely on the zero point.
Example. Say in Kelvin the temperature goes from 100K to 110K. Obviously, a ten percent increase.
Now let’s measure it in NuKelvin, where one NuKelvin = 10 Kelvin.
In NuKelvin (NK), the same temperature measurement now goes from 10NK to 11NK … obviously, a ten percent increase in either Kelvin or NuKelvin.
Best regards,
w.
You’re right, my bad, the scale wouldn’t matter, but % variation of temperature relative to absolute zero is still a very odd way of talking about temperature. Small percentages are meaningless, it’s the variation in degrees, not % that matters.
Which degrees? Celsius? Fahrenheit? As you pointed out, those things are arbitrary. A 10 degree change in Celsius doesn’t mean the same as a 10 degree change in Fahrenheit.
WR2 August 11, 2020 at 8:39 am
It only seems odd because you haven’t dealt with the world of thermodynamics before. In thermo, like say when you are analyzing the performance of a heat engine (which might or might not be the climate), Kelvin is the only game in town.
Sorry, my friend, but I fear you are out of your depth here …
w.
Willis, your citing of your own article “The Steel Greenhouse” onlu confirms the notion that you don’t know what you’re talking about and in true Trumpian fashion, has “doubled down” on being objectively wrong on radiative thermodynamics and laws of physics you clearly don’t understand.
I called it at the time as garbage and it remains garbage and I guarantee you will get no bona fide physicist to think or say otherwise. Other commenters called it nonsense but you ignored them as well.
i can only conclude that you just simply don’t care whether you’re wrong or not, because you’ve got carte blanche to be the anti-expert of anti-experts and have a ready made audience of people who don’t care what reality actually behaves like just so long as Donald Trump remains President.
You’re flat-out wrong about COVID-19, completely wrong about hydroxychoroquine and have made mistaken prediction after mistaken prediction with no checks or balances, including a humdinger where you claimed that the pandemic in the US was over by May and the lockdown was useless and then states opened back up and lots of people got infected and died because the President, like you, hates expertise in all of its forms and doesn’t sweat the learning required because that’s too much hard work. Oh and masks make you look bad.
Echochambers are wonderful things. You’ve got your megaphone and no-one is going to stop you.
John, that was astounding. You went through all of that whole long list of places where you claim I was wrong, wrong, wrong without once:
• QUOTING MY EXACT WORDS as requested, or
• Pointing out one single scientific fact that you say I got wrong, or
• Providing the slightest scrap of evidence to support your spittle-flecked rant.
You lose.
w.
PS—Oh, and it seems that the President is living rent-free in your head … you even bring him repeatedly into scientific discussions which have zero to do with the President. In your place I’d evict him …
Please Willis, every second article is about Trump’s beliefs and your unwavering fascination with him. Why else would there even be a discussion about the merits of hydroxychloroquine unless President “Anti-Expert” had been promoting it?
I pointed out at the time that in “Steel Greenhouse” blog post you had got everything wrong about radiative physics and others agreed. Did you check your scientific claims? Erm, no.
You also claimed that the pandemic was over in the US and the lockdown a failure. And then it accelerated as States opened up too soon and lots more people got infected and died. Mea culpa? Nope.
The only reason that you bring up these anti-scientific discussions at all, is because you live in a delusion that Donald J. Trump knows what he’s talking about on any subject, when it’s plain to everyone else that he doesn’t. The only reason you attack Dr Anthony Fauci, who has forgotten more epidemiology than you or I will ever know, is because you use Trump as a scientific authority on anything.
Just today we have this gem from President Dumbass: “In 1917…the great pandemic certainly was a terrible thing where they lost anywhere from 50 to 150 million people. Probably ended the second world war. All the soldiers were sick.”
Just remember that its Joe Biden who is supposedly the one with dementia.
Sorry, but you are totally confused and have latched on to Willis for your latest bout of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Among the laughably lame repetitions of CAGW orthodoxy:
a) You assume Willis is denying that warming is occurring.
In reality, CAGW is a chain of beliefs of which only the first 1 or 2 are legitimate – which Willis notes above. 1) More fossil fuels = more CO2 2) more CO2 = more heat retention 3) more CO2 heat retention = higher temperatures via positive feedback 4) higher temperatures are bad – more people die, disease, crop failure, land flooding, more storms etc etc
3) and 4) (and onwards) are totally unproven and don’t even have empirical evidence.
b) You assume Willis is a Trump fan. He may or may not be, but he has never injected politics into his posts – unlike your rant (which Willis correctly described as spit-filled).
c) You almost certainly haven’t read this far, but if you do – Willis was talking about HCG long before Trump was. And as a potential preventative measure – not a magic bullet.
Anyway, welcome to WuWT; no doubt you will want to return to your cancel culture, limousine liberal internet ghetto now.
John A — the new troll in town? TDS much?
Please Willis, every second article is about Trump’s beliefs and your unwavering fascination with him.
As Willis often requests: quote him. Please show us one quote from Willis where he shows an “unwavering fascination with him”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Willis talk about Trump pro or con. His posts are mostly apolitical, contrary to what your TDS-addled brain thinks.
I can’t remember, even one time where Willis has even mentioned Trump.
As to whether or not Willis has positions that happen to be the same as Trump’s, I haven’t investigated.
Regardless, agreeing with someone is not evidence of “unwavering fascination”.
I would say that the person who has an “unwavering fascination” towards Trump would be JohnA.
John A,
Any of us can point out that the only reason to believe the malarkey spewed by warmistas, green energy advocates, or any stripe of doomsday climate catastrophists, is because they are slavishly devoted to the Democratic party, or whatever the left wing party might happen to be in another country.
We can all say that we have been down this road so many times there is no need to rehash it, the case is proven beyond all doubt long before now.
But no such pronouncement carries much weight in a discussion, because it is another way of saying, in the case of the former, that the only reason for anyone to think anything in particular, is because of political considerations, and in the case of the latter, that the discussion is closed and settled long since.
It is peculiar that warmistas can simultaneously declare a subject closed and settled, and also demand perpetual funding for a never ending plethora of redundant “studies”.
Peculiar as well, that they can recall everything anyone has ever said when convenient for their argument du jour, but at other times demand that every argument and every assertion ever made, be backed up with links and documentation, even if it is the ten thousandth time the same subject has been discussed.
There are occasion discussions on the subject of politics here, and there will be more of them than usual as we get closer to the election.
I look forward to your participation in those discussions when everyone is focused on politics and personalities. But right here and right now, yours is yet another transparent effort to deflect, obfuscate, change the subject, and otherwise engage in the same tired playbook as we have all grown very weary of.
Back in 1956 Gilbert N. Plass discovered that atmospheric CO2’s 15 micron radiation absorption wavelength exists in a hole in the H20 absorption wavelength, causing him to go off on a tangent and conclude that the average surface temperature of the earth increases 3.6° C if the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is doubled, coining the term “climate change”.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2153-3490.1956.tb01206.x
The term “global warming” was coined in 1975 by Wally Broecker.
https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu//files/2009/10/broeckerglobalwarming75.pdf
After the global environmental leftists at the U.N. took over the field, they founded the Intergovernmental Panel on CLIMATE CHANGE in 1988 in league with their fifth column in the U.S. headed by Al Gore. Realizing by then that “trapping” IR in the sky doesn’t do anything for the temperature back at the surface, they began pushing the CO2 back radiation hoax, that CO2 doesn’t trap IR but reemits it back to the surface where it heats things up.
This is where the greatest hoax in modern science got started. It’s still going strong despite being totally based on fake physics because 15 microns has a Planck temperature of -80C, colder than dry ice, which isn’t even heat. Hence CO2 can’t absorb or emit heat. Only the Sun heats the Earth’s surface. All the real heat caused by solar radiation (-50C to +50C) is cooled by natural processes of convection-evaporation and radiation. The U.N. IPCC picked the wrong getaway driver. This hoax’s days are numbered, despite their machine’s colossal political momentum wielding it as their ultimate leftist tool to end capitalism.
http://www.historyscoper.com/thebiglieaboutco2.html
An associated hoax is the claim that without atmospheric CO2 supplying 33C of temperature the Sun alone couldn’t keep the Earth from freezing. This can’t be true since CO2 can’t melt an ice cube, and indeed the real reason there is a 33C increase in surface temperature over an atmosphere-less Moon was derived long ago by Maxwell and Feynman, not by using radiation physics, but by using statistical mechanics, and is solely a consequence of gravity, atmospheric mass, pressure, density, and heat capacities, and not dependent on “trapped IR radiation” in atmospheric CO2. Each day the excess surface heat is either radiated or convects toward space, in the latter case pulling cooler air down to take its place until it dissipates by converting to work to expand against decreasing pressure. The permanent lapse rate just moves extra solar heat along a conveyor belt to space.
https://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2015/07/physicist-richard-feynman-proved.html
The CO2 climate issue is really that simple. Weather is what’s so complex nobody can predict it.
Unless it’s absolute zero, everything has heat.
Just because something is cold by our standards, doesn’t change that.
Again, I fear your lack of familiarity with the subject is betraying you.
All heat is energy.
All energy is NOT heat.
Here’s a passable definition:
So: unless it is at absolute zero, everything contains THERMAL ENERGY, but not heat. Heat is a spontaneous flow of energy from hot to cold.
Best regards,
w.
”So: unless it is at absolute zero, everything contains THERMAL ENERGY, but not heat. Heat is a spontaneous flow of energy from hot to cold.”
Willis, if everything contains thermal energy, but not heat, then I ask how can heat be a spontaneous flow of energy from hot to cold FROM everything since everything contains thermal energy, but not heat?
Trick, perhaps an analogy will help. Let’s replace “energy” with “water”.
Now, consider a lake. A lake contains water. Is it a stream? No. Does it contain streams?
No. Just as with heat, which is a spontaneous flow of energy from hot to cold, a stream is a spontaneous flow of water from high to low.
Just as a stream is a FORM of water, heat is a FORM of energy. It’s energy which is spontaneously flowing from hot to cold.
And just as a lake contains water but does not contain streams, a physical body contains energy but does not contain heat.
I hope that clarifies it.
w.
Willis’ lake contains water. Willis’ stream contains water. Lake and stream share a boundary. Water can flow between them without water suddenly being called a different name only for an instant at lake/stream boundary. This is the case in thermodynamics also.
Trick August 11, 2020 at 5:10 pm
Seriously? I make an honest attempt to alleviate your ignorance about heat and that’s your answer?
You just got your last explanation from me. Your name is very appropriate. I was tricked. I foolishly thought you wanted to learn something.
Pass.
w.
Seriously. Willis, I always do want to learn something but where any def. of heat is different than Clausius’ undeniable truth gold standard, there is no increase in amount learned on the topic of heat. I thought you would better answer my question and learn something about the nature of heat in commenting to help MarkW and TL Winslow advance learning on the topic. Appears so far my thought was misplaced.
Let me start with your first question:
The fact that you ask this clearly demonstrates that you don’t have a clue about what heat is. So I tried to explain it to you. In response, you said:
Trick August 11, 2020 at 5:10 pm
So far, so good.
I have no clue what this means. Streams are a FORM of water. Heat is a FORM of energy, just like potential energy and kinetic energy are different FORMS of energy.
You asked, is there heat in the block? NO. There is thermal energy in the block. If that energy radiates out into the universe it’s called radiant energy.
And if a cooler block is put next to the first block, there will be a SPONTANEOUS flow of energy from warm to cold. We call this particular FORM of flowing energy “heat”.
Trick August 11, 2020 at 7:20 pm
You have clearly demonstrated that you really, truly don’t understand what heat is … and now you want to lecture us on some “gold standard”???
I love it when someone refers to some mythical “gold standard” but doesn’t have the common decency to LINK TO WHATEVER IT IS THEY ARE BABBLING ABOUT.
If you want to learn something as you claim, then why are you lecturing us and telling us you already know THE TRUTH about heat? Break out your “gold standard” and we’ll talk about it.
w.
”Streams are a FORM of water.”
Liquid water in a gravity field takes on any form Willis, a river, a lake, a beer bottle. This is irrelevant.
”but doesn’t have the common decency to LINK TO WHATEVER IT IS THEY ARE BABBLING ABOUT.”
To talk about it, I see Willis throws down the caps lock and I notice did not have the common decency to link to his 11:17am heat def. either. Clausius ought to be familiar name to research for anyone commenting on the topic of heat such as Willis. So, I entered into google search string: Clausius definition heat
The first hit has a link to Clausius searchable book, which I searched, string: heat is
On page 18, I found Clausius writing for the motion of the particles in a body: “heat is a measure of their vis viva”. I quickly found vis viva means kinetic energy, in this case a measure of the body’s constituent particles total kinetic energy, a basic category of energy, the other basic category being potential energy. That research took less than 2 minutes, but I knew what I was doing. Took me longer to write.
For your cooler solid block put next to your first solid block “there will be a SPONTANEOUS flow of energy from warm to cold” is more physically accurate written: there will be a SPONTANEOUS gross exchange of energy, net from warm to cold as solid block constituents remain in place exchanging gross KE both ways until steady state. That “both ways” for gross KE is the key concept to grasp out of this discussion.
Neither block contains heat (per your 11:17am), both contain thermal energy, so my question becomes why do “We call this particular FORM of flowing energy “heat”.”? What increased physical understanding clarity does that add? Once you accept & grasp Clausius’ heat def. is more clear physically than your unattributed def. at 11:17am you can think/comment way more clearly and accurately about atm. thermodynamics. Or not, commenters have free choices.
All this expansion boils down (ex Clausius def.) to my 5:10pm earlier comment where water is used for energy as did Willis.
I see that the Trick troll has returned with his thermodynamics confusion of heat. His fools gold standard is nonsense.
1) Trick correctly (or used to) understand that energy can neither be created or destroyed–but it can be changed into other forms.
2) Trick seems to understand that heat is a boundary phenomenon. That is, heat only appears at the boundary of a system–a system doesn’t contain heat. That means that heat added to system can do two things–either increase the internal energy of the system or leave the system by some other energy route, such as work or chemical potential, or both.
3) Because a system doesn’t contain heat (according to Trick), there is no way to extract heat from a system. (Notice Trick forgot about item 1).
If we heat a steel bar in a blacksmith’s fire until it is red hot and place it on an anvil, Trick believes the following:
1) because the bar contains no heat, you can pick it up and not get burned;
2) because the bar contains no heat, it doesn’t glow red.
3) because the bar contains no heat, there is no convective air flows around the bar.
4) and because the bar contains no heat, it is impossible for the bar to cool down.
You should stop feeding the Trick troll. His knowledge of thermodynamics is mostly nonsense and very Zoe Phin-like.
Jim
I give up, Trick. I’ll just leave you with some definitions, each from a separate and distinct website.
Are you starting to see a pattern here? Heat is a particular form of energy, distinct from thermal energy, kinetic energy, or potential energy. It is the form of energy that flows spontaneously between two systems. Period.
Don’t bother responding, I’m not interested in your bizarre fantasies about how the world works …
w.
”Are you starting to see a pattern here?”
No. I notice that every one of those definitions of heat is different. Every. One. When a commenter uses the term “heat” which def. on your list, exactly, am I supposed to go to? How do I know that is the one the author meant if I don’t ask the comment author?
That ought to raise your suspicions & look for a better defn. source from a grandmaster. Anyone can call MY source Clausius def. of the heat term bizarre fantasy if they must, however that def. is the one I will use when someone invokes the term “heat”. It’s a good way to test if any author knows/understands thermodynamics well enough to use the term consistent with Clausius defn.
Jim correctly writes: ”a system doesn’t contain heat.” which agrees with Willis (“everything contains energy, but not heat”) then Jim continues: “heat added to system can do two things” – I ask Jim where was the heat added from if “a system doesn’t contain heat”?
Jim then erroneously writes what Trick believes, I’ll use Willis’ written words for the other items to correct Jim, here energy is meant thermodynamic internal energy:
If we increase the temperature of a steel bar in a blacksmith’s fire until it is red hot and place it on an anvil, Willis 11:17am actual writing correctly implies the following:
1) because the bar contains enough energy but no heat, you can pick it up and get burned;
2) because the bar contains enough energy but no heat, it glows red.
3) because the bar contains enough energy but no heat, there is convective air flow around the bar.
4) and because the bar contains energy but no heat, it is possible for the bar to cool down to the room temperature surroundings after removal from the fire.
I like this explanation from Oxford professor Peter Atkins book “Four Laws That Drive the Universe”. The whole (short) book is highly recommended, especially for those who have not formally studied thermodynamics.
Very good find Ed Bo, Atkins is the closest to Clausius’ heat defn. I’ve seen in a while. Still, he is a bit conflicted in writing heat is not an entity then writing this heat nonentity can transfer. Thermal energy transfers by virtue of a temperature difference is an improvement even on Atkins but still not quite up to the gold standard.
The measure of total thermodynamic internal (thermal) constituent KE reduces in a body, stays the same, or increases in a thermodynamic process. No entity transfers.
Some guy named Joule wrote about a few different kinds of “heat”.
He defined the terms “latent heat” and “sensible heat”:
“In an 1847 lecture titled “On Matter, Living Force, and Heat”, James Prescott Joule characterised various terms that are closely related to thermal energy and heat. He identified the terms latent heat and sensible heat as forms of heat each affecting distinct physical phenomena, namely the potential and kinetic energy of particles, respectively. He described latent energy as the energy of interaction in a given configuration of particles, i.e. a form of potential energy, and the sensible heat as an energy affecting temperature measured by the thermometer due to the thermal energy, which he called the living force.”
https://archive.org/details/scientificpapers01joul/page/n1/mode/2up
When I cover my glasshouse with a fifty% shade cloth (which is basically 50% solid and 50% space, 6 inches above the glass) on a cold night, the temperature inside remains slightly higher. The shade cloth must be slowing radiation from the outer surface of the glass by about 50% or in DIRECT PROPORTION to it’s solid part. (assuming no air movement) There must be some back radiation from the solid part of the shade cloth. All good. But shade cloth is a solid. The atmosphere is not a solid, it’s a gas. If you warm a gas it expands until it reaches the equilibrium (in this case I mean the distance between molecules which must always be governed by temperature and gravity) that it had before it was heated. The molecules of gas are now further apart and, all thing being equal, remain so. If I imagine that my shade cloth can expand just as a gas does, I cannot see how it could slow heat loss. If I imagine the atmospheric CO2 as a gaseous shade cloth, any increased energy from the Earth’s surface (or anywhere) would just make ”bigger holes” in it and even though back radiation would increase, no warming of the surface or the atmosphere would occur. Obviously I’m not a scientist! So what am I missing?
“on a cold night, the temperature inside remains slightly higher.”
Higher compared to what else? A different glasshouse nearby?
Compared to not putting on the cloth.
”Higher compared to what else? A different glasshouse nearby?”
I forgot to mention it has internal heating. Without that the temp would be the same as outside, shade cloth or not.
You would get an even larger effect if instead of shadecloth, you stretched a sheet of clear (or black) poly several inches above the glass.
In effect you are creating double paned glass.
On cold nights, the wind is typically light or absent, and so even 50% shade cloth traps a layer of air in between the two surfaces, albeit less effectively than would be the case without the holes in the shade cloth (like if you used the stuff we call ‘ground cover”, which is more or less 100% shade cloth).
I am no longer in the business, but back in the 1980s and 1990s, I built and operated a large commercial plant nursery in West Central Florida.
I was also studying at the time at a nearby university.
I spent thousands of nights outside…many of them all-nighters.
During this time, I had dozens of thermometers in all sorts of locations, and could also note the survival of various tropical plants under a huge variety of conditions…outside in the open on grassy ground, under large oak trees, sitting on a concrete pad but otherwise unprotected, inside shadehouses, glass houses, shadehouses with a layer of poly in place to make it a greenhouse of sorts, radiational cooling events, cold weather with high wind, all day freezes lasting 72 hours of more, once or twice with cold rain accompanying…
I mostly used geothermal heating, but some crops and some situations demanded gas heaters.
And I can recall very vividly many nights when it was very cold, with clear sky and no wind, and the temp was dropping fast to the dew point, or even slightly below, and even some times when the temp had bottomed out.
And on a bunch of occasions, a streak of jet stream cirrus moved in from the SW, many miles up, just a thin layer of ice crystal clouds that were for sure far colder than the surface of the Earth ever gets in Florida.
And when this happened, something very interesting always occurred: The temperature would go up, suddenly, in a matter of minutes, as much as 5-8 degrees F.
There were times when this wispy streak of clouds saved entire strawberry and citrus crops from frosts of freezes, over several entire counties.
Conclude what you will about back radiation from these observations.
Anyone can wait for this to happen and go observe and measure the effect for themselves.
I can tell you, all of this occurred long before these discussions about this subject in the context of global warming theory was a thing.
“I forgot to mention it has internal heating. Without that the temp would be the same as outside, shade cloth or not.”
Not exactly.
On a cold night, the small amount of heat from the ground inside the shade house or greenhouse will keep the temp warmer than it is outside, if only by a small amount.
If the building is on a concrete pad, it will be substantially warmer inside than outside.
The enclosure blocks advection/convection, and so keeps the enclosed space from cooling as much as it does outside.
I know this because much of our growing areas were inside of shadehouses that we covered in polyethylene sheeting from October to April, and we grew some plants that did not need to be protected from all cold, just the worst of it…stuff like gardenias, ficus benjamina (we grew tens of thousands of braided ficus trees) and other stuff that is not particularly cold sensitive, and so it was usually unheated. Even just shadecloth with no poly is enough to prevent frost from being able to form. Under a live oak, the temp on any cold night with no wind is many degrees above the temp a few feet outside the canopy of the tree. Frost will not form under the canopy of a leafy tree.
The range of microclimates that occur in even a few acres is amazing. Any building, and small concrete pad, any tree…all alter the amount of cooling that occurs due to radiation, enough to keep certain plants alive, when those same plants a few feet away are dead by morning.
OT, but…
And then there is the effect of spraying water on plants during a freeze. As long as the water stays on until the morning when the ice is melted, plants that would be dead at 32° with dry air, have no damage. Strawberry farmers and (not as much any more, but historically) citrus farmers use this to great effect every winter in Florida…even more so during the decades when freezes are much more common…which last occurred in Florida from the mid 1970s to the early 1990s.
Florida has had a pattern of several decades of relatively benign growing conditions and little in the way of killing frosts or freezes, interspersed with decades in which farmers were wiped out across most and sometimes all of the peninsula…going all the way back to at least the civil war period.
Mike…is your operation in Florida?
Strawberry fields being protected from cold by water:
And also by simply laying a layer of spun polyethylene on top of them…which captures the heat from the ground for long enough to prevent freeze and frost damage:
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Note this method only works when the conditions are marginal.
If it gets cold enough, it will not work.
Using water protects down to very low temps, but can fail if wind is present, or the water is interrupted for any reason, such as power failure, frozen valves or pipes, mechanical failure, etc.
It’s most likely that any loss in heat from your greenhouse is due to reduced air motion next to the greenhouse.
Mark,
A much more succinct and concise way to say what I took far longer to state!
Thanks for your comments Nicholas. I concur with everything you say about frost, microclimates etc. In my haste to write something about radiation I forgot all about convection!!
I run a small nursery in Sothern Australia.
it has nothing to do with GHE
Mike, s Mosher said, that’s nothing to do with the “greenhouse effect”. Read my post “The R. W. Wood Experiment” for more details.’
w.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/06/the-r-w-wood-experiment/
I was going to mention the R.W. Woods experiments, but decided to stick to my personal experience.
Everyone should apprise themselves of this and other such experimental data…it would save a lot of time in certain conversations.
Leftists around the world are implementIng Post-Modernism theology where the precepts of Western Civilization (empiricism, scientific method, reason, logic, moral and ethical absolutes, inalienable natural individual rights, individualism, nuclear family, free enterprise, etc.) are being destroyed and replaced with their polar opposites (feelings, anti-science, illogic, irrationality, moral and ethical relativism, single-parent household, tribalism, “My Truth”, revisionist history, cancel culture, “Fake News”, Marxism/Socialism, Nihilism, etc.).
We’re quickly losing our humanity as tyrannical Leftist governments steal our individual rights of free speech, free thought, free enterprise, and brainwash their citizens to unquestionably believe whatever The State wants them to believe, regardless of how irrational, illogical, unscientific, immoral, unethical, unfounded and inhumane those beliefs may be.. Individuals are no longer allowed to question the government propaganda and must simply obey.. Oh, goody.. that’s worked so well in the past.
The only solution to this existential Leftist threat is for a second Renaissance to occur where Leftism is forever renounced and replaced with Western Civilization precepts and government power is severely restricted to perform just a few simple tasks and all education is run by the private sector.
Leaving aside the use of the term “denier”, which Willis has comprehensively exposed as a version of an ad hominem attack, the terms “climate denier” and “climate change denier” are also internally incoherent. How does one deny the reality of climate! How does one deny the reality of climate change! Contrary to what the terms’ users believe themselves to be saying, climate or climate change denial is, in reality, achieved only by themselves.
They insist that the world’s climate, if it were left to its own devices, would have stabilized in the mid 19th century and remained in that Goldilocks state for all eternity. They deny the fact that our atmosphere and climate are in a constant state of change—as they have been for about 4.5 billion years—and explain such minor change as Willis refers to as the result of human meddling. To bring global temperature and climate back into line with the preferred, anthropogenic Goldilocks state, these people propose a further phase of meddling and suggest that atmospheric CO2 should be drained from the atmosphere. The consequences, including the extinction of all life that depends on atmospheric CO2, are, of course, denied; Goldilocks’s porridge must be just right, in her opinion.