Sunday usually has about half the traffic of a weekday, but yesterday we had the most hits ever – over 6200. There were a lot of hits on Labor Day as well, so our audience may be changing a little. The hit count probably isn’t apples and apples to hits earlier in the year, since we’re getting a lot more robot hits (as distinct from spam hits).
I realize that I’ve been a bit sarcastic lately – probably prompted by my reaction to the ES&T article. On balance, I’ve put up with a lot of undeserved jibes from climate scientists, who feel free to make a variety of disparaging personal remarks about me, but aren’t prepared for any blowback. It seems to be OK for climate scientists to say that I’ve done "incredibly stupid" things [Trenberth] or "dishonest" [Mann] or "threatening" [Crowley], but not OK for me to say "Esper ***t" or "mini-***". Anyway, I do not view the sarcasm as a virtue and I’ll probably tone it down. The goofiness of the articles by the multiproxy guys speaks loudly enough that I don’t need to indulge in little verbal jibes. I was having a little fun with the play on words, but I guess that’s not allowed when you’re talking about priests.
Update: I find this blog changes the dynamic quite a bit when I get slagged by someone like Thacker. Previously, when these guys took shots at me – no matter how far below the belt- there wasn’t that much I could do about it. I’d get mad – but what was I going to do? The massive disinformation from the Mannians (Mann-iacs?; Mann-ies?) was impossible to overcome. Now I can chip away at the disinformation in my own way.
I’m going to post some more on the Thacker story. I don’t know what the circulation of Environmental Science and Technology is or what the audience for Thacker’s article was, but I’m getting increasingly confident that this little (or not so little) blog can create a little blowback and ensure that these guys can’t just take swings for free. You’ll have noticed that Thacker’s article was long on rhetoric about supposed errors and mistakes, but did not actually report any.
One thing that I agree with Mahlmann is that the story is lampoonable. If that’s the way they want to go, then maybe it’s time for the Lumberjacks.
Update – Sep. 13: I’ve gone back and edited out some recent sarcasm.
Climate Audit 
245 Comments
You need to deconvolute for TCO factor. Oh…stats maestro…
I thought the names were humorous, though sarcastic, and feared your scientific message might get ignored. As someone who follows the AGW and hockey stick debate as an outsider, I generally prefer just the straight story, with as much guidance and explanation as you have time for. But I understand where the sarcasm is coming from, and wish all involved would be more forthcoming, and less touchy, frankly.
OTOH, if people would confine the names they call me to something as benign as “Eaton the Magnificent”, I’d never give a second thought…I could at least repeat that to my children.
As you say, the is pretty harmless. It’s hard to resist mini- (and obviously too hard for me to resist although I recognized that I was having fun – usually not a good idea).
Pshaw. Leave the sarcasam. You do penty of good number fiddling work and it’s all serious (If over my head). The sarcasam is light hearted, and as you say, the priest don’t like their religion challenged and get plenty vehement when it is.
I fully expext a new Climate Inqusition. Believe in it, or be tortured till you believe in it.
P.S. In relation to the whole thing I found this humourus
In the upper right hand corner: “Computer Models subject to larger error Do not use for planning purposes”
Well that’s Kyoto out then.
Steve:
I enjoyed you sarcasam, but wondered if it detracted from your important messages, the hockey stick is a hoax, the computer models that built it, and the data used must be audited. Please keep us posted on Rep Barton’s progress on a Congressional audit.
Most of the number fiddling is over my head and most of my blog readers. Could you give a non-scientist summary of your findings once a month for more general consumption. We need the general population to know how they are being lead down a rabbit hole with no exit. Keep up the good work.
Russ
Re #4. Honestly!
Don’t you give a seconds thought how cheaply insulting it is to those like me (interested in climate, not a liar, not a deciever, basically honest and absolutely not religious in my thoughts or nuttily trying to shut up others by force) to be called both ‘priests’ and part of a da*n inquisition bent on ‘torture’? Do you want to be shown respect or not?
On the role of humor, a wise man, Saul Alinsky said: “through humor much is accepted that would have been rejected if presented seriously”
Perhaps that should define the role of humor in dealing with climate scientists. If their math is really so bad, then they are priests more than scientists.
As a laymen, I can’t tell if these math problems are superficial or not. The way these scientists are presenting their theory, we can’t tell if it’s a house of cards, or one built with lots of redundancy.
It really ought to be up to them to show us how well they’ve built their theory, since they haven’t, perhaps someone will do it for them. Just seeing the weakness in places isn’t quite convincing as that can be a misdirection.
RE:6
Respect is earned not granted.
I note that you have a lot of outrage for the minor derision here, but no outrage for the examples that Steve has shown here for the derision given to him by your “colleagues”
We have seen the derision of those of us here who do not accept the Church of AGW position 100% even on these boards, I won’t mention other paces where it’s even worse. You want to be treated with respect, treat others with respect.
Goose/Gander, Pot/kettle. All that.
Doug L, do you remember Alinsky’s famous sit-in at the washrooms of O’Hare Airport. That one amused me.
Re #6: Peter, no one called you a priest.
A lot of priests in Canada have been very good hockey players: there used to be a very good team of hockey-playing priests (some of who could probably have made the NHL), that played charity exhibition matches. They called themselves the “Flying Fathers”. I guess some people have better sense of humor than others.
I still would like to name the Hockey Team. We’ve talked about Heat and Flames, but right now I’m leaning to Lumberjacks, although the Monty Python image may be a little obscure for a general audience. There are a few posts on this. With that image in mind, it’s pretty funny to see how often, in their canonical pictures, members of the Hockey Team are holding a large cylindrical stump.
Pete, please don’t be insulted. We like you. Stay and play.
“Flaming Lumberjacks”? Hmm, that kind of goes in directions I don’t mean it to…
Do you have a link to the pictures?
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=23 with link to
http://www.climate2003.com/blog/hockey_team.htm
Re #10. Steve, you can’t be all bad if you rate Monty Python.
I liked Beyond the Fringe from that period as well. Who would have ever thought that I’d be getting along so well with Dano on this board as well? I’m going to be posting up something soon that even throws a compliment Hunter’s way.
I like the Monty Python analogy. The Lumberjack song is a classic : “I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK, I work all night and I sleep all day, I like wearing women’s clothing and hanging round in bars etc etc”. Perhaps the parrot sketch would be more appropriate with the pet owner selling the dupe a dead parrot and pretending it was alive. As far as the sarcasm goes, it does detract from the message which on the whole comes across clearly. I am not a mathematician but find the geology fascinating.
Steve.
Does your Blog software have a poll capability. You could do a Sarcasam yes/No and then 5 or 6 potential names for the hockery team in another.
Steve-
Regarding your update to this post, I will say that the first thing that made me suspect something was amiss in parts of climate science was how some conspicuous members of that community took to answering critics with denunciations that were short on detail about where the critics were incorrect. If someone like you brings up something, by all means, in the words of Judge/boxer/referee/US Marine Mills Lane, “Let’s get it on!”, but like scientists, not politicians or professional wrestlers.
Hmm, the parrot sketch… “this hockey stick is no more. It has ceased to be…”
re #16 and #18: consult http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=110. Knut Nutsen reproached me for mixing up the Cleese and Palin characters in the Dead Parrot sketch. Merely based on appearance, I rather like Bradley for the Palin character.
The Black Knight sketch has also been mentioned in connection with this controversy – with opposing candidates for who is the hackee and who is the hacker. One correspondent suggested to me by email that the our evisceration of MBH was now almost cruel and that the spluttering of MBH reminded him of the Black Knight. On the other hand, Willliam Connolley, a realclimate Mannian, posted the comparison on his blog with the roles reversed. None of his correspondents objected to the sarcasm. I guess it’s somewhat in the eyes of the beholder.
I’ll ask John A about the poll. It sounds like too much fun to be a good idea.
It is an EX-hockeystick
Ahhh Steve You might be good with the computers doing figures, guzzintas and stuff like that. But I can use the Replace function in Word and get a laurgh out of it.
he he
http://www.sidv.org/Steve_McIntyre.htm
Re:# 9
Steve,
I do not remember Alinsky’s “sit-in” at O’Hare which never happened, I was eight years old. I googled his name to find that quote because I remembered his connection with humor and that he was apparently quite a success against difficult circumstances.
The guy must have been a real character. Oakland, I think, passed a law to prohibit him from entering the city, but they had to relent.
Re: Monty Python stuff,
I actually tried to use the “Argument Clinic” as a parody for what I see at Google Groups alt.global.warming. They came up with a humorous response:
http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.global-warming/browse_frm/thread/46f5ae3a3e51ecd4/348d40f86f2a46a5?q=argument+clinic&rnum=1&hl=en#348d40f86f2a46a5
#Re 21: in more detail, the Alinsky sit-in at O’Hare would have been in about 1967 – 1969 during the Viet Nam war. Alinsky noticed that travellers coming off planes went immediately to the washrooms. So he organized hundreds of people to sit in the toilets and line up at the urinals, simply to annoy the travelling businessmen. Whether it occurred or didn’t occur, I can’t say. But I remember it as a contemporary story, not as an after-the-fact story. I was in university; it was an active political time and Alinsky was in the news.
Steve, humor is a useful tool. But keep the humor oriented around their actions and responses to you. No matter the temptation do not allow yourself to use the cheap personal smears that their partisans and the OCD crowd like Lambertengage in. The key is to avoid descending down to their level. Satisfying as it is, a huge key to your success is staying on point about the science.
If we ever get to the Barton Committee when Mann, Bradley and Hughes plead the 5th, I want to at least sell some “Kyoto Flames” hockey shirts (emblem: Broken Hockey Stick in Flames) with names of “Mann”, “Bradley” or “Hughes” on the back. Alternatively a shirt with “I went to Kyoto and all they had was this lousy broken Hockey Stick”.
I’ll make a million, easy.
Steve,
You say “I realize that I’ve been a bit sarcastic lately” and “I was having a little fun with the play on words, but I guess that’s not allowed when you’re talking about priests”.
As the signal to noise ratio of this site appears to be assymptoting to zero, I’m actually getting pretty sick of it. Steve, the climate scientists that I know really want to find out how the world works. Many non-scientists that I know are worried about the prospect of future climate change, whether we have at least caused part of it and whether we can do anything to reduce the problem. I and many others are tired of your continuing and vicious attacks on other people’s work — while, at the same time, you provide no constructive answers to the real questions that are being asked. Even if you managed to demolish the bulk of “IPCC science” what would you replace it with? While we know that we have forced the levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases way outside the envelope of the past hundreds of thousands of years (are you going to question THAT next?) how will we estimate what that effect is now, and what that effect will be in the future? Are we supposed to just say “we don’t know anything any more, but let’s just assume everything will be all right”?
Your tactics appear more and more like those that were reportedly used by the tobacco industry to “disprove” the harmful attacks of smoking — i.e. take reasonably numerate people and get them to just pick holes in the science.
A bit more collaboration and a bit less testosterone (counting “hits” only improves the metaphor) would not go amiss — you should try it.
Oh…booshwa. If Steve finds a fault, it makes the real science better to have found it and corrected it. That’s what Feynman would say. But he was not some liberal wimp. I don’t give a damn if the climatologists want to save the world if their math is screwed up.
A. The majority of this site is Steve’s presentation of volumes of data. Making the signal to noise much higher than ). I assume you’ve missed the 6 or so threads he’s created today alone.
B. You hang out with many Climate scientists? I know of few other sites where the “climate scientists” actually converse with the regular folk.
C. Again another example of condemning Steve’s “vicious attacks”, yet when the hot air scientists attack him, that’s perfectly acceptable.
D. The work that is done here at statistics central is not to replace anything, but rather to bolster the majority of the climate record that showed two significant variances in the past 10 years that was accepted within the climate community. Then Mann comes in with the Bauer Tri-Flex Junior Wood Hockey Stick, and shows that all the previous science was wrong. Mcintyre looks to support the long accepted science by showing little mathematical backing to Mann’s work.
E. In the distant past CO2 levels were far higher then they are today, and no one knows what the “envelope” is.
F. No one is saying everything is all right (Reduction of any mission is a worthy cause in an of itself, there is no reason to stand on a soapbox with an “The end is Very F’ing Nigh” sign.). But one thing that is constantly ignored. Life spans are much longer than they have ever been, meaning things ARE getting better, on average.
G. Steve doesn’t need to pick holes, the holes are already there, he is just pointing them out. I assume you’re a Jesuit, and feel bad science is acceptable if it means we save the world (whatever that means).
H. The other side has no intention whatsoever to collaborate, maybe while your hanging out having some green tea with them you could convince them to stop with the Ad Hominem attacks and collaborate so we can get some decent results, rather than made up numbers.
10 years should read 1000 years
Drop the sarcasm wherever possible. It decreases your credibility.
Oops I almost forget to ask the question I always ask those that are so convinced about AGW.
Given that the global average change in the 20th century is 0.6C/1.0F, also given that the climate is never steady state (acceepting of course for Mann et al), it is always changing on any time scale. And this ~1 degree change is apperently un-acceptable
Two Questions?
A. What percentage of the ~1 degree change is anthropegenic?
B. What amount of change is acceptable. Keeping in mind that there must be SOME change positive or neggative.
This is too good an opportunity to pass up:
As it is, the noise is produced entirely by you.
Really? The climate scientists I know want to get rich and famous by spreading fear. They’re the same people. They’re on a mission from God to warn us of approaching Apocalypse.
Please spare us with this "holier than thou" attitude about climate scientists, as if they were somehow driven by a higher calling than anyone else.
And why is that? Is it because they’ve been fed a bad diet of apocalyptic warnings from simplistic and inadequate computer models, bad statistics, missing data and out-and-out lying from the sainted climate scientists? That’s what I want to know.
Those "vicious attacks" are requests for probity and transparency in the production of scientific results. What can Hunter possibly have against that, except that it interferes with Hunter’s cherished worldview of Apocalypse Nearly Now?
If you don’t think that checking results for robustness isn’t constructive, then perhaps you’d like to buy this lovely "Free Energy" device that I’ve just patented, which uses Pons and Fleischmann’s Cold Fusion method to deliver an endless supply of Zero-Point Energy directly through homeopathically charged quantum vibrations straight to your home via our team of specially trained psychics.
Only $9999.99 It’s a steal. Really.
You mean investing in nonsense is better than nothing?
No we don’t. Even the IPCC TAR shows CO2 levels many times today’s figures in the geological past.
And if Steve would like to investigate the suspiciously Hockey Stick-like Siple curve, I’m all for it. What about you? Prefer mirages to reality? That’s your prerogative.
….which is called the "Argument from Adverse Consequences" fallacy. If we don’t have hard sceintific evidence, we don’t know that a stated course of action will not even be harmful. If we don’t know whether we are sick or not, because the doctor turns out to be a quack selling his own brand of snake oil, should we still pay the quack on the off-chance that he could be right?
Or are some of us not that gullible?
And that, Peter Hearnden, really IS an ad hominem attack. No substance at all. I think its because Hunter doesn’t have any moral gumption to face up to the real problem in climate science. (Yes, Peter, that IS my opinion)
You should try some science, just occasionally. It spaces out those all-expenses paid trips nicely.
Re. 31: Thank you John A. Once again, you make my point exactly.
John H, in case you missed my aside in #15, I do have an upcoming post that will acknowledge a point you made earlier this year. Stay tuned.
You say:
First, a common remark after we criticized MBH was that we hadn’t commented on the other multiproxy studies, and, since they were presumanbly still OK, it really didn’t matter whether MBH was right or wrong. So I’m turning my attention to Moberg, Esper, Crowley, Jones, as people asked. Most of the seeming “viciousness” is not because of editorializing, but just putting the material in the light of day, where the shortcomings of the original material become apparent. But the shortcomings are the fault of the original authors.
Second, I think that the vast bulk of what I’ve posted is pretty objective. I agree that I lapse from time to time and the lapses attract attention. I resolve from time to time to be more serene, and then I get an onslaught of absurdities from Crowley in EOS or Thacker in ES&T with malicious and uninformed quotes and, yes, I’ll counterpunch.
Third, look at the viciousness of the attacks on Soon and Baliunas. I didn’t notice climate scientists get “tired” of those attacks. Or does it depend whose ox is getting gored?
Fourth, I’ve been working quite hard at upgrading my statistical skills, which were pretty good compared to the Hockey Team to start with. I want to understand the statistics of autocorrelated series and different forms of stochastic processes really well. It’s taking me a lot of time. I could learn math quickly when I was young and athletic, but I’m not young any more and it takes me a lot of time. Try wading through articles by Phillips or Vogelsang or Beran. Anything new that I could contribute would be more in the form of statistical methodology. I thought that the abstract that I sent in for the AGU meeting was pretty constructive along those lines. And yet over at davidappell.com, somebody was calling for me to be barred by AGU.
Steve (#33): The “viciousness of the attacks on Soon and Baliunas” pales into insignificance when compared with the viciousness of just one posting in this thread: #31 (#31 also contains blatant and unsupported untruths, but I won’t spend my time elaborating). So thank you too, Steve — it’s your site — and your site manager just digging that hole even deeper.
Why because there are non “untruths” so since you can’t argue the staments on their merits, or lack therof, you’ll simply make un-substantiated accusations.
There are opinions that could be argued, granted, mainly in polar response to the author he is commenting upon. But tha’t not what you said.
But unsubstantiated allegations are par for the course amongst the Church of AGW (and other curches as well)
Maybe we could find out if John A is a witch by seeing if he floats.
I don’t speak as Steve’s “site manager”. I speak as an individual who has heard too many false statements made by climate scientists to let your piece of self-serving doggerel go by without comment. Do you really think that only climate scientists “really want to find out how the world works”? Or strictly climate scientists who believe what you do? It seems to me more like a mystery cult than a branch of science, when only climate scientists who believe can investigate the methods used by climate scientists.
Yes, your time is much too precious to ever justify anything you say with reference to facts, which is why its much easier to descend to comparing Steve McIntyre’s work with that of tobacco scientists (a now standard ad hominem attack – can’t you even be original?) than get to grips with the fact that several major studies done by climate scientists are simply false. After all you get paid the same whether what you produce has any scientific validity or not. And speaking as an outsider, I suspect your work to be much less valid than you let on – but its only a suspicion.
I didn’t prove your point – you proved mine. You proved you’re incapable of rational argument based on the facts. You’re the noise and not the signal.
Now, now children, play nicely.
Re #37. I agree.
Re #31: I’ve snipped an inappropriately personal remark.
Re #34: One post by John A. here hardly compares with the campaign against Soon and Baliunas. That’s just a silly thing to say.
I’ve deleted the sarcastic honorifics. Sometimes it’s worthwhile leaving an editing trail, but since the objection was to the sarcastic honorific itself, the more sensible thing in this case seemed to me to delete the honorific. Esper did not communicate with me prior to this little bit of sarcasm and I have no expectation that he will now suddenly archive data in public locations like WDCP (rather than password-protected sites like SO&P).
Password protection of data in SOAP is a scandal.
Improving the methodology of climatologists is a good goal/action. You will get furhter though if you do some of it yourself and then people can imitate, rather than purely calling out errors and urging people to change methods. You can do that too, but some leadership by example would help also.
I probably shouldn’t, but you have the wrong skit altogether.
McIntyre: Trouble in the TAR.
Skeptic: Oh no – what kind of trouble?
McIntyre: One on’t R2 gone owt askew on PCA.
Skeptic: Pardon?
McIntyre: One on’t R2 gone owt askew on PCA.
Skeptic: I don’t understand what you’re saying.
McIntyre: One of the R2’s has gone out askew in the Principle Component Analysis.
Skeptic: Well what on earth does that mean?
McIntyre: I was just checking some of the numbers being published on historical climate recreations – I didn’t expect a kind of Kyoto Inquisition.
(Climatologists burst into the room)
Mann: NOBODY expects the Kyoto Inquisition!
Our chief weapon is …peer review and consensus …consensus and peer review… Our two weapons are peer review and consensus… and replication in published papers… Our three weapons are peer review, consensus, and replication in published papers… and an almost fanatical devotion to the IPCC….Our four… no…Amongst our weapons… Amongst our weaponry…
are such elements as peer review, consensus…I’ll come in again.
(Mann bundles the Climatologists outside)
McIntyre: I didn’t expect a kind of Kyoto Inquisition.
(JARRING CHORD)
Mann: NOBODY expects the Kyoto Inquisition! Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as: peer review, consensus, replication in published papers, an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, and colourful charts – Oh damn! (To Climatologist Ammann) I can’t say it – you’ll have to say it.
Ammann: What?
Mann: You’ll have to say the bit about ‘Our chief weapons are…’
Ammann: I couldn’t do that…
(Mann bundles the Climatologists outside again)
McIntyre: I didn’t expect a kind of Kyoto Inquisition.
(JARRING CHORD)
Ammann: Er… Nobody… um…
Mann: Expects…
Ammann: Expects… Nobody expects the… um… the Kyoto… um…
Mann: Inquisition.
Ammann: I know, I know! Nobody expects the Kyoto Inquisition. In fact, those who do have their results replicated…
Mann: Our chief weapons are…
Ammann: Our chief weapons are… um… er…
Mann: Consensus…
Ammann: Concensus and…
Mann: Okay, stop. Stop. Stop there – stop there. Stop. Phew! Ah!… our chief weapons are Concensus… blah blah blah. Climatologist, read the charges.
Bradley: You are hereby charged that you did on diverse dates commit heresy against Climate Science.
Steve (#38): I am glad that you agree with Paul Gosling’s posting #37 (“Now, now children, play nicely”) because it was precisely what I was asking you to do in my original posting on this thread (#25). May I now assume that you (and even possibly John A) will now “play nicely”?
As regards your claim that:
“One post by John A. here hardly compares with the campaign against Soon and Baliunas.”
— I have never seen any criticism of Soon and Baliunas that comes anywhere near to matching the gratuitous invective of posting #31 (which you have even been moved to clean up), now backed up by #36 — if you have seen any such criticism, then I’d be glad to read it.
Okay that’s much much funnier.
Although I think Steve should put this in as his signature line.
“Look, I took the liberty of examining that Hockeystick, and I discovered that the only reason that it had been sitting on its perch in the first place was that it had been nailed there.”
RE #34 My you have a thin skin. I can’t even identify what you deem so gratuitously invective.
Steve, you should never clean up as a result of discusion like this, it only encourages them, they take the moral high ground, even you think they are right because you changed something, blah blah blah.
You’ll note they don’t offer to have any of the comments edited out from their vitriol.
Re #42. A lot of work for a few cheap shots.
Re #42. A lot of work for a good belly laugh. Thank you, Jeff, you brightened my day.
Re #42. Peter,
It isn’t work when you are having fun. Relax, enjoy.
Jeff
I agree with those who want John Hunter to explicitly state what there was in post #31 wich is “gratuitous invective” and why he thinks so.
If your (John H’s) complaint was against the first response where John accused you of ALL the noise on site, you could make a case of sorts, though it depends on whether the meaning of ‘you’ was you personally or ‘you ‘ in the plural, meaning the Attack Pack (Hunter, Hearnden, Dan0, Mitch, etc.) None of you have provided any factual argument against Steve’s many fact-based posts.
John Hunter:
Here is a suggestion- though it may sound radical. How about having science that can be replicated, is open and robust and isn’t the result of cherry-picking and bias ?
bizarre, I know…
yours
per
Re #50, I guess there isn’t any, right?
Oh, hang on, you probably mean Steve, Wille Soon, John Daly, Richard Lindzen, the Heritage Fondation, S&C, dear old Myron…just as bizarre to my mind…
Peter
Re #49 ‘attack pack’. I love it, listen, I was beaten up by quakers!
Re #51.
Have you ever attacked Steve — yes.
Have you ever provided any factual argument against Steve’s many fact-based posts. — no.
QED
Re: #24
I think there is as much value in falsifying premises as there is in producing new hypotheses. The conclusion that something must be done is valid only so long as there is evidence that there is something to correct.
The evidence needs to speak for itself. Steve does not have to show the correct methodology for accurate multiproxy studies, just as refuting phrenology does not require presenting an alternate methodology for reading head bumps.
But we are far from “demolishing the bulk of ‘IPPC science'”. But are you telling me that if the bulk of IPCC science could be demolished that that does not consitute evidence that it was wrong all along? When people here talk about the “religion” of AGW, that’s what they’re talking about; a belief in AGW regardless of the evidence — when an experiment confirms some part of AGW, then it can be put on a pedestal, and when an experiment denies some part of AGW, then either the theory is modified so that AGW still exists (e.g. global warming -> client change) or the experiment was flawed.
All of the criticism of Soon and Baliunas was carried out in peer-reviewed journals by the very people who had invested the most intellectual and political capital in the revisionist history that the Mann Hockey Stick represented.
The moral equivalence between the extraordinary vilification of Soon and Baliunas, and my characterization of John Hunter in a comment on a weblog, could only be made by someone whose value system is not simply warped, but poisoned by his own ego.
I note that John Hunter made his attack on Steve McIntyre in response to Steve’s weblog receiving increasing traffic. While it’s still a drop in the ocean, the rise in traffic would fairly indicate to most of us that Steve McIntyre is being increasingly listened to, and John Hunter’s invective is the result of jealousy and childish petulence because of that fact.
Kind of the definition of Faith is it not. When some religious (Judeo-Christian type) tells me about god etc, I say fine. Prove it show it/him to me (definition of Agnostic me). I hold the AGW types in the same regard. Because my beliefs about “Prove it” are not limited to discussions about supreme beings. As you say with Phrenology, I aint going to believe it until I’m shown that it works. Same with AGW. I’ve spent near on 2 decades looking into it, and I’ve yet to see any conclusive evidence (Including all of the so called smoking guns that crop up regularly about every 6 months or so, which are so far from a real “smoking gun” as to be laughable.) I understand the thermal properties of CO2, as well as Methane and water vapor, but just because it can retain heat doesn’t mean we are headed to an early heat death next Tuesday. the more I hear (Which is just the same stuff re-hashed in different ways), the less confidence I have in AGW theory. They like to point out things like warming in the Antarctic Peninsula, while ignoring that that it affects 2% of Antarctica, and the vast remainder is cooling. Whenever the “skeptics” point out a record cool day, the AGW types say that’s weather not climate. The first day temperatures break 80 they start screaming we’re all going to die. N Article last winter pointed out that the Mountains here had, had record low snowfall from 1990 to 2000, sounds important until you look into it and find out they’ve had record high snowfall and record low temperatures from 2000 — 2005. Of course when I say record I mean over the past 40 — 50 years they’ve been keeping track of such things. Hell 10,000 years ago there was about a kilometer of ice on top of where my house sits, thank Jeff for Global Warming.
I’ve yet to see anyone, including climatologist, put forth a cogent case for dangerous AGW, and people making ridiculous comments to support their claims (December 26th Tsunami was caused by global warming) just make them look even more foolish.
My most recent favorite was one guy who thought that the 1 degree over 100 years was significant (which we’ve all heard before). Then when examining someone’s graph, that plotted Carbon-14 concentration in fossils over the past 200 Million years (as yet another form of proxy data) he made the comment that it took nature at least 50 Million years to see a change of 1 degree, never mind that the graph was not of temperature, and even as a proxy it didn’t even have a resolution as low as one degree. How can someone with a straight face say that it takes 50 Million years for the Earths climate to vary 1 degree.
I’m not surprised by the ‘middle finger’ being flown back and forth. It’s science, sure, but science is something certain higher primates do, along with a more cerebral form of feces slinging. I think the friction, within limits, is healthy. Wanting to dig into something because you think the other guy is full of beans is motivating.
I personally disagree with Dr. Hunter’s assessment of the signal to noise ratio here. The statistics involved in this sort of work routinely zoom over my head. But this is an ideal site for someone interested in the field because it exposes the controversial areas, and calls out the techniques that are used (especially a scientist or engineer with the math foundation to follow up). There is plenty of signal here, and I learn from it. It wouldn’t be as much fun, and I’d have less motivation, if there were not some emotion involved, i.e. noise. The signal is there, though, well above the background.
I’m sure it is less fun for those whose work is being scrutinized, and less jugular perhaps, because it isn’t my field, nor my reputation. I get where Dr. Hunter is coming from, though I think that it is worth the head butting to get this stuff right. The noise has certain characteristics that make it plenty easy to ignore in my opinion. People who dart in, snark less than 2 lines, then dodge out- easy to ingore. People who repeat the same appeals to authority- easy to ignore. Name callers…easy if you aren’t being called the name, but easy enough to discount as noise. So lets not get too sensitive.
M&M found problems with the celebrated (and jeered) ‘Hockey Stick’ paper. Science advances by such critiques, and I am glad Steve intends to look at other multiproxy studies, to see if the errors in MBH ‘don’t matter’ or not. People are going to get testy when you look up their skirt, so to speak, but that’s what we sign up for in science.
Maybe this spot, as well as RealClimate, are not without precedent (though I know of nothing like them), but I have never been so close to a scientific dust-up outside my own field before, and I find it fascinating.
Play nice, hell. Fight. But fight more about the data and methods, and less about one another’s personal peculiarities. The signal to snark ratio could be adjusted, but if the data keeps being laid out, and arguments made, then let’s go at it. One might get smacked around, or get to do some smacking, but the science, the “how the world works” is what is really important.
I like your style…
You forgot to adjust for the TCO factor. The alpha tree himself…the mythic python of grass curves himself…TCO!
Re #55.
Sid, a nice example of a belief that, since it’s probably unchangable, you religiously hold. The fact is, there simply are not enough weather stations (i.e. data) to be able to reliably say what’s happening to Antarctic temperatures. It might be cooling, but it’s not assertable.
Re #52.
That, sir, is bound to be a downright lie. Now, before you balther on, I’m not going to go through ClimateAudit for at least one example, becuase life’s too short, I’m on dial up atm, and I think there must be at least one post (infact many) where I’ve provided a factual based argument. Surely even someone as biased and blinkered as you would conceed I’ve produced at least one fact here? Or can you provide an analysis of my posts (audited by someone else of course) to show otherwise?
Actually you don’t need to troll through the whole site, I can assert that you have never posted a single factual arguement of any note Peter. Many other posters, myself included, have tried and tried to get you into a discussion relating to some of the issues Steve has raised on this site, and you have steadfastly refused to engage. It is not too late, you are hereby invited to start, please !
You could try answering a hypothetical question. If in the process of preparing M&M05, Steve McIntyre calculated an unfavourable finding and then omitted that finding in the publication, would it be OK for Steve to do that ? Would you feel justified in criticising him for that ?
I am sure that Sid, unlike AGW proponents, could be persuaded to change his views on whether Antartica is cooling by reference to verifable facts.
Ed, firstly there’s probably nothing I could say that would convince you otherwise…I don’t suppose you have anything better than you attempted character assination of me to offer? No analyis, just you assertion? No audit of that analysis (this is ClimateAudit)? Didn’t think so. Do try reading, for a start, the IPCC TAR sometime, and then comeback and say it has no facts. Nature is quite good too.
Re your question. No, (if it was done deliberately and to decieve) and yes (given the previous answer).
We’ll see what Sid says.
Peter, when we rename the weblog “CommentAudit” you will be the first to know. Such ducking and weaving skills as you have demonstrated would have put Muhammed Ali to shame.
It is very difficult to argue against Steve unless you have a very thorough understanding of statistics, which I would bet few if any of us here posses.
Re #63
Including not a few climate scientists, perhaps?
Peter, there is nothing you could say, because you don’t have a history of commenting on the data, you never (in my recollection) do ! However you could do what you suggested, go back through your posts and see if you can find any that deal with the data raised by Steve. I may be wrong and I’ll admit it if you can find a thread where you clearly debate Steve’s data. That BTW does not include statements like “read the TAR & nature” (paraphrased). Good advice no doubt, but I would advise you not necessarily to take everything therein on faith alone, especially the summaries.
Paul, I can agree that the statistics is a bit dense at times, but it has been a great learning experience to attempt to follow what one can, looking up matters where possible. I do now have a better understanding of autocorrelated series for example. I can’t pretend to understand all the nuances, but so far no AGW proponent has attempted to seriously dispute any technical point Steve has made. John Hunter has made (suprisingly) some interesting contributions and made good points, clarifying some items, and rightly warning against over interpretation. But few others have been able to dispute anything directly. Even Danzero who has an apparent hidden talents and expertise in dendrochronology, has not managed to justify the use of the Bristlecone pines, for example, as temperature proxies. I for one think that the evidence is pretty clear that they aren’t, but I would be willing to follow any serious suggestions and arguements based on data that they are to see if I would be justified (in my opinion) in changing my mind. So why hasn’t anyone attempted this example.
I agree that JohnH and Dan definitely add benefit to the discussion.
That’s interesting. After all, don’t you subscribe to the belief that “late 20th century warmth is unprecedented for at least roughly the past two millennia for the Northern Hemisphere” a la Mann and Jones (2003)? Take a look at their proxy locations here http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/mann2003b/mann2003b.html . Tell me that there are enough proxy locations (“i.e. data”) “to be able to reliably say what’s happening” to Northern Hemisphere temperatures, let alone take into account the flaws inherent in the proxy data themselves.
re: 67 This all depends on how persistant teleconnections are.
Michael, a reasonble question.
I don’t subscribe to the belief as you phrase it. I’d add the word ‘probably’ and say it was my view not my belief. You know that recons are not 100% precise, IMO (FWIW) you can’t state for certain now is as warm as it has been for 2000 years, but I think it’s a reasonable inference that’s unlikely to be wrong (as ever, I’d love to see other recons, but Steve’s not interested is he (he’s not alone amongst sceptics), criticism not construction being the watchword…). I honestly think it takes a leap of faith to suppose now is not historically very warm.
Likewise you can’t state Antarctica is cooling, but I certainly don’t rule it out. The data showing cooling is there, but it’s sparse and inconclusive. To state Antarctic is definitively cooling is, I think, to go beyond what the data can show, though on balance I suspect it’s either cooling or not changing much.
Peter, what’s your explanation for the medieval treelines?
Steve
I think you may be placing too much faith in tree lines.
They are not very responsive.
They are depressed by grazing.
They are subject to natural and human induced genetic change.
A couple of points aimed at Peter Hearnden:
1. I see Michael Jankowski as partly stolen my thunder, but it is peculiar that you claim the few stations on antarctia aren’t sufficient to tell whether it’s cooling or warming. If that’s true (i.e. it’s a fact based statement, and thus contradicting me ex post facto) then doesn’t that in and of itself make it practically impossible to tell if the earth as a whole has been warming or cooling in the past century? Antarctia is a huge continent.
2. The second point is more indirect. Someone or several people mentioned that the math here is too difficult and that therefore most people can’t contribute directly to the conversation. I can think of two recent statements which belie that. One was the statement that Gotberg island only had a maximum height of 100 meters and therefor a statement Steve had made concerning the seeding rates of tree stands was incorrect (actually that can be worked around, though I don’t believe Steve has done so). Assuming that statement was correct, it was a fact-based contribution to the discussion which didn’t rely on knowing any math. Another statement was by someone questioning the different ‘populations’ of trees Steve has observed; normal, slow growers and alpha trees. This person suggested they may have been an artefact of a bad computer database arrangement. Steve didn’t deny the possibility, except to state that alpha trees seem to be a regular feature of tree-ring databases. He also implied, though I don’t think he out-and-out stated, that if the slow growing trees occurred because of a misreading of a computer file, it wasn’t on his end of things.
So in summary, it’s quite possible to keep Steve on his toes by being observant and asking pertinent questions concerning the data and their manipulations quite aside from actually having to understand / use the statistical manipulations themselves.
Peter, I’m glad you agree that Mann and Jones’ main conclusion also goes too far.
The one I linked to is Mann and Jones 2003, not the MBH98 that has had so much notoriety on this site. So it is another recon, of sorts (amazingly, with a smaller uncertainty pre-1000 than for 1000-1600).
Steve had mentioned other recons. One problem is that they often use common proxies, and obviously focusing on problems with proxies themselves (which Steve has done a lot of) does deal with other recons. Obviously, it’s very time consuming and a lot of work just to even get the baseline data to start with, and as Steve has said several times, Mann has actually been more forthright with providing data and archiving than most researchers he’s dealt with.
That’s how I feel with the “recons” in general. The data is way too sparse in general to apply to the entire globe, the proxies way too fraught with significant errors, and the proper means of weighting, calibration, centralization, etc, are way to disputable. But it doesn’t keep climate scientists, politicians, and other people from drawing conclusions they act like are written in stone.
Paul, while I’m intrigued by tree lines, I realize that they are thought to be unresponsive. I’m going to post up some info on articles by Kullman on Scandinavian tree lines near sites I’ve been looking at. While unresponsiveness would explain why modern tree lines have not moved very quikly, wouldn’t the argument work both ways: for the medieval treelines to be higher than modern treelines, there must have been a sustained period of warmth which was greater than the 20th century?
Grazing would of course affect that. I’ve collected some articles on the effect of grazing on the American Southwest (See our EE article).
As to the genetic change – wouldn’t that apply also to ring widths and MXD which are being used now (and which seem pretty hairy for comparing MWP and modern results)?
There is as much data as there is for the Antarctic Peninsula. I notice you don’t argue with the statement that the peninsula is warming by the AGW crowd. In fact there are far more weather stations on Antarctica then there are sample locations for Mann’s proxy data as Mr. Jankowski Pointed out. He posted a map of the proxy locations, I’ll post a map of Antarctic weather stations and you can compare http://uwamrc.ssec.wisc.edu/images/awsmap.jpg Please note that these do direct temperature measurements, not proxies. Therefore with more sampling areas and direct measurement we can say with a much higher confidence that the Antarctic is cooling (while CO2 is rising) than the confidence level of Mann Et als assertions. Remember the majority of the work done in Antarctica is temperature and weather work, there aint much else to do down there.
But while we are there lets examine other areas where the density of measurement stations are low.
There is the entire Southern Hemisphere where well over 1/2 is water, making for poor results as there are few permanently mounted stations.
Siberia The stations are few, and the data continuity is poor.
Gobi Desert, Sahara desert, Amazon, Africa etc etc etc.
I’ll stand by my statement. But I am willing to see actual data posted by you to refute it. Keeping in mind this must be data from the continent proper, not vestigial appendages. If you show measurable upward change I will revise or retract my statements. I don’t religiously hold it, but I’ve seen the data. I do not hold a religious belief that the sun will rise in the east and set in the west, I base this on actual observation.
But I note you don’t have any concerns over the global temperature record for lack of data, nor Mann’s various papers which are remarkably low in data points (geographically speaking)
PS
Oh yes, everyone please remember that any warming effect of CO2 in the Arctic and Antarctic is immediately halved. You can pump all the greenouse gasses you want in there, but no sunlight for 1/2 the year means no greeanhouse warming for 1/2 the year. Making for lovely heatsinks that are realitively un-affected by greenhouse gasses.
Oh, I just read the ES&T article and thought it was a lampoon! All the quotes come across as if spoken by pompous asses! Steve’s quote is the only one that shows a little humility. I can’t believe those interviewed OK’ed them. While articles like this can rile, I think though as a strategy that as long as the jury (public sentiment) is still out on AGW, that its a good idea to hold the venom.
re 76
What makes you conclude that the greenhouse effect doesn’t work without sunlight?
?????????????????????
Do you understand how the “greenhouse effect” works?
Sunlight shines down, some energy is retained by the various greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere retaining energy means heat, other light is reflected/refracted back as IR energy (heat) which is also retained by the greenhouse gasses.
Can you explain how this process would continue in the abscense of sunlight?
Every co2 molecule acts as a little radiator, so adding more co2 increases downwelling radiation, with or without sun, as long as the molecule temperature is above 0 K.
I think Hans is correcty on this Sid, as long as the temperature of the ground is greater than that of space (talking here of Antartica in the winter), then there will be radiation from the surface towards space. The CO2 (and of course other gases) will act to trap some of this radiation and “recycle” it, a proportion going in all directions including back down.
Hans, you have graphs on your site implying that at low enough temperatures, CO2 seems to act to promote thermal radiation, so there is excess radiation in the CO2 thermal bands. Do you have an explanation for this apparent action ?
re 81
I’m not sure which one you are referring to, perhaps the nimbus 4 observation over antarctica?
In the interesting configuration of ground inversion, (see http://home.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/baroim190203.gif for observed examples in the arctic) the hot middle layer shields ground emission, leading to a net emission spectrum.
However, the same warm layer is also radiating towards the ground…
No CO2 Molecules are not “Little Radiators” they trap energy from the sun, they don’t create it. As to the shedding of heat so long as they are above 0, let me give you a clue. EVERYTHING DOES THIS.
If the ground is giving up some heat (ground warmer than space is irrelevant, is the ground warmer than the air? Last I checked the ground was not in contact with outer space, it had a few tens of kilometers of insulation called the atmosphere giving a fairly decent R value) I’l grant that the CO2 may trap some of it, but it does not create heat. Therefore net loss does not constitute warming. And ED if you believe Hans’ little Radiator concept I’m really surprised.
I am honestly surprised that anyone is even discussing this.
Do this as an example. Tomorrow monitor temperatures during the day while the sun is shining. Then one the sun goes down monitor temperatures at night. I’m willing to bet that you will find an upward trend during the day, and downward trend at night. The reason why we do not get extremely cold temperatures at night is that the atmosphere (mostly water vapor) gives of it’s heat slowly, it does not trap it. In other wards the Sun warms everything during the day, and the atmosphere warms everything at night. Once the earth and the atmosphere reach thermal equilibrium (as the arctic and Antarctic do shortly after the sun set for winter) they only radiate heat out they don’t trap any. The reasons why the arctic and Antarctic don’t eventually reach absolute 70 is that it would take longer than a few months for all of the heat to radiate out (assuming the Sun disappeared tomorrow), and there is a certain amount of heat transference fro those areas of the earth that are warmed by the sun as heat is transferred to these areas. It’s a rather bizarre system called “Winds” that move air through the atmosphere. So I think you will find even in winter in the Arctic and Antarctic the atmosphere heats the ground (or ice), not the other way around. But this is not due to greenhouse effect (though the air original gained some of it’s warmth due to greenhouse effect when it was exposed to sunlight)
Also lets remember that Ice absorbs very little thermal radiation, it also converts little of it to the longer wavelengths, it is much closer to a reflector. In fact Ice covered areas have an extremely high Albedo. And the ground in the Antarctic is covered by Ice, which is a decent insulator.
I still can’t believe we are even discussing this.
This is more ludicrous than the comment someone made about it taking 50 million years for the earths climate to change 1 degree before man.
Might I suggest you all read up on the basics of the greenhouse effect before commenting upon it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
Wait a minute Hans has a site talking about Greenhouse effect? And he actually believes this?
Jeff Wept.
Just saw the site, my beliefs about humanity are further reinforced.
For a better understanding of how things radiate energy outwards when energy input is removed might I further suggest.
http://www.geocities.com/bdimitrov_project/myproject/Laws/radiation.htm
The laws of thermal radiation, and the differing rates of all matter in the universe, is somewhat removed, though coupled, with the greenhouse effect. However, the greenhouse effect is limited to explaining how the earths atmosphere is heated beyond a certain point that is accounted for by other processes. The greenhouse effect deals solely with a certain way that solar radiation is trapped, not with how it is radiated
radiation of heat is done by all matter in the universe, not just greenhouse gasses.
Which it weren’t so. Be nice if my beer could get cold instantly when I put it in the refrigerator.
Little radiators indeed.
Can I assume you meant absolute zero? The earth receives most of its heat, not from the sun, but from radioactive decay from the earths interior. What would the equilibrium temperature be if the sun suddenly disappeared? I don’t have a clue. I suspect it would be significantly higher then the roughly 3 degrees K of space.
Certainl absolute 0.
Regardless I thiink you will find that that theory for us having MOST of our heat. In addition to solar radiation, there is also the tidal forces, gravitation and so on. Radioactive decay would certainly keep us as you say signifigantly higher than 3K but not our current average of ~14C. And radiactive decay has little to do with this discusion, which entails global tempratures above the baseline that radioactive decay would provide. Regardless this is still not the Greenhouse effect. The question put forth before us is “Does the Greenhouse effect work without Sunlight” Since the Greenhouse effect describes how the atmosphere retains more heat from sunlight than would be expected by pure solar radiation, it is impossible to say that it continues in the abscense of solar radiation.
As to the most of the heat comment, in practical terms. Since radioactive decay is constant, and it is independant from ambient temprature, pressure, solar radiation, the amount of heat added is also constant. IF the majority of our heat energy comes from radioactive decay, why then do we see such a large seasonal difference? In fact a quick check of the Moons minumum temprature is -233 C. Since the Moon should have the same amount of radioactive decay. This is only 40 Kelvin. So if radioactive decay accounts for 40 Kelvin (actually it would have to be less than this, but let’s stipulate it for the moment) this means that 240 degrees of kelvin comes from other sources. the tempratures of Neptune 49K and Pluto 48K – 56K (variation is based on distance from Sun, funny that) seem to support this theory.
I don’t think most is the proper word.
Well the moon does not make for a good comparison.
IOW, we have a much bigger nuclear reactor then does the moon.
Jupiter at 14.85 – 19.85 C is close to the same temperature as the earths 14.85 C and does not support the theory. Also, the closest planet Mercury has a mean temperature of 166.86 C and Venus ,which is further away, 456.85 C.
Of course it does. For the most part CO2 is transparent to sunlight. It is only after it has warmed the surface that the energy is low enough in wavelength to be absorbed by CO2. The question is, how cold does the surface have to get before it no longer radiates energy in the bands that CO2 absorbs.
Re: #83
ET, you may want to reread the wikipedia article you referenced.
You said
Actually, they absorb and re-radiate. Wiki:
You said
Wiki says
Compared with the surface, the atmosphere is a small *direct* absorber of solar radiation, and a small thermal reservoir. Wiki:
As a simple experiment to verify that the atmosphere is not the major night-time heat source, note how influential bodies of water are in determining night temps compared to land areas. If the atmosphere were the major heat reservoir, night temps should correspond to daytime air temps.
Also, note how much less the night-time temp drops when there is cloud cover. The clouds effectively absorb and re-radiate the IR from the surface, preventing much of it from being lost to space. Less heat (IR) lost to space means more heat remains (higher temps).
Nothing like citing counter examples in attempt to strengthen your argument. There is a reason I chose Pluto and Neptune. They are the farthest from the sun, and thus any solar radiation effect is limited.
Actually it does. Because radioactive elements are fairly evenly distributed within rock planets. Therefore it can be assumed that the Moon has the same approximate density of radioactive materials, thus the fact that it’s core is smaller (assuming you mean the liquid core portion saying that the alpha decay is what is creating the heat that melts the rock) thus if the majority of the internal heat was from alpha decay then the moon should have a similar liquid core. So no we don’t have a much bigger reactor. the ratio of radioactive elements is fairly even, so a larger planet has more radioactive material, but it also has more non-radioactive materials to heat. So your curve is fairly linear, not completely due to minor effects like atomic cross section of different elements, thermal properties etc.
Jupiter is also primarily made up of hydrogen and helium, neither of which are alpha emitters in their natural state. But now you start to see what is actually the main driver behind primary planetary temperature.
Is there a reason why you choose a planet that has the most variable temperature in the solar system to another that has a much lower variability, and used mean temperatures? In fact Mercury’s temperature on the day side reaches 510 degrees Celsius. Since we have already determined that alpha decay is not effected by the cyclical rotation of the planet, we find that alpha decay has nothing to do with the disparity of mean temperatures between the two planets, particular considering density and total weight does not effect alpha decay. But when we look at the two planets, which are on the opposite extreme, we find that the two defining factors are the size of Venus compared to Mercury, and the fact that most of Mercury’s atmosphere has been stripped away, and due to composition it is likely that the current atmosphere is a result of out-gassing that is constantly removed. But since pressure and temperature are well known to be correlated, and Venus has an atmospheric pressure 90 times greater than earths, in conjunction with it’s proximity with the sun we now understand it’s temperatures, and in the case of mercury, without a static atmosphere to retain heat, this also explains it’s temperature variability, and because of this we cannot compare mean temperatures. It’s like comparing AC and DC voltage 110 Volts AC does not = 110 Volts DC Venus is more DC and Mercury is highly AC.
But in the end looking at what you have pointed out we find that the real driver for temperatures in large planets is not radioactive decay, but the planets own gravity. Since we see temperature increasing with size. There is a reason why it is the INTERIOR of planets are liquid (when they are), since radioactive elements are fairly distributed the exterior should be much closer than internal temperatures (after accounting for thermal radiation). Instead we find that pressure is the real issue for internal temperatures (But again has absolutely nothing to do with the greenhouse effect and surface temperatures).
Irrelevant, that has to do with the thermal absorption of CO2, not the greenhouse effect. The thermal effect of CO2 is one of the factors in Greenhouse effect, not the other way around. Again, read the “Greenhouse effect” theory, only part of it has to do with thermal absorption. It’s like saying the only factor in your cars mileage is tire pressure. All matter has differencing thermal absorption effects, therefore all gasses (in fact all solids and liquids) would be greenhouse gasses (or solids or liquids), therefore there would be no specific greenhouse gasses. You were also less than straightforward with this comment too “For the most part CO2 is transparent to sunlight” yes it is, it’s the non most part that is the issue. Sunlight also contains the lower frequencies that are reflected as well. Since thermal effects are not effected by the direction or source of the energy, only the frequency, CO2 (as well as the predominant greenhouse gas, water vapor) will also absorb that frequency on the way in, as well as on the way out. Again I think you need some homework here.
Notes
1: Before you start talking about other radioactive effects like Neutron emissions, they cannot be responsible for any long term thermal effects because they happen so infrequently that any heat transfer would radiate away long before the next neutron hit the same atom again.
2: In fact that much heating from Alpha emissions can pretty much be ruled out. Plutonium is a massive alpha emitter and even in high concentrations it never heats on it’s own (at normal densities) more than a few degrees above ambient. Enough to be noticeable, but not enough to burn your hand.
3: It’s well known that what causes fusion ignition in stars is it’s density coming from it’s mass and gravity, and that Jupiter is something of a failed sun, it is the mass that is creating the heat, not alpha decay of which there is little.
4. In your original link the final response talked about the Oklo reactors, this is a result of nuclear fission chain reactions, not radioactive decay. Radioactive decay simply was the igniter, but the reactors would not have heated up unless the density of U235 reached a certain point, which was possible then because the ratio of U235 to U238 was higher millions of years ago.
5: Oklo reactors are actually a counter example, because areas high un Uranium are also greater alpha emitters (as well as other particles), yet the surface temperatures around these concentration of decaying radioactive elements is not significantly higher than areas with low concentrations.
Wow I thought for a moment I had screwed up my end quote business.
This in no way counters my statement, CO2 does not create energy, the Sun does, no sunlight, no energy. You might want to look at the thermal radiation properties of water vapor and CO2, particularly the time frames.
Did you actually read it? It says visible and near visible get through, you know what doesn’t get through, the thermal radiation coming in (or parts of it), how does this disprove what I say.
This is because there is less direct thermal radiation of the proper frequencies coming in.
Little thought experiment for you. Imagine a CO2 or an H2O molecule. Both will absorb a photon of a certain frequency. First a photon comes from the left. It absorbs it, after a certain amount of time it re-emits it. Then another photon comes from the right, based upon what your trying to say it should ignore this one because it’s not coming from the proper direction. Why would a molecule ignore certain photons coming from some directions and not from another? To further re-state the question. What is the difference between a photon of a specific frequency from the Sun, and another photon of the exact same frequency coming from the Earth?
Oh that’s good news then, no worries with Global Warming then.
What does this tell you? Ever noticed that the humidity (atmospheric water vapor) near bodies of water is higher, (sarcasm on) no one is quite sure why this is (sarcasm off)? Back to my other experiment. Why are the day/nights variations in the desert (which has the same amount of landmass as a portion of non desert of the same size, so we are dealing with equals here) so much more than the day/night variation in areas with higher humidity (greenhouse gases) They have the same amount of land area.
In areas with large amounts of water vapor in the atmosphere. Both Nitrogen and Oxygen alone do not retain heat anywhere near as long as water vapor. But somewhat to your point, water does absorb, and re-radiate more energy than land, but looses most of that energy through evaporation. But the atmosphere absorbs much more, since the atmosphere is warmed through out it’s depth, where the majority of water and land warming happens only at the surface, or just below.
No, not at all.
Re: 69
PeterH sed:
“I honestly think it takes a leap of faith to suppose now is not historically very warm.”
If he means the average global temperature (as reported by the MSU or GISS) of the last ten years is higher than any other average ten year period since 1850, then I would generally agree.
Jeff (NOT the Jeff to which ET Sid Viscous refers above though)
Lets just clear up a few planetary facts. The moon is made of quite different stuff to the earth. It does not have a hot liquid iron core like the earth. Mercury and Mars also have no liquid core. They are too small and cooled down long ago. (we know this because they have very weak magnetic fields). The outer ‘gas’ planets also have liquid cores. Jupiter also has a huge metalic hydrogen outer core and a large magnetic field.
“Also, note how much less the night-time temp drops when there is cloud cover.
No, not at all.”
You are just winding people up now!
I specifically mentioned that some planets have a liquid core, and some do not
The moon is made of different stuff? Cheese I assume you mean. The Moon is rock as we are, it may be different kinds of rock and compositions of rock, but rock none-the-less it still contains the same ratio of radio-active elements I assume. Or is there some reason that Earth is special, is this some kind of creationist theory, Earth got all the solar systems Uranuim. I notice you wanted to “Clear up” a few facts, you seem to have targeted me, though I don’t see where you did. But I notice no comment on the Radioactive decay heating the planet theory (Who needs a sun, we don’t get any heat from that(/sarcasm off)).
Assuming you support it, why have Mercury and mars cooled down and no longer have a liquid core. Are they matter of matter that is older than us, since size doesn’t matter to Radiation decay, they should have the same energy/mass ratio as us.
Since I assume your supporting the radioactive decay theory, care to explain to me how metallic hydrogen is an alpha emitter? I do seem to recall, correct me if I’m wrong here, that I did say Jupiter is made primarily of hydrogen, I did not say which, if any, state it was in, since it was irrelevant to what I was discussing, which was radioactive decay, and since isotopes of hydrogen are primarily either very short lived (tritium) or stable (Deuterium), even if metallic they still aren’t alpha emitters.
I’m sorry, I refute that evenings with clouds are warmer than evenings without clouds, and I’m the one winding people up? Someone show me one iota of evidence that supports this ludicrous theory.
If you notice more thermal variability on evening with cloud cover, it’s not from reflecting the massive amounts of energy the Earth’s crust gives off at night, it’s most likely that clouds accompany the boundary layers between warm and cold air masses. As we can see in the case of mercury’s variability, when you don’t have an atmosphere, the rock gives off it’s heart energy rather quickly, this is also seen on the moon, it is the atmosphere that retains heat.
So anyways, in your clearing up, where exactly did I mis-speak myself in relation to describing planets? granting that the moon does not have a liquid core, I was simply trying to understand his ratios of core’s. he certainly didn’t explain that very well. So far as I know both the moon and the earth are not hollow, so they should have the same percentage of internal mass, radioactive decay doesn’t limit itself to the core. Whatever that means.
That assumption makes no sense. The moon is 3/5th the density of the earth.
The problem is, Greg, though El Cid seems to have a bee in his bonnet at the moment and you’ll have to excuse his irrasability, that elements like Uranium are actually more likely to be found in lighter rocks than in core material. This is due to their being able to fit in the crystals forming basalt. Therefore most all of the radioactive decay in the earth actually occurs in the upper mantle and the crust, not in the lower mantle or core.
Ref why the Earth has a hot liquid core :
Does anyone happen to know to what extent this is due to radioactive decay, as opposed to the constant tidal flexing caused by a large moon ?
ET
I wasn’t getting at you, more the ill informed planet stuff in gemeral
It is quite simple. The interior heat of planets was formed mainly when they were formed by things crashing into each other, radioactive decay plays a small part.
Small things heat up and cool down quickly, big things slowly. So the moon, mars mercury, being much smaller than the earth have cooled down more quickly. Current theory is that the moon was formed when a mars size planetoid struck the earth. The stuff which was blasted off formed the moon. As the earth is in layers they suff which was blasted off was different to the stuff left (the moon is iron poor).
Jupiter is very hot because it is very big, so a lot of heat was trapped during its formation. It produced 3 times the energy it gets form the sun.
Busy now will answer your night cooling thing later.
fFreddy,
Actually a lot of the present heat supposedly came from separation of the iron core from the lighter mantle material. There may be some of that still going on.
And it takes a VERY long time for heat to escape from the center of the earth. That’s why we have plate tectonics. Its faster for heat to escape via convection than from conduction. But it still takes hundreds of millions of years for a cycle of convection in hot rock.
Hmmm. Might be a good name for one of the older bands: Mick Jagger and the Hot Rocks.
ET
Its quite simple. Water, as I am sure you are aware, is a greenhouse gas. It traps long wave radiation. Clouds are made of water. After the sun goes down the surface begins to cool by long wave radiation. If there are no clouds then lots of the long wave radiation escapes and the surface cools rapidly. If there are clouds this means lots of water in the atmosphere, so lots of that long wave radiation is trapped by the water in the clouds. Some of this is then re-radiated back towards the surface helping keep it warmer.
Some of the discussion in this thread regarding “atmospheric greenhouse” effects might be improved by minimizing the use of metaphors.
So called “greenhouse gases” absorb, and emit, IR (infrared radiation). Trap might be a metaphor for absorb, but it suggests prolonged retention. Little radiator might be a metaphor for an emitter, but seems incomplete.
Regarding: “As to the shedding of heat so long as they are above 0, let me give you a clue. EVERYTHING DOES THIS.”
If “shedding of heat” is a metaphor for emitting IR, then the “clue” “EVERY THING DOES THIS” needs another clue: some substances do this much better than other substances. CO2 (as well as H2O), does this much better than N2 or O2.
Let me add a few other comments:
At night the ground can, and does, get cooler than the air above it by emitting more IR upward than the air above it emits downward. This process cools the air that contacts surface, which cools nearby air, and can cause dew formation, as well as radiation frost.
A net effect of atmospheric “greenhouse gas” absorbing, and emitting, is a net slowing of IR from Earth to space. At times when a net warming of the surface is occurring, the net slowing of IR from the surface to space increases the rate of warming. At times when a net cooling of the surface is occurring, the net slowing of IR from the surface to space reduces the rate of cooling. The reduction of the rate of cooling is an “atmospheric greenhouse effect” that does not require concurrent sunlight. It merely requires surface temperatures sufficient to emit more IR upward than the local atmosphere emits downward.
ET, just a few clarifications:
When I quoted the wiki:
I was referring to your statement that
; as you can see, they certainly are (or perhaps there’s another definition of “radiator”?).
If what you mean is that the surface absorbs a bigger fraction of the incoming solar energy because it absorbs at many frequencies that the atmosphere does not absorb at, I agree.
Sorry, didn’t understand this non-sequitur.
However, the transparency of the atmosphere to incoming solar radiation is much greater than that of the surface, so it in fact does *not* absorb more than the surface; the surface absorbs roughly 3x as much as does the atmosphere. Again, the wiki: “The remaining [unreflected] 70% of the incoming solar radiation is absorbed: 16% by the atmosphere …; 3% by clouds; and 51% by the land and oceans.”
Hmm looks like I touched a nerve
(google: did you mean: et sid vicious)
ET you have a high crackpot index
This thread may be getting a bit long, but since it isn’t my blog, I have to add on to what’s here.
One thing which hasn’t been made clear about how CO2 and the Greenhouse effect works (and this applies to water vapor as well) is that it’s important to understand how IR emission actually occurs. I THINK I understand, but I’m not absolutely certain, so I want to get my ideas out on the table for others to look at and critique.
First, to emit or absorb IR or any other electromagnetic radiation, a molecule must have a dipole moment. Therefore a linear symmetric molecule like acetylene won’t be likely to absorb (there are exceptions like some vibrational and bending states). But molecules like CO2 and H2O which have a central atom and the other atoms at other than 180 deg apart will have a dipole moment and thus absorb or emit easily at certain frequencies. These frequencies, BTW, are widened by interactions between vibrational, bending and rotational states as well as thermal widening. That’s why they are usually referred to as bands.
The common molecules in air, O2 and N2, OTOH, really can’t produce a dipole moment by themselves and therefore don’t absorb IR. But, and this is where I’m relying on basic principles rather than any specific knowledge, if two molecules collide, during the time they’re close to each other there will be natural dipole moments formed and this can result, if there is enough energy present in the collision, in IR emission. The spectrum of this sort of emission is determined by the temperature of the atmosphere and will be a black-body spectrum. Note that while theoretically a couple of molecules interacting could also absorb a passing IR photon, the odds of such a “3-body” interaction is quite small, at least at atmospheric pressures.
Likewise, a H2O or CO2 molecule while colliding with other molecules might be excited sufficiently to emit an IR photon before another collision occurs, but the odds there are quite small, as the mean time for emission of IR by CO2, for instance, at atmospheric pressures, is much longer than the mean time between collisions. And this, BTW, is also why IR is ‘trapped’ by the atmosphere in the first place. A GHG molecule captures an IR photon, but long before it has time to re-emit it, it’s collided hundreds of times with other molecules and given up it’s excitation energy to them.
Someone mentioned the inverted state that happens sometimes in Antarctica and this is an example of the opposite situation. The surface is so cold that the chances of a CO2 molecule emitting an IR photon, small as it is, is still greater than the chances of it absorbing one from the surface (or of the rest of the atmosphere emitting one by black-body radiation).
I asked about this on Real Climate. they gave some sites to look at. I skimmed, but it looked like some brain engagement required so I turned off. Not their fault. I am lazy and like spoonfeeding.
I’m a cracpot, while your asserting I don’t know how to spell my own “name” or nickname, that I’ve been using for about 10 years?
Hans Erren? Did you mean Hans Aaron, or maybe Hank Aaron.
All come back and address other varied semi lucid points later. 10 Hours of driving + work is a bit much.
But a couple of points before I go.
What does this have to do with even distribution of radioactive elements? Yes it is 3/5 the density, but the regular (un-radioactive) rock and the radioactive is at the same ratio. So if there is 3/5 less density regular rock (assuming same volume) then there is 3/5 less density radioactive elements. Same goes for volume. If the moon is (guess here) 1/10th the volume of the earth, it has 1/10th less rock and 1/10 less radioactive material, so the amount of warming from radioactive decay would be the same.
Look at it this way. Water is 2 parts Hydrogen, and one part Oxygen. Changes in volume, temperature, density do not effect that ratio. I do not see why there would be any contusion.
Yes, taking the argument on a completely different tangent, ignoring completely that the discussion was about can or cannot the greenhouse effect take place in the absence of sunlight, or solar radiation, regardless whether or not CO2 are little radiators, little radiators not receiving heat don’t absorb any. You did an excellent job of cherry picking quotes to support your position that the greenhouse effect has nothing to do with solar radiation while totally ignoring the fact that the article mentions 9 times in the first 3 paragraphs that the Greenhouse effect describes the absorption of Solar radiation, or solar power, in other words sunlight. Since the poles receive 6 months of darkness you still say that that land continues to radiate solar energy from 6 months prior fueling the greenhouse effect.
As to comments about absorption of solar energy and percentages, this is 100% of all solar energy in ALL FREQUENCIES. How much (in watts) thermal energy is radiated from the surface of the Earth in the proper frequency to be absorbed by the various greenhouse gasses, and how much is absorbed as it comes in as sunlight in (in watts)?
There are loads of other thermal energy outside of those narrow frequencies that is absorbed by the surface, since the Earth is not optically transparent, the vast majority have absolutely nothing to do with the greenhouse effect as they are not within the frequency range to be absorbed by Greenhouse gasses, Yet I notice you include this massive bias of energy in your numbers.
For example CO2 does not absorb energy from light in the frequency range of 4000 Angstroms (blue), but the surface of the Earth does. So n your numbers why do you talk about all the blue light the earth absorbs, that even reflected back at a shorter wavelength the CO2 will never absorb, unless it is at the proper frequency.
Remember we are talking about the GREENHOUSE EFFECT, and your explaining how it continues to function in the absence of sunlight, not the semantics of the little radiator analogy. I also notice how you didn’t correct Hans Aaron on the fallacy of his analogy of adding CO2 without sunlight emits more thermal energy, it may, but this is not the greenhouse effect. I can fire up an acetylene torch, or light a bonfire, set off an atom bomb. All of thosewill add more thermal energy too, but it’s not the greenhouse effect.
ET
You are starting from a false premise. That (radioactive) elements are distributed evenly through all rocks. This is patently false. There would be no mining industry if this were true. Therefore because the moon is made of different rocks it will contain different amounts of radioactive elements. But as I said this is not the main heat source in the interior of celestial bodies anyway.
As for the greenhouse effect. Radiation from the sun arrives over a wide range of wavelengths. Ultraviolet (UV) radiation makes up a very small part of the total energy content roughly 8%- 9%,visible , with a wavelength of 0.35mm to 0.78mm, represents 46%-47% of the total energy received from the sun. The final 45% of the sun’s total energy is in the near- infrared range of 0.78mm to 5mm. In total the atmosphere absorbs about 20% of total incoming solar radiation.
The surface absorbs about 50% (the rest being reflected, scattered etc). Terrestrial radiation What the earth radiates back after being warmed is in the far-infrared range spanning from 3 to 75mm. The greenhouse effect is the absorption of the outgoing long wave radiation. Not the incoming. If this were the case then the atmosphere would get hotter the higher you go because the radiation would be absorbed as soon as it started to enter the atmosphere. (If fact the ozone layer is hot for this reason, it is absorbing a lot of radiation). In fact the troposphere is warmer near the surface because greenhouse gases are trapping the outgoing radiation. (there is a pressure effect as well). So the greenhouse effect continues without sunlight because the earth still radiates infrared because it is still warm and the greenhouse gasses still absorb this radiation.
Re #107. Paul, the best reply so far :). Oh, and, amazingly, I broadly agree with what both Hans and, gulp, Ed (#81), have had to say on the matter.
re: #108
And do you disagree with what I said, or is it too technical for you to decide if it’s right or wrong?
Dave, Pete has been pretty nice lately. Maybe you could hit the desk real hard? (Works for me sometimes…I’m an awful troller/flamer).
No you are mis understanding, and mis-quoting what I said, I never said that it was evenly distributred throughout the rock. I said it is eenly ditributed throughout the Universe, and or the planets. Meaning that the ratio of radioactive elements in the moon is the same as on Earth. So you are making false statements, and are starting from false premises. More importanlty you are filly aware of this, you are simply trying to take a shot at something that isn’t there. Either your reading comprehension is poor, or your taking a sad attempt to call me an idiot, by fabricating evidence against me. I cannot, and I’m pretty sure you cannot, make an individual count of all of the atoms in the moon, and compare them to all of the Atoms in the Earth, in 3D. However, as a rough approximation, to the limit that it matters, The ratio of radioactive elements in the moon is the same as on Earth. You apperently disagree with this statement?
quotes for your benefit: “Actually it does. Because radioactive elements are fairly evenly distributed within rock planets.”
Could you kindly point out where I stated that radioactive ellements are evenly distributed through all rocks?
As to the atmospheric content and absorption, A: I don’t see how anything you say there proves that the greenhouse effect continues to work without sunlight.
It was rather cute how you contradicted yourself, once you take the contridiction out, you have a fairly cogent description of the process, and it still shows that the Greenhouse effect works with sunlight, not without.
TCO,
Peter’s never denied he’s not particularly well trained in science. I was just asking exactly what I was wondering, not intending any sort of put-down. My original post was meant for those who might be here who have a strong technical background in physics / E&M, etc. Really I’d hoped that if Peter said it was to difficult to understand technically it might encourage someone else to either state I was correct or show where I am wrong.
I don’t know about others, but I’m never comfortable with a subject until I have an internal model for what it means. I can’t stand just being able to restate what others say.
yeah…that’s a good way to be.
Paul
If CO2 doesn’t absorb incoming radiation, only outgoing, how does it know which direction the photon is coming from? Could you please explain that. Why does CO2 differnetiate between incoming and outgoing?
Or could it possibly be here, WAG here, that the amount of incoming energy Greenhouse gasses absorb INCOMING has a direct realtion to how much radiation it will later be able to absorb outgoing, therefrom making it an important ingredient to the mechanics of the greenhouse effect.
Re #109, I’ll remember that, especially as I wasn’t getting at you! Re #112, that’s better! Indeed, I’m not a trained atmopshere physicist. I don’t pretend to be but, I think I understand the jist of it, and I think you’re right.
Sid, are you saying the way SW and LW radiation interact with CO2 is the same? So, you’re rewriting science then. It’s difficult when you’re re writing the science those who seek to rewrite science accept. Presumably you don’t accept the accepted radiation balance of the planet as per Trenberth and the rest?
SW and LW radiation aren’t the same, if they are the same how can they be differnet? Wavelength perhaps?
re: 115
Since I finally got some feedback (from Peter) I was encouraged to go looking for a semi-technical presentation and found one which is pretty good:
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:TjneqGOl7Q4J:ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/
~budker/Physics138/Alyssa%2520Atwood%2520Atm%2520Spec5.ppt+CO2+%2B%22IR
+absorption%22&hl=en
You’ll have to connect the three lines together to get the link to work I expect. But this is just the result of a google search on CO2 +”IR absorption” so it shouldn’t be hard to find.
I do see one minor mistake I made in my earlier message; CO2 is a linear molecule so one set of vibrations is not IRactive. Also it is the vibrational modes (modified by rotations) which interact with thermal IR.
ET indeed you’re not viscious, your are more like treacle.
For starters if you look at the numbers that are available for geothermal heatflow you’ll see that the global average amounts to 75 mW/m2, with peaks in the East Pacific of 350 mW/m2.
http://www.geo.lsa.umich.edu/IHFC/heatflow.html
A doubling of CO2 leads globally to an increase of 3.7 W/m2 (Myhre et al), so that is a factor fifty compared to geothermal heatflow.
In the future, please quantify your statements, geothermal heatflow is insignificant for climate change.
Hans (currently in the USA, visiting Dave Dardinger)
ref
Myhre, G., E.J Highwood, K.P Shine and F. Stordal, 1998, New Estimates of radiative forcing due to well mixed greenhouse gases, Geophys. Res Lett. 25, 2715-2718
‘What did they draw?’ said Alice, quite forgetting her promise.
‘Treacle,’ said the Dormouse, without considering at all this time.
So Hans Aaron
first off why are you comparing to Geothermal Heat flow, what relevenace does this have to the discussion at all. Or are you simple trying to make a non-sequitur and again attribute comments to me that I never said. In fact it has been those arguing against me that have said the Earth (not geothermal, just it’s own heat potential), and it would seem that YOU are the one agreeing with them if you think that the Greenhouse effect works in the absence of sunlight.
Now you seem to think that the sole act of doubling CO2 increases energy, and you have earlier asserted more than once that this happens even in the absence to sunlight. Can you please explain this process that seems to fly in the face of physics. How is CO2 an energy source? You’ve called them “Little Radiators” radiating heat wherever they go. Where do they get this heat from? Do you have some theory about CO2 funneling zero-point energy or some such? You have said, in effect, that solar radiation has absolutely nothing to do with the greenhouse effect, so I am just curious how you think CO2 adds energy to a system. If CO2 is an energy source maybe I can heat my home with it.
I would agree 100% that geothermal heat is insignificant to climate change compared to the majority driver of solar radiation. Can you please cite a single reference where I stated that geothermal heat flow is significant to climate change? Or are you again trying to falsely imply I’ve said something that I have not.
I said that geothermal energy has a greater effect on the Earth’s temperature (not it’s atmosphere or climate) than radioactive decay, no reference in relation to CO2.
Can I ask, do you have a problem in English Comprehension, because if so I would ask you not comment on my posts as you don’t seem to understand what I am saying, I won’t say I am the worlds best writer, but you are making connections that simply do not exist.
Unless of course you are doing this intentionally to draw away from your original assertion that the greenhouse effect functions in the absence of sunlight.
Which while true, has absolutely nothing to do with what I was saying. Which was that the ratio/proportions of Alpha emitters are the same in all planets (rock types, gas giants have very few alpha emitters). therefore all rock planets should have approximately the same amount of temprature from alpha decay. What exactly about that makes no sense?
Can I ask if you also have trouble understanding the words that I am writing?
IMHO Heating from radioactive decay acconts for
Software seems to have taken my use of the less-than assembly for an HTML tag. Append to the end of the above comment
“Less-than 40 degrees C/K
Paul Gosling re post #99
that explains why the atmosphere would cool less quickly in the evenings, but the effect you describe is nowhere near sufficient to trap enough energy and re-radiate downward to be noticeable.
The most significant flaw in your description is that when the water vapor in the clouds reradiates the thermal energy it radiates it in all directions, not just towards the earth.
So on a cloudless evening the earth will radiate X quanta of thermal energy outward, that we feel as heat, while this travels in all directions, we are only concerned with that heat that radiates upward from the surface of the planet. 100% of this heat is transferred irreversibly into the atmosphere. warming it, until portions radiate into outer space while the dark side of Earth and atmosphere attempt to reach thermal equilibrium with it’s surroundings. Most importantly thermal energy coming from higher in the atmosphere is also radiating downwards towards the earth.
On cloudy evenings the same X energy of thermal energy is radiated outwards, a portion of this energy is absorbed into clouds, and re-radiated a short time later, in all directions, only a small portion of that headed downwards towards the earth., even less reaching the level where we people sit for as to feel as heat. You also have to keep in mind that this is inversely countered by the clouds doing exactly the same thing to the thermal energy coming from higher in the atmosphere, and it to is doing the same thing. I seriously doubt that the reduction in the rate of cooling is even measurable.
Simply. When the Earth is in Darkness the surface of the Earth, and the atmosphere above it are trying to reach thermal equilibrium, clouds will have very little effect, as they too are trying to reach thermal equilibrium with the atmosphere. So far as Evening temperatures are concerned, winds have a vastly more significant effect than cloud cover. And even that is dwarfed in comparison to the thermal energy in the air mass. If a warm mass moves in at night we will warm, regardless of cloud cover, if a cold mass moves in we will cool. Cloud cover will have no noticeable effect.
What you are in essence are describing is the Greenhouse effect, which as I have already stated, and further explained here, does not work in the absence of sunlight, or in Max Planks words a “Heat Engine” with no energy source the only thing everything can do is strive towards thermal equilibrium. There are various process for this, cloud cover will not significantly add to the energy available.
You might need a clarification to this. N2 and O2 shed heat with the same potential as everything else in the universe, incluiding CO2 and H20. The difference is that H2O and CO2, by nature of their chemical make up (You are comparing elemental molecules, to chemical molecules, ie. H2O and CO2 both contain different elements, N2 and O2 are single element molecules), absorb more energy than N2 or O2, and thus have more to shed. the efficiency of heat expulsion (reverting from a high energy state to it’s ground state) is well understood, and has more to do with it’s state of matter (solid liquid gas) than it’s elemental composition.
H2O absorbs the radiation energy levels of Both Hydrogen and Oxygen. N2 absorbs only the energy level of Nitrogen.
Your comparing apples to Oranges.
Might I suggest
http://www.thermalphysics.org/heat/heatengineessay.html
All things radiate heat CO2 is no more or less efficient than say calcuim. The point of discusion here is WHERE DOES IT GET THE HEAT THAT IT RADIATES. CO2 left in a theoretical box that would block 100% of thermal energy in, and pass 100% thermal energy outwards will eventually cool to absolute 0 (becoming a solid in the process). CO2 does not create any thermal energy. So where does it get the heat that this radiator emits all the time?
To use your analogy. the radiator in your car does not make any heat. It recieves the heat of the engine, and radiates it efficiently outward (due to it’s increased surface area, and being made of materials that have good thermal conductivity). A radiator sitting alone in your backyard, not attached to a running engine will not create any heat whatsover (excepting for an extremly small aount from minute radioactive decay of impurities. these will never generate heat in the radiator even approaching 1 degree). It gets it’s heat from the combusition of fuels in the engine. Where does you “little radiator” get it’s heat from?
No I mean that the atmosphere absorbs energy at many different frequencies along it’s entire depth, while the surface recieves energy only at the thin surface. And I’ve got news for you. All the percentages that everyone has badied about here are for only one phase of the process. In fact the atmosphere absorbs, much more than the numbers you mention suggest. Because when the surface absorbs X percentage of sunlight, it later re-radiates it, where it is carried out by the atmosphere, by the atosphere absorbing and radiating it.
If this where not true the Earth would have boiled away to nothing long ago.
In fact I believe this number is 100% i.e. the atmosphere absorbs and radiates 100% of the sunlight incident on the earth. Anything less than 100% would have to be energy that is radiated from the erth in a spectrum that the atmosphere cannot absorb, I don’t believe there is an process like this that exists, but I don not know that for sure.
Re: 119
The problem is that it’s NOT true that all rocks contain the same % of alpha emitters. When the solar system was forming it was the most refractory oxides / elements which condensed first an others condensed later. This means there was a variety of different raw materials available to produce the proto-planetoids which eventually formed the various planets. Certainly there were a spectrum of different rock types which went into each planet, but the average composition, including of radioactive materials differed from planet to planet.
re #123 & 124
I’m afraid both these messages have a number of mistakes in them. I don’t have time to totally deconstruct them, but here are a few points:
1. O3 is also an ‘elemental’ molecule, but is also a strong GHG. The problem is that consisting of 3 or more atoms will allow some dipole moments to develop even if all the atoms are the same.
2. “H2O absorbs the radiation energy levels of Both Hydrogen and Oxygen. N2 absorbs only the energy level of Nitrogen.”
This is just plain wrong. You’re thinking about electon levels in an atom but that isn’t what IR absorption is about. As my message #103 above explains These electron bands are in the UV or visible. It’s vibrations (modified by rotations) which create the bands in the IR.
3. “CO2 does not create any thermal energy. So where does it get the heat that this radiator emits all the time?”
As I’ve explained a few times before, the GHGs give up the energy from IR they absorb quickly to the surrounding gas compared to the time it’d take to re-emit it. This is why they don’t emit nearly as much as they absorb. But other molecules emit IR thermally during collisions and this produces a black body spectrum with some holes in it where the GHGs like to absorb.
4. “when the surface absorbs X percentage of sunlight, it later re-radiates it, where it is carried out by the atmosphere, by the atosphere absorbing and radiating it.”
Except that the surface emits according to a black body spectrum based on its temperature. The atmosphere, primarily the GHGs in it, absorbs this thermal BB spectrum only in certain bands and the rest escapes to space. The atmosphere then emits a BB spectrum of lower intensity (for various reasons) in all directions and some of it is re-absorbed, some escapes and some gets to the surface. This last is the greenhouse effect and if we have an increase in the concentration of a GHG, say CO2 a small amount of the total greenhouse effect will reflect this increase. [You can fill in the obvious caveats needed here]. The surface will now be warmer than it would be without the GHG and so it emits more IR than it otherwise would. As must be the case, an equilibrium is eventually reached where the total IR escaping through the ‘holes’ in the atmospheric spectra plus some additional emission to space from the top of the atmosphere will balance the amount of sunlight absorbed on a time averaged basis.
BTW, you need to average activity either daily or yearly and over the whole earth if you’re wanting to truly discuss “the greenhouse effect” Saying it doesn’t exist at night or in a polar winter just confuses the issue.
Sid, I hate to buy into this discussion, but I can’t follow your logic sorry. You have in #124 above “In fact I believe this number is 100% i.e. the atmosphere absorbs and radiates 100% of the sunlight incident on the earth. Anything less than 100% would have to be energy that is radiated from the erth in a spectrum that the atmosphere cannot absorb, I don’t believe there is an process like this that exists, but I don not know that for sure.” If all sunlight incident on the earth was absorbed and re-radiated by the atmosphere, how could we see where the sun was ? Surely if the visible light photons are all absorbed in the atmosphere, the re-radiation is in all directions equally ?
I believe that the issue is this. The atmosphere is largely transparent to photons in the visible range, so such radiation penetrates the atmosphere and hits the surface, warming the surface. If the atmosphere wasn’t transparent in this “window”, then we could not see such small sources as stars at night, correct ? The amount of light reaching earth from a distant star is so small, any significant atmospheric absorption would mean we couldn’t see the star’s light, or at least not at a point.
Note that Solar IR, UV, and other radiation is absorbed, by the atmosphere in various ways (UV largely by Ozone for example).
So the visible light hits the surface and warms it when the sun is shining. At night the warmer surface emits according to its temperature much longer wave radiation than it receives, with the peak in the IR. This IR is emitted and generally absorbed in the atmosphere, I believe that the mean free path of an IR photon in the atmosphere is measured in 10s to 100s of metres. The absorption is mostly by water vapour, with some by CO2, CH4, and other gases. Water and CO2 don’t absorb so well just because they are molecules and the statement you make “H2O absorbs the radiation energy levels of Both Hydrogen and Oxygen. N2 absorbs only the energy level of Nitrogen.” I believe is misleading. The critical IR absorptions are made by changing the rotational or vibrational states in the molecules, and CO2 and H2O have such states in the IR region, O2 and N2 don’t. To the degree that the occurrence of these absorption bands is because of the mass differences between the different atoms in the molecules, then I think I can see what you are hinting at, howver it is not the energy levels of the atoms that matters, but the rotational etc states of the molecules.
Clouds I suggest do affect cooling, it is something I can certainly readily notice directly, a clear night will usually cool much faster than a cloudy night, although I agree winds and movements of the air can have an effect. But where conditions are kept the same except presence or absence of clouds, clear nights cool faster and more. The reason is I suggest because clouds represent a significant density of water vapour in the atmosphere, providing a far shorter mean free path for the IR photons, increasing the back-radiation of IR, and reducing the speed at which the IR radiation eventually leaks into space. The atmosphere above the clouds will of course cool as normal.
re # 127
Good post for the most part. One correction however.
“The critical IR absorptions are made by changing the rotational or vibrational states in the molecules, and CO2 and H2O have such states in the IR region, O2 and N2 don’t.”
It’s not that O2 and N2 don’t have rotational or vibrational states with IR frequencies. It’s that there’s no dipole moment in these diatomic molecules which allow them to couple to an electromagnetic field and emit or absorb a photon.
Of course it differed, but by relatively small percentages. On the scale of a planet, at the end of the day they are somewhat close. Are the exact to fifteen decimal places, of course not, but equally true the Earth does not have 100 of times more radioactive materials than Pluto. The earth may contain 0.05125 (complete WAG) alpha emitters, and Pluto 0.05032% this difference is not near enough to account for a difference in baseline temperature between planets by hundreds of degrees Kelvin. If Pluto, receiving very little solar radiation, is at slightly above 45 Kelvin, it would be expected if we sent Earth to the same orbit as Pluto, and stripped it of it’s atmosphere eventually the Earth would cool down to slightly above that of Pluto. So if Pluto has a temperature of ~45 Degrees Kelvin, we must assume that radioactive decay in Pluto accounts for less than 45 Degrees Kelvin, in fact since it estimated that Pluto’s temperature can go down to 35 Kelvin* that radioactive decay accounts for less than 35 Kelvin. In order for “Most” of the Earth’s temperature to come from radioactive decay it would have to have a dramatically higher ratio of radioactive elements than Pluto. Since the Earths temperature is ~288 Kelvin, with Pluto’s ~45 Kelvin, if Radioactive Decay accounts for “Most” of Earth’s temperature as Greg F posted,
Greg F
and you apparently agree with, that means that the Earth would have to have at least, roughly 8 Times more radioactive material than Pluto.
Can I assume that Your Position is that the Earth has 8 times the Radioactive material that Pluto has. Since it would have to in order for Radioactive decay to be the most significant factor in the temperature of the Earth, as you apparently agree with Greg F’s statement.
My Position is that Pluto has roughly the same amount as the earth, equal in at least the first significant digit, to fifteen decimal places? Of course not.
To further re-iterate my position The surface temperature of the moon varies from surface 396 K.to 40 K. This is in direct correlation of Night side to day side. i.e. Dayside, when the moon is exposed to sunlight it reaches 396 K (Maximum) and when the moon is not exposed to sunlight it drops to 40 K. So on the Moon Sunlight is responsible for 356 K of warming, and radioactive decay can account for no more than 40 K. Again, very similar to Pluto, so we arrive to the same conclusion if you are correct that the Earth must have at least 8 Times more radioactive elements as the moon. To paraphrase others on this board. That is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.
*And to re-iterate radioactive decay is not effected by Heat, pressure, density, mass or any other of the factors that differentiates Pluto from Earth. 1 Gram of any given radioactive element at 250 Kelvin at a pressure of 50,000 psi pressure emits radiation at the same exact rate as 50,000 tons of the same element at 45 Kelvin at 30 psi. Yes the larger material emits more particles, but that is based on the fact that there is more of it. Any given 1 gram sample of the larger piece emits exactly the same amount of radiation as our other hypothetical 1 gram sample.
This brings up a good point. Since the Moons day is 29.530589 Earth days (I went to 6 decimal places just for you Dave) And the Moon cools ~350 Kelvin in that time, and since the Earth is made of the same matter as the Moon, that means that absent the atmosphere it would take the Earth approximately the same time to cool an equivalent amount.. If we assume an equal rate, and that night side of the moons temperature is at it’s coldest half way through it’s day. We get 23.3 C/K degrees per day. So if the Antarctic or arctic had no atmosphere to warm it, it would cool at approximately the same rate. Lets be generous and use 10 C/K per day. Average Summer temperatures are -20C and average winter are -60. Form this we determine that after to days, any solar energy still residing on the surface is gone, and thus is warmed by outside areas, and not by Greenhouse effect. So my position that the greenhouse effect is absent in these areas is correct -4 days.
It’s so bad, it’s not even wrong.
ET go home.
“and you apparently agree with”
Oh no you don’t! Don’t put words in my mouth! I don’t in fact agree with at least what you think Greg said. But you made a factual error and despite your attempt to expand your mistake away (it’s a wonder what adding a few orders of magnitude will do,) the amount of radioactives in planets vary, and a lot more than a percent which wasn’t just a WAG but an entire dog.
RE 126 Dave for once again switch topics. My point was that the radiative rates of different molecules is similar, the reason why things such as H2O and CO2 are GHG are because they absorb more radiation than others, but all matter is radiative. Again my point is that CO2 does not Create energy it absorbs and re-radiates it. Your explenation is only about what frequencies this happens at, it does not in any way disprove my statement. Again you are talking about something else entirely. The discusion here is does CO2 get it’s energy from the Sun (even if that energy is secondary reflection/radiation from the earth, it’s origin is still the Sun).
Averaging over day and night is only in reference to the Greenhouse effect warming. Yes the atmosphere re-radiates energy that it absorbed during the day (as does the Earth). But the Greenhouse effect is not that. The greenhouse effect explains how the GHG get the amount of energy that they do during the day. How that is re-radiated at night is not the Greenhouse effect.
To put a finer point, that Hank Aaron and I assume you and others here believe that CO2 has it’s own inherent energy, that absent sunlight it will continue to warm the earth. My point is that this is not true, absent sunlight the Earth immediately begins to cool. The fact that it was warmed to X degrees during the day is the greenhouse effect, the rate at whch it cools is simple radiation theory, and has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect.
re: 133
“My point was that the radiative rates of different molecules is similar,”
WRONG!
Hey Dave, you saw fit to put words in my mouth. You made a completely and totally incorrect statement, in relation to what I said. I said that radioactive pecentages on a global scale are approximately the same.
I said to repeat: “Because radioactive elements are fairly evenly distributed within rock planets. ”
You then posted that I had said: “You are starting from a false premise. That (radioactive) elements are distributed evenly through all rock”
Something that I never said, and there is a signifigant difference. Why is it okay for you to put words in my mouth, but not the reverse. You are arguing my point that radioactive decay in all planets should be about the same (Order of magnitude, within a couple of degrees) If pluto is heated by Radioactive decays to 40K and the Earth is at 288K, either the Earth does not recieve MOST of it’s heat from radioactive decay, or the Eearth has many times, (not 2 or 3 % but 700% or 800%) the radioactive material that Pluto has.
What Greg said was that Earth recieves Most of it’s warming from Radioactive decay, do you or do you not agree with thatl. It is a simple declerative statement.
I in no way said it recieves no heat from radioactive decay, only that to an order of magnitude it is similar to any other rocky planet. So please show me a citation that shows any other rocky planet has more or less radioactive elements by 1%, by mass, than the Earth.
Yes Hans Aaron, we know you’d rather insult than actually dispute the facts. F the details, show me where I am so out and out wrong.
More importantly, back up your statemnet that Greenhouse warming continues in the absence of sunlight.
Imagine a closed box filled with CO2, how does the Greenhouse effect continue in that box after it reaches thermal equilibruim.
ET, the distribution of heatflow on earth is in the first place determined by the distribution of oceanic basaltic volcanism, which is in it’s turn determined by mid-oceanic ridges, which position is driven by viscous [sic] flow in the upper mantle.
Recommended literature:
Geodynamics by Donald L. Turcotte and Gerald Schubert
Hey ET, why this strange thought experiment, the atmosphere is not a closed box and never in thermal equilibrium.
Every CO2 molecule radiates, as long as it’s temperature is above 0 Kelvin.
O2 and N2 do also radiate, but in narrow lines, and not in the infrared.
Absolutely correct. The question is dose the Earth radiate any light in that spectrum? That is radiate. Of course large amounts of light in that spectrum is reflected, else we could not see the Earth from space. But if it is reflected it is not absorbed by the earth.
Case in Point. Is any light emitted from the dark side of the Earth (forgetting for man made lights) that is not thermal? I’ll give you Flouressence of some elements in the crust, but this is very minute. If the atmosphere absorbs thermal Energy, and the only light that the Earth emmits is thermal, then it would stand to reason that the atmosphere absorbs this thermal energy. Question, do we see the land in a thermal image of the Earth (It emmiting IR energy not absorbed by the atmosphere) This link http://tinyurl.com/c4sqg with this picture http://tinyurl.com/72pqq seems to suggest not.
I fully agree that light of certain spectrums passes through un affected by the atmosphere. It is then absorbed by the Earth. The Earth then needs to re-emit it else it will burn up as well as vioalting the laws of thermodynamics. At what frequency does the Earth emit this stored radiation? If you show me that the Earth emits light in a spectrum not absorbed by the atmosphere I will grant you that the Earth emits light not absorbed by the atmosphere. If you show me that the total energy is many times greater than the amount the atmosphere absorbs I’ll grant that the Surface of the Earth absorbs a much greater percentage of Sunlight than the Atmosphere.
I think we can all agree that the Earth does not create any light in the visible spectrum (that is the rock of the Earth, surely burning material and man made lights emit in the visible spectrum)
Wonderful Hank Aaron, in what way does this relate to anything I’ve said here.
I would reply to your comment with
The price of tea in China is driven by the yield of crops for any given year.
Neither your comment or mine has nothing do with what is being discussed.
Sorry, should be “Has anything to do with”
ET the infrared image of the earth is in the window where H2O and CO2 do not emit.
Here is an example from an observed spectrum on board of the Nimbus 4 satellite.
These are the meteosat spectral band parameters:
0.4 – 1.1 µm – Visible light
5.7 – 7.1 µm – Infra Red – water vapour absorption
10.5 – 12.5 µm – Thermal infra red
see? No observation in the 14 micron band!
Hmm I’m stopping feeding the troll, my posts with links ae being blocked by Spam karma.
bye.
I think ET has given us all excellent advice; I certainly plan on taking it.
“Because radioactive elements are fairly evenly distributed within rock planets. ”
vs.
“That (radioactive) elements are distributed evenly through all rock”
I don’t know what you meant that makes these incompatable statements, and at this point I don’t care. I’m beating Steve to the punch and ending this discussion. Do the victory dance of the insufferable and continue on with one less discussant.
Well that’s that issue scientifically solved then isn’t it. I will not that before a couple of days ago I have never heard anyone mention noticing this effect at all.
But again, this is someone (not you originally) trying to detract. My assertion is “Greenhouse effect stops in the arctic and Antarctic at night (~6 months long)”
Hank Aarons assertion is “the greenhouse effect continues even in the absence of sunlight”
Light radiated from the Earth in non polar regions, and trapped by the atmosphere is not discussing what I said. My comment was about Polar regions. Even if what you say is true (and I do not agree at this point) that has little relevance. Since The surface of the Earth in Polar regions will not retain enough of it’s heat during it’s “day” to last and radiate throughout it’s long night. So please forget about the cloud issues for a moment, does or does not the greenhouse effect happen in the North Pole on January 15th, or at the South Pole on July 2nd.
Well Dave it’s fairly simple. It comes down to the adgjetives. I said FAIRLY evenly distributed. that accounts for small differences, lets say 1% to 2%, stretching it maybe even 5%. Then by saying planets this means I am talking About a planet, not every single piece of rock in existense. Obviously Uraninite contains more radioactive elements than Iron ore. This is not what I said, I said Pluto contains approximately the same amount of radioactive elements as eaeth, or any other planet that is not a gas giant.
Your statement that you incorrectly attribute to me is that all rocks (I was speaking of planets, so then you mis-interpert me to mean every, when I was not discussing rocks) have an even distribution, not allowing for small variances.
I said fairly evenly, and that was in refernce to planets. It amazed me you cannot see the differnce.
It’s if I said, all planets are somewhat large. Then you picked up a pebble and said “this isn’t large.”
Sid, I’m sorry, I am not following you. Briefly put, I am saying that visible light mainly passes through the atmosphere to be absorbed by the surface. This is mostly emitted as IR. The IR radiation makes its way out through the atmosphere, mainly as a series of emissions/absorptions/emissions etc from molecules in the atmosphere, mainly H2O, but also CO2, CH4, and others. The surface will continue to emit radiation, and as long as it is warmer than space it will continue to lose energy, but more slowly as the differential shrinks. I believe that you are also correct that energy is transferred (speaking of antartica here) from the rest of the world via convection in the atmosphere and the sea, which probably increases as the differential antartica/world increases.
The so called greenhouse effect continues to operate throughout the antartic winter as surface emits IR, but as the temperature drops the total emission drops, the emission spectrum may become less efficient, and as noted above, energy is transferred inwards as well. As the antartic atmosphere is very dry there will not be as great an effect in winter, as H2O is the major greenhouse gas. Extra CO2 should make a difference here more than in other regions. It is a weakness of greenhouse warming theory that Antartica is not warming as theory suggests it should, although there are possible reasons to explain this.
Sid, the “greenhouse effect”, it the absorption by certain molecules of the IR emitted by the surface, and the re-emission of that radiation in a random direction. This slows down the loss of energy from the earth, and warms up the atmosphere. Overall this raises the energy content and hence the temperature of the earth. This depends on the sun only to provide the initial energy. If the sun went out now, the temperature drop of the earth would be slower than it would otherwise because the GH effect would conti nue to operate, with diminishing efficiency, and it would more or less cease when all of the water and all of the CO2 froze out of the atmosphere. The earth would still be warmer than space for some time because of the internal heat content which will take some time to “leak out”. Without doing the research, I make no claims about the derivation of this internal heat other than some is from radioactive decay and some possibly from the original heat of accumulation from gravity.
As regards clouds acting to reduce the loss of heat at night (and also to reduce the heat during the day though this is IMO less marked), although this effect can be masked by wind related effects, typically where there is no heat convection effects you can notice this effect directly yourself. I suggest you check this out yourself rather than just disparage it. Try this link, http://zebu.uoregon.edu/1998/es202/l13.html I hope I have the tags right.
If you disagree with my position, perhaps you could concisely set out your own so if necessary we can argue the issues rather than reverting to sarcasm or insults.
I can’t be arsed to read the whole kerfuffle above…but…did someone say that the GH gases interact with IR by having a dipole? CH4 is nonpolar and is a strong GH gas.
Ed. First off, as to sarcasm and insults, if I was, to you personally, excessively sarcastic and insulting I apologize. But you must first realize something. If you step into the middle of a fight, and pick out one individual and question his comments, you have to expect to get bitten. In a saner rational discussion this would not happen, I would not in anyway characterize this as a sane rational discussion.
As to your points, I am not going to address everything in total. Lets stick to the point, for the sake of removing all the BS that has passed let’s for a second review my original statement that Han Aeryn disagreed with.
Misspellins left intact. I’ll ignore for the moment in which context I posted that comment, sufficient to say it was in relation to a discussion about the temperatures in mainland Antarctica having a downward trend, and others saying there aren’t enough station measurements.
So now, I’d like to make a poor analogy to help explain my point. Before anyone attacks it as not describing atmospheric warming, don’t. It is not meant to; it is making another point which I will build upon.
Take a pot of water and boil it to make Ice tea, as I did a little while ago. The water is brought to boiling by the radiant heating of the stove (before someone complains about the heat being radiant, mine is a radiant heat stove) . Now you take this water and put it into a container with tea bags. The water, is well above the ambient temperature of the room, this “heat” (Heat almost always being a relative term, meaning more heat energy than ambient) was supplied by electricity that heated the element and transferred the energy to the water. Since there is more heat than ambient, the water starts to warm the air around it, the container, and the counter. This heat comes from Stove, is stored in the water, and released to the air, container, and counter. Thus the stove is heating the counter.
Eventually the tea will reach thermal equilibrium with its surroundings. It will no longer heat the air, the container and the counter. It is now in a transitional phase, it still retains a signifigant amount of energy imparted from the stove, but there is a distinct time period where this heat from the stove is gone. Now the Tea is kept at ambient temperature by whatever is keeping everything else at ambient temperature. Lets time travel the pitcher of tea to this Coming January. Now I’m heating my house with my furnace. Therefore what accounts for the temperature of the tea at ambient is my furnace. Is there still heat from the stove present in the tea? Sure, but it becomes more and more insignificant. Quickly you ignore it.
No lets apply this imperfect analogy to my above comment about GREENHOUSE WARMING during the winter in the Antarctic.
During the day, sunlight directly, and the greenhouse effect indirectly warms the land to it’s maximum temperature for the conditions. This is more so true for the polar regions because they receive their sunlight for so long without a break. Everything in the system reaches maximum equilibrium (for lack of a better term). Then the Sun goes down for the final time as winter arrives. Immediately, since its major energy source has been removed, the Ground and the air start to cool, until they reach equilibrium, in the same way that my tea is cooling. Is there solar energy trapped in the ground? Yes. Is it radiating towards the sky and being absorbed by greenhouse gasses? Yes. But this is happening only for a brief time (I don’t know how long, but I would guess a few days at most). At this point, when the ground and air reach an equilibrium the heat source now has to change. In fact during the brief race to equilibrium Greenhouse warming is responsible for the majority of the temperature at any given moment until equilibrium is met. So now the temperature is driven from something else besides greenhouse warming, since the ground is the same temperature as the air, it is no longer emitting energy above what the air has.
So the temperature in the Antarctic (or North Polar region inverse in the year) is not being added to by greenhouse warming or the greenhouse effect. It’s temperature above what it would be absent any solar effect at all (geothermal, “Radioactive decay” etc) is purely by heat energy brought in from air and water currents. Now rather than ground emissions being trapped, the air and water are imparting heat onto the ground.
Now, Is the actual temperature of the air an water that reaches the polar regions affected by Greenhouse warming. Yes of course, but that greenhouse warming is happening in another part of the planet that is receiving sunlight. It IS NOT happening in Antarctica. Simple convection and radiant heating is what allows the air to warm the ground. @nd Law of thermodynamics says that it can no longer impart heat back to the air, just as the Earth does not heat the sun, heat again being a relative term and being used here as a verb as in “to Heat” rather than as a noun as in “Heat energy”
And to more succinctly put it towards my original point, to which Hank Aeryn disagreed with. Adding GHG to the atmosphere above Antarctica in winter will not increase its temperatures, unless that GHG is warmer than ambient, and then it will have only a minor radiant, not greenhouse, effect until it reaches thermal equilibrium.
I would also like to point out that you said “speaking of antartica here” that is all I am speaking about here. I did not say that the greenhouse effect stops in non polar regions, though I suspect it’s effects are so slight after a few hours, and the heat “drain” so great in the winter that it may well do so. But I made no comment before about that.
@=[shift]2
Sid, it becomes you not at all to conjure with Hans’ name, Hans makes a worthwhile contribution in many forums. You haven’t (yet) tried to insult me, but feel free, with a name like Snack you have a lot of possibilities. Don’t, however, imagine in any way you will be original.
I think I see your point that you are trying to make, not that the GH effect doesn’t apply to antartica (to the artic regions in general) but that absent a regular source of energy (the sun) the effect becomes negligible relatively rapidly. So in the winter heat coming from outside the region there is no effective GH action ?
I think this makes a lot more sense than I have managed to extract from above posts, but could I suggest that the equilibrium for radiation is not the surface/atmosphere, but the surface/space ? IR radiation can directly penetrate to space although as noted above the MFP is typically much shorter. All “black bodies” radiate energy according to their temperature. In a equilibrium environment, wouldn’t the all the bodies be radiating their BB spectrum, but also absorbing, in an equilibrium the radiation and absorption are in balance.
I agree that heat energy comes in from outside by convection, but I also assert that heat is lost from the surface by radiation. Hence the GH effect still works, albeit weakly because the temperature is much lower, but without it the temperature would be still lower.
I think I could also assert that generally the surface and the surface layer of the atmosphere are more or less at the same temperature, mainly through convection/conduction in that layer (and that layer is much shorter than the MFP). That doesn’t stop radiation from the surface however, and the radiation is captured in the atmosphere by GH gases.
Dave, does it really take a polar moment to capture a photon in a rotational or vibrational mode ? Is this a polar moment in the bond, so a diatomic molecule like N2 will have no polarity in the bond, whereas CH4 which has no overall polarity, has 4 polar bonds ?
Ed, Might I suggest before putting me to task about altering of names, you might put Hank Aaron to task for first suggesting that I was misspelling my own moniker. Is there a reason, you feel that I should be held to a greater standard/have more restrictions than other people on this board? Why are his insults to me perfectly acceptable to you and mine are egregious enough for you to say something. Why do you suggest I would do something similar to your name, have I missed in the past where you altered the spelling of my name? Have you noticed that this something I do regularly with people I disagree with here? To me it was done specifically because Hans Brinker Aaronson felt it necessary to make a post of which the only purpose was to disparage the spelling of my moniker. goose, gander and all that.
You could suggest this, but I don’t see the relevance at all. Heat energy comes in through convection. It is there already, in other words the atmosphere holds X energy it radiates in all directions, including out to space. Its energy is now less than X, it will never reach x again without an influx of energy. Greenhouse/warming effect discusses the trapping of energy above and beyond what it would in the absence of greenhouse gasses, in this scenario the atmosphere never receives more energy than it started with, since it is in effect the energy source. I don’t see you can have any warming with a constant loss of energy/heat.
Again from my original post
Remembering also that the energy returned to the atmosphere from the ground must be at a lower frequency than the atmosphere radiated. Greenhouse gasses work with energy of a specific frequency. they absorb energy of a certain frequency, and release at a lower frequency, this is how the greenhouse effect works in the first place, since light of too high a frequency is not absorbed by the GHG it most be reduced to a lower frequency, and then radiated back at them at the frequency they can absorb. Since any light they emit cannot be re-absorbed, because it has to be at less then their original frequency, further reducing that frequency would make it less likely to be absorbed. The frequency loss is translated into movement, as heat is movement of molecules/atoms.
To give a comparison. After the Sun emits light, it is reflected or radiated from the Earth and goes back to the Sun. Has the Sun gained any energy/heat by this process?
No they are eventually at the same temperature. If the air comes in warmer and heat is steadily lost eventually they will reach the same temperature, absent a constant influx of energy i.e. sunlight.
Sid, I just feel that if you had a point with the name calling, you’ve rather worn it out by now.
Quote” You could suggest this, but I don’t see the relevance at all. Heat energy comes in through convection. It is there already, in other words the atmosphere holds X energy it radiates in all directions, including out to space. Its energy is now less than X, it will never reach x again without an influx of energy. Greenhouse/warming effect discusses the trapping of energy above and beyond what it would in the absence of greenhouse gasses, in this scenario the atmosphere never receives more energy than it started with, since it is in effect the energy source. I don’t see you can have any warming with a constant loss of energy/heat.”
Are we talking past each other ? Warming in this scenario consists of cooling slower than otherwise. If there were no GH gases in the atmosphere, more emitted radiation from the ground would penetrate straight to space, leading to faster cooling, and the atmosphere itself would transfer heat also by radiation and by collision within the atmosphere and with the ground. With CO2 present however, more of the emitted IR photons are captured in the atmosphere, because CO2 has various rotational and vibrational nodes that can change by capturing a photon with IR energies (at certain defined wavelengths of course). Hence more energy is recycled and the heat loss slowed. I don’t think (?) we disagree about this, however I think you are saying without a heat source, the ground and atmosphere will move to an equilibrium temperature and stay there. I am disagreeing, saying that radiation is emitted all the time, and if it weren’t for CO2 (& others) the heat would escape more easily. Yes, heat does arrive from outside antartica by way of air movements (let’s ignore the sea) and this counteracts the heat loss by radiation, which is mostly from the top of the atmosphere, and in fact the equilibrium is the loss of heat by radiation at some point matches the inflow of heat from the outside (plus any heat coming up through the ice, which I believe we can ignore for arguements sake).
The radiation from the surface and atmosphere is continuous, because of the properties of the atmosphere, photons emitted from the ground very rarely make it out to space. If there were no greenhouse gases, a greater number would and the temperature would fall further during the winter, the equilibrium would still be reached, balancing radiation outflow and convective heat inflow from outside, but the equilibrium would be at a lower temperature.
Secondly, Quote “Remembering also that the energy returned to the atmosphere from the ground must be at a lower frequency than the atmosphere radiated. Greenhouse gasses work with energy of a specific frequency. they absorb energy of a certain frequency, and release at a lower frequency, this is how the greenhouse effect works in the first place, since light of too high a frequency is not absorbed by the GHG it most be reduced to a lower frequency, and then radiated back at them at the frequency they can absorb. Since any light they emit cannot be re-absorbed, because it has to be at less then their original frequency, further reducing that frequency would make it less likely to be absorbed. The frequency loss is translated into movement, as heat is movement of molecules/atoms.”
I again believe you to be incorrect. CO2 for example, absorbs a quanta of energy to change from one, say, rotational state to another of higher energy. It can release exactly the same amount of energy to revert to its former state. It can also capture further quanta (almost certainly different), and release combinations of quanta although the spectrum is undoubtedly dominated by single transition emissions and absorptions. The absorption and emission spectra are the same, just like those for elements where the characteristic spectral lines are at the same frequency in stellar spectrograms when seen as absorption or emission lines.
CO2 absorbs visible light poorly, the energy levels are too high to promote a single state change, so visible light from the sun easily reaches the surface of the earth. The visible light is partially absorbed, and re-radiated mainly as IR because of the earth’s temperature which determines its spectrum. CO2 does readily absorb IR in several “bands”. The IR photons emitted by one CO2 molecule can then readily be absorbed by another CO2 molecule, and probably in quantum mechanical terms the energy can also be reabsorbed by the same molecule leading to a delayed emission in practice, but that is complicating matters. Water vapour of course has a very similar behaviour, and being usually far more prevalent in the atmosphere, absorbs the great proportion of IR. The presence of such gases is why most IR telescopes have to be on satellites, although certain bands can be used from earth.
My “surface layer” comment is referring to the thin boundary layer where heat transfer is dominated by collisions rather than radiative transfer. All I was attempting to point out that a thin layer at the surface in no way inhibited the emission of the “black body” radiation from the surface. This thin layer rapidly achieves equilibrium with the surface, but in still conditions may not mix rapidly.
Re: #141
No, Methane isn’t non-polar in the sense we’re talking about. Carbon and Hydrogen don’t have the exact same electronegativity nor, obviously, the same atomic structure. This means that as the various modes of vibration occur there will be changes in the dipole and thus the ability to absorb / emit IR. But both because of the differences in atomic weight of carbon and oxygen (in the case of water), and the various new modes having a total of 5 atoms provides, the bands for methane absorption will be a different locations than those for water and it will thus be able to make a larger difference and be a stronger GHG.
Sid has made the assumption that:
This homogeneous assumption of the “ratio of radioactive elements in the moon is the same as on Earth” is at odds with the facts. The crust of the earth is in fact quite similar to the moons crust with some significant differences. Potassium, one of the radioactive elements, is about 25 times more abundant in the earths crust. The crust does not a planet make.
To understand the differences in the core we need to know how the moon was formed.
The core of the moon and earth are quite different due to differentiation that occurred on the earth before the formation of the moon.
This differentiation makes the earths core significantly different.
To further emphisize the point:
The radioactive elements uranium and thorium, being denser elements, would have sunk to the core during differentiation. The moon lacks these elements in it’s core due to the fact it was formed from the early earths crust. But what about potassium? Potassium, with it’s low density, would be expected to have risen to the top and not be present in significant quantities in the earths core. Experimental results indicate this may not be the case.
re#145,
Yes N2 can have no polar bonds (except a very minor one if there are any isotopes of nitrogen and even then the extra weight shouldn’t affect the electronic structure much if at all.) Methane will have polar bonds, albeit not as strongly polar as the H-O bonds of water. And some of the vibrations of methane will be symmetric and or redundant and thus not count in terms of degrees of freedom and in terms of being able to absorb IR. Actually though, come to think about it, since there aren’t any linear bonds in methane, the only symmetric mode would be all four hydrogens moving in and out at the same time and I’m not sure but what that still wouldn’t produce a dipole change (or perhaps it’s better called a quadrapole change). This may be another reason methane is a strong GHG.
re: 116
A link to the Power Point presentation is here. Excellent find Dave.
Greg,
Look at:
http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q4106.html
Here’s the important paragraph:
“Uranium and thorium (Th) and potassium (K) are large ions. This makes them “prefer” to remain in liquid rock rather than in solid crystals. So, when a magma chamber forms in the mantel, the liquid in the chamber will have more U, Th, and K than the surrounding rock. As soon as a magma chamber forms, the magma starts to crystallize, and these crystals (which remain underground) have LOWER amounts of U, Th, and K than the remaining melt. As the magma continues to crystallize, the residual liquid becomes increasingly enriched in U, Th, and K. When it finally rises and erupts at the surface (or forms granite just below the surface), the rock that is formed has most of the U, Th, and K of the original magma. Doing this repeatedly over billions of years has caused most of the U, Th, and K in the earth to become partitioned into the earth’s crust. We can measure this”¢’¬?when we find rocks that formed in the mantel, we see that they have far less U, Th, and K than rocks formed in the crust. We can also see that, over time, the amount of U, Th, and K in the crust has increased steadily”¢’¬?just what we’d expect from the explanation given above. So the first answer to your question is that there is no chain reaction in Earth’s core because there probably isn’t enough uranium there to initiate a chain reaction”¢’¬?and this is because of the cosmic and geochemistry of uranium.”
Actually I had a slightly different take on WHY U an TH migrate to the crust, but at least this author agrees that that’s what happens.
OTOH, Greg look at:
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/12/10_heat.shtml
where we read:
“Our new findings indicate that the core may contain as much as 1,200 parts per million potassium -just over one tenth of one percent,” Lee said. “This amount may seem small, and is comparable to the concentration of radioactive potassium naturally present in bananas. Combined over the entire mass of the Earth’s core, however, it can be enough to provide one-fifth of the heat given off by the Earth.”
Re: 159
Dave,
P. Andrew Karam, the author, appears to be a health professional (PDF file), not a geophysisist.
I would suggest that his understanding might go back to when he was a student. Since this is not his speciality, I would suspect his understanding is a bit dated.
Re: #161
Actually, his background is quite interesting: check out http://sidharta.com/authors/index.jsp?id=2
His current work seems to be related to biological effects of radiation; he is/was Radiation Safety Officer at Rochester, and about 5 years ago he listed his affiliation as “Staff, Radiation Safety / Geological Sciences, University of Rochester”. I’d look into his background more before evaluating his expertise in core radiochemistry.
beadwindow
Re #163, TCO
No, just looks that way.
TCO & fFreddy Re: “beadwindow”
Have you both gone ET?
Ed, again your talking about cooling less quickly.
May I again re-iterate my statement. “but no sunlight for 1/2 the year means no greeanhouse warming for 1/2 the year”
I’ll grant that the 1/2 a year is not a presact staement. I am refering to the time that the polar regions are in darkness.
I did not say that Antartica will cool just as quickly as it would without the GHG. I said warming. Mr. Hans Aaron baited my by changing the term, I took the bait and that started alot of this crap that has stemmed from it in the past few day. For the moment I am going to stick to my statement in post 76.
So I ask you. Simply, no lenghty dissertations. Does Greenhouse Warming occour in Antartica during the winter months.
We can addres other issues after that.
Is Potassium the only element that goes through radioactive decay? I found a link that showed an even distribution for a radioactive isotope, but it was singular. You’ve a lot of discussion about how it is concentrated in the crust what the core is made of etc etc. That is how certain elements and compounds are chemically concentrated in certain areas. None of this addresses the point. You could pile al the potassium in one big potassium pile, the amount on the Earth will still be the same.
Nor does it address or support the original point.
Does or does not the Earth receive most of it’s heat from radioactive decay.
Nice try at distraction Sid, the point was your fallacious assumption:
Which is clearly false.
I don’t see why it’s clearly false, and certainly not from what you have posted here. Because you continue to misconstrue what I orgininally said. Until you start discusing what I siad you are going to have a difficult time proving me wrong.
In fact you have posted evidence that supports my statement.
If the Moon, was originally part of the Earth, wouldn’t it stand to reason that the makeup of the moon was somewhat similar to the makeup of the Earth? Concentrations in the crust aside.
Ahhh going back to to the original quote I see where you confusion comes from.
Should read
Because radioactive elements are fairly evenly distributed among rock planets.
I’ll grant the poor wording in the first statement. But I have clarified myself to you further numerous times, yet you continue to harp on the issue. You still have shown no evidence that the Earth should be hundreds of degrees warmer than Pluto, or the darkside of the Moon, from radioactive decay.
For the last time I did not say that the distribution of Radioactive elements withing a single planet were evenly distributed, I said again to repeat myself since people like you like to distort what I said, common tactic with disengenuous people like yourself.
trip last line frim statment Was in their before I edited my comment.
But to go back for just a moment.
Here is where I clarified myself, and yet you still continue to ignore the fact. You have shown that the moons crust has a different composition, not the entire moon. In fact you show how the Moon was created from the Earth. As such the moon should have a similar elemental makeup, how would the Moon all of a sudden gain more or less of something than it orignally had?
Troll, this is what you said:
The ratio isn’t the same, but you keep avoiding this fallacy. Again you attempt to distract by selectively quoting one of the links I posted.
By purposely avoiding the detail of what part of the earth broke off you ask:
The moon is only similar in the crust. IOW, heavy elements like uranium and thorium had already differentiated to the core. The answer to your question was in the part of the quote you edited out.
Get it yet?
You claimed that “the ratio of radioactive elements in the moon is the same as on Earth“. Your intellectual dishonesty is thus noted.
Read the links I provided.
And at the same link:
Try actually reading the links sometime.
You still have not in anyway shown that the ratio of all radioactive elements in the Moon and the Earth are drastically different. You have concentrated on one, not on the others.
As to the last statement please note where I retracted it immediately afterwards. I was writing, and part of what I changed was not visible, I did not realize it was not removed until after I posted.
You still have not in anyway addressed my original point. You addressed a subset. It cannot be shown that the concentration of one radioactive isotope of Potassium is a satisfactory proxy for all radioactive elements. Nor have you satisfactorily shown the distribution of radioactive elements at the time of Moons Formation.
That is the core. But the original statement is not about energy in the core, it is about that the Earth receives more energy from radioactive decay than from the sun. The argument for the CORE can be substantiated because my background in Optics tells me little sunlight reaches the core. But it does not satisfy the statement that the Earth as a whole receives more energy from radioactive decay than from Sunlight.
Again, Jupiter, which you cited as proof of your statement is a counterproof. As is the proto-Sun. Both gain their heat from Mass, radioactive Decay is unaffected by mass. In fact both the Proto-Sun and Jupiter contain very little elements that experience radioactive decay. The majority of the mass of Jupiter (99%) is Hydrogen and Helium, neither of which undergo radioactive decay. Certainly their isotopes can, in the case of tritium (very rare in nature) undergo decay. But A. It’s half life is 12.3 years, and it emits a very weak Beta Particle. Not sufficient to Explain Jupiter’s temperatures. Radioactive isotopes have a half life measured in less than seconds. Again insufficient to account for Jupiter’s temperatures. So as we can see, on a planetary scale Mass has a large effect on temperature. To repeat myself Mass has 0 effect on Radioactive decay.
In any case, we can argue about the definition of “Fairly well distributed” till the end of time. You still have not shown where the earths temperature is ~288K while the moons temperature is (sans sunlight on the dark side) is ~ 40 K. Arguing 8 places from the significant digit does not make up for this difference. Please explain 240K delta in Earths temperature vs the Moon (on the dark side where thermal effects are removed), and show where radioactive decay accounts for more energy than we receive from the sun. In the process please quantify the pressure effect of all the rock mass on temperature so we can subtract that from the system.
Try reading the links, I am not going to spoon feed you.
Even if I grant you the point, which I still do not agree with 100%.
You still have not accounted for the ~240 degree delta between tempratures.
I have, you still have not accounted for a delta with an order of magnitude of 8 times.
Sid, I take “Greenhouse Warming” to include cooling slower than otherwise, or being less cool, as well as actually getting warmer than before. So the “greenhouse effect” does occur during an artic/antartic winter. It isn’t increasing the temperature from where it was was, but from where it otherwise would be.
In a simplified way I suggest that the GH effect enhances the ability of the atmosphere to insulate the surface.
I don’t see how Warming could include a slower rate of cooling.
Again my statement was not about “Greenhouse EFFECT” It was “Greenhouse WARMING”
Warming insinuates an additive of energy, not a slower rate of cooling. Cooling less quickly is still cooling, and I think we can agree that Cooling is not Warming.
If you have two refrigerators, one that works worse than the other, so it cools something less quickly. You cannot say that refrigerator is warming something.*
Different rates of cooling are different rates of cooling, the slower one is not warming anything.
*Unless when you put it in the refrigerator it was already less cool than the interior of the refrigerator, obviously.
Gregg F to make things simple. The Sun imparts ~84 Terrawatts over the entire surface in one 24 hour day. Please cite a reference that for the sake of arguement, Radioactive decay provides more than 84 Terrawatts of power. In reality it would have to be more for your original asseertion to be correct, But I will give in to showing 84 Terrawatts.
From your source
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/env99/env276.htm
We get 6.18×10-12 watts/kilogram
Mass of Earth 6E+24) kilograms
http://science.howstuffworks.com/question30.htm
By my calculations (I could be wrong, happy to have someone check the numbers)
37.08 terrawatts
Signifigantly less than the 84 Terrawatts we get from the sun.
My largest concern would be the lack of a time componenet in the 6.18×10-12 watts/kilogram. Hour? Day? Month? Year?
Sid, no point in arguing semantics. If you want to argue that there is no actual “starting low and going higher” temperature increase during an antartic “night” from GH gases, then I agree, but I don’t see the relevance of that. I argue that there is warming in that without GHGs, the temperature would be, say 200K, whereas it is really 220K, say. But the temperature drops from, say 270K when night begins, so to get to either 220 or 200K, there is only cooling.
One can make the same point about temperature changes overnight in a temperate climate. When the sun sets, the temperature drops (pace any convective changes such as the arrival of a warm mass of air) overnight to reach a low usually just before the sun rises. GHGs at no point make the temperature overnight go up from a point they are already at, but they do have an effect on how fast the temperature drops, and the actual low point reached. They reduce cooling. In fact this is the majority effect postulated for AGW, the diurnal temperature anomaly will be reduced, leading to a rise in the average temperature. Daytime temperatures will rise less, but because they start from a higher base in the morning they will rise to some degree. This reduced anmomaly is considered by some to be the defining signal that enhanced warming is occurring.
To return to another point of contention, this is why, IMO clouds increase nighttime temperatures, as clouds consist of that prime GHG, H2O. When there are clouds, it can be taken as given I suggest, that there is more H2O around in that part of the atmosphere than when there are no clouds. Hence an enhanced GH effect, as well as some direct downward reflective effects. Clouds could also represent a layer that blocks convective effects from reducing temperature as well. That is, the clouds are not the block, but show the existence of a relatively stable layer that is the block.
So the net effect is less and later frosts? How much will this need to occur before the alligators can move up from Manteo to Norfolk. I really think they are grand. Want them in VA.
And my contention, I think I’ve got strength on my side. That since cooling is the antonym of warming; if it is in fact cooling it is not warming. To use your insulation analogy, No amount of insulation will warm my house, I need to gain warming from some source.
To use simile. A car either accelerates, keeps speed stable, or decelerates. A poor set of brakes will decelerate a car less rapidly, but that does not mean that a poor set of brakes will accelerate a car.
You can slow down cooling by warming, the applying of heat, but a reduction in cooling is not warming.
To your second point, you assume only one type of cloud, and only one source of clouds. It too is a secondary argument. I refuse to concede anything in that area so long as you refuse to concede that any change in cooling is automatically “warming” I think the definition of Warming and cooling is sufficiently clear that there is no need for a semantic argument.
Sid, it isn’t my choice of terminology. “Greenhouse Warming” is the term, and I think I am roughly correct on how it is working. There is an increase in temperature if you look at the average temperature. Say no GHG (and 12hrday, 12hr night, two measurements), Day 20C, night 0C, av 10C. With GHG Day 20C night 2C, av 11C. So warming on an average basis even though this is caused (in this example) by a reduced cooling overnight.
I think this is semantic in that you are arguing that warming means gaining in temperature, if you like an absolute warming, whereas “Greenhouse Warming” wrt the atmosphere really means relative warming or warmer than would otherwise be. The cooling part only comes in because the temperature is an average of two different states, day and night. Day is dominated by inbound radiation effects, night by outbound radiation, and these two radiation cases are at different wavelengths. The majority daytime radiation has little effect on the atmosphere, the outbound can have a significant effect depending on its composition. The atmosphere is optically thin at visible wavelengths, and optically thick at IR wavelengths.
Try this idea, lets simplify and say that GW only works at night, which is a rough approximation. In that case there is a warming. However, don’t confuse this case with the fact that the temperature cools from the daytime temperature, as night is a different case and we are only considering that case.
As for clouds, I am simplifying. Different clouds have different effects. High clouds are typically less influential than low. Clouds may have or represent several effects, a ground layer inversion type effect where warmer air is trapped (reduced convection, for lower clouds), a small radiation reflection, and an enhanced GH effect because of the obvious presence of extra H2O. The exact theoretical basis I haven’t researched, but I am sure of the effects at night.
I don’t know about where you post from, but where I am frosts are relatively rare, say 2-10 days a year. These usually only occur on still, clear nights. Wind disturbs the cold ground layer, and clouds increase the temperature above the necessary minimum. Usually if the normally measured night temperature is lower than 4-5C then we can get a frost as the grass temperature is about 5C lower. On very rare occasions really cold conditions can bring snow, about once every 30-50 years or more, and not on the ground in my area but on the hills around.
But we are not disusing day night outside of polar regions. We are discussing only one condition, the extended night of polar regions, and we ar not discussing on average. We are discussing only the process that occours in Polar regions during extended nights.
I will fully admit GHG insulation properties, insulation does not warm, it reduces cooling, that is not warming. Warming requires a positive energy/heat source.
Try warming your house with Pink Fiberglass insulation.
As to my location. for the majority of the year, in any given 5 day period from November to May I can show you frost Dew on cloudy mornings. Clear mornings would be the exception rather than the rule.
So what are we attempting to clear up ? Has anyone argued that Greenhouse warming actually produces an increase in temperature at night, any night ? I don’t recall anyone arguing, for example, that in antartica during winter, that the GH effect will make the temperature actually increase from a lower measurement to a higher one. Reduce the amount of cooling, yes.
And we are discussing the average temperature, that is what is being discussed when people talk of world temperatures. MBH98 just as an example, professes to measure the average annual temperature. If you want to refer to the temperature at a specific time, you can’t really make generalised statements about the temperature at other times.
We actually almost completely agree, GHGs reduce cooling at night and don’t make actual measured temperatures go up. Night in antartica is long, but the same processes apply. The temperature is much lower than almost anywhere else on earth, so the actual IR radiation is lower, and the air is drier, so the GH effect is limited, but it occurs. The reason that the temperature does not drop even lower and throughout the “night” is because some heat energy “leaks in” from outside antartica by convection. Fair statements ?
Do you also agree that the absorption and emission of photons by molecules (and atoms) occurs at the same wavelength ?
I have not and would not expect insulation to increase the temperature in my house on its own, but I would use it expecting that it would reduce heat losses, sure.
Frost under cloud, sure, if the temperature is low enough. where I am the formation of frost is so marginal that it only occurs in “ideal” conditions, and they are in clear, cold, still, weather.
ET
Funny that you keep using Pluto as your example of a planet which must have a similar ratio of radioactive elements to earth. Pluto is 30% water. http://www.nineplanets.org/pluto.html so not vey similar at all.
So Ed. I will ask again.
Do you agree that there is no Greenhouse warming at night?
On average or not. Because my original comment discussed ONLY the Antarctic night. By Saying “Of course it does, because during the day….” Is irrelevant. At night only please.
“Do you also agree that the absorption and emission of photons by molecules (and atoms) occurs at the same wavelength ?”
Absolutely not. That would defy physics. Why do you think the earth radiates energy at a lower frequency. It has to.
Paul:
A: “indicates that it is probably”
B: By Weight or by Volume, this would drastically effect your point.
C: It does not give the same information for the Earth, this would also have a drastic effect on your poiint.
D: It still does not give us the required 8 Times greater to account for differences in tempratures between the two to prove the statement “The earth receives most of its heat, not from the sun, but from radioactive decay from the earths interior.”
re: 119 & 125 & 135
Sid (or whatever your actual given name is)
After a few days rest, I went back and reread this entire thread (well most all of it anyway). I see partially where things went wrong and while I don’t think I said anything wrong, I can see where you got confused.
Your point was that because the cosmic abundances of radioactive materials is uniform (an incorrect statement, but that’s whole nother thread), the average level of radioactivity in rocky planets should be quite uniform. This was what I was attempting to disprove in my message 125 which you panned in message 135.
The trouble is that you quoted my first sentence which was discussing different [primordial] rock types and I was pointing out that because of the way the solar system was formed these rocks would have varying amounts of radioactive elements. In the rest of the post I was pointing out that since the individual rocky planets were accreted from different ratios of the protoplanetoids, which in turn formed in different areas of the solar system, they would each have a different amount of each of the various radioactive elements.
Now what bugged me about your response 135 is that you went from my pointing out an error on your part (you can call it a ‘supposed error’ in your own mind if it makes you feel better), to assuming my statements were part of a larger agreement with those you were arguing with. I don’t operate that way. I don’t always point out every error someone makes and I generally let my putative allies ramble on in error (as I’ve pointed out to TCO and others, in general it’s the responsibility of the adversary to point out error in your camp), but when I think I can make a contribution to the discussion (and prevent the adverdary from scoring cheap points), by pointing out an error I do so and make no distinction between those I generally agree with and those I generally disagree with. Consequently, your jumping to unwarrented conclusions about my beliefs just because I tried to correct you gets my dander up.
Now I’m not errorless, but I like to think that if someone makes a valid point about something I’ve actually said I will read what was said carefully enough to determine what the actual scope of the complaint was and respond correspondingly. I think in this thread you let your emotions get in the way of your analytical powers and this was what I was referring to when I said initially you had a ‘bee in your bonnet’. This was probably not a wise statement for me to make tactically, but here you go, as I said I’m not errorless.
I think it benefits the discussion to point out mistakes by “allies”. It moves the discussion ahead to more substantive issues.
Dave.
First off. Normally I never explain this, no do I feel I have to. Because of your gracious explanation I will do so for you. Sid Viscous is my Moniker that I use online, and always have. To the degree that there are a large number of people that I have met in real life that refer to me by the name Sid. In my personal life I would say that there are many times more people that know me as Sid than my real name. Due to the nature of this forum I have appended my real initials on the front. I do this so that people can, if they wish, find out who I am. I do this because within the climate debate if you do not agree completely with the AGW believers you are automatically in the pay of the Oil companies. It does not take much research at all to find out with “ET Sid Viscous” who I really am.
To the rest.
Again thank you for your, not an apology, but “Statement of situation” for lack of a better term. As I explained less than eloquently elsewhere. There are two situations here. One, everyone is making the false assumption that by saying “Fairly evenly distributed” I am stating that all planets have exactly the same ratio of Radioactive elements, or even so far as to say the exact same ratio of all radioactive elements. This is not what I said. My original statement was about A: the amount of radiation the Earth has from radioactive Decay, and B: the temperature above space that the Earth would be without Radioactive decay. As an order of magnitude statement, fairly evenly distributed holds on a planetary scale. We are all made from the same stuff. When the Universe was formed the Solar system did aggregate with Lighter elements further from the sun. Left at that my statement would be incorrect, Jupiter and Saturn being the counter examples. But the Solar system is more complicated than that. Pluto is a rock Planet where a rock planet should not be, hence the belief that it was a passing planet that was captured, again beyond the scope of this thread, and I particularly excepted gas planets, which obviously do NOT have the same ratio of radioactive elements. As an aside, since so many have been so eager to point out my errors (none of us our errorless of course), why did no one point out my incorrect Characterization of Neptune as a rocky planet, when it is considered a gaseous planet?
And while the solar system is complex, so is Radioactive decay. Lighter elements are further out from the sun, so automatically they will have less radioactive elements right? Wrong. Not all radioactive elements are heavy elements. Beryllium, potassium, and carbon are all relatively light elements (Why do I know I’m going to get an argument on this statement), with natural radioactive isotopes. So, again on an order of magnitude, the inner planets will have more heavy radioactive elements, and less lighter, the outer planets the reverse. This is then counterbalanced, in terms of planetary heating, that outer planets will also have lighter non radioactive components. So in terms of heating the effect should be fairly even. To my point, in terms of planetary heating, if you total, for any given rock planet, the mass of radioactive elements, and non radioactive elements, the ratio should be, within an order of magnitude, fairly even. i.e. one planet is not going to warm 800% greater by radioactive decay than another
Anyway I digress.
To your point that the planets have varying amounts of radioactive elements. Of course they do, but within the constraint of planetary heating it should be fairly even. Now you ask why didn’t I explain all of the above before? Well I didn’t expect the Kyoto Inquisition. So far as I know I am not defending a thesis paper, this is not a court of law. I say this in reflection of other comments done here. I do not see extensive footnotes for every comment posted by every person in this blog/forum. As such I did not realize I had a requirement to do so. Which leads us into the second situation. Most reasonable people left this thread long ago. As such I have had a variety of un-reasonable people (Keeping in mind that I did not leave which would also put me into the un-reasonable category as well. I would say my difference is that I am fully aware of this fact) nitpicking at every word I said. And when they couldn’t do that they deem it necessary to change what I said in order to find fault with what I did/n’t say. Simplest example of this, post # 76. Since about this point in the thread onward I have 8 separate people getting into aggressive, semantic (for the most part) arguments being overcritical (for the venue) of every statement I made, and if they can’t find something wrong, they make up something I didn’t say. Your buddy Hank being particularly proficient in this. Is it any wonder I was somewhat defensive? In the middle comes you (Not included in the eight) You do not concede any point that I had made, and choose to again, nitpick something I said. This Situation is further broken down into two issues. You waded into the middle of an 8 on 1 fight, and attacked the 1 guy alone, you joined in on the feeding frenzy to coin a phrase. Is it in any way surprising that I characterized you as another attacker?* So I would say any increase in altitude of your dander is your own damn fault if you don’t mind me saying. And the second part is that your “I think in this thread you let your emotions get in the way of your analytical powers” is absolutely true. I’m human, and as such I have the same instincts as any other human. When cornered by a pack of attackers I do one of two things, as all people do, submit or attack (even against being outnumbered). As a former Marine my mentality is to always attack, no matter what the odds, that’s me, take it or leave it. Part of this is a rage component of course. When outnumbered you have to use things like that or get defeated. Unfortunately in an intellectual discussion this leads to mistakes (See the Neptune one, there are others, but since no one will concede me a point no matter how obvious I refuse to show weakness that will encourage the attackers). But again, in context I still say my statement about distribution stands. Your statement about there being differing ratios of different elements is of course true, but so is the distribution of the elements and type of elements that would be heated. At the end of the day I still say the effect should be FAIRLY even to within a few percentage points. Might I suggest if your statement was a clarification (for lack of a better term) of my previous statement you could have included a statement of some support if you wished to not have me turn on you.
Well this has gone on too long. I hope this has clarified my position on any statements I may have made towards you. And to err is human. Some here are more human than others.
*As a rhetorical question. Why pick me? Why not point out problems with other statements made by different individuals. Not to put to fine a point on it, what have you got against me. Again, there is no reason to answer, this is a rhetorical question. Quite frankly I couldn’t care less why you choose to respond to my statement over others.
TCO, There has been discusion of substansitive issues here, why start now.
Um yeah…there has been, I guess. There’s also been some “I proved you wrong–no you didn’t, since I never said what you claim I said!” But I wasn’t really trying to slam the discussion (although I hate it). After all, this one is your playpen.
I was just sticking my quick oar in on the one issue that I care about. I really do think it is valuable to cite errors in “allies” (note the use of scare quotes). It tightens things up.
See above. Attacking (withing the context of the time) is not the same as clarifying a point, or pointing out a possible error that in terms of the discusion is not signifigant.
I also fail to see here I am the only person who’s errors need to be pointed out. There are other errors here as well.
Actually post 194 should be “There has been NO discusion of substansitive issues here, why start now”
Just wanted to have a discussion with Dave on how to have discussions.
A little reprise, then. The first 75 messages, no problem. Warmers whacking away with their hockey sticks at skeptics and skeptics pounding warmers on the heads with bristling pine cone rings.
Then in response 76 you claimed that half the year there was no GH affect in the antarctic because there was no sun.
Hans questioned this in 78 and then in #80 he unfortunately used the phrase “little radiators” I say unfortunately since while it’s technically true, it doesn’t really fit in the context since it’s the black body radiation which is really what’s important when it comes to atmospheric emission.
Ed agreed with Hans and then you posted a long message (#83) which could be characterized as a diatribe. Unfortunately you started pushing the “GHGs don’t ‘create’ heat so we can’t call it greenhouse warming” meme.
Next Greg (#85) chimed in with the badly worded phrase “The earth receives most of its heat, not from the sun, but from radioactive decay”. I think he meant the mass average heat content of the earth, but it sure sounds like he meant the surface temperature. So, so now we have 3 separate misunderstandings / mistakes in a few messages.
Well, I’ll continue this, but I think I’ll post this much as a start.
Not to be pedantic but.
First before someone points out. Message numbers have shifted as Hans Aeryn has been released froom the clutches of Spam Karma, I assume from multiple postings from your location with a difrferent IP. So all disregard my post # in the most recent diatribe.
Secondly, it was not a request to start pulling errors from all sides. that too was rhetorical. I will keep in mind in any future conversations with you that all rhetorical comments will have “RHEOTRICAL STATEMENT” tags. 😉
Third. For the 856th time and the last. I did not say “GH affect” (sic) I said Greenhouse Warming. I know the two are bandied about as being the same thing by many, particuarly the Cardinals of the Kyoto Inquisition, but they are not the same thing Effect and warming ARE NOT synonyms. “That was Jaws 2…………It’s a completely different shark Ted!!!!”
Lastly I appreciate the effort.
Sid,
Before I get back to the recitation, there is no greenhouse cooling (well, actually there is in this case, but that’s not what you’re referring to), therefore any difference between greenhouse warming and greenhouse effect are simply meaningless. But this will be clearer (I hope), when I post my next message.
Oh, BTW, while Hans came by our house, he stayed elsewhere and is now off in a camper so messages since yesterday morning I assume are from borrowed (or paid for) time on someone else’s computer. I don’t know how Spam Karma treats such a moving target. (It probably doesn’t like it however).
there is no need to go on with the recitation.
There is a differnece. The greenhouse effect is always in place, even with no energy source and all elements involved at absolute 0.
The point is that in the ebsence of energy Antartcia does not warm, I would refer anyone to a dictionary for the meaning of the term, Maybe I’m hyper-ineeligent, but I do not consider it a complicated word. Nor did I find “is” a complicated word. Warm does however have many conotation, make sure you take the proper one (that involves reading in contect) You can have a warm sweater, but in this contect it has a different meaning, actually it could have dual meanings. That’s what is meant by taking it into context.
Saying that cooling at a lesser rate is warming is false. And maybe it comes about by false logic. I.e. Warming can reduce the rate of cooling*, therefore a reduction in the rate of cooling is warming. this is false logic. That’s like saying some coins are quarters thus all coins are quarters.
The effect describes the process, but the process has a variety of modes of operation.
*If the rate of warming is less than thermal loss, if the rate of warming is = to rate of loss there will be no cooling or warming, if the rate of warming exceeds thermal loss there wlll be warming. In all cases cooling does not = warmiing.
Why this is so complicated I don’t know. Let me put it this way.
We don’t have a Anthropegenic Global Warming problem. We have an Anthropegenic Global Cooling Problem. The problem is the rate of cooling is just very low ln fact it’s gone negative. -Cooling is warming.
Does that make any sense?
No I didn’t think so.
All right. What you’ve just admitted is that for you it’s a semantic problem. The phrase “greenhouse warming” has the word “warming” in it. And in everyday language “warming” means to make have a higher temperature.
This illustrates quite nicely why scientists like to use mathematics and deal with nice neutral symbols like X, Y and Z. But Sid, it’s not the name, it’s the process which is important.
Let me give you an everyday example. Say you you have a stove where the burners have a setting “warm.” Now if you bring a pan of water to a boil and then turn it down to “warm” I hope you’ll agree that if you come back in 15 minutes the temperature of the water will be greater than it would have been had you simply removed the pan from the burner. Likewise if instead you’d filled the pan from the tap and set it on the burner set on “warm” I think you’ll agree that the temperature will be greater in 15 minutes than it would have been had you just set it on the counter. So, was the burner label “lying” about the boiling water while telling the truth about the tap water? Of course not. It was referring to a process, in this case to allowing a little bit of voltage across the burner.
So it is with the greenhouse effect. It consists of the process of GHGs absorbing thermal IR given off by the earth’s surface and then the atmosphere emitting extra black body radiation, some of which returns to the surface and is absorbed. During the day this process will augment the absorbtion of solar radiation and thus leads to the surface becoming warmer faster than it would otherwise. In the evening it prevents as much heat from being lost to space as quickly as it otherwise would and thus leads to the surface staying warmer longer than it otherwise would. During a arctic or antarctic winter it results in the surface becoming extremely cold more slowly than it otherwise would. Now it’s true that because of winds additional heat is brought into these cold areas and the thermal IR emitted from this relatively warm atmosphere acts a lot like our “warm” burner does. And this warming is not directly related to the greenhouse effect. But trying to use different terms for the same process depending on whether or not the sun is around is not a useful procedure. It just confuses people and may well be confusing you. I’ve certainly run into people in the past who were confused by precisely this sort of fallacy of the appeal to nomenclature.
I disagree. And I’ll lean on the crutch of context for a moment again. I realize we are far removed from the origininal comment, but Aeryn was not at the time. Read the comment in it’s entirity and comment it in context.
I’ll even give you a hint. “Heatsink”
Maybe I would ask you to re-word my statement to what you would consider 100% correct.
As the semantic part of it. If people want to attribute a different meaning to a wrod than the word entails, that’s not MY problem. But even using that arguement it is still incorrect in relation to my comment.
Using your (IMHO incorrect) usage:
Global Warming is the process by which the whole world warms, as such Global warming happens while it’s night in the polar regions, but it still is not happening in the polar regions. On average globally, yes it is happening, but not in the nightime polar reagion.
“This illustrates quite nicely why scientists like to use mathematics and deal with nice neutral symbols like X, Y and Z.”
Semantic arguement aside, agreeing completely with your statement above, in relation. Wouldn’t it have been intellectually proper for Aeryn to use my term. Not using the Synonym (in his mind) for what I said, but using what I said.
PS your example doesn’t work. If I may be so presemptous I will re-word your example to expalin what is happening in the antarctic/arctic.
Say you you have a stove where the burners have a setting “warm.” Now if you bring a pan of water to a boil and then turn it down to “off” I hope you’ll agree that if you come back in 1 hour the temperature of the water will be greater than it would have been had you simply removed the pan from the burner. So, was the burner label “lying” beacause when you turned it to off the water didn’t cool off at the same rate as if you had put on the counter.
Likewise if instead you’d filled the pan from the tap and set it on the burner set on “warm” I think you’ll agree that the temperature will be greater in 15 minutes than it would have been had you just set it on the counter. Becasue it is actually warming it.
And not to keep posting but re-reading I came up with something I thought was relevant to the semantic part.
Someone once told me that I shouldn’t use the word Agnostic to describe myself in terms of religion because I wasn’t “really” an agnostic.
She misunderstood the term agnostic, and it’s meaning. But her point was other people wouldn’t fully understand my feelings, as they would misunderstand it as well.
Should I not call myself an Agnostic because many people have attributed an incorrect connotation with the term?
I feel like a schmuck posting 4 times in a row. But had to do it before it’s outdated.
Had to bounce around in my head a few times before I laughed out loud.
It’s “This case” I’m talking about. Thank you for making my point so succinctly.
Well, I had fun writing a rather sarcastic response to your spate of messages, but I thought better of posting it. Since you clearly didn’t understand any of what I said I’ll go back into lurk on this topic. Maybe someone else will get something something from what I said.
Don’t let the past hold back a sarcastic message. I thought I expressed that it was timing more than anything you said.
I understand everything that your saying, I just don’t agree with it. I have to assume you don’t understand any of what I’m saying. I would hold your example as to not understanding. Going from Boiling to “warm” is specifically not what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about the sun going low on the horizon, the sun sets, it’s not a little heat, it’s no heat.
Sorry to wreck your beautiful thread, guys. 😉
Sid, I think I will just leave you with it. I only dropped into this thread as I thought I could help clarify matters, obviously I have failed. You insist on a particular meaning of the word “warming”, I have shown a way whereby it applies to averages, but you cannot accept that. Sorry, I believe that you are incorrect,, and for one last go, here are my answers to you post above:
Quote: “Do you agree that there is no Greenhouse warming at night?
On average or not. Because my original comment discussed ONLY the Antarctic night. By Saying “Of course it does, because during the day” Is irrelevant. At night only please.”
Sid, the answer I have already given, you too are guilty of not reading what posters write, is that antartica generally cools from mid-late summer. There are roughly 3 periods in the antartic year, high summer with 100% day, autumn/spring with days and nights within a 24 hour period, and winter when there is no sun for the whole 24 hours. There isn’t a sudden transition from one to another, so it is difficult to speak of a sudden antartic night. With the sun at very low angles there is minimal insolation, but some.
All that aside, when full night arrives, antartica only cools, I have never disagreed with this point. What I have insisted on adding is that the cooling is slowed by the Greenhouse Effect, something I believe you agree with (#185, “I will fully admit GHG insulation properties, insulation does not warm, it reduces cooling, that is not warming. Warming requires a positive energy/heat source.”). The greater the effect the slower the cooling, and this effect will persist all “night” although the effect will be much lower as the temperature diminishes, and as at times the atmosphere is warmed by convection from outside, the surface may be warmed on occasions. However the surface is always radiating, primarily in the IR range. The more IR transparent the atmosphere is, the more this will cool the surface. The atmosphere is always radiating also, and this cools the atmosphere. Both are also absorbing radiation from the other to counteract the direct cooling. This would be in equilibrium except that some radiation escapes to space.
So, it is (pace external convection) cooling only, but slowed cooling compared to no Greenhouse Effect agreed ? This is acknowledging that there is a greenhouse effect, and during the “long” night in antartica it is still present. If you don’t think the effect still works, why not ?
So why this insistence on “insulation does not warm, it reduces cooling, that is not warming. Warming requires a positive energy/heat source.” as a semantic point. We agree on the substance, Global Warming is not my term, but I am defending how it is commonly agreed to work. And, although you don’t agree on the use of “warming” as a word, do you agree that the average temperature is increased by a reduction in cooling.
Take one analogy you gave above, the car with faulty brakes. Take 2 cars, one with good brakes, and one with poor or faulty brakes. They both start at point A at 100 kph, they travel for, say, 1 kilometer at that speed, then both apply their brakes equaly hard for 5 seconds, then continue at the speed they are then doing for another Kilometer. Lets assume that the good brakes slow the car to 30 kph, the bad brakes to 60 kph. Which car reaches the end of the 2 and a bit kilometer test track first ? And which has the higher average speed ? Now you wouldn’t (couldn’t) say that the faulty brakes accelerated the second car, but you would agree that it ended up going faster over the distance. We might both agree that calling this “vehicular acceleration” was inappropriate, but only as a naming convention, I reckon you would accept that the increased average speed did exist.
Quote ” ED Snack – “Do you also agree that the absorption and emission of photons by molecules (and atoms) occurs at the same wavelength ?”
ET Sid – Absolutely not. That would defy physics. Why do you think the earth radiates energy at a lower frequency. It has to.”
Let’s go just a bit deeper as I believe I am guilty of not defining what I am referring to clearly. I agree that not all absorbed energy is re-emitted at the same frequency although the circumstances matter as to the proportion. In some circumstances almost all energy is re-emitted at the same frequecy, in others, effectively none is.
In practice there is a mix of re-emissions, mostly at a lower frequency. There are two types if you like, of energy storage in a gas. The molecules/atoms themselves have kinetic energy (they are moving), and they can also have internal energy states, that is say rotational or vibrational states, that contain energy. There are also internal atomic states and chemical bond energies, but these can be ignored here. The kinetic energy is not (except at very very low temperatures in some circumstances {Bose-Einstein anyone ?} I believe) effectively quantised so there is a full continuous spectrum of energies depending on temperature. However the internal states are quantised, so only specific energies are represented.
When photons pass through the atmsophere, they can be absorbed to transfer kinetic energy or to promote a specific state change in the molecule, from one vibrational state to another, say. The first mechanism occurs I believe but is very inefficient, so is rare Of course with billions of photons some coupling does occur, the sun does warm the atmosphere this way but not “efficiently”. The second depends the availability of suitable state transitions. At visible light frequencies, there are no molecular transitions, only atomic transitions, and these can be observed as absorption lines in spectra taken through the atmosphere, although again at atmospheric densities this is not very efficient. At IR frequencies however there are a number of molecular absorptions available, and this mechanism is efficient, but only at specific frequencies. This frequency specific absorption completely dominates the general “kinetic transfer” absorption at these frequencies if suitable state transitions are available.
The energy thus absorbed can be emitted or transferred through collisions. Kinetic energy is transferred in any amounts in collisions, and any emissions of this energy is based on the black body spectrum. Hence in this case you are mostly correct that any absorbed energy will probably be emitted at a lower frequency. Not all, it is possible to absorb a small amount and emit a larger amount by using some existing kinetic energy, but very rare.
With regard to the state change energies, they too can be transferred by collisions, and I believe that in the atmosphere this is a dominant but not exclusive process. The energy is then transferred to either a matching or similar state, or as kinetic energy. To the extent that it becomes kinetic energy, then as above it is emitted at a typically lower frequency. However energy that is retained as an “excited state” will be emitted at precisely the frequency it was absorbed, for both atomic and molecular states. This is what I was referring to. CO2 that has absorbed an IR photon in the atmosphere may re-emit that photon, and if it does it will be at the same frequency. Molecules can enter the “excited state” by absorbing a photon, or through a collision. Typically as any photons emitted at that energy will be promptly re-absorbed, most energy that escapes the atmosphere is transferred to kinetic energy and re-emitted at a lower frequency. However from space I believe that the earths atmosphere on the night side would show a strong IR signal for water and a weaker one for CO2, as at the top of the atmosphere emissions from these molecules would often escape re-absorption.
So it is not physically impossible to re-emit at the same frequency, it is indeed physically perfectly normal to do so, but in different conditions other mechanisms such as collisional de-excitation will interupt the re-emission at that same frequency. This applies equally to atomic and molecular processes.
There, done. I have re-read much of the thread and I feel that enough is enough. If you insist that for global warming to exist it must cause direct measured temperature rises rather than act by reducing cooling at night which is the expected dominant effect, then your form of “global warming” does not exist and you are “correct” in that. However my form of “global warming”, where the overall spacial or time averaged temperature of the earth is raised by the greenhouse effect because of a reduced diurnal temperature anomaly, does exist, and you have in no way disproved that. So I quite fail to see what your arguement is anymore. But thanks for the stimulation into trying to set down what my understanding was of the mechanisms, and for pointing out the imprecisions in my language where I refer to specific mechanisms (re absorption/emission frequencies) but did not say so, making my statement incorrect as a generalisation.
As a final suggestion, could you perhaps try to make a quite short summary of what you profess to believe we are disputing, it would be interesting to see. If you do, please ignore the specifics such as absorption/emission, except to point out why that is important as a mechanism.
Cheers
Ed
To me Global Warming is the issue of the average temperature of the earth going up (from before and after CO2 intro). So talking about if the temp during the day was on the upswing or the downswing that day is irrelevant. Now, could someone put a cushion on Sid’s head and sit on him?
There are roughly 3 periods in the antartic year,
high summer with 100% day,
Damn HTML tags
There are roughly 3 periods in the antartic year,
high summer with 100% day, (——————-Not talking about this.
autumn/spring with days and nights within a 24 hour period, (—————Nor am I talkin gabout this.
and winter when there is no sun for the whole 24 (——–this is the single and only case I am discussing.
At this point I have to conclude your just baiting me. You must either add something to what I said, talk about something else, or talk about a political usage of the word that is beyond what I am discussing. You seem to not be able say that under extreme conditions (0 sunlight) “Global Warming” does not exist. Because you seem to think that puts a hole in the “Global warming theory” (another politicized term), and do not realize that my statement far above is not to say that the global aggregate worming of the Earths atmosphere is not happening. I am talking about a specific special case. One that you refuse to discuss. You continue to discuss aggregate warming, and refuse to limit your discusion to the specific case I mentione.
“Now you wouldn’t (couldn’t) say that the faulty brakes accelerated the second car,”
So then why can you not admit that absent added energy warming cannot occour, and that insulation retains heat, it does not add to it.
that’s because you use the politicized meaning of the word TCO. But politics have 0 effect on physical processes, and are extremly poor at discussing them as well.
No, I don’t.
I know I said I wouldn’t re-comment, but briefly this time.
Sid, I did agree with your limiting case #213 “All that aside, when full night arrives, antartica only cools,…”. (The other cases I distinguished just to make the point that the arrival of the long “night” in antartica is not a simple transition, sorry for the digression.) If that is not clear enough From the start of the period when the sun no longer rises above the horizon in antartica, until it starts to rise again, antartica only cools. The main exception would be where warmer air from outside antartica is brought in
Where I disagree is in believing this to be important. You seem fixated on the idea that for global warming to be real, the temperature must physically increase when the sun is not above the horizon in antartica. Why ? If you don’t believe that, and your only arguement is “after sunset in antartica, the temperature drops and doesn’t increase until the sun rises again”, then I suggest no one has ever argued against this. I don’t refuse to discuss it, I just agree and pass over it so quickly because it is trivially true and a non-sequitur. Why 219 posts to reach this conclusion ?
Interestingly enough, the assumption that the earth’s internal heat has no effect on antartica’s temperature (a simplifying assumption I at least have made) is not true for one specific place in antartica, Mt Erebus, and perhaps Mt Terror as well. Erebus has been active in recent times, but it is one very small spot in antartica.
The car/insulation analogy is fine, I’m not claiming that insulation makes the temperature increase. Why can’t you clearly see that you exactly agree with my point. If you visited two houses at, say, midnight. One insulated, one not, you would perfectly reasonably be able to say that the insulated house was warmer than the non insulated, even though both were colder than they were at 4 pm earlier in the same day And you could say that the insulation had “warmed that house”, which is a relative, not an absolute, comparison. What is wrong with this use of the word “warmer” and “warmed” ?
“You seem fixated on the idea that for global warming to be real, the temperature must physically increase when the sun is not above the horizon in antartica. Why ?”
Absolutely 100% incorrect. I have never said anything of the kind.
“then I suggest no one has ever argued against this.”
Wrong again, been 50% of this crap discusion, after post 76.
“Why can’t you clearly see that you exactly agree with my point. ”
Because it has nothing whatsoever with what my detractors have said about my original statement. I never said outside of the one special circumstance greenhouse warming does not occour. I also did not say that that Bigfoot is living at room 812 of the Waldorf Astoria, why did you not debate that.
Post #76
“Oh yes, everyone please remember that any warming effect of CO2 in the Arctic and Antarctic is immediately halved. You can pump all the greenouse gasses you want in there, but no sunlight for 1/2 the year means no greeanhouse warming for 1/2 the year. Making for lovely heatsinks that are realitively un-affected by greenhouse gasses.”
and #79
“Do you understand how the “greenhouse effect” works?
Sunlight shines down, some energy is retained by the various greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere retaining energy means heat, other light is reflected/refracted back as IR energy (heat) which is also retained by the greenhouse gasses.
Can you explain how this process would continue in the abscense of sunlight?”
This is what I am working from Sid. What is “other light is reflected/refracted” supposed to mean ? I understand that the incident light is mostly in the visible part of the spectrum and is largely absorbed by the surface and re-emitted that is important for the IR. The re-emission occurs over time. Reflection would not change the frequency, and refraction only minor change. The surface absorbs visible light strongly, I am sure you can think of examples where a piece of the surface is much hotter than the atmosphere locally when in sunlight, think of your car left out in the sun, or the black surface of a road.
Is this the issue ? Are you suggesting that as the light is “reflected/refracted” as you put it, that the re-absorption by the GHGs in the atmosphere occurs while the sun is shining on the surface ? As the surface is always emitting “black body” radiation the process continues without the sun.
Is it that the surface and atmosphere locally get to be in equilibrium, so any BB radiation merely recycles the heat ? But the atmosphere will generally lose heat at the top, and will convect and radiate to continue to do so, and so will continue to cool over a long period. Once the surface and local atmosphere are at the same temperature the process slows down, but except in special circumstances, the atmosphere will lose heat to space and is not in equilibrium, so any surface/atmosphere equilibrium is ephemeral. Talking here of antartic night again, or where there is no inwards radiation.
And if you can point out where anyone has suggested warming in your terms (that is an actual physical increase in temperature) without the sun being present, I will happily retract my comment. Otherwise I stand by it.
Your playing semantic games.
I asked you personally how many times? “Does Greenhouse warming happen in the poles during it’s long winter” to which you would not agree.
Just from you
178 “Sid, I take “Greenhouse Warming” to include cooling slower than otherwise, or being less cool,”
184 This is where you talk of something else. “Sid, it isn’t my choice of terminology. “Greenhouse Warming” is the term, and I think I am roughly correct on how it is working. There is an increase in temperature if you look at the average temperature. Say no GHG (and 12hrday, 12hr night, two measurements), Day 20C, night 0C, av 10C. With GHG Day 20C night 2C, av 11C. So warming on an average basis even though this is caused (in this example) by a reduced cooling overnight.”
181 “I argue that there is warming in that without GHGs, the temperature would be, say 200K, whereas it is really 220K”
154 “Warming in this scenario consists of cooling slower than otherwise”
152 “I agree that heat energy comes in from outside by convection, but I also assert that heat is lost from the surface by radiation. Hence the GH effect still works, “
To me “greenhouse warming” is something that is relevant over timescales related to the change in CO2 concentration (i.e. years). so the comparison is from epoch to epoch. It is irrelevant if temps are cooling during the night. what’s relevant is how cold one night is to another. And if you go with your nitanoid definition of “warming” only applying to raising the level of positive sloped temperature-time fields (not negative sloped ones), you are curiously without a term for this “less cold at night” phenomenon.
And your statement would be fine, if it weren’t for the fact that I specifically limited the time of my statement, and it’s relevance to a specific period of time.
It’s like me saying Rome was the hub of civilization from 200 BC to 200 AD
And then you saying civilization was around a lot longer than 400 years.
And again you show that “Greenhouse warming” to you is a political statement, not a description of a physical process. Of course it is relevant over larger timescales, but I wasn’t exactly talking about larger time scales, now was I.
Doing your super troll thing again are you. Are you being purposely obtuse or just dense.
Oh jeezus. You’re on the “this is what I said” kick. Well if you did say that (I don’t agree but even so) what f***ing point did it have? Jeezuz.
Because people like you continue to misconstrue what I said. Had you actually read the post, and from your posting habits, had an attention span longer than a huminbrid you would have seen the point.
Why the heck would you make such an inane post? What relevance would it have to anything of interest. Actually I think you were in error and just lack the sac to admit it. Pathetic.
Not getting enough attention from Mommy?
Sid, nowhere am I claiming it gets hotter, try again, You are just trolling now, or being deliberately obtuse. End of this thread.
Ed Snack: “Warming in this scenario consists of cooling slower than otherwise””
Or can you finally agree to the statement (Corrected from original) “There is no Greenhouse Warming, in Antarcica, during the Antarctic nights*”
*Full nights, when the sun does not rise above the horizon for months.
Boy this thread has grown! Only away for two weeks.
re #166
Yes! The phenomenon called “coreless winter” in the antarctic demonstrates a radiative equilibruim during winter with downwelling radiation. Downwelling radiation by greenhouse gases.
http://www.nadn.navy.mil/Oceanography/courses/SO426_maksym/text/chapter5_climate&met.htm
graphs:
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/About_Antarctica/Weather/Temperature/index.php
But you just had to bring it up again didn’t ya Hank.
I notice the distinct downward trend during the winter/darkness months.
If you were to go back to my original statement, you will find the words -warming-, which in English means to warm. Not to cool less quickly. So you are simply belaboring yet another point already, incorrectly IMHO opinion, made.
If your point is that greenhouse warming is occouring outside of the arctic/antarctic regions and transported to the arctic/antarctic, that point has already been made as well, by me I believe. But again, that greenhouse warming is occouring Outside of the Arctic/Antarctic, so does not damage my original statement, and reinforces my statement about being a heat sink.
So your point is?
Indeed, viscous
Or even better, thick. You know ET, this reminds me of a discussion I had on the dutch Kijk forum, http://forum.kijk.nl/messages/board-topics.html with somebody imposing as a university professor. You are very eloquent and write a lot, most of it however provable wrong.
I leave you to it, I will try to ignore you. I am going to spend my valuable time on AR4 instead of trying to debunk you. However, don’t get the impression you’ve won this discussion on scientific arguments. This kijk guy also started calling names, when his scientific arguments dried up.
Bye.
I’m sorry Hank, Mr. “You don’t know how to spell your name”
Now your accusing me of impersonating a college professor? When did I say anything of the like? But since your argument has absolutely no merits, and cannot stand on it’s own (Warming=cooling, Black=white, Up=down, etc etc etc) Instead you revert to insults and accusations that have no basis in reality. As I told your buddy Dave, I appended ET to my Moniker so it can easily be determined who I am. What I am is not a professor, nor have I made any attempt to assert anything of the kind. I’m nothing gut a layman who has spent many years researching such things.
But again, your point wasn’t to argue your ludicrous position. It was to make up lies about me, and try to discount my points that way. Most likely your also lying about the other discussion I don’t care that you had.
If they are so provable wrong, do so Hank Aeryn.
Let’s be more polite please.
Don’t know if your speaking to me or not Steve, but I can ssume so. I’m glad to be more polite, but I have to ask Hans to be as well.
See ET, You are the anonymous poster here, you could be anything, even a 13 year old Japanese girl. I won’t debate your scientific content anymore, because there isn’t any.
Please: everyone do it unilaterally, whether immediately reciprocated or not.
I stand by my comment that anyone can find out who I am easily enough, and I’m known by more people by my moniker than my real name.
And PS I fail to see the relevance of knowing my real name.
I do know your real name, which convinces me that you are missing essential basic knowledge of (geo)physics.
And I fail to see the relevance. Is there a list of names of people that are qualified to comment on such things. If you could please point to said list and the application process to get on said list. (Sorry for the sarcasm Steve). So far as I know Neither Steve or John have set any requirements for what people can or cannot say here based upon their educational background.
This is a similar argument whether or not to accept Dr Naomi Oreskes’ study, or Dr. Benny Peiser’s critique of said study. global Warmers like to point out that Dr. Peiser is not a climatologist, while conveniently ignoring that Neither is Dr. Oreskes. Or even (Not to get personal) Mann’s criticism that neither Steve McIntyre or Ross McKitrick are climatologists, thus ignoring their comments on the analysis of statistical methods, for which they are qualified to discuss. There’s even another Blogger who has inserted himself in the global discussion of global warming, he’s a computer scientist, nothing to do with climatology, though he comments on such physics issue that many of us have learned from what he has said (rather than his degree) that he too is lacking basic knowledge of (geo)physics.
I’ve already told you that I have no fancy letters after my name, I’m a simple layman. I don’t quite see where knowing my name is going to change the knowledge level, which in your terms is completely unverified. Rather why don’t you look at what I’ve said (which is mostly self explanatory). If you disagree learn me on the facts, just don’t insult. In short, I have no degree, even undergraduate, and I make no claims that I do. I do, however, have the ability to read and learn. You do not need a degree for that.
This is a blog/forum, not a scientific journal, nor a national position report. It is a collection of many people (ignoring our leaders for the moment) with varying backgrounds and education levels commenting on what they see here, and a Global issue being discussed by people everywhere. Rather than tallying peoples grades we should be discussing what is/isn’t said. My knowledge is all self taught, you won’t find my name in any listing of bright fellows or a member of any scientific societies. So as far as your comment I could just as well use X, since knowing my real name will tell you nothing of any value. If your so interested (and I can’t imagine why you would be) spend your own time looking. You can get my name, address, phone # and even a picture on the web. though I see no value in the information for you.
I don’t need a Masters in Mathematics to state, with complete confidence, that 567+452=1019 the facts speak for themselves.
If, due to my lack of college level education/degrees, you find no value in my posts, might I recommend ignoring them, and more importantly not posting in reply to them. Even more importantly drop the insults. I’ve never made any comment to you before the long ago post in this thread, and I’ve certainly never insulted you before then as well.
Quite frankly your fascination with my name I find extremely disturbing.
Do you realize what a baby you sound like?
Everybody please take a deep breath. You’re all valued posters and I can’t be bothered snipping. But I don’t want this to be like sci.environment. Next 10 posts – no personal comments or editorializing , OK?