The heat capacity of air is 1 joule / gram / degree C.

The weight of air would be equivalent to 760mmHg by 1 sq meter. So the air would weigh 10 tonnes, or 10000000 grams, therefor it would take 10000000 joules to raise 10000000 grams of air by 1 degree C.

2 watts x 5000000 seconds = 10000000 joules

so it would take 5 million seconds for 2 watts of energy to increase the temperature of this 10 tonnes of air by 1 degree C. 5 million seconds is nearly two months, but if the IPCC average is 1 degree C rise every 33 years, what happens to all the heat over the remaining 32 years and 10 months. (33 years minus 2 months)

According to this, 99% of the heat created through CO2 raditive forcing is NOT used in raising the temperature of the atmosphere. I have heard that a lot of the heat created through CO2 radiative forcing gets absorbed by the oceans, but I didn’t realise 99% of it was. Is this so, or have I placed a decimal point in the wrong place?

Chris

What is the before feedback IPCC sensitivity of doubled CO-2 in the tropics?
What is the before feedback IPCC sensitivity of doubled CO-2 in the North Polar regions?
What is the before feedback IPCC sensitivity of doubled CO-2 in the South Polar regions?
What is the outgoing W/sq-m radiation in each of these areas.
What percentages of the earths outgoing LW radiation is in each of these areas.

I have only seen what others have called the “cartoon” global average chart displayed by the IPCC. It appears obvious to me that what should be averaged are the different latitude responses to the different W-sq-m radiation in the different latitudes. Simple example (I do not know the real numbers)… The tropics radiate 9 times the LW W/sq-m radiation as the south-pole. The tropical doubled CO-2 sensitivity to this radiation is .25 degrees due to the high humidity in the tropics. The polar region doubled CO-2 sensitivity is 2 degrees due to the lack of humidity. Geographically these areas may be the same size, yet 90% of the LW radiation and the response are in the tropics. Therefore the response for the two combined areas is .25 / .25 / .25 / .25 / .25 / .25 / .25 / .25 / .25 / and 2. The two areas combined have a sensitivity of .425 degrees relative to the total W/sq-m radiation of these locations. Should not the response be given as a W/sq-m number and not a temperature?

Is this at all logical?

Is this what the IPCC does?

I know far more is involved in this, and getting the true response would be as difficult as getting the world average temperature. I am just trying to understand on a very basic level how they arrived at a global average response of .8 degrees per doubled CO-2

Does this mean that the atmosphere is more IR transparent than one would think by looking at the CO2 absorption lines?

Yes .
Take for instance the asymetric stretching mode of the CO2 molecule that is IR active (001 at 2349 cm^-1) .
This mode stands in very strong resonance with the IR inactive vibration mode of the N2 molecule at 2331 cm^-1 .
In LTE there will be the same number of excited N2 molecules deexciting as the number of deexcited N2 molecules exciting through collisions with CO2 molecules .
Both the number of 001 CO2 molecules and (1) N2 molecules is given by the Boltzmann distribution and is constant .
This example shows among others that one has to be VERY cautious when talking about Kirchhoff’s law
(and other macroscopical laws) in processes dominated by quantum mechanics .
The process in which a CO2 molecule absorbs 2349 cm^-1 radiation and excites an N2 vibrationnal mode as well as its symetry clearly doesn’t obey the Kirchhoff’s “law” despite the fact that energy is conserved .

Now you double the number of CO2 molecules .
Then you double the number of 001 states (increased absorption at 2349 cm^-1) and you double the number of collisions
with N2 molecules .
So you double the number of excited (1) N2 molecules .

End result ?
Part of the 2349 cm^-1 IR radiation was transferred to an IR inactive N2 vibration mode and is not available for reemission by CO2 .
This is an example of intermolecular V-V (vibration-vibration) energy transfer .
Beside that you have many V-T (vibration – translation) energy transfers where an excited IR active mode stands in thermal equilibrium with the translation continuum .

The same applies of course also for H20 which largely dominates the radiative transfer anyway .

Again a word of caution .
This sort of argument shows the sensibility of purely radiative/collisional processes to a doubling of CO2 and it is shown that the result can’t be obtained by considering CO2 alone .
It doesn’t say what is the radiation itself in LTE and more specifically it doesn’t mean that radiation energy somehow “disappears” .
Once the gas is in LTE , it is at constant temperature , the energy states are populated as per Boltzmann law and everything that is excited must be deexcited and vice versa by all available processes .

I’m reposting this also look at the link it has pretty graphics and charts for the absorption bands of different gases

The problem I have with these estimates is that they are based on GISS data. I have pointed out before that GISS has a positive bias. I personally don’t know why this is but Roger Pielke Jr. suspects it is because of an extrapolation of the polar data. I also see that ozone is not included in the calculations, Why? Do think this is why Roger Pielke Sr. says there is an over estimation of not only CO2 forcing but total radiative forcing?

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/

Medical science is highly diverse and complex. Overall, the success in this area is remarkable, with people’s lives and health being significantly improved.

Understanding the human body is no more difficuly than understanding climate. The big difference is medical science can seperate the good from the bad through trial and error. That said, medical science must meet some pretty high standards before humans can be used to the theory. Medical scientists are not allowed to say ‘trust us’ – they have to demonstrate convincingly that the benefits of a therapy outweight the risks. Medical scientists or the organizations they work for are liable if they make scientific errors and then try to cover the errors up.

Why do climate scientists think that they do not need to live up to those standards when it comes to justifying a huge social experiment that will affect the lives of everyone on the planet?

Bugs says:

That one specific area had an error does not surprise me at all. I do not think the science or projections are anything like 100% perfect. The general response of the climate over the past two decades is pretty convincing, however. AGW is real, increased CO2 is the forcing that is causing it.

That is what you believe but steves work on this blog makes it clear that basis for that claim is not a firm as you would like to believe. If you claim is correct then climate scientists should be able to prove an engineering quality exposition to back it up. If they can’t/won’t do that then they can no business asking society to make investments based on their science.

This seems to be a common mode of thought at this web site. It seems to boil down to this line of thinking.

“I am ignorant of the science of climate, but I will not accept what the experts say, so I will not believe anything they say until they explain to me the detailed science”. IMHO, it’s up to you to go out and do a University course in climate, it’s not up to them to spoon feed every detailed question on science. (#32)

Experts have been wrong before. The basics aren’t really that hard, if you can understand partial differential equations. It certainly seems reasonable to me that somebody with a scientific education should be able to get these types of questions answered without having to take a university course.

There seems to be a kind of “band gap” between the simple cartoons of the sort the IPCC provides and the actual mathematical development found in textbooks like Thomas and Stamnes. IMO if the climate change issue is important enough to ask the governments of the world to massively interfere with just about everybody’s lifestyle, it’s important enough that somebody should be responsible for filling this “band gap” for the sake of scientists and engineers who want to audit the science.

One way to do this might be a set of graded FAQ’s, with answers at several different technical levels. People in the field could be responsible for assuring that the answers were technically correct, and people out of the field for assuring that the answers were reasonably understandable.

Your response demonstrates a common mode of thinking among alarmists: focus on the on the most uninformed opinion expressed and claim it represents the views of all skeptics. This allows the alarmist to avoid dealing with the more nuanced opinions of the well informed skeptics who raise legimate questions regarding climate science. (#33)

There’s an awful lot of ill-informed skepticism out there. For example, this paper showed up in the BB today. (Here’s my amateur critique.) This sort of stuff wastes the experts’ time, and confuses people more distant from the subject.

I think you also put too much weight on the value of climate science theory at university. When I went to university most textbooks simply presented the facts that students are expected to learn. Students learn them and don’t often care whether the facts are wrong because they still have to produce the facts as presented in the textbooks on an exam paper. The system ensures that bad science takes a long time to refute once it makes it into a textbook.

Hear! Hear! We have an internet that could provide the physical infrastructure for something more interactive, especially for people in other technical fields. It should be used, IMO.

For example, for years medical textbooks said that ulcers were caused by stress and any aspiring doctor that claimed otherwise would be lose marks. It took years before a maverick scientist proved that bacteria was really caused ulcers.

Medical science is highly diverse and complex. Overall, the success in this area is remarkable, with people’s lives and health being significantly improved. That one specific area had an error does not surprise me at all. I do not think the science or projections are anything like 100% perfect. The general response of the climate over the past two decades is pretty convincing, however. AGW is real, increased CO2 is the forcing that is causing it.

This seems to be a common mode of thought at this web site.

This seems to be a common alarmist straw man.