Bishop Hill A new typology for the climate debate
Sep 15, 2012 Climate: Sceptics Climate: other This is a guest post by Lloyd Robertson.
I think we need a new typology for people who comment on climate--better than warmists vs. skeptics or any other "teams". I propose three main analytical categories:
- state of mind
- whether still learning or not
- communicating with public/media honestly or dishonestly.
For state of mind, I want to distinguish ordinary ignorance, Socratic ignorance (knowing when one doesn't know something), and knowledge.
The best combination of the three categories would be Socratic ignorance combined with some knowledge, still learning, and communicating honestly. In this category I would put your distinguished self, Steve McIntyre, and some bloggers I read including Lucia (including posts by Zeke), Judy Curry, and Pielke Jr. I would be more impressed if lukewarmers were prepared to say that much of the IPCC AR4 is not only shaky, but nonsense. Judy Curry stands out for having taken a fresh look at all this, and calling a spade a spade.
What impressed a lot of us about Climategate was the contrast between the way folks spoke in private, and the way they spoke in public. In public it was all about suppressing any admission of ignorance or uncertainty in order to maintain the dogma. In private, though, there was sometimes something like Socratic ignorance combined with some knowledge. For example, Trenberth saying on two occasions that there were important things he and his colleagues didn't know about temperature, "and it's a travesty that we don't know." Socratic ignorance, probably some ordinary ignorance, some knowledge, possibly trying to learn, communicating dishonestly. Ed Cook saying "we honestly know fuck-all about what the … [temperature] variability was like on timescales greater than a century with any certainty (i.e. we know with certainty that we know fuck-all)." On this last point, though, Cook probably realized that there was substantial paleo evidence against the warming dogma, and none to speak of in favour of it: a combination of ordinary and Socratic ignorance, not much knowledge, not trying hard to learn, communicating dishonestly.
Let's have some more fun: Trenberth again, but this time constantly in the news saying every hurricane is the beginning of Armageddon. Plain ignorance, lack of knowledge (not the field in which he's trained), not trying to learn, still communicating dishonestly in that he knows or should know better.
This raises a subtle point. If one is convinced that a person wallows in complete ignorance and folly, it is difficult to blame them for anything they say. How can they be dishonest about the truth if they really don't know anything? Of course there is the dishonesty in failing to achieve Socratic ignorance, and for a scientist, there is dishonesty in not trying to find out more, or not trying to disprove one's favourite theory.
For all I know, Lewandowsky has never known anything on any subject, including how to conduct an online survey. But doesn't even an ordinary, fairly stupid person have enough sense to be more honest about his mistakes than Lew is being?
Of course I am a skeptic, and I am giving the impression that the egregious faults are all on the other side. I suppose the skydragons, whoever they are, are plain ignorant, not trying to learn, but probably honest. I don't read them, I had never even heard of them until Judy Curry sharpened her lance against them.
Muller is probably an interesting case: impressive in his defence of McIntyre and Anthony Watts, blowing his own horn a bit too much as he confirms the mainstream view of temperature, and then going out on a limb by attributing the warming to man-made CO2. We have Michael Mann's word for it that the question of attribution is not settled, and it is certainly not as simple as Muller made out. So: on that question, plain ignorant, lacking in knowledge, and not trying hard enough to learn. On the other hand, Muller is probably always honest--perhaps to a fault given his non-Socratic belief that he is always right.
Reader Comments (106)
omnologos,
Please desist with the "loony" insults that merely enforce Robertson's ad hom about my colleagues which I see Andrew Montford has now had the good sense to have deleted and replaced with the less inflammatory statement "Judy Curry stands out for having taken a fresh look at all this, and calling a spade a spade." But an apology for Robertson's slur would also have been nice.
My colleagues at Principia Scientific International (formerly aka 'the Slayers') are merely seeking a reasoned dialog on the science. FWIW please help us by addressing the following facts.
Our detailed study of the work of Arrhenius and Tyndall proves that both men based their beliefs on the utterly discredited notion of “luminiferous aether.” How is that “solid science?”
Also, which of the confused “theories” of the GHE do you believe in – is it the delayed cooling version or back radiation? Because these are mutually contradictory physical processes. My colleagues and I proved that there are no fewer than 63 variants of the so-called greenhouse gas theory taught and used in leading institutions – many of them fatally contradictory.
As retired former U.S. Navy meteorologist, Dr. Martin Hertzberg laments, “prior to the 1970′s no mainstream science journals considered the “greenhouse effect,” let alone the theory that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) had any influence on the weather.” When we carefully charted the history of the infant science of climatology we saw that emphasis on radiation really took hold thanks to the work of two men: James Hansen of NASA and Tom Wigley from the now disgraced Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. It is they who set about re-writing history and science. Indeed, in the early days we found that Hansen’s scientific papers confirm that carbon dioxide barely raised peripheral interest to GHE researchers back in 1967. At that time, Hansen – an up and coming theorist – shared Carl Sagan’s view that dust (aerosol particulates) drove the GHE. This is tellingly exposed in Hansen’s famous 20-page paper about the GHE on Venus of which catastrophe theorists still make so much. Tellingly, in black and white, amongst 7,687 words “dust” (42 times) and “aerosol” (33) or their derivatives are the focus of concern while the apparently irrelevant CO2 makes just the one appearance – on Page 1151 (see here: Hansen, J.E., and S. Matsushima“The atmosphere and surface temperature of Venus: A dust insulation model” Astrophys. J. 150: 1139–1157 (1967) Bibcode 1967ApJ…150.1139H. Doi:10.1086/149410).
Ken wrote Michael J: "I urge you: please don't discount your own personal analysis, intuition, simplification and generalization. Every huckster in the world will take advantage of you by making the analysis seem overly complex and arcane."
Unfortunately, problems develop when one doesn't rigorously and fairly test one's personal analysis against the laws of physics and honestly assess (despite one's personal biases) whether one has discovered a massive mistake in the application of radiation theory to the earth's atmosphere. As Richard Feynman once wrote (in a fabulous article entitled "Cargo Cult Science"):
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you haven't fooled yourself, it's easy to not fool other scientists. You just need to be honest in a conventional way after that." Unfortunately, activists like Steve Schneider have corrupted climate science by claiming that it is perfectly ethical to present the PUBLIC with scary stories and over-simplified scenarios without mentioning of any doubts.
So Ken should ask himself: Why didn't scientists recognize mistakes in how radiation theory was being applied to the atmosphere in the 1960s to 80s, when the radiative-convective equilibrium was first proposed and before CAGW had severely politicized climate science? Why don't highly competent skeptical scientists (like Lindzen, Spencer and Curry) support assertions of a massive mistake? Why do G&T merely complain that SOME descriptions of the greenhouse effect violate the 2LoT ("DLR from the [colder] atmosphere heats the [warmer] earth"), rather than directly challenge the two-way transfer of radiative energy between the earth and the atmosphere? The logical conclusion is that there have been no mistakes in the application of conventional radiation theory. Claes Johnson and his acolytes believe that conventional radiation theory, quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics are wrong because these theories permit individual molecules and photons to violate the 2LoT. (They don't seem to understand that temperature - and heat flow from hotter to colder - are concepts that only apply to large collections of colliding molecules and the net energy flux between them. The Boltzmann distribution of kinetic energies means the temperature of any single molecule isn't determined from its kinetic energy and therefore is a meaningless concept for a single molecule.) Perhaps Claes will win the Nobel Prize for his new theories (cough, cough), but any new theory must be compatible with a large body of experimental observations that will limit how radically the predictions of any new theory can vary from the predictions of established theory.
Most of Ken's arguments in the above posts suggest that he is the huckster. In my opinion, posts like Ken's are ruining the scientific credibility of skeptical blogs and misleading those who haven't mastered the physics of energy transfer in the atmosphere. For example:
1) The earth isn't like a iron ball heated up to 100 degC WITH THE HEAT SOURCE REMOVED and being left to cool. The sunlit face of the earth constantly intercepts 1365 W/m2 of solar radiation (as measured from space) which produces an average of 342 W/m2 distributed over the whole surface (4*Pi*r2) rather than the sunlit face (Pi*r2). 102 W/m2 of the incoming radiation is reflected back into space (also measured from space as SWR, which is easily distinguished from the LWR emitted by the earth). About 2/3 of the remaining 240 W/m2 reaches the earth's surface (also easy to measure, but highly variable with day/night and clear/cloudy). The remaining 1/3 is absorbed in the lower atmosphere on the way to the surface.
To maintain a constant temperature, the earth/atmosphere system needs to radiate a 240 W/m2 to space. All of the analogies describing how insulation keeps us warmer by slowing down outgoing radiation apply to THIS situation, though they don't apply to alternative situations Ken proposes that are poor models for the earth. When averaged over a day, measurements show that the surface receives about twice as much LWR (about 330 W/m2) from the atmosphere than SWR (about 160 W/m2) from the sun. Ken may choose to believe that pyrometers measure the downward LWR from the atmosphere incorrectly and that conventional radiation theory is wrong; but if he choses to believe this, there is no way he can explain how the earth's surface remains 288 degK and emits 390 W/m2 of (nearly) blackbody radiation when it only receives 160 W/m2 from the sun AND loses 80 W/m2 by evaporation.
2) Ken's arguments about day and night are irrelevant. Radiation is proportion to the fourth power of the temperature in degK, which is generally between 220 degK and 310 degK in the atmosphere and on the surface. Compared with these large numbers, the temperature difference between day and night is trivial. This difference is typically about 10 degK at the surface on land and less in the ocean (where surface water cooled by radiative cooling sinks at night and is replaced by warmer water), and in the upper troposphere (which actually emits most of the photons escaping to space). The minor temperature fluctuations associated with day and night are small compared with the "33 degK greenhouse" effect. (33 degK is a sensible estimate for the greenhouse effect made by an over-simplify model.)
3) The following passage is scientifically absurd and embarrassing to any knowledgeable skeptic:
"It's true that collisions slow down the average outgoing velocity of IR photons and collisions are very prominent near the Earth's surface. That's why the delay distribution is slow from a "light-speed" POV. Milliseconds are a huge amount of time compared to how quickly an IR photon would escape the Earth system without collision. From the photon POV, the delay is enormous. However, from a day/night cycle POV, a few milliseconds are miniscule."
When a photon emitted by the earth's surface is absorbed by a GHG molecule in the troposphere, the resulting GHG molecule enters in a vibrationally-excited state that is usually returned to a ground-state by collisions long before a photon can be re-emitted. The energy from the photon is therefore converted to thermal motion/heat. There is no "millisecond delay" in the outward flow of radiant energy. The GHG's in the atmosphere emit photons (both upward and downwards) at a rate that depends only on their temperature (which determines the fraction that are in an excited vibrational state), and does not depend on the number of incoming photons from the earth's surface. The temperature of the troposphere is determined mostly by convection, which eliminates lapse rates steeper that 5-10 degK/km produced by radiative heating or cooling. The heat from an absorbed upward photon is eventually lost by radiative cooling in all directions - ie 50% is directed downward towards source of the upward traveling photon. This is the essence of the greenhouse effect, the partial redirection of the outward flux of radiative energy. However, photons are emitted downward towards the surface by GHG molecules in the atmosphere and these can also be absorbed before they reach the surface. 50% of that absorbed energy is redirected upward, partially negating the redirection of upward energy flux. However, it is usually colder in the atmosphere than at the surface, so the redirection of upward energy flux is larger than the redirection of downward energy flux. Not surprisingly, the NET change is small for a doubling of CO2, about 4 W/m2 out of 240 W/m2 at the tropopause and about 1 W/m2 near the surface.
The real scientific controversy lies in HOW MUCH surface temperature rise will be needed to restore balance the inward and outward energy flux when CO2 has doubled. The IPCC's estimate of 1.5-4.5 degC seems too narrow and policy discussions are dominated by the upper end of this range and other alarmist scenarios.
4) Ken's argument about putting CO2 in double-pane glass for its optical properties is bogus. To understand why, we need to compare the absorption of photons by 400 ppm CO2 when passing through many kilometers of the earth's atmosphere to the absorption passing though about 1 cm of pure CO2 at 1 atm between two panes of glass. About half of the atmosphere lies below 5 km and its pressure averages 0.75 atm. So the whole atmosphere has absorption equivalent to 7.5 km of air containing 400 ppm of CO1 at 1 atmosphere: Comparing:
In double pane glass: 1 cm * 1,000,000 ppm = 1,000,000 "cm-ppm" of CO2
In the atmosphere: 750,000 cm * 400 ppm = 300,000,000 "cm-ppm" of CO2
To escape through the atmosphere, an infrared photon must avoid being absorbed by 300 times as many CO2 molecules as it would encounter passing through double-paned glass filled with 1 cm of CO2. It's not surprising that CO2 could act as an "insulator" in one case and be ineffective in the other. I believe argon and krypton are used in in double-pane glass because they are monoatomic and therefore have the lowest possible heat capacity when convecting heat between two panes of glass. Heat capacity should be more important in situations where absorption is negligible. Slower diffusion cold be important with krypton.
5) The modest concentration of GHGs (400 ppm CO2, 10,000 ppm water vapor) compared with non-GHGs in the atmosphere turns out to be irrelevant. The GHG's don't have the "burden" of warming the "whole atmosphere": Since there is no way for non-GHGs to cool off, they don't need to be warmed by anything! Non-GHGs don't emit (or absorb) infrared radiation. Non-GHGs can't conduct or convect energy into space. The only thing that changes the temperature of the non-GHG's in the atmosphere are collisions with GHGs, water droplets in clouds, and rarely the surface.
I would wear O'Sullivan's threat as a badge of honour. If I cared.
Loqacious,
In that "theoretical" world of climatologists carbon dioxide sure is a warming gas. But in the real world of science e.g practical engineering - air conditioning manufacturers apply carbon dioxide as a well known refrigerant and its increasingly being used in appliances. Why is there a disconnect in reasoning here?
As Dick Topping Director of Appliance Research (TIAX, LLC) and a respected expert writes: “The use of CO2 as a refrigerant dates back more than a century, but it fell out of favor in the air-conditioning and refrigeration industry with the development of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the 1930s."
http://www.appliancemagazine.com/editorial.php?article=567&zone=1&first=1
The irony in Topping's next section is sublime as he informs readers that the cooling properties of carbon dioxide are, “leading many researchers and manufacturers to reconsider “natural” refrigerants such as CO2, hydrocarbons, and ammonia, because these substances have negligible direct global-warming impact and ozone-depletion potential.”
I'm sure in the closed ranks of climatology's denialism of actual applied physics your sophistry will be persuasive. But as long as industry requires practical solutions to real problems we won't be revising the science to make CO2 warm instead of cool.
The "typology" for this Faux debate is obvious....there are three sides, Warmists, Luke Warmists and Slayers....and two sides are wrong. There is NO emperical evidence that the "atmospherics" of GHE exist anywhere beyond climate insiders computer models. Complex science is not easily reducable to the intentionally reduced layman level of understanding. Bullet point rebuttals become useless and therfore require reference to other supporting research. CO2 does not "capture" or redirect IR energy. The absorption process lasts a billionth of a second. The momentary kinetic energy boost is followed by a lower energy, longer wave emission that is invisible to additional CO2 abosrption. This kinetic energy is then distributed to adjoining N2O2 molecuels in 4 billionths of a second, creating an upward convective current. Any downward directed emission would have less energy, and NO abaility to warm the still warmer Earth.
Everything about AGW is abusrd, requiring cherry picked data and statistical manipulation, as Montford documents in his excellent book "The Hockey Stick Illusion". But this is not the only illusion, as much of modern science is a fraud. Read more about this in "Becoming A TOTAL Earth Skeptic".
"It is easier to fool people, than to convince them that they have been fooled"....Mark Twain
We have been fooled for a reason, read "Fractional Reserve Banking Begat Faux Reality" to see the real reason for climate alarmism...and supporting branches of Faux Science.
"Our detailed study of the work of Arrhenius and Tyndall proves ..."
Another of the sky dragon signature themes. The word "proves" above is simple wrong. Indicates, or suggests, or various other less arrogant words would be fine, but "proves" turns the statment into pure bollocks.
And being a sky dragon, there is no way the J O'S will understand this point.
steveta,
Is there any scientific/dispositive point you wish to add to your gratuitous insult? For instance, would you care to clarify whether you accept or deny my statement about Arrhenius and Tyndall that "both men based their beliefs on the utterly discredited notion of “luminiferous aether.”"?
"Is there any scientific/dispositive point you wish to add to your gratuitous insult?"
No, not really.
All
Please refrain from flinging insults.
Thanks
In the end the GH and AGW scams boil down to this.
Both "theories" start with P/4. That is, the power of sunlight recieved at the top of earth's atmosphere divided by four. That is how 1368W/m2 becomes 340W/m2 as the starting point in both "theories". In other words, you can illuminate all of a football at 1/4 of the strength of the light of a torch you point at a football. No - it does NOT HAPPEN in reality. END OF STORY.
If you are uncertain that both GH and AGW "theories" do indeed start with P/4, please look at the "theories" themselves.
Greenhouse effect "theory".
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g43/DerekJohn_photos/Alan%20Siddons/Slide23.jpg
Anthropogenic Global Warming "theory"
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g43/DerekJohn_photos/stuff/radiation_budget_kiehl_trenberth_20.jpg
NASA version of AGW "theory"
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g43/DerekJohn_photos/NASA/global_energy_budget_components.png
NB - No one knows what the "consensus" actually models, they have never released the codes, nor has anyone ever shown the "physics" MODTRAN actually models.
http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/thread-1039-page-2.html
I read this post by Lloyd Robertson and was well impressed. Something genuinely new as a way to look at the fraught issues of climate. Well done Bishop Hill. Then I read the comments, which quickly descended into a slayer vs non-slayer slanging match, and I totally lost interest.
When someone presents something this new we should naturally treat all of it as speculative. But when the author, in his penultimate paragraph, says:
this situation is crystal clear. This is a very minor, entirely speculative application of his much more general framework. There is no place at all, in a sensible comments thread, for this side issue to completely predominate.
Sometimes, for me, BH comments threads are astoundingly dumb, despite the bright people who chose to comment here from time to time. It turns out crowds are not synonymous with wisdom after all. As if we needed to be taught that after the 20th century.
I didn't notice any threat in Sullivan's comment. Could you point it out for me, Maurizio?
Anyway perhaps one of the Slayers here could answer the question I asked Ken Koffman concerning Alan Siddons. I was just mystified to find that the author who contributed no less than nine chapters to the "Slaying the SkD" book should be absent from the "Meet the Authors" section on the site.
It must be said that these chapters went the farthest towards confirming my suspicions about the "science" behind the notion of CO2- induced global warming, back-radiation and the rest.
An archive of Alan Siddons articles can be found here: http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/thread-659-post-5585.html
I was very interested to read John Sullivan's quotes from Herzberg's observations about the history of climate "science" and Sullivan's follow-up comment:
The problem is that the propaganda has been so all-pervading and effective as to convince many sceptical scientists who now assume that if they reject the meme they are flouting some scientific laws and are scared of being taken for kooks if they go so far as to question it - hence the "lukewarmer" position that the GHE does exist but nowhere near as much as claimed. Personally I disagree with that but unlike some, can live with it.
Krypton is used in windows because it's clear, inert and due to its viscous density, restricts convection between panes of glass.
I am a layman. An ancient one. What I lack in specialist knowledge, I try to overcome with what I believe to be logical thinking. I am an out and out denier. I could be persuaded to become a mere skeptic but first I would need to be convinced that transfer of thermal energy is possible by "back radiation". Should you wish to attempt to change my view please start by rewriting the first and second laws of thermodynamics for my consideration. Until that is done and accepted, the warmers have no glimmer of an opening to a worthwhile argument. (I have no wish to offend anyone. Should I do so please make allowance for my wish to see an end to this whole argument before tempus finally fugits).
Sep 17, 2012 at 2:00 PM | John in France
"- hence the "lukewarmer" position that the GHE does exist but nowhere near as much as claimed. Personally I disagree with that but unlike some, can live with it."
This is exactly my position. I can't really follow the explanations but I think some of the 'slayer' arguments sound like they have some merit. What would be good is a discussion between the opposing theories and some experimental work to back up the arguments, then perhaps we might reach a new level of understanding of the complicated weather system.
I can live with being a lukewarmer though, as there are plenty more points I can disagree with to the entire Global Warming debate.
Sorry Richard Drake, I usually appreciate your comments, but can't you see that the said penultimate paragraph by Lloyd Robertson is plain insulting to people whose writings he admits he has never read?
I see a form of persecution going on in this thread and an attempt to silence a minority on a par with the worst of the alarmist blogs. The Slayers were quite right to respond and I've not noticed any slanging emanating from them.
Please read through the thread again.
I for one will not 'desist'.
Is 'sectarian proselytizer' an insult?
JohnIF, the author said "I don't read them" - and I envied him - and now you ask me to read them twice! In calling it a slanging match I was not counting both sides equally responsible so I have nothing to alter in my wording. I continue to think that the comments on Lloyd Robertson have been far less than the best and that Lindzen and Monckton have a point that if our enemies were smart they might be inclined to push funding the way of greenhouse contrarians. Fortunately we know our enemies have no money and are not capable of deception. So that's alright then. But this thread isn't. As I said before, Robertson's penultimate paragraph should have been treated as a side-issue here (and if necessary debate started up elsewhere). He has no doubt learned from the reaction that this was too much to hope. But I regret he wasn't able to 'shoot the breeze' as he wished and have his framework dissected from the top. And the bottom. The application to Richard Muller is a very interesting one but all that has been missed. And this is typical whenever the dragons invade a thread in numbers.
Maurizio,
I've said it once, I'll say it again.
You are tarring them all with the same brush. That's what persecutors do.
Is Joseph Postma a 'sectarian proselytiser'?
Read his "Copernicus meets the Greenhouse effect":
http://principia-scientific.org/publications/Copernicus_Meets_the_Greenhouse_Effect.pdf
- then let us know what you think of the Slayers of which Postma is one.
I don't know who Postma is. I am talking about the skydragons that end up infesting other people's blogs.
The simple fact that none of them can understand how bad it looks what everybody else sees as an invasion, is for me more than enough.
steveta wrote: "If you really can't see the enormous logical hole in this, there is little point in anyone trying to explain."
That's a tautology that ammounts to "if you are stupid, then you are stupid".
I suggest you respond with "no, it isn't" - if you want to continue trolling.
Richard Drake (this counts too for Omnologos, but I have no intention of responding directly to his rant),
Re: "(...)the Dragons invade a thread in numbers."
Four "Slayers" (not Dragons) have commented this thread in reaction to an unjust dismissive statement:
Ken Coffman = 6 comments
Joe Postma = 1 comment
John Sullivan =1 comment
Joe Olson (Faux Science Slayer) =1 comment
= 9 comments out of a total of 70 at the last count
to that you can add 5 comments by Yours Truly - not a Slayer but I try to give them a fair crack of the whip.
- and 10 comments by Omnologos - more than all the Slayers put together, so who is doing the invading?
As for the application to Richard Muller, that's a fair point, but the dismissal of the Slayers was in the article too so, not OT; it had to be responded to and yes it has prevented a full discussion of Robertson's article. Too bad!
I have to agree with steveta, if somebody doesn't understand how invasive, inappropriate, abusive and egotistical it is to talk the skydragons' physics under a blog post that has nothing to do with that, well, there is no hope about that somebody.
as an attempt at an objective test, if you accept the reasoning of Claes Johnson and Doug Cotton as expressed at tedious length on numberous blogs, then you are going to struggle to get a paper published.
Michale J, your description was right on the button. The "Skydragon" argument , and the "CAGW" argument for that matter, ignore Newton's law of cooling/warming.
As you said, in the daytime, the sun's shortwave energy gradually heat's up the earth. Part of the longwave energy from the earth is intercepted by the atmosphere, and part is reradiated back to earth- the greenhouse effect. The incidence of sunlight changes throughout the day, the earth is constantly warming as long as incoming radiation from sun + atmosphere is greater than earth's current radiation expenditure. Once the net radiaton from sun and atmosphere is less than radiation from earth's surface, the earth starts to cool- around 2:00 or 3:00 PM. After dark, the earth still receives some radiation from the atmosphere, but continues to cool- based on Newton's law- It never cools enough that radiation from earth exactly balances radiation from atmosphere- before it gets that cold, the sun rises and we have a new warming cycle.
The CAGW models have ignored this cyclical temperature fluctuation which would exist even with NO atmosphere, and the skydragons are correctly attacking this part of the cycle, but overlooking the dampening effect of an atmosphere, clouds, etc.
Can we add "venality" to the list? Surely that explains the Climategate schizophrenia we saw on display from Trenberth et. al. They simply couldn't afford to be honest in public about what they knew in private; to wit, that they really didn't know fuck-all but dared not say so lest they risk their precious trips to exotic locales and be banished to the dreary doldrums of their laboratories once again.
John in France, omnologos, you are both correct.
I am all in favor of the slayers. By the way, they have the coolest name in the whole thing. 'skeptics' - likely to be confused with Mike Shermer and Simon Singh and the like (ugh), deniers - you know the problems with that, 'warmists' - sounds like crap.
On the other hand, if slayers want to disrupt threads, that is a different matter.
When a photon emitted by the earth's surface is absorbed by a GHG molecule in the troposphere, the resulting GHG molecule enters in a vibrationally-excited state that is usually returned to a ground-state by collisions long before a photon can be re-emitted.
Loquatious! This part makes some kind of sense, if this is a mechanism whereby carbon dioxide acts as a super insulator by absorbing radiant energy and thermalising (turning it into measurable kinetic energy), then it is a process that would work. However you then flatly contradict yourself with the following statements.
The energy from the photon is therefore converted to thermal motion/heat. There is no "millisecond delay" in the outward flow of radiant energy. The GHG's in the atmosphere emit photons (both upward and downwards) at a rate that depends only on their temperature (which determines the fraction that are in an excited vibrational state), and does not depend on the number of incoming photons from the earth's surface. The temperature of the troposphere is determined mostly by convection, which eliminates lapse rates steeper that 5-10 degK/km produced by radiative heating or cooling. The heat from an absorbed upward photon is eventually lost by radiative cooling in all directions - ie 50% is directed downward towards source of the upward traveling photon. This is the essence of the greenhouse effect, the partial redirection of the outward flux of radiative energy. However, photons are emitted downward towards the surface by GHG molecules in the atmosphere and these can also be absorbed before they reach the surface. 50% of that absorbed energy is redirected upward, partially negating the redirection of upward energy flux. However, it is usually colder in the atmosphere than at the surface, so the redirection of upward energy flux is larger than the redirection of downward energy flux. Not surprisingly, the NET change is small for a doubling of CO2, about 4 W/m2 out of 240 W/m2 at the tropopause and about 1 W/m2 near the surface
This is some serious doublethink. BTW there is a serious point that is hardly ever discussed in GHE arguments, firstly we have no idea what the average surface temperature of the earth is, our measure is surface AIR temperature. The air is the insulator (the blanket) not the body. So when we talk about black body temperature and calculations, what exactly are they because I don't think anyone has a measure of it.
Let me pose a question with analagous to the scattering of ir radiation by co2. Does the scattering of blue light by oxygen raise/lower the brightness of the sky? Does it extend or reduce the daylight hours?
Sorry that my post is so far off topic but frankly labelling groups of people due to their difference in viewpoint on these issues frankly is as distasteful as anything "the other side" gets up to.
As distasteful as anything the other side gets up to? A simple labelling, but nothing remotely like 'denier', alluding to holocaust denier, that the other side definitely has got up to. And loads more. And a simple labelling is as distasteful as all that?
Typical of the self-importance and non-sequiturs that switch me off when the slayers are in town.
Sep 17, 2012 at 3:25 PM | John in France
Sorry, but I don't see why it had to be "responded to" here, in this thread. I'm not sure that I saw Robertson's comment as a "dismissal", either; but, in any event, it was a very minor part of his post.
It appears to me that the Slayers seem to look for hooks on the popular skeptic blogs and rather than simply posting a link to whatever material they might have available, they very discourteously attempt to take over the thread with their lengthy dissertations.
Your comment count is interesting, John; however, IMHO it doesn't quite do justice the word-counts one is invariably required to scroll through in order to find material that is actually on topic for the particular thread in which - having found a "hook" - they've chosen to "fish".
As a consequence, the impression I'm left with whenever, as Richard Drake says, "the slayers are in town" is that they simply don't care what others might think of them.
YMMV, but I, for one, very much doubt that their approach is quite the way to go if, in fact, they would like to win friends and influence people.
Perhaps, not unlike the UN and the enviro-activists, the Slayers would benefit from considering the possibility of "trying another way".
"As distasteful as anything the other side gets up to? A simple labelling, but nothing remotely like 'denier', alluding to holocaust denier, that the other side definitely has got up to. And loads more. And a simple labelling is as distasteful as all that?
Typical of the self-importance and non-sequiturs that switch me off when the slayers are in town."
Yes, everybit as distasteful because you have used a label to dismiss my points, this is no different than "the other side" calling you/me a denier and then ignoring me. This kind of argument is nothing more than an appeal to authority. It demeans us all.
Whether we are the Peoples Front of Judea or the Judean Peoples Front is irrelevant while the Romans arestill in control.
I don't care if the Mujaheedin-e-Khalq fight for a good cause, I care that they are ready to do anything for it including destroying themselves. Likewise for the skydragons, still to this very minute unable to understand the limit between discourse and prevarication. All for the *cause* of course.
Re hijacking of threads, I can only repeat what I have already said from what I have seen this tends to come from one person who is very present in the blogs, which has led to the others being tarred with the same brush whenever they maker a comment anywhere. The first slayer to comment was Ken Coffman - 256 words in his first comment, Hilary. I don't think that constitutes invading a thread, but as soon as he mentioned he was a "Slayer" he shut minds immediately and there as been considerable overreaction.
I've been looking through this thread over and over again but can't see how they have hijacked it. There have been disputes between individuals that would have taken place whether the Slayers had been present or not. As for not responding here, where would they have gone? Inside their own echo-chamber?
Speaking of echo chambers I think that the reason they are so obsessed with debunking the GHE by CO2 and proselytising as Omnologos puts it, is that it is the cornerstone of the whole debate, and you can't escape that; so it must be galling to see sceptics defending it or rejecting out of hand any other point of view. Perhaps there are other ways of going about defending the Slayers' views but I can't see what they could be, even after reading your linked article, Hilary - well I did try giving links to what I consider to be balanced well-written articles; other than that I don't know what can be done.
By the way, shortly after I posted my comment count I realised that John O'Sullivan made three comments, not one, which now brings the Slayer's score to 11/82, but I was expecting "peer review" on that.
There is one important point though. You notice everytime the warmies get an opportunity to pitch their case (say, in their favourite venue, a Congressional hearing), they make it a point to talk about the history of their climate science, as though it extends back into the 1800s - just like their temperature record.
This history re-writing is important to them. A serious dispassionate examination of the scientific legacy would reveal, much like any other science, a discontinuous, saltatory process with large shifts and jumps. As the 'world' cooled or warmed around them, people came up with post hoc explanations. Long lost threads of scientific investigation were not fastidiously followed, and climate science held on its life supported by governmental weather modification fantasies (particularly in the US).
The warmies on the other hand want to pretend as though they are the heirs to a long tradition and train of thought in science. Ever the showboaters. Just look at Heidi Cullen's speech at a hearing (the one where she's propped up a couple of seats away from Lindzen at the same table).
Slayer talk never gets anywhere because the topic being attempted is an explanation of a putative climatic/meteorologic phenomenon, derived from first principles from ... quantum physics. Isn't their problem, *the* problem* of climate science?
John,
We cross-posted.
I agree with you. *Anyone* should be free to discuss what they feel, provided there is a reasonable topic connection and they are playing well.
My feeling is that omnologos was pointing out to the never-ending stream of greenhouse quantum physics snippet commentary offered by mdgnn et all, which was insinuatory in nature, but never really got anywhere.
Thank you Shub.
Not only that, the issue is also that the post had nothing to do with Slayer Physics, and yet we've been flooded with the same proselityzing stuff I have read from them countless times.
Off topic=spam.
Maurizio, I am generally in agreement with what you, Hilary and Richard are saying about the slayers' proselytising methods, which are often annoying and counterproductive to their 'cause', but I don't think it is worth getting worked up about. Better to stay cool and defeat the flawed reasoning with logical, factual argument. As an example this thread -
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/09/do-greenhouse-gases-warm-the-planet-by-33c-jinan-cao-checks-the-numbers/
- could easily have descended into rancour, but didn't thanks to the light, patient and amusing touch of Bob Fernley-Jones and a few others. As a result the thread was elevated to something both entertaining and educative, at least to readers with no dog in the fight. There are ways and ways of handling importunate behaviour.
As another example, tallbloke (Roger Tattersall) successfully defused Doug Cotton's thread bombing a while back by allowing him a thread of his own, in which he could argue his 'slayer' case to his heart's content, albeit unconvincingly to me and I would imagine most readers. Nevertheless the concession appeared to satisfy him. People should be allowed to present their scientific hypotheses, no matter how 'out there' they appear to be. It's just a question of finding a way for them to do that in a socially acceptable and non-disruptive way.
Chris M - I would be more than happy if the Bish opened a Slayer thread. I would be gladly discussing it all if the Bish had a blog post about skydragons.
But in a thread under a post titled "A new typology for the climate debate", I think I am perfectly on topic describing the many ways the skydragons make themselves appear "plain ignorant, not trying to learn, but probably honest". To which I add, intemperate and badly-mannered.
And still they keep posting comments that reinforce the point.
Markington:
No. If the Peoples Front of Judea includes Richard Lindzen and he thinks the Judean Peoples Front a bunch of amateurs who are greatly damaging our credibility in a fight vital for humanity, so much so that he comments wryly (at the House of Commans in February) that it would have been a smart move for the Romans to fund the Judean Peoples Front, we don't have parity between the two Fronts. We have a decision to make between them.
One thing that struck me throughout the weaselly interruptions of mdgnn is that he would never give credit for the 24 years spent fighting the CAGW hydra by veterans like the MIT atmospheric physicist. No, mdgnn had arrived on the scene, spotted the schoolboy howlers in Lindzen's physics, developed over forty years studying some of the most complex data known to man, and that was all there was to be said.
Those who wished to debate his often abstrusely delivered points failed to register how this derision for Lindzen and other long-term sceptics like Spencer and Christy greatly incapacitated our 'team' if they were taken seriously. (And can you remember one positive thing this pseud said about any of these real people?) All this for the chance of a knockout punch from someone of whom we didn't even know the name, let alone a string of papers that could begin to persuade mainstream scientists of the breakthroughs in fundamental understanding he claimed.
I'm now going to be told that there are subtle differences in the critiques of mdgnn and other slayers, as we call them as a linguistic convenience. And I'm sure there are. But the outcome of uncalled-for domination of inappropriate threads, meaning much more important things fail to be discussed, is the same. For me it's a hallmark of the Judean Peoples Front, a reason I choose to make the distinctions I do and call others to do the same.
Maurizio, The most recent comment by a Slayer on this thread that I can find was yesterday afternoon: Sep 17, 2012 at 2:07 PM |Ken Coffman (21 words). There have been 25 comments since then, some fairly lengthy.
John, there is exasperation with the slayers and I think that's being expressed here. But that exasperation has a big backstory. This isn't the first time a thread on a sceptic blog anywhere in the world has been taken off course with this stuff. So the post-counts and word-counts by now are not the real metric. The crowd is trying to reach wisdom on how to deal with this stuff without polluting all the wrong threads. That will no doubt take time.
RD:
OK, I'll let it go at that then. As I said, I can live with different views on the GHE. But I will reiterate my point that I suspect that the Slayers who have earned this terrible reputation may be very few in number - perhaps just one person. The others are suffering for it.
One more thing: I think I know the identity of mdgnn and if that is so, I can tell you your description of him is way off the mark. By no means a pseud with a large number of papers to his name.
Several times within this thread the atmosphere has been compared to “insulation” presumably because it is believed that the atmosphere raises the temperature of the surface of the earth by inhibiting its ability to cool. Others in other blogs have used blankets, jackets, greenhouses and parked cars as analogies that presumably describe atmospheric physics. All of these human inventions “work” because they trap a certain volume of air near a heat source. Small pockets of air are trapped within insulation, blankets and jackets and large volumes of air are trapped within greenhouses and parked cars. In all of these instances the warmed air is not allowed to move away from the source of heat whether it is someone’s body, someone’s heated house or the inside of someone’s parked car.
“Greenhouse gases”, on the other hand, have no capacity to prevent the movement of atmospheric air away from its heat source, which is the ground. Regardless of how much carbon dioxide there is in the air it will still expand when heated and ascend skywards. The fact is, jackets, blankets, insolation and greenhouses are human inventions that were designed to protect us against the cooling forces present in the atmosphere.
The way that nature designed the earth/atmosphere ensemble roughly 90% of the IR radiation that cools our globe emanates from the atmosphere. Currently that is roughly 239 W/m2, which corresponds to a “blackbody” temperature of circa -18 °C. Under the atmosphere’s current design that temperature is found near the atmosphere’s center mass, circa 500 hPa. At that altitude ½ of the atmosphere is below and ½ of the atmosphere is above. The air below that altitude is warmer than -18 °C due to compression and the air above that altitude is cooler than -18 °C due to decompression.
Why then, if the atmosphere is cooling from its center mass at an effective radiating temperature of -18 °C and this center mass temperature is in thermal equilibrium with the amount of sunlight that the earth/atmosphere ensemble is absorbing, is the air near the earth’s surface, some 5-6 km lower in altitude, about 33 °C warmer? Is it because the air in the lower atmosphere is somehow being physically blocked from moving away from the warm ground like what happens in a greenhouse? Is it because “greenhouse gases” in the lower atmosphere are trapping thermal energy in the lower atmosphere and re-radiating it back towards the ground? Or is it because of the Ideal Gas Law? Personally, I believe it is due to the Ideal Gas Law, which dictates that when air from the atmosphere’s center mass, which is at -18 °C and in thermal equilibrium with the amount of sunlight that the earth/atmosphere ensemble absorbs, descends to replace ascending air it warms on average about 33 °C by the time it reaches the ground because it is compressed into a smaller volume by the progressively increasing air pressure.
So, if you want to compare the atmosphere to a greenhouse be aware that you are asserting that a greenhouse warms the air within it by compressing it into a smaller volume. If you want to compare the atmosphere to insulation be aware that you are asserting that insulation warms a house by compressing the air trapped within the insulation. I think that you will agree that neither analogy, either insulation or greenhouses, are proper analogies for what is actually happening in the atmosphere.
If, on the other hand, you want to assert that the atmosphere works like a diesel engine that adiabatically heats the fuel-air mixture within its pistons so hot that it explodes, well, that would be a more appropriate analogy for how the atmosphere warms descending air, a more appropriate analogy for what is actually happening in the atmosphere above our heads.
Carl
"The GHG's don't have the 'burden' of warming the 'whole atmosphere': Since there is no way for non-GHGs to cool off, they don't need to be warmed by anything! Non-GHGs don't emit (or absorb) infrared radiation. Non-GHGs can't conduct or convect energy into space. The only thing that changes the temperature of the non-GHG's in the atmosphere are collisions with GHGs, water droplets in clouds, and rarely the surface."
I would like to comment on this scientific hypothesis. It is a hypothesis that asserts that “there is no way for non-GHGs to cool off” therefore “they don't need to be warmed by anything.”
I have a thermometer mounted within a homemade Stevenson Screen about 1.5 m off of the ground that has been measuring the temperature of non-greenhouse gases, i.e., nitrogen, oxygen and argon, every 30 minutes for the past year or so and the temperature of these non-greenhouse gases decreases every night and then increases again during the day. Just as an example the temperature of these non-greenhouse gases on June 18, 2012 dropped from 39.5 °C down to 16 °C over night and then warmed back up to 37 °C the following day. This is a diurnal temperature swing of over 20 °C. Something is both cooling these non-greenhouse gases down during the night and then warming them back up again during the day.
I therefore find that the scientific hypothesis that asserts that non-greenhouse gases have no way to cool off and therefore don’t need to be warmed by anything is false. I will also assert that any secondary hypothesis that is build upon the false premise that the temperature of non-greenhouse gases does not fluctuate will also be false.
Carl
JiF:
That last sentence is ambiguous. But if I ascribe the meaning that makes the most sense in the context then you've not read me carefully enough. When I wrote
"we didn't even know" applied to both
a) the name
b) a string of papers that could begin to persuade mainstream scientists of the breakthroughs in fundamental understanding he claimed.
You hint that unlike some of us you may know the name. So why not tell us your best guess? Or is that not part of the game being played here?
The reason I contributed to this thread is because of this comment which is ignorant and unfair and deserved rebuttal:
"I suppose the skydragons, whoever they are, are plain ignorant, not trying to learn, but probably honest. I don't read them, I had never even heard of them until Judy Curry sharpened her lance against them."
Essentially, Lloyd says he doesn't know anything about us, but he knows we're wrong.
I think the resultant exchange which I commend Andrew for tolerating, is very informative. There is plenty for the reader to look at and decide for themselves whether I am ignorant and incurious. There is plenty for the reader to study to determine for themselves the depth of knowledge and character of folks like omnologos. And, we stirred up a comment from Carl Brehmer, who I greatly admire. So, if Lloyd is following along, at least he now has a sense of the Sky Dragon Slayer thought process and if he still thinks we're ignorant and incurious, he has data and information to support his conclusion.
Ken:
He didn't say he knew that you were wrong. He said he supposed that you were ignorant - but honest.
He didn't say that you were good readers and that was a good call.
It was clearly speculative, a data point for his framework. It was the framework that mattered.
That would be quite a stretch, wouldn't it, Richard? To be ignorant, incurious...and correct?
You still don't get it Ken. You and the others as countless other times took the excuse of being mentioned NOT to discuss why you should be considered better than described BUT to embark in the usual quantoschizoid soliloquy based on everybody else being completely and absolutely wrong.
It's been downhill since.
Maurizio: you suggest that Ken and the other slayers should have discussed why they should be considered better than described rather than the quantoschizoid soliloquy based on everybody else being completely and absolutely wrong. But much though I agree on what needed to be avoided I think even this is to concede too much noise for this thread. What I think Ken should have done is say where he saw himself (not ignorant, for starters) and others like Muller and Lindzen in Lloyd's scheme. This could have shed considerable light.
It's a confusion of hermenetical levels. Lloyd was absolutely right to give examples but we all should have had the maturity to take them with a pinch of salt - then explore whether the typology was adding something to our ruminations. It could still happen - but in another thread I guess.