Climate-gate

billvon said:
No, you are mistaken. Most of the solar radiation we receive at the surface of the Earth is NOT IR radiation.
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No I'm not mistaken as never said sunlight was IR, although the wings of the distribution have more IR than UV.
reflectance_wavelength.jpg
This shows sunlight's distribution at sea level with IR "notches" caused by molecular absorption.

Molecular absorption is quite wave length selective as energy must be conserved and the only "after absorption" place to take up a continuum of energy (kinetic) is the molecular recoil, but momentum must be conserved too. Thus the tiny momentum of the photon changes the speed of the heavy molecule only slightly. As the kinetic energy goes as the square of the speed, most of the photon's energy is internally stored in an excited state of the molecule. (Usually only briefly as the stored energy is re-radiated, unless the gas is very dense. Then it heats the gas via collisional de-excitation of the excited state.)

UV can split molecular bond (or even ionized). The sun is quite a good approximation of a black body, but the UV wing intensity falls off more rapidly than the black body curve. This is because there are more particles after the typical UV absorption to conserve both energy and momentum, so any wavelength photon can be absorbed.

You can see that the absorption "notches" in the far IR are broader. This is mainly due to fact the molecules had a larger spread of kinetic energy relative to the far IR photon. If it was moving towards the incoming photon from its point view the photon has more energy (Doppler shift) and will not have the correct energy to make the transition to the higher state, but some lower energy photon will. Conversely if it is moving away then the photon it can absorb must have higher energy. - That is Part of the reason why those far IR notches are broader then the near IR ones are. A larger reason is due to something called "collisional broading." I won't try to explain that to you. I know more about all this than most physics PH. D.s do as my Ph.D. thesis was on the shift and broading of spectral lines from an ionized radiator (Argon II lines in a dense plasma. The first to measure this for ANY ion with collisional broading dominating the Doppler broading. Hans Griem's theory only applied to lines from neutral radiators, but he was trying to extend it to a ionized radiator).

SUMMARY: Given that I know much more about this than you or 99.99% of the population does, I don't need ANY correction, especially as I never said most of the sunlight is IR. What my "IR opaque" clearly referred to is that the surface radiation trying to escape to space could not directly do so when Earth has a completely covering high altitude cloud cover, like Venus does.

BTW the clouds are nearly IR opaque even for the sunlight, but the dominate mechanism is scattering (the refraction form of scattering mainly), not absorption. This is why clouds "reflect" sunlight. I.e. they have multiply scatteed the photons until the net result of many random changes in their direction of travel sends them back out of the cloud.* For the longer wave length IR when wave length is about same as water droplet size, that scattering should not be called refraction. It becomes Mie scattering, quite complex but interesting - sort of more self interference off the droplet surfaces and thus very slightly different wave lengths constructively interfere in quite different "reflection directions." Less and 99.9999% percent of the population have even heard of Mie scattering, I bet, much less have been thru its math.

* This multiple scattering form of reflection can have a greater coefficient of reflection than any metal but the scatters must have essentially zero absorption. Sodium Iodide crystals make excellent scintillators to detect gamma rays but the photon produced is very likely to leave the crystal at some location where the detecting photo-multiplier tube is not. It must be very efficiently reflected back into the crystal many times before it strikes the photo-multiplier tube. Thus between the external metal can and the crystal is a few mm thick layer of very fine, very pure (zero absorption) scattering crystals, sort of like a cloud "reflecting" the photo eventually into the detection photo-multiplier cathode. Multiple reflections off a metal would loss many more of the scintillation photons (more than half, I think) than this nearly loss free dielectric scattering does.

Another application of this "reflection" by multiple scattering is used to get an intense flux of only one wave length. A liquid and mass of very fine crystals both with essentially zero absorption for the wave length of interest are held in a transparent container. The index of refraction of all materials is a function of wave length. (Why prisms separate white light into colors.) At all wavelengths except one the liquid and fine crystal's index of refraction will be different. As the beam of many wave lengths tries to pass thru that container, it will come to many thousands of interfaces between a crystal and the liquid contacting the crystal. I. e. each interface will scatter energy out of the beam, EXCEPT for the wave length that has the same index of refraction in both the crystal and the liquid. It passes thru with neither scattering nor being absorped. Since the coefficients a+s+t = 1 always, and a = 0, and at that wavelength only, s = 0 then t is 1.

If you want to pass almost all IR wave lengths in an intense beam, but block all visible, use a sheet of indium metal. It is visible opaque, but the IR photons have too little energy to be absorbed. The indium sheet looks sort of like lead - a "dirty grey."
 
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Here is a quite entertaining (funny) talk by Guy McPhersion filled with facts and references: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk9I0peQOmg
It is part 1 of three. Quite amazing he is both so entertaining and is the same Guy who is firmly convinced we are all dead by 2030.
I have yet to listen to the other two, but will hear this one again in part to pause it and write down references, given "off the cuff" (no notes).

Here is Nationa Academy of Science's recent 4.25 minute video on the Abrupt Impact of Climate Change: http://nas-sites.org/americasclimat...media/abrupt-impacts-of-climate-change-video/
It is one of several, some free, you can click to read or watch at: http://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices/

This link has text of an interview in a video by Tim Garret: http://www.ecoshock.org/transcripts/ES_Garrett_Transcript.htm
University of Utah Physics Professor Dr. Tim Garrett explains why fossil-based wealth leads to both hyper-inflation and a ruined climate. All from a published, peer-reviewed paper in Journal "Climatic Change". According to our energy and wealth equation, only a sudden economic collapse could save us from 5 degrees Celsius global temperature rise (or more) by 2100. And we'll get over 100% inflation along the way. One of the most important interviews of the year. From Radio Ecoshock show 101119 - this interview is 24 minutes, 6 megabytes.

Here is an 8 April 2014 hour & 40 minute discussion of his and another Ph. D. in physics person: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K0KoTO2eps
but it is mainly about why few are oncerned and how to change that, not facts leading to a disaster.
While listen to this in background, I realized not all mammals and warm blooded animals will be killed by 35C wet bulb environment. This is because their internal heat generation (~100W for reasting human) is proportional to their volume (to the cube of their size) but their cooling surface is proportional to the square of their size.

Thus tiny creatures, like mice, may live when all humans are dead and burning of fossil fuels has ended, and trees are again covering most of the man cleared land, as they did when Daniel Boon hunted bear in what became Ohio etc.. Perhaps the Bible is correct: "The meek shall inherit the Earth."
 
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US temperatures from 1930 to about now =/= average global temperatures over a longer period.

My gut feeling is that if we bother to investigate we'll find out that the supposedly fraudulent graphs were achieved with better data/averaging.

I used to be sort of a skeptic myself, but this creationist-like pattern of conspiracy theories makes me pretty sure that, whatever the science really says, the most outspoken "skeptics" aren't probably even dealing with that, but just cherry picking data and repeating things they've read just because it agrees with the core ideology that "if raised taxes are a solution to something, than this something most likely doesn't exist".
 
The way the global warming magic trick works is based on distraction used in magic. The data does indeed show a slight rise in global temperature over the past century. This is based on solid science. Going from there, to saying this is based on human intervention, is not as solid in terms of science. The magic trick tries to overlap these two distinct things (temperature rise and manmade effect) and call them one, even though each has different levels of proof. If you deny manmade, you deny global warming, because of the sales pitch overlap association. But in reality, one can accept the warming data, but deny manmade, since the manmade does not have the level of proof, as the warming.

I can accept the global warming data, but I differ in terms of why the warming. Based on hard data and science, the earth has warmed and cooled many times over its long history. This hard data proves that purely natural events can cause global warming. There are a wide range of such natural events that have proof.

The theory of Manmade global warming is different, since it has never occurred before in the history of the earth. Nobody can show me an example of this having happened in the past, to make sure this is even possible and not an illusion based on inference speculation. The manmade claim is much thinner than the alternative of the effect being natural, because it is science without historical precedent. It is all based on now, which uses the sales pitch needed to keep funding going as long as possible.

If said I made a gasoline engine that gets 40 miles/gallon, this would be based on historical precedent and would be considered plausible. It is sort of boring because it has already been den and what could I add. Say I pick a number that has no precedent, like 100 miles/gallon, the natural reaction should be doubt. But in the case of manmade, it is not. There is blind acceptance with the cult of acceptance trying to make up reasons for how I can get 100 miles/gallon. There may be an excitement to this, because if it is true, it would change things. That line of logic induces the emotional irrationality that clouds rational doubt. There is a fear tactic used.

The PC correct term, Climate Change is the latest change to the magic trick. It was chosen for distraction effect, since anything that occurs in weather will be included, based on computer models that have yet to make good predictions except by their own self serving standards. Part of the trick has to do with more resources available to collective and report data, so it appears like more is happening based on science. If resources were lacking, more events would not be properly documented and reported making it appear like less data is out there. Climate would appear to be calmer to the masses. This magic trick needs to keep upping the resources or else the distractions will go down.
 
The scientific study of past natural fluctuations and the climate in general has that "greenhouse gases" are a highly relevant factor.

Even if one just accepts that, and knows nothing else, then there's the nearly unavoidable conclusion, roughly speaking, that higher concentration of such gases will lead to higher global average temperatures. So it's quite a stretch to speak about "magic". There's even a "fingerprint" of increased radiation within the spectrum that would be locked by CO2 emitted by humans specifically.

That's basics of the science involved. Unless one proposes some radical new science, where the main assumptions of mainstream climatology/physics are ignored/refuted, it would be hard to dispute that more greenhouse gases "equals" more warming, and that humans are doing just that, and have been doing for a while already -- to the extent that scientists believe that there's some warming that's already unavoidable, at least without some counterbalancing measures, such as managing to increase albedo somehow.

(And there are some people who even come to that, deny that there is such thing as "greenhouse effect". Oddly enough a creationist climatologist who's also a AGW "skeptic" was trying to explain to those people that at least that part mainstream scientists got right.)


The rest is politics. Risk management. At the most broad analysis, accepting the scientific conclusions that I assume are undisputed even by most "skeptics", it's hard to deny that increasing/maintaining greenhouse emissions would have bad consequences (inferred from past climate studies and current trends). The most reasonable conclusion still seems to be that prevention measures are the safer "bet", than that somehow scientists have been getting it all wrong and/or it would be no big deal at all. Even if one doesn't take the "99%" certainty that mainstream scientists allege. Then there's what? 80% chances? 60%? 49%? In what other situation such odds wouldn't justify preventive measures? People buy insurance for much less. That's just a more specific form of doing "savings", in a way.

The "skepticism" of AGW, obfuscates the more important debate of what such preventive measures would ideally be, in terms of effectiveness and feasibility. To me it's not clear at all that geoengineering should be off the table, but I admit I haven't read much about it yet. It's so odd that it seems so more common to deny the problem than to propose alternate solutions, or merely to question the more popular ones with more than "I don't want more taxes".
 
wellwisher said:
The way the global warming magic trick works is based on distraction used in magic. The data does indeed show a slight rise in global temperature over the past century. This is based on solid science. Going from there, to saying this is based on human intervention, is not as solid in terms of science.
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It is indeed.

CO2 concentrations are rising - fact.
We are responsible for most of the rise - fact.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas that, everything else being equal, increases warming on a planet - fact.
On average temperatures have risen as CO2 has risen - fact.

Now, who denies these facts? A great many people for a great many reasons.

1) The ignorant. This is the easiest category to understand. Some people simply do not understand (for example) the greenhouse effect or why radiation matters to temperatures.
2) The misinformed. These people are intentionally misinformed by organizations like FOX News to support specific political agendas. They are indeed ignorant, but not willfully so.
3) People who feel threatened. As Upton Sinclair wisely said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Thus a coal worker might "not believe" in AGW because he feels his job would be threatened if he did, and thus engages in magical thinking; if I don't believe it it will be untrue.
4) People who hew to ideological ideals. Many conservatives disregard science and try to impose dogma in its place. This was seen in the smoking debate; conservatives were the last deniers of the risks of smoking and secondhand smoke. Today we see this conservative dogma in the creationism and the climate change debates. They feel if they can lie/distract/distort the issue sufficiently that they will "win" since science is seen as a "tool" of the left.

If said I made a gasoline engine that gets 40 miles/gallon, this would be based on historical precedent and would be considered plausible. It is sort of boring because it has already been den and what could I add.
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And what would you say if someone claimed that you were lying, that the science isn't settled, that no one can prove it works, that it doesn't get 40mpg, or it might but the efficiency doesn't come from the engine, and anyway everyone will die if they drive in 40mpg deathtraps?
 
Billy T said:
No I'm not mistaken as never said sunlight was IR
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Let's review shall we?

billvon: Because the Venus cloud cover is COMPLETELY opaque, which is very different from being IR-opaque. ...
BillyT:No, not "very different" not different at all.

Again, you are wrong. IR opaque is not the same as completely opaque. Let's look at your chart.

If an atmosphere is completely opaque, then NOTHING gets through. Your chart is a flat line. No transmission at all.
If an atmosphere is opaque to IR, but not to visible light and higher frequencies, then your chart looks very much like it does, but with the IR removed. In fact, the peak in the visible spectrum is still there.
The above means that the charts would look very different in an IR-opaque vs a completely opaque atmosphere. Thus your statement that the two cases are "not different at all" is incorrect.

Let's look at the practical results of that.

An atmosphere that is 100% opaque sees no transmission of energy to the surface - at all. It may well get some re-radiation from warmed gases in the atmosphere, but there is no direct incoming energy at the surface. In such a case you could well see a Venus-like situation where daytime and nighttime temperatures are indeed equal.

An atmosphere that is 100% IR-opaque but transparent to visible light will see over 1000 watts/sq m heating during the day (assuming the orbit of Venus and depending on albedo) and zero heating from visible light at night. Thus there would be a dramatic difference between the day and night sides. This is why your statements about such a planet having no temperature differential are not credible.


Given that I know much more about this than you or 99.99% of the population does
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Apparently not.
 
let's look at just how "opaque" CO2 is to the infrared band of the spectrum:

panel-f-spectra-co2.jpg


3 tiny points within the spectrum effect CO2, which then reradiates that energy in all directions.

OK?

Let's look at the same for H2O
panel-f-spectra-water.jpg


again, claiming opacity is a fools game
 
Buckaroo Banzai said:
The "skepticism" of AGW, obfuscates the more important debate of what such preventive measures would ideally be, in terms of effectiveness and feasibility. To me it's not clear at all that geoengineering should be off the table, but I admit I haven't read much about it yet. It's so odd that it seems so more common to deny the problem than to propose alternate solutions, or merely to question the more popular ones with more than "I don't want more taxes".
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http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/

http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/...ry-is-concerned-with-the-climate-think-again/

http://www.collective-evolution.com...tratospheric-aerosols-into-earths-atmosphere/
 
Photizo said:
http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/

http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/...ry-is-concerned-with-the-climate-think-again/

http://www.collective-evolution.com...tratospheric-aerosols-into-earths-atmosphere/
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You sure don't say much. I just noticed that your last link says NASA admits to chemtrails. I am half tempted to actually look at this link for the humor, but... nah, I think I will treat it like the rest of your links - ignore it.

Didn't you already get banned for being nothing but a link posting machine?
 
Billy T said:
{post 778, in part}... There is more than enough water in the ocean to make Earth's atmosphere IR opaque (or "completely opaque" if you prefer)* due to water vapor if it nears 100C but as the atmosphere mass rises the ground level pressure would be many times greater than 15PSI so the boiling point of water would be a little higher than 100C.

My guess that the final temperature might be 200C, not 900C was due to Earth being father from sun than Venus is. I have suggested than for a "million or so" years the complete ocean evaporation would take that the surface temperature would slowly rise and only surge up to the final Hot Stable State temperature when liquid H2O only exists in a 100% covering IR opaque cloud cover much higher than current clouds, with water vapor above the cloud tops and very high up some ice crystals as now.

These clouds would of course have lower albedo than Earth's current average, but probably greater than 0.1 so the IR radiated energy would be less than now and come from the tops of the clouds or a little above them. It must basically equal the net solar absorbed energy. ...
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* I don't like to use "completely" opaque as no gas is. For example micro waves will only be slightly attenuated and the sun radiates them as a very tiny fraction of its radiant energy. Also, I think you find if your research it, that slightly more than half of the solar radiant energy has wave lengths longer than the visible to humans light. Slight less than 50% of the energy is at wave lengths longer than visible at the surface.
billvon said:
Let's review shall we?
billvon: Because the Venus cloud cover is COMPLETELY opaque, which is very different from being IR-opaque. ...
BillyT:No, not "very different" not different at all. ... If an atmosphere is completely opaque, then NOTHING gets through. Your chart is a flat line. No transmission at all.
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It would have been better if I had not included, essentially by long established habit, the now red "IR" but certainly not false to say that the atmosphere of the final hot state of Earth (high pressure steam atmosphere at the surface) is IR opaque. That Earth, high pressure steam atmosphere would be opaque to all wave lengths of EM radiation with wave lengths shorter than about 3 cm, but not truly "completely opaque." (We did map the surface of Venus with radar, and that require the EM radiation to pass twice thru the atmosphere of Venus.)
billvon said:
If an atmosphere is opaque to IR, but not to visible light and higher frequencies, then your chart looks very much like it does, but with the IR removed. In fact, the peak in the visible spectrum is still there.
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True, but completely irrelevant. The high pressure steam atmosphere of Earth in the hot stable state is not transparent to any wave lengths shorter than about 3 cm. That is why I did say, as you quote me:
billvon said:
... your statement that the two cases are "not different at all" is incorrect. ... An atmosphere that is 100% opaque sees no transmission of energy to the surface - at all. It may well get some re-radiation from warmed gases in the atmosphere, but there is no direct incoming energy at the surface.
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I am correct - there is no difference except Hot stable Earth's surface constant surface temperature would be lower than that of Venus; Because from an energy loss to space, POV, the surface of Earth in the hot stable state would radiate completely negligible energy as radiation - only wave lengths longer 3cm - Surface radiation is essentially 100% trapped by a high pressure steam atmosphere. This is mainly because of the high pressure "line broadening" but the high temperature also broadens the line radiation by Doppler effect. Thus, the sharp absorption "lines" illustrated in figures of post 790, no longer exist. They are broadened out to make essentially a continuum spectrum for radiation or absorption. I commented on this earlier in my post showing the ground level solar radiation - noting and explaining why to far IR lines are quite broad, even with only ~15PSI less pressure broadening plus Doppler of only ~300K or less acting.

An extreme example of "pressure broadening" but rarely if ever called that, is the nearly black body radiation coming from carbon rod, heated red hot. Only the energy levels of ISOLATED (low pressure gas source) are relative sharp. When another atom comes close (always the case in a solid with lattice vibrations) the interaction of their electric fields dynamically changes the energy levels so the radiative decay from and upper state to a lower state level does not have the same energy difference as those two levels have in ISOLATED atoms.

Isolated carbon atoms have sharp, well defined, energy levels as all isolated atoms do, but make those carbon atoms come close together in a solid, then their thermal vibrations are changing their energy levels. That makes for a continuum radiator or absorber. I.e. This is precisely what is happening in a high pressure gas but then is always called "pressure broadening." Not many people have bothered to understand why solid, made of atoms which when isolated, radiate sharp line spectra produce continuum radiation - But now know why.
billvon said:
In such a case you could well see a Venus-like situation where daytime and nighttime temperatures are indeed equal.
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Yes. ANY planet (Earth in hot stable state with high pressure steam atmosphere included) with no surface radiation able to escape to space directly will have a constant temperature - no significant temperature difference at the surface between "high noon" and midnight.

As I stated before, at high altitude where there is some sunlight being absorbed (none is at surface as none gets down there) the gas will be heated - be hotter than if it had adiabatically cooled by expansion as it rose from the surface. It will be hotter than the adiabatic "lapse rate" just enough to re-radiant the same energy back into space as is being absorbed in the high atmosphere. As at some altitude their would be water droplet clouds, COMPLETELY covering the Earth. Clouds mainly scatter solar radiation, absorb relatively little, thus I think much (more than half probably so albedo less than 0.5) of the incoming solar energy would not be absorbed but multiply scattered back into space. I.e. the much hotter at surface Earth in its hot stable state would actually radiate LESS energy back into space than the current colder stable state Earth does.

The surface gets hot same way frugal self sufficient New Englanders get rich. Not by big "in come", but by almost no "out go."

1 = t + a+ s always, where t = fraction of incident energy transmitted thur a layer (the full atmosphere in our case of interest about surface temperature); a = fraction absorbed; & s = fraction scattered back into space (often by two or more scatterings). We agree t = 0. I expect that s > a to repeat what I just said in words, more mathematically. (Also note that for every wave length a = e where e is the emissivity coefficient radiation.) This a = e equality is very often slightly falsely stated as: "a good absorber is a good radiator." without correctly adding: "at the same wave length."
billvon said:
An atmosphere that is 100% IR-opaque but transparent to visible light will see over 1000 watts/sq m heating during the day (assuming the orbit of Venus and depending on albedo) and zero heating from visible light at night. Thus there would be a dramatic difference between the day and night sides. This is why your statements about such a planet having no temperature differential are not credible. ...
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I made no statement about such a planet - I.e. one that is 100% IR-opaque but transparent to visible light as I was discussing the surface of Earth in its hot stable state with thick, high pressure steam atmosphere - no heat loss from the surface by any EM radiation with wave length shorter than ~3cm. Even most of the much longer radio frequency radiation will also be trapped by the much higher ionosphere - Why lightning radiation (called "whistlers") from a lightning strike on the other side of the earth can be detected as static noise in a short wave receiver even half a world away.

My statement that there is no day/ night surface temperature variation is 100% correct at any fixed point on the surface of a hot stable state Earth.
 
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No sane person with even a modest intellect could possibly believe that anthropogenic generated green house gasses are solely or even predominantly the cause of the warming of the past century.
That being said, why then is there so much crazy fear-mongering hype about a.g.w.?

Perhaps, it is just a foil to get people to be willing to pay more for fuels, and alternate energy?
We pay almost 500% more for electricity due to the windfarm buildout here in Iowa.
It costs over 300% more to fill the truck's tank with diesel than it did when I bought the truck.

So, what then is the endgame goal?
Energy independence?
Greed?
 
sculptor said:
No sane person with even a modest intellect could possibly believe that anthropogenic generated green house gasses are solely or even predominantly the cause of the warming of the past century.
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Then I guess most scientists are insane. If so I am proud to be counted among them.
 
billvon said:
Then I guess most scientists are insane. If so I am proud to be counted among them.
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My thouhgts exactly. It is rather astounding that someone would state that the overwhelming majority of climatologists are neither sane nor do they have even modest intelligence. Based on that rather bold statement another option identifying the unintelligent and insane person springs to mind. ;)
 
billvon said:
Then I guess most scientists are insane. If so I am proud to be counted among them.
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From my above, you might be surprised at just how many sane scientists are out there working at their specialties.

............
question:

If we were in a grand solar maximum for the last 1/2 of the last century, and we are headed into a grand solar minimum:
What change would you expect reflected in global temperatures?


.............
I rather enjoy the way "solar polar field strength" rolls off the tongue.

.............
Are you one of those guys who thinks that the average Svensmarkian deserves one of those fancy sports coats with the wrap-around sleeves?
 
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