The Global Warming Crisis

Fascinating comment thread, i wonder if anyone can come up with a scientific method for getting the last 30 minutes of my life back?

Blankets...lol.

Nice article, but you're wasting your time if you think you can convince to slack-jawed Monckton quoters that will eventually fill up this thread their view is wrong.

The denialist stuff and its impact on public policy so pissed off a bunch of Australian scientists that they launched this mini-site to bring some science to the table:

http://theconversation.edu.au/pages/clearing-up-the-climate-debate

Well worth a look.

You know, there are facts about global warming. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Humans are burning stuff that puts more CO2 into the atmosphere. The changing the greenhouse effect in magnitude changes the ways in which energy gets distributed in the climate system, in as broad terms as possible.

I think those are indisputable facts based on over 100 years of laboratory experiments.

So why not just focus on those aspects of this physical situation since they are actually informed by physical theory? Why go to the effects on reefs based on a Scientific American article?

I mean, you're an actual scientist teaching at a college. You can't find a research article that demonstrates the same level of certainty as a Scientific American article?

And if you couldn't, doesn't that tell you something about the certainty the research community has in what is causing highly localized changes in a specific ecosystem due to what you had already had to describe as a global effect?

This is a very confusing and controversial issue, no doubt. But if you're going to clear the air on why global warming is a well-informed theory, then you ought to leave the information from Scientific American at the door.

...oh, and by the way, of the three 'scientists' you mentioned as writing about the issue of global warming, none of them actually do any meaningful scientific research on climate change. Connolley is the closest, but he hasn't put out a paper in over a decade. One can very easily establish that on Web of Science.

So again, it's hard to take your opinion beyond the facts established by physical theory seriously when you can't even identify who is an is not an 'honest scientist'.

Concern troll is concerned.

Holy shit!

maxwell is a fucking idiot!

@ Ethan,
Great article. I thought it was entirely to the point. It admits there are numerous variables, but still hones in on the fact that CO2 is a problem. It always drives me nuts when you get people saying that we can't possibly harm Earth. Just look how big it is. And even worse, God said he would protect us and never doing anything like the great flood again so it's ok! Oh and thank you for showing Venus. I always try to make the argument that some green house effect is good, we would be somewhere around 60-70F cooler without it (forget the exact number but something similar to that). But have a look at Venus and here's a case of "When Green House Gasses Attack!"

Only thing I would have possibly added was one of the carbon cycle graphs. Just a simple way to show this much CO2 is being released, this is how fast/much it can be absorbed. Hopefully, they can see the two numbers aren't exactly equal.

@Maxwell
You do realize there is an actual difference between a thorough research project and a blog post? Yes you can find research articles, but for the purposes of the general public, linking to one of those is almost pointless since they won't have access to it (something I do have a problem with but that's an entirely different problem). Generally Scientific American is a pretty good source, not perfect, but for these purposes a hell of a lot better than some random guys facebook status. I also think the way he was using the ocean example was there are other adverse effects that stem from something we cause. Even if sea levels do not rise and potentially flood cities, there are other ecosystems that might not be so resilient.

As to the authors mentioned, I don't think he has taken any controversial enough issues that would require speciffically a climate scientist. I majored in Government & Classical Civilizations and I am pretty sure I could tabulate out these kinds of graphs. Let alone reach these conclusions. Hell the people tabulating these results are satellites in space and computers (yes I am being facetious) but simple graphs that show CO2 by ppm v. CO2 emissions or energy produced by which fuel are not exactly that difficult.

This simplicity is what I think he was trying to acheive. That by simply looking at the most basic physical properties this is the type of result you should expect. Then through more basic principles you can see these results confirming your expectations. Then, something more for the people specialized in climate research, they are the ones that get into the nitty-gritty details and build more hypotheses on what to expect on the grander scheme of things. We know it's happening, now freaking let the experts figure out how/when/why/whatever given the data.

Now we just gotta worry about that damn secret society of evil scientists that make science to tough and lie to us because they have some secret goal they think we are too stupid to find out! If only we had some Free Masons here we could use them to infiltrate their ranks!

Hey everyone, let's remember that a kilowatt (kW) is a unit of POWER, not a unit of ENERGY. It represents a rate (energy per unit of time). The poorly named kilowatt-hour (kWh) is a unit of energy.

That said, I'm not quite comprehending the graph of world power consumption. Do Americans consume power at a rate of 10 kilowatts, on average, all day every day? That would have us each using 240 kilowatt-hours of energy every day, which seems high but not impossible. Either that or the units are mislabeled? The source document was not very helpful.

Just for a minute lets leave the temperature at a constant and continue depleting aquifers(Arizona sinks,mining destruction etc.), cutting trees(no fence rows or riparian buffers)Trees hold a lot of water, really it's amazing how much trees hold,the list is long, and for good measure well throw in a pole melting.

My viewpoint is we have added water to a system that is warming or *at a constant rate?* The only difference is the severity of the outcome.

Picture a teapot with constant Fire/temperature with one cup water, well call that normal, now add a couple cups, we now have more potential, add some additional heat/warming effects and you effect intensity.

Rain events will produce more, where they happen to occur and if it has an extreme enough temperature differences then critical points will be reached and the events will be more intense(add more rainfall and more intense lightning, and at the extreme, higher winds), don't think of all events as always wide spread(*40 days and nights*), just more intense local events(at first).That's one basic problem...Perhaps an early warning signal.

Well that's how I see it.

To RM:

Yes, it's actually closer to 11 kilowatts continuously per capita. Pretty easy - any number of sites (try EIA, the Energy Information Agency, or the British Petroleum site) will show that the U.S. uses about 100 "quads" (quadrillion or 10^15) b.t.u. per year. If there are about 300 million of us, plug "(100*10^15 btu/year)/300,000,000 in kilowatts" into a Google searchbar. Google does the math and the unit conversion to yield 11.14 kilowatts.

rediculously I still meet smart people in work and on the street who deny that global warming is caused by man. Other people pick up the denyers arguments (and a recently ciculating email) that one large volcano eruption and wipe out all of mans intentions of cutting back on CO2.

even amongst the people who believe in the science, they often dont believe that mans part is that big in it, or that we are passing the tipping point or that we can control it.

Politics and people who make lots of money off oil keep this debate going so that sustainable energy doesn't get the efficiency it needs to make it a practical solution.

This is one major branding problem. Someone just needs to figure out how to sell it to the population so that they understand that something needs to be done, and it wont cost them anything (in money terms) to fix the issue we created.

that's the hardest problem of all.

Unfortunately, we have fabulously wealthy sociopaths putting enormous amounts of money into propaganda campaigns to sell people on the idea that global warming is a fantasy dreamed up by "the far Left" for the purpose of bringing misery and penury upon mankind.

Maybe the only real solution is the one that will come too late to fix the problem - war waged by countries unfazed by this propaganda against those countries who are in the tank for the likes of the Koch brothers and others who are actively despoiling our planet for their own profit.

When confronted with the power of a hurricane, a blizzard or the intensity of a heat wave, the idea that humans could control or even influence the elements seems ridiculous, even arrogant. However, thanks to the development of industrial societies and the accompanying use of fossil fuels, that farfetched idea is becoming a reality.

Concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and other gases (all of which add to the greenhouse effect that creates a warming blanket over the Earth) have increased sharply over the last century -- by 35 percent for CO2, and by more than 100 percent for CH4. This is overwhelmingly due to human industrial and agricultural activity.

If you fancy a giggle, check out Fred Singer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer

He reckons that blazing fireball of fusion nearby has more effect. Look at those climate changes in the middle ages: we weren't kicking out CO2 then. Mini ice age and all that.

In answer to the question posed at the end:

Build LFTR's to produce electricity and feedstock hydrogen by the sulphur-iodine process. These are high temperature unpressurised reactors (the passive safety is thus good), with a fuel cycle that is effectively impossible to weaponise. Also neatly, with some additional work you can eliminate trans-uranic and neutron activated fission product waste, so your "high level" waste is an issue for c.1ky rather than c.400ky. We know how to engineer on the former time scale.

Reverse water gas shift and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis take hydrogen and atmospheric CO2 to any simple hydrocarbons you want. Ideally you move transport to DME (directly substitutes for Diesel; is very easy to synthesise). Industrial hydrocarbon use is accommodated similarly. Some carbon/energy intensive processes can be directly altered to use non-fossils as heat sources (eg. Haber-Bosch; cement manufacture, iron smelting; c.15% global CO2 overall)

The important point is that we don't have to overhaul most of our infrastructure to avoid using carbon. We just don't use fossil carbon.

Rough background:
This; somewhat UK-centric book by a Cambridge Physics prof. free to read online. Discusses quantitatively what traditional renewables can achieve. Precis: They can't do enough; even with near massively optimistic assumptions about what you could get built you're off by a factor of 2.

Global lithium supplies make electrifying global transport effectively impossible. We want plastics. If we require that end consumers change their behaviour (eg. turning down thermostats, buying smaller vehicles, not flying), we will be sadly disappointed.

There's something that has always interested me and I'm not sure if there is much research on this:
If we swap from fossil fuels, to say, nuclear or solar power, won't we still be essentially releasing or absorbing extra energy to Earth, most of which will end up as thermal energy at some point.

I imagine the warming from this will be much less than the greenhouse gases cause, however, how much less exactly and how large can our power consumption grow before simply the thermal energy that gets produced as a byproduct of whatever we do is enough to make global warming an issue again if we swap to energy production which does not release significant extra CO2 ?

Regarding arguments that pre-industrial climate variation disprove the link between CO2 emissions and climate; it's simply a logical fallacy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent

(Or, restated: "some unknown"->Q therefore P->Q is false.)

Your article was a fine example of good science, and good science writing.

Sadly, it will make no difference AT ALL to those who, for various reasons, be it ideology, personal conviction, lack of education, religion, or simply because they are paid to do so, deny scientific facts.

I suppose you could argue that the ability to deceive onself - to tell "Just so" stories to match a party line - is the mark of a highly evolved species. The problem is that this same ability may be, in this case, suicidal.

the same global warming problem in Turkey, lived in difficult moments, but was shot thirst and drought on water spending, socially-conscious when you have made an improved've noticed something in this article informative, thank you for your good work also

Yet so much of what we have been told is evicdent lies; the predictions of 0.2 C per decade rise have obviouslt not happened; CAGW is simply the latest, so far, of a long string of "environmental" world catastrophe stories, EVERY ONE OF WHICH HAS PROVEN FALSE. What evidence is there that CO2 is causing a level of warming outwith historical experience or that its effect is comparable to solar variation (eg the Maunder Minimum)?

these 7 questions seem to go to the heart of the warming scare since if any of them cannot be aswered in a way that supports alarmism then there is no case to answer. For some reason Mr Mann has declined to answer them privately (as indeed has every other warming alarmist asked:

1 - Do you accept Professor Jones' acknowledgement that there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995?

2 - Do you accept that the rise in CO2 has improved crop growth by around 10% & that the consequent influence on world hunger is more beneficial than any currently detectable destructive action of alleged global warming?

3 - Do you accept that the Hockey Stick, as originally presented by Mann and the IPCC contained calculations that were inconsistent with good science and that Mann's refusal to make calculations and algorithms available for checking were inconsistent with scientific principle?

4 - Do you accept that many claims from people and organisations on the alarmist side, from Al Gore's claim that South Sea islands had already been abandoned due to rising sea levels and Pachauri's claim that any dispute that the Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2025 was "voodoo" were untrue and insupportable even at the time.

5 - Do you accept that there are a number of geoengineering solutions which arithmetically can be shown would work (including stratospheric dust, the geritol solution or even just replacing CO2 burning with nuclear power) which would work at a small fraction of the cost of the war against fire, or in the case of nuclear, at negative cost?

6 - Do you accept that the refusal of alarmists to denounce fraud or telling of obvious untruths. on their side, or even its active support or covering up, detracts from the credibility of the entire movement?

7 - Of the alleged "consensus" - can you name 2 scientists, out of the roughly 60%, worldwide who are not paid by the state, who support catastrophic warming & if not can you explain how something can be a consensus when no member of a subset of 60% of the alleged consenting, consent?

If any of these cannot be answered the case for catastrophic warming falls. If 3,4,6 or 7 cannot we are dealing with deliberate fraud.

In case people are tempted to respond: Neil Craig has been spamming that identical comment to many blog posts about AGW (including Deltoid), and ignoring any corrections. He is not worth your time or effort.

It's worth noting the misuse of time-series data by the denialist/rejectionist brigade.
For example, the warming since 1995 is now statistically significant, once the data from 2009 and 2010 are added. In fact, when you work backwards from the present, the rate of warming is pretty consistent, whether you use a start date of 1985 or 1995. It only gets variable when the period is shorter, as you'd expect from internal variability superimposed on a trend.

As you note, Ethan, it's all basic physics, and unsurprising. The opposition is not based on science - if it was, some consideration of the statements by all the national bodies would cause more reflection.

I'm not the only one contacting authorities and law makers and the justice departments to have the leading SCIENTISTS and NEWS EDITORS charged for this needless panic of a false war called Climate Change that condemned billions to a DEATH BY CO2 for 25 years. Because remember, climate change wasnât sustainability, it was a specific CO2 death threat of theory turned into political correctness on steroids and history will curse us all for this modern day omen worship.

Do you accept that every one of Neil Craig's points has been thoroughly rebutted?

Once again, propaganda boy, scientists who have abandoned the scientific method have lost the right to call themselves scientists. This is your religion, not proper science. Did you even bother to read the responses to your last article? How do you respond? This is a series of oft failing hypothesise strung together in an ever changing corrective state, not theory. I find it hard to believe someone with such methods is "teaching" our impressionable children and young adults. Nice cape.

Look at the graph of wavelength vs absorption. You have 100% absorption at greenhouse wavelengths. Beer's law says a carbon dioxide atmospheric concentration of 20ppm will absorb 80% of radiated infrared at active wavelengths. That means that at the background level of carbon dioxide (280ppm) 100% of the radiated energy at wavelengths where carbon dioxide is active will be absorbed by an altitude of under 100 meters. Raising carbon dioxide concentrations simply lowers this already very low altitude a bit further. This will lead to more intense thermals. The result of more intense thermals is greater cloud cover. Greater cloud cover reduces incident radiation from the sun. Until you can address these facts you can not convince this PhD that carbon dioxide has anything to do with recent changes in earths mean temp. Earths mean temp has varied widely for a long time. Sometimes much warmer than today like is was 1000 years ago. Sometimes much cooler like it was 300 years ago.

Beer's law is simply dI/dC = kI where I = radiation intensity at a given wavelength and C = concentration of absorbing substance for anyone who is not familiar with the equation. It is a compound interest equation which says clearly that more C becomes irrelevant as once you get close to 100% absorption more C makes no practical difference.

First, I am not a Climatologist either.

I am an Electrical Engineer and very familiar with all aspects of Electromagnetic Field Wave Propagation, Circuit Design and Heat Sink design.

The first Physics mistakes in the article were:

- Greenhouse gases "reflect" heat, they actually absorb heat and re-radiate heat.
- Next, it is IMPOSSIBLE for any Greenhouse gas radiant Electromagnetic Fields to propagate from a colder atmosphere to a warmer Earth surface and HEAT UP THE EARTH.
-------
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, vector Physics of Electromagnetic Fields, vector Physics of the Electromagnetic Force and The Law of Conservation of Energy all prohibit spontaneous heat flow from cold to hot.

Electromagnetic Fields are FORCE FIELDS ( the Electromagnetic Force is one of the FOUR FUNDAMENTAL FORCES that also includes gravity) and are VECTOR QUANTITIES having a MAGNITUDE and a DIRECTION and VECTOR MATHEMATICS is required to analyse their behaviour.

Electromagnetic Fields and the Electromagnetic Force moves zero mass Photons from one place to another.

Just like two oppossing forces on a block of wood will only move the block in the direction of the larger force, zero mass Photons can only move in the direction of the larger Electomagnetic Field (Force). Hot objects have larger Electomagnetic Field (Force) than Cold objects.

It is IMPOSSIBLE for the block of wood to move in the direction of the weaker force and it is IMPOSSIBLE for zero mass Photons to move in the direction of the weaker force (Cold to Hot).

âSecond Law of Thermodynamics: It is NOT POSSIBLE for heat to flow from a colder body to a warmer body without any work having been done to accomplish this flow. Energy will not flow spontaneously from a low temperature object to a higher temperature object.â
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/seclaw.html#c3

The words NOT POSSIBLE are there for a reason.

The Vector Addition of Electromagnetic Fields is used in Antenna Array designs to shape the resultant propagating Electromagnetic Field including NULLS and PEAKS in the Antenna Radiation Pattern.

Exactly the same analysis can be used for the IR Radiation of the Earth and Back-Radiation of the colder Atmosphere.

Back-Radiation from the colder Atmosphere CANNOT reach the warmer Earth and therefore CANNOT HEAT THE EARTH.

The ONLY way Back-Radiation can be DIRECTLY measured on the Earth is to use COOLED IR DETECTORS (like the NASA AIRS Instrument), COOLED far below the temperature of the colder atmosphere.

If COOLED IR DETECTORS are not used, no direct measurement of Back-Radiation is possible.

---------
Anybody can build a simple Solar Oven that concentrates Electromagnetic Energy (including Visble light and IR Back-Radiation) at a focal point to produce warming.

Put some water at the Solar Oven focal point, point the Solar Oven at the Sun and the water will BOIL.

Point the Solar Oven away from the Sun at the Cold Atmosphere and the water will COOL and even FREEZE.

This simple experiment PROVES that the Fantasy "Greenhouse Effect" simply DOES NOT EXIST and PROVES that the Back-Radiation from a Colder Atmosphere (that is supposed to be 324 w/m^2 and HEATS the Earth DAY and NIGHT) CANNOT HEAT THE EARTH.
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There is not:

- Even ONE Law of Science that supports the Fantasy "Greenhouse Effect"
- Even ONE Measurement, EVER DONE, that shows that a Colder Atmosphere can HEAT UP a Warmer Earth

I challenge anybody to provide ANY of the above.

They simply DO NOT EXIST.

Neil Craig:

Yet so much of what we have been told is evicdent lies; the predictions of 0.2 C per decade rise have obviouslt not happened

Right from your first factual claim you tell a lie. Warming over the WHOLE world for the shortest climatically significant period (the last 30 years) was 0.18 deg C per decade which rounds to 0.2 deg C per decade. You're nothing more than a lying denialist.

Ethan:

It isn't the only thing causing the Earth's temperature to rise

Considering that the Sun has become slightly weaker over the past 50 years, what other things besides greenhouse gases are causing the Earth's temperature to rise?

How about we quit cutting down and getting rid of all the "green" here on planet Earth? Plants USE atmospheric CO2 - so why not use a "green" approach to try and help clean it up? The tree hugger in me says maybe we are trying too hard to find a scientific theory to explain and fix the problem - when the fix has been right under our noses for BILLIONS of years - nay, even before "we" were here to screw it all up.

Gord,

you're framing the problem in the wrong way.

'Heat' does not flow from the colder atmosphere to the earth. Radiation does, as you pointed out to Ethan. Now, vibrationally excited molecules emit like point sources. That is, they radiate spherical waves in all directions, otherwise known as Huygen's principle as any good electrical engineer should know. Some of that radiation is emit back toward the surface of the earth.

So now the question becomes 'what happens when IR light is re-emitted back toward the surface of the earth?'

A simple review of quantum mechanics reveals that that energy in the form of a photon gets absorbed by the surface.

Therefore, energy gets transferred from the colder atmosphere back to the warmer earth's surface, but not via heat transfer so the 2nd law of thermodynamics is not violated.

QED

Any other questions?

Ethan,

The simplest answer is usually the right answer.

Does the engine in your Car get it's energy from Gasoline or CO2?
The simplest answer and correct answer is Gasoline.

Why? Because CO2 is NOT AN ENERGY SOURCE and Gasoline IS AN ENERGY SOURCE.

Does the Earth get it's energy from the Sun or CO2?
The simplest answer and correct answer is the Sun.

Why? Because CO2 is NOT AN ENERGY SOURCE and the Sun IS AN ENERGY SOURCE.

Does Heat flow spontaneously from a low temperature object to a higher temperature object?
The simplest answer and correct answer is NO.

Why? Because EVERY MEASUREMENT EVER DONE and every experience, by everyone, confirms it.

The temperature graphs shown in this article are incorrect, and appear to come from the warmists. Sateliite data from '79 do not show the same warming from the ground-based thermometers that the warmists rely on.

Temperatures today are not far off from the late 70's. There has been no warming for the last ten years -- based on hyper-accurate satelitte measurements. The flawed and manipulated ground-based thermometers are the warmists only tool to make their case. It's why they don't like the accurate numbers.

The author may be a physicist, but sure doesn't know much about thermodynamics. Temperature is an extensive variable, and temperatures cannot be added together. Adding two or more temperatures together results in a meaningless number. Taking an average of a meaningless number is meaningless.

Maxwell,

Heat IS RADIATION OF EM FIELDS.

Heat Radiation
"Radiation is heat TRANSFER by the emission of electromagnetic waves which carry energy away from the emitting object."
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/stefan.html#c2

Heat is Infrared Radiation.
------
I see that you also choose to ignore the Electomagnetic Force that happens to be one of the four FUNDAMENTAL FORCES.

Electromagnetic force
"The electromagnetic force is one of the four fundamental forces. The other fundamental forces are: the strong nuclear force (which holds quarks together, along with its residual strong force effect that holds atomic nuclei together to form the nucleus), the weak nuclear force (which causes certain forms of radioactive decay), and the gravitational force. All other forces are ultimately
derived from these fundamental forces."

"In physics, the electromagnetic force is the force that the electromagnetic field exerts on electrically charged particles. It is the electromagnetic force that holds electrons and protons together in atoms, and which hold atoms together to make molecules.

"The electromagnetic force operates via the exchange of messenger particles called photons and virtual photons."

"The electromagnetic force is the one responsible for practically all the phenomena one encounters in daily life, with the exception of gravity."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_force

-----
Try using Vector Mathematics for Vector fields to show how IR Radiation can flow from Cold to Hot.

Good Luck!
------
PS:

Any luck finding:

- Even ONE Law of Science that supports the Fantasy "Greenhouse Effect"?

- Even ONE Measurement, EVER DONE, that shows that a Colder Atmosphere can HEAT UP a Warmer Earth?

No?
They simply DO NOT EXIST.

This is psuedo-science. Only true believers (ie the delusional) still buy this B.S.

I just read The Deniers by Solomon - it is quite enlightening to see the world's very top climate scientists poke large holes thru AGW hypothesis.

It is not a theory - it would have to stand the test of time and verification by independent parties to reach the theory stage. Thats how science works.

Gord's thermodynamic argument is faulty, and sad to see it reiterated after correction. (It doesn't matter what the energy *source* is, OK?) Many engineers do this because they've been taught rules as heuristic but firm and independent of the context - requiring physicist-style insight into process and caveats. Consider a radiating body B1 in space of Kelvin temperature T1. It cools off at such and such rate. Now, have a nearby but *colder* reflecting surface. That will reflect some IR back to B1 and keep it from cooling as fast: because "nothing" is like a surface at absolute zero! Yes, photons can indeed move from a colder body to a warmer one (what's to stop them, all bodies above AZ radiate!) If we have a radiant source added to the system, B2 could help block radiation into space by B1: B1 would be warmer than without B2. BTW "detection" is more of a thing than simple "affect" to a new equilibrium (you need something to benchmark against, etc.)

Doughter: wrong, because for one thing absorption is not like fence rectangles, the slope offs allow extra absorption at nearby wavelengths. Also, as people explain: the extra CO2 makes for more re-readiation in all directions over an enlarging volumen, hence the equilibrium temperature at given solar influx is raised. That much is accepted even by any of the real scientists who doubt that AGW would be a *problem*, they just say the forcing factor (extra feedback effects) won't make it even worse. So you hard skeptics aren't even following the rational wing of your own side.

Neil Bates,

I see that you also choose to ignore:

- the Electomagnetic Force that happens to be one of the four FUNDAMENTAL FORCES.
- Elecromagnetic Fields ARE VECTOR QUANTITIES so TREAT THEM AS SUCH!

PS:

Why don't you POST a MEASUREMENT....ANY MEASUREMENT, EVER DONE, that shows that HEAT FLOWS FROM COLD TO HOT?

Also, any luck finding:

- Even ONE Law of Science that supports the Fantasy "Greenhouse Effect"
- Even ONE Measurement, EVER DONE, that shows that a Colder Atmosphere can HEAT UP a Warmer Earth

No?
They simply DO NOT EXIST.

While it's clear we should be responsible caretakers of the planet, it's not at all clear the solutions being proposed right now by our politicians will make an iota of difference, other than bankrupting our economies.

@NeilBates
Your description of the radiation effect is good, and it's _the_ argument used by those who are concerned with the increase in CO2. The question then becomes, what other forces increase because of increased CO2. Does it cause more foliage to grow? Does it cause more cloud cover? Are there others? These other effects aren't typically addressed by those making the CO2 argument.

Jennie-Plant Biologist @30:

Plants USE atmospheric CO2 - so why not use a "green" approach to try and help clean it up?

The only way to remove atmospheric CO2 using plants would be to remove the fixed carbon from the system by making it non-biodegradable. Otherwise, all that happens is that the rate of breakdown speeds up and there is only a minor increase in fixed carbon.

If you are truly a plant biologist, I am surprised you did not already know this.

Gord,

you seem to be quite confused. The power radiated away from any object is NOT a vector quantity. So talking about the energy (power multiplied times unit time) of an EM field does not necessitate any vector quantities whatsoever.

In the interaction of light with matter, the energy of the interaction is also not a vector quantity. And since earthlight (IR light emitted by the surface of the earth) is unpolarized due to the many orientations of the molecules and atoms making up the surface, we can integrate over the vector aspects of the emitted field and just focus on the scalar field without loss of generality.

So your point concerning vectors isn't justified in the least. One could very easily do the calculation using vector quantities, but once energy enters the mix, dot products are performed and vectors go bye-bye.

More the point on 'heat transfer', I do see that you have found what you believe to be a single source that describe what you want to hear. Unfortunately, the actual physical meaning of that webpage explains exactly why your argument is wrong.

Excited GHG molecules emit radiation in all directions. Some radiation goes back toward earth. The earth absorbs that radiation due to quantum mechanical selection rules. The energy of the earth increases. So there is heat transferred from the atmosphere to the earth.

Again, QED.

There is no way around this fact with semantics or poorly worded definitions from high school physics websites. The onus is on to prove that the surface of the earth does not in fact absorb radiation emitted by the atmosphere. Given the over 100 years of experimental data that confirm that the earth does absorb that light, it seems like quite the feat.

re: plants

Sequestration of carbon dioxide by plants is temporary, as most of the carbon is released within years to decades. That is why burning wood to heat a home is carbon neutral, whereas burning coal containing carbon sequestered 300 million years ago is not. It all has to do with when the carbon was sequestered.

Any plant biologist should know this simple fact of the carbon cycle.

The premise of your argument is wrong. The skeptics are neither uniform in theory nor uninformed. The primary criticism is of AGW. The evidence of East Anglia is that it has proven to be a scientific ruse perpetrated by a group of fianncially bought "scientists," relying upon scare tactics to preserve their sinecures of grants and tenure. Instead of providing the primary source data, the likes of Mr. Mann engaged in a conspiracy to denigrate anyone who would deign to question his research or conclusions.

That there may be GW, and it may or may not be contributed to by anthropomorphs. However, instead of a scientific inquiry and conversation about the causes of GW, we have a program of solutions thrust upon society, sprung fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus. Surprise, surprise, it calls for the beggaring of the West by transfer of wealth to the second and third world. How damned convenient?

Instead of identifying a problem and postulating theories about its cause, the lugrubrious left crusade for an end to market capitalism through the sale of environmental indulgences. Was there ever a more fortunate crisis for the revival of socialism from its history of failure?

The discussion should not have been politicized in the first place. A true inquiry about GW would address: What is the basic cause of GW? Do we have sufficient data, knowledge and theoretical framework to attribute its cause to anthropomorphs? Can we assess what part of GW is attributable to natural causes? Has recent volcanic activity contributed to or diminished GW? Do we have sufficient data to test whether sun cycles and solar weather has contributed to GW?

The fundamental disagreement about GW has been brought about by those who have a vested self-interest in obtaining governmental and university funding for their careers. They have alligned with their progressive allies in government to tax evil market capitalism and transfer wealth to the "poor." If Mr. Mann or any of his allies have the coconuts, they should publish all of their source materials. If their source materials prove to be correct they may be owed an apology for the accusations of scientific fraud. But, even then, the skeptics have a point: before you can conclude that x causes y you must first eliminate all other causes; or at least explain their contributions to GW as well.

"Sequestration of carbon dioxide by plants is temporary, as most of the carbon is released within years to decades. That is why burning wood to heat a home is carbon neutral, whereas burning coal containing carbon sequestered 300 million years ago is not. It all has to do with when the carbon was sequestered.

Any plant biologist should know this simple fact of the carbon cycle."

Your analysis applies to the steady state situation. Given the degree of global deforestation, burning wood is not carbon neutral.

If Jennie-Plant Biologist's idea was seriously pursued we could reach steady state in a few centuries and you would be (almost*) correct. Atmospheric CO2 levels would also be lower.

* you still have the issue of harvesting, transporting and processing the wood so you will never be carbon neutral burning wood.

Why was this post held for moderation when another one was JUST POSTED?

Maxwell,

What a HOOT!

Watts are NOT a Vector Quantity but Watts/m^2 (The Electomagnetic Field) IS!

Where are you getting your information from?

Do you just make this stuff up?
----------

Here is the Physics link showing the Heat Flux (w/m^2) is a Vector Quantity:

"Heat flux or thermal flux, sometimes also referred to as heat flux density or heat flow rate intensity is a flow of energy per unit of area per unit of time. In SI units, it is measured in [W·m-2]. It has both a direction and a magnitude so it is a vectorial quantity."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_flux
--------
Electromagnetic radiation
"Electromagnetic radiation (sometimes abbreviated EMR) takes the form of self-propagating waves in a vacuum or in matter. EM radiation has an electric and magnetic field component which oscillatein phase perpendicular to each other and to the direction of energy propagation. Electromagnetic radiation is classified into types according to the frequency of the wave, these types include (in order of increasing frequency): radio waves, microwaves, terahertz radiation, infrared radiation, visible light, ultraviolet radiation, X-rays and gamma rays. Of these, radio waves have the longest wavelengths and Gamma rays have the shortest."

"EM radiation carries energy and momentum that may be imparted to matter with which it interacts."

"Electric and magnetic fields do obey the properties of SUPERPOSITION, so fields due to particular particles or time-varying electric or magnetic fields contribute to the fields due to other causes. (As these fields are vector fields, all magnetic and electric field vectors add together according to vector addition"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_radiation
-------
Vector fields
"Maxwell's equations allow us to use a given set of initial conditions to deduce, for every point in Euclidean space, a magnitude and direction for the force experienced by a charged test particle at that point; the resulting vector field is the electromagnetic field."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_field

Hey Maxwell, ever hear about MAXWELL'S EQUATIONS?
-------------
Like I said...

Try using Vector Mathematics for Vector fields to show how IR Radiation can flow from Cold to Hot.

Good Luck!
------
PS:

Any luck finding:

- Even ONE Law of Science that supports the Fantasy "Greenhouse Effect"?

- Even ONE Measurement, EVER DONE, that shows that a Colder Atmosphere can HEAT UP a Warmer Earth?

No?
They simply DO NOT EXIST.

Your right...YOU ARE NOT A CLIMATE SCIENTIST!!

It's funny how the arguments of denialist tools converge across disciplines. In other contexts, the same sort of genius would be blathering about how the second "law of thermodynamics" means evolution can't possibly have happened.

Always the same thing. Deduction (usually erroneous)from some previous era's "laws," (which were discovered by induction every. single. time.) somehow invalidate empirical reality. The earth can't be old, because it would be too cold. DNA couldn't possibly have arisen, because entropy says every single snowflake must be intelligently designed. On, and on, and on, and on. The march of ignorance is preceded by the drumbeat of false tradition. (And bad math.)

Hey rev., if you want to see ignorance, go look in the mirror.

@Bill

Only the gas needed for my chainsaw and me exhaling carbon dioxide from hauling the logs and splitting them. :-)

"A true inquiry about GW would address: What is the basic cause of GW? Do we have sufficient data, knowledge and theoretical framework to attribute its cause to anthropomorphs? Can we assess what part of GW is attributable to natural causes? Has recent volcanic activity contributed to or diminished GW? Do we have sufficient data to test whether sun cycles and solar weather has contributed to GW?"

Exactly Rick!

The nice thing is that we have really good answers to every one of those questions, and the answers keep getting better and better the more we study the problem. I just read an article in Science that detailed energy transfer in ocean circulation and how this is relevant to climate science. It's amazing what science can achieve when it addresses the fundamentals, AND when it isn't blinded by preconceptions.

Every comment here and on all sites like this are about the scientific fact of global warming and the trashing of the rubes who don't get it.

What I rarely see is any effort to solve the problem.

One of the greatest statements from my business career, and I have leaned on it alot, was "Problem identification is the easiest job in the world, actually solving the problem is the toughest job in the world".

So I see things like: "Invent nuclear fusion? Go 100% Solar and Wind? Learn to live with using less energy?"

WOW that's helpful.

Nuclear fusion isn't happening soon.

Solar and Wind are expensive, that's OK, but when you consider that wind does not always blow and that Connecticut covered border to border with solar panels would only supply New York City with electric, it becomes problematic.

Use less energy. Now that's interesting. Shut off the lights, insignificant but we should do that. Drive less and/or increase mileage of vehicles, OK, so what.

We can't use nuclear, at least in the U.S., as that is a no no. Can't use natural gas cause that would mean Fracking and we shouldn't waste our time on research and developmet of Fracking because that just won't work.

Pass Cap and Trade legislation in the U.S. Now that is good. That would have no meaningful effect on CO2 worldwide but would effectively shut down the U.S. economy. And NO China and most of the industrialized world will not follow just because we do it. Who are you kidding.

So maybe we should sit down and talk to Bjorn Limborg and other level headed people and scientists and businesspeople and discuss how to do or not do all of the above, and see if there are ways we can live with some warming until we have the ability to create Nuclear Fusion, etc.

Or we could just shut down the world economy, because right now that is what we are talking about doing. That should work out well. Trade one giant problem for a new one. Yep that'll work.

I will now leave this site as I know the abuse and name calling that will commence. I know, I'm a rube and have no say in the matter. Thanks for the moment and take care.

Bye

Maxwell,

What a HOOT!

Watts are NOT a Vector Quantity but Watts/m^2 (The Electomagnetic Field) IS!

Where are you getting your information from?

Do you just make this stuff up?
----------

Here is the Physics link showing the Heat Flux (w/m^2) is a Vector Quantity:

"Heat flux or thermal flux, sometimes also referred to as heat flux density or heat flow rate intensity is a flow of energy per unit of area per unit of time. In SI units, it is measured in [W·m-2]. It has both a direction and a magnitude so it is a vectorial quantity."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_flux
--------
Electromagnetic radiation
"Electromagnetic radiation (sometimes abbreviated EMR) takes the form of self-propagating waves in a vacuum or in matter. EM radiation has an electric and magnetic field component which oscillate in phase perpendicular to each other and to the direction of energy propagation. Electromagnetic radiation is classified into types according to the frequency of the wave, these types include (in order of increasing frequency): radio waves, microwaves, terahertz radiation, infrared radiation, visible light, ultraviolet radiation, X-rays and gamma rays. Of these, radio waves have the longest wavelengths and Gamma rays have the shortest."

"EM radiation carries energy and momentum that may be imparted to matter with which it interacts."

"Electric and magnetic fields do obey the properties of SUPERPOSITION, so fields due to particular particles or time-varying electric or magnetic fields contribute to the fields due to other causes. (As these fields are vector fields, all magnetic and electric field vectors add together according to vector addition"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_radiation
-------
Vector fields
"Maxwell's equations allow us to use a given set of initial conditions to deduce, for every point in Euclidean space, a magnitude and direction for the force experienced by a charged test particle at that point; the resulting vector field is the electromagnetic field."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_field

Hey Maxwell, ever hear about MAXWELL'S EQUATIONS?
-------------
Like I said...

Try using Vector Mathematics for Vector fields to show how IR Radiation can flow from Cold to Hot.

Good Luck!
------
PS:

Any luck finding:

- Even ONE Law of Science that supports the Fantasy "Greenhouse Effect"?

- Even ONE Measurement, EVER DONE, that shows that a Colder Atmosphere can HEAT UP a Warmer Earth?

No?
They simply DO NOT EXIST.

Rick: The East Anglia emails "proved" absolutely nothing. Your tinfoil-hatted conspiracy theory is intellectually worthless and you shame yourself for having posted it. I recommend switching to a different screen name.

Not only did "Climategate" actually prove nothing, it didn't even provide EVIDENCE of anything that COULD be proven. One independent examination after another has shown that no inappropriate behavior actually took place. The only thing they could be said to prove is that wingnuts will settle for thoughtcrime as an excuse to persecute scientists. Because as long as a scientist SAYS he doesn't want his critics to be able to publish anymore, this not only proves that he must have taken action to oppress them but it it further proves that the entire concept of radiative physics is a lie.

I feel a small shred of pity for the anti-science denialist "Final Nail" crowd. They blew their wad over "Climategate," but not only did it turn out to be a complete nonstory, as a bonus it also didn't capture public attention as poll after poll has shown that it had no impact on perceptions of the climate issue. This is because the emails are so dense and complicated that laymen can't follow it and don't perceive what wingnuts claim to be the smoking guns, whereas anybody who actually has the training to comprehend the emails can at once see that nothing bad is happening. They basically Breitbarted themselves--convincing themselves via their own fake evidence--and are now wondering why there isn't a bigger mob joining them with torches and nooses.

This is how conservatives encounter the global warming issue, after all: not through evidence (of which their perspective has none) but through egos and personality, and with a ridiculous "Affirmative Action" curve for their kooky ideas such that as long as any scientist can be shown to have his shoes untied, then all of his research must be fraudulent and maybe the world is flat too. Global warming isn't real because scientists are uppity and Al Gore is fat.

Svendsky: So maybe we should sit down and talk to Bjorn Limborg

Sit down on a toilet, maybe. His caliber of work product is usually found inside there. Lomborg is a proven con artist with a dishonorable habit of claiming to have data that he doesn't have, via references to sources that actually contradict him or that do not even exist.

Stick the flounce, Svendsky! Stick the flounce!

For the rest of you denialist turds, please take your worn-out rebuttals and your childish trolling, and go away.

Perhaps, since we are talking about what can and cannot be confidently asserted, we could discuss the following propositions;

1 - The Saudis have oil, and they intend to sell it.
2 - Ditto the Nigerians, the Venezuelans, the Brazilians, Tajiks, etc.
3 - The Chinese are building approximately one new coal-fired electrical plant per day.

So, assuming you are right about the effect of CO2 on the climate (which I do not, but never mind why), which of these nations should we go to war with first?

It is true that heat can not flow from a colder object to a warmer one.

But - if you take the colder object, add energy to it, and make it warmer, then LESS heat flows from the warm object to the colder, and the warm object therefore becomes warmer.

Add energy to the colder atmosphere, heat flow from the relatively warm surface to the now-warmer relatively cold atmosphere slows, and the surface gets warmer.

The flow of individual quanta of energy is NOT heat. There is no problem at all with quanta of radiative energy flowing from the colder to the warmer object. The second law simply says that net all energy exchanges, total energy flow is from warmer to colder.

Hell, I'm only a biologist. My mathematics tops out about where the interesting stuff begins for the physicists and climate scientists. But this is blindingly obvious even to me. How in the hell do we have so many miseducated engineers about, who so badly misunderstand the second law?

Shorter Svendsky:

It is really hard to see good non-painful solutions to the problem, therefore it is not fruitful to try to show that the problem really exists.

Shorter Gord:
Fuckin' blankets, how do they work?

and/or:
If a mirror is colder than my body temperature it must be impossible for me to see my reflection!

Lee: mostly from listening to Rush, the "climate expert" often sited by "Fox News." BTW Lomborg recently admitted AGW was a problem. Note use of "anthropomorphs" as a noun in that othere con-ment!Is that the cool name for "people"?

Svendsky: coward. Look at the abuse non-denialists get here and elsewhere. BTW, a differential tax offset by other things wouldn't wreck the economy. A gas tax instituted years ago would make us being using less now and *it would cost less* (see, supply and demand, right?) We can try to catch up.

And re clouds, etc: maybe. OK, so AGW is a risk factor. As Tom Friedman says, that's no excuse not to do something: you want even a 20% chance of some serious disruption to things?

Cleanup: Scientific American articles tend to be summaries written by the best in their fields, thus more credible that any random paper by Dr. Joe Blow. Griping about that was a red herring. Ocean acidification is a serious problem.

Finally, this "how convenient" to some conspiracy (and why would scientists want a wrecked economy and to transfer wealth to the third world anyway?) So Svante Arrhenius in freaking 1896 was thinking of how to wreck civilization? He thought global warming would be *good*, so didn't have any motive to use it as club against fossil fuels.

I vote for Alex wins the thread.

Wow. This thread is full of shockingly bad reasoning and facts.

What the global warming via increased CO2 debate all boils down to (or should) are the feedbacks. The simple back of the envelope calculation shows that every doubling of CO2 will result in an increase of 1.2 C at the surface. Any temperature higher or lower than this comes from feedbacks.

The IPCC would like people to think that the feedbacks have all been worked out in the models. They simply have not been worked out to the level that a global mean temperature (is this really a meaningful quantity? If so, is its "measurement" reliable?) can be predicted based on a certain quantity of CO2.

So far, predictions of 20 years ago that temperatures would be much higher than they are today have not panned out.

And the worst part of it is all the silly and lame things blamed on global warming. There is a list out there of peer reviewed literature that has a paper showing some event that is connected to global warming followed by another paper that shows the exact opposite event that is also caused by global warming.

CO2 is a greenhouse gas. So is water. Anyone disputing that is just wrong. The feedbacks should be the point of contention (wrt the models) as well as the sometimes laughable connections made between some event and global warming. Everything else is just a distraction.

@Alex:

The mirror wouldn't work either way for Gord.

If it is warmer than he is, no light flows from Gord to mirror. If it's colder, no light flows from mirror to Gord.

I think Gord just proved that light is a violation of the second law.

@Juice;

"The IPCC would like people to think that the feedbacks have all been worked out in the models."

Wrong. In many ways.

Values of Charney climate sensitivity are NOT dependent on model results. They have been derived from multiple independent sets of data and reasoning, and values all converge on about 3c / 2xCO2. This includes feedbacks, by definition.

Most of the feedbacks are well worked out in the models. the only significant unresolved included feedback is cloud dynamics - and that is well constrained by data, such that it is impossible for it to be a significant negative feedback. The models do not include several probable feedbacks, such as nonlinear releases of methane from hydrates/permafrost, or albedo changes from ice/snow dynamics, but those are almost certainly positive feedbacks, meaning the models are underestimating the issue.

"So far, predictions of 20 years ago that temperatures would be much higher than they are today have not panned out."

This is simply not true. The guys who are feeding that to you, get their graphs by cherry picking start years, and aligning the forecasts against temp rise based on single years, rather than on trends. The differences they highlights are noise, not signal.

Lee,

Regarding the predictions of the past, I read the papers that made the predictions. They were wrong.

That value of 3 C per doubling of CO2 is (as stated in the IPCC reports) a "best guess." Could be as low as 1.5 C (pretty close to CO2 with no feedbacks) or as high as 4.5 C. Sounds like they just split the difference and said "well that's our best guess so we'll go with that."

Nice picture Ethan. That says it all. The earth produces 99% of all global greenhouse gasses. We produce less than 5% of global CO2. Politicians and politicized scientists have produced a value system for human produced CO2 that far outweighs the impact of naturally produced CO2 and other natural greenhouse gasses. One volcano, Mt Pinatubo, in one eruption, produced the full complement of human emissions since 1810, before the industrial revolution. In one boom, nature matched the human complement, and then the warmers will tell you humans make the climate get warmer. To add to the insanity, the warmers will tell you that by stopping emissions we can stop climate change in it's tracks. We need to get climate science back from the political class. Factually, it makes no sense. The earth has warmed and cooled before humans, and will continue once we are gone. This is a quasi-religious movement that requires faith that humans make emissions much more significant than nature, and that humans, by nature, are bad for using fossil fuels. There is no near term alternative energy sources even close to covering for fossil fuels, let alone being affordable. Fossil fuels and the energy it produces saves millions of lives every year. Yet warmers say we must halt our lifestyles and while cutting out fossil fuels, don't develop nuclear, don't frack, and don't do anything but solar and wind. The gullible sycophants only prove that P.T. Barnum was right.

"CO2 is a greenhouse gas. So is water. Anyone disputing that is just wrong. The feedbacks should be the point of contention (wrt the models)"

Yup, water vapour causes a greenhouse effect and drives temperature up just like CO2. The difference is that water condenses and precipitates out of the atmosphere. There is no equivilent feedback mechanism keeping CO2 levels in check.

@Steamboat
Well put.

Don't worry, I was informed by a friend that when Jesus returns he will fix everything.

Really...

No, I mean it...

...yup.

Every one of steamboat's points is a zombie argument:

"Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans"

Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions

"Climate's changed before"

@steamboat
"Mt Pinatubo, in one eruption, produced the full complement of human emissions since 1810"

Where did you get that, from an e-mail? The folks at the USGA disagree with you.

"Do the Earthâs volcanoes emit more CO2 than human activities? Research findings indicate that the answer to this frequently asked question is a clear and unequivocal, âNo.â Human activities, responsible for a projected 35 billion metric tons (gigatons) of CO2 emissions in 2010 (Friedlingstein et al., 2010), release an amount of CO2 that dwarfs the annual CO2 emissions of all the worldâs degassing subaerial and submarine volcanoes (Gerlach, 2011)."

Check out their site for the full references. It's a cool site, it even uses real science.

@steamboat

So much shit in such a small space. Good job.

@steamboat:

"One volcano, Mt Pinatubo, in one eruption, produced the full complement of human emissions since 1810, before the industrial revolution."

No.

Just... no.

Mt. Pinatubo emitted, in total, about 50 million tons of CO2. One single large coal-fired power plant emits about 10 million tons each year - so Pinatubo in total was about equivalent to the one-year output of 5 large coal plants.

Annual human CO2 emissions are about 30 BILLION metric tons. Total annual volcanic CO2 emissions are about 100 - 500 million tons. So humans annually emit about 60 - 300 times as much CO2 as all volcanoes on the planet in total.

steamboat, people are LYING TO YOU to try to get you to discount AGW. You might think about why that is. You might consider fact-checking what they tell you. And you really should stop passing those lies on as if they re truth.

Steamboat's "Pinatubo" denialist email macro file was initially written in the early '90s and was used to sneer at the idea that CFCs could possibly be bad for the ozone layer. Like so much else about AGW denialists, they have just repackaged their ozone denialism without any change in accuracy or comprehension.

You see all of the traits of denialists in gord's posts: he has absolutely no training in anything relevant to the debate yet, despite having it explained time again why he is wrong, keeps spitting out the same crap.

I point this out not to ridicule him (although he deserves it) but to mention that this is the wall presented by the denialists: they don't have science on their side and they don't care. Their philosophy is to continually deny, cherry-pick, misrepresent, and scream their loudest. Unfortunately, in much of today's media, their position (bolstered by ignorance and bluster) seems to be winning.

Mt Pinatubo released some 50 million tonnes of CO2. So, at present our annual CO2 output stands at roughly 0.6 kiloPinatubos. One dwarfs the other, all right - just not in the direction the denialists would have you believe.

Oh, and the word gord is missing is "nett" - ie. There is no spontaneous nett flow of heat/energy from a cool body to a warm one. Heat is, of course, constantly flowing in all directions - it's just that the flow from the warm body dwarfs the flow from the cool one. Warming the cooler body increases the back-flow, so that the nett heat transfer is slower and the warmer body warms up.

Fuckin' blankets - that's how they work!

Damn - that's what I get for posting on my phone. Beaten not just once, but thrice over.

Oh, and for Doughter at 26: what you need to be looking for is "mean path length". The problem to be solved isn't as simple as "at what distance from the ground is all the IR absorbed?" - because it's re-emitted. The actual problem is "how many times must each photon be absorbed and re-emitted before it finally finds its way out to space, and how long does it take?" - because that's what ultimately defines the "raw" insulating effect of CO2.

An additional note on the Pinatubo nonsense. Looking at the Keeling curve, we see that a huge spike in atmospheric CO2 in 1991 is conspicuously absent.

@Juice:

That value of 3 C per doubling of CO2 is (as stated in the IPCC reports) a "best guess." Could be as low as 1.5 C (pretty close to CO2 with no feedbacks) or as high as 4.5 C. Sounds like they just split the difference and said "well that's our best guess so we'll go with that."

Wrong again.

3C is the central value of a lot of different appraoches. The error range is based o uncertainties/ errors in teh various approaches. 1.5 is the bottom end - tehchances of sensitivity being lower than that is very, very low, and even that value makes it impossible to find a way to get the ice ages, for example, given the changes due to milankovich cycles. The upper end, 4.5, is constrained by model results. If we don't use model results, and use only observational-derived constraints, it is very hard to constrain uncertainty on the upper end to less than 6C or even higher.

But the idea that they simply 'split the difference' is so wrong as to be absurd, and shows that you simply have not bothered to read the IPCC reports. As, I suspect, is also true of your claim to have "read the papers that made the predictions"

The scientific method is dead. Long live pseudo- intellectual liberal morons. Gore, Man-bear pig and these guys can change the weather and will save us all. hahahahahahah...

150 years ago, atmospheric CO2 concentrations were about 300 parts per million. Today, they are about 380 parts per million. The total increase in CO2 is therefore 80 ppm. Divide 80 by 1,000,000 and you come out with 0.00008. Convert that to percentage terms and you come out with 0.008%.

Thatâs 8/1000ths of 1 percent, gang. So mankind, after doing his fossil fuel-burning worst for 150+ years, has only succeeded in altering the composition of the Earthâs atmosphere by a paltry 8/1000ths of 1 percent.

Anyone who seriously believes that this kind of miniscule increase in the amount of a trace gas in the atmosphere can, in and of itself, cause the glaciers to retreat and the seas to rise is smoking crack.

Titan seems not to be aware that the overwhelming majority of the atmosphere consists of optically neutral gasses.

How many times do the same absurdities need to be squashed? And where do these people come from?

Titian, tell you what: take 80 parts per million of your body weight in, say, potassium chloride. Potassium is an important nutrient, that you need every day. A mere 80 millionths of your body weight couldn't possibly hurt you, right?

Disclaimer: don't actually do this. Given that the lowest published lethal dose for accidental potassium chloride ingestion is a quarter of this, it would have a very good chance of killing you.

Heh - comment stuck in moderation - I take it due to my reference to essential nutrients that, if taken at ppm levels, would cause one to, uh... shuffle off this mortal coil.

Perhaps another example: take four drops of ink (about 80 kilograms) and disperse them in a litter of water.

The effects of different components of a mixture cannot be predicted simply from concentrations. You have to understand their properties as well.

Anyone who seriously believes that this kind of miniscule increase in the amount of a trace gas in the atmosphere can, in and of itself, cause the glaciers to retreat and the seas to rise is smoking crack.

100 micrograms of LSD can trip out a 100 kilogram person. Divide 10^-4 by 10^5 and you get 0.000000001 or 0.0000001%. It's not the gross percentage by mass of the system that matters - it's the actual effect of the molecule on the system.

Your personal incredulity is not an argument.

Ignoring global warming for the moment, there are other factors that we should be considering, such as energy security.

Facts:

In medieval times, farmers used to be able to put 1 Calorie of energy into their fields (mostly physical labor by them and their families) to yield 2 Calories of food, not much better than subsistence, and always at the risk of tipping into famine.

Nowadays, with much more productive agriculture using most of the arable land available, it takes 10 Calories of energy to produce 1 Calorie of food (mainly due to mechanization and use of fossil fuels to produce fertilizers). This doesn't include transport and processing costs of energy.

Modern agriculture is able to almost feed the current global population of 7 billion (there's roughly 500 million who are on the edge).

If we're lucky, in 2050 there might be 8 billion, more likely 9 billion people on Earth. So we have to increase food production by at least 15% perhaps 30% by then. That without allowing for 1 billion people being dependent on fishing for protein, the world's fish stocks currently being successfully managed into collapse.

Peak oil has already occurred. Peak gas will soon happen. So both oil and gas will become progressively more expensive. Tar sands and slate gas might act as a stopgap, but mining them will lead to environmental damage, due to the processes of fracking affecting aquifers and pollution of rivers negatively impacting on agriculture.

Coal reserves might provide several centuries of energy, but we'd need to work out how it could be used to make agricultural fertilizer and transport fuel (unless we convert the world's shipping back to coal).

So, we really need to take a broader viewpoint. Business as usual, and burning fossil fuels as quickly as many people want, is eventually going to lead to disaster, even without global warming.

Addressing AGW will actually solve the problems of energy and food security. What the solutions will be, I have no idea. I imagine that it will be a combination of strategies, including conservation, increased energy efficiency, nuclear energy, renewable energy sources, genetically modified bacteria or algae to produce long chain hydrocarbons by photosynthesis.

@Tristan w/out any math skills:

The increase is 26.7%. To obtain this figure, you divide the increase (80) by the original value (300) and multiply by 100. Would you like a literature reference for that, or will you take my word for it?

Math: learn to use it correctly.

Nibi: Using a specious analogy, really? Is that what passes for deep scientific thought in this echo chamber. The effect is negligible, take more LSD and try again.

Rob@84: please don't get me mixed up with Titian. The shame would be almost too much to bear.

Not a specious analogy, Titian. Please feel free to point out where I claim the human body is analogous to the Earth's climate. I provided a counterexample to show that an argument of the form "a small change in the molecular composition of a system cannot have a significant effect on the system" is fallacious.

If it is your claim that the change in the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere attributed to anthropogenic activities has an insignificant effect on the climate, then you must provide the evidence. Climate scientists have provided evidence based on fundamental science and empirical data to show that anthropogenic contributions do, indeed, have a significant effect.

Your game of framing the increase in CO2 as a small number in comparison to the large quantity of essentially radiatively inert gases is one of dishonesty and deception.

@Steamboat: "Nice picture Ethan. That says it all. The earth produces 99% of all global greenhouse gasses [sic]. We produce less than 5% of global CO2." Another fallacy: the issue isn't how much CO2 comes from human activity, the issue is how much *increase* does. That makes it warmer. That figure has to be wrong anyway because the actual change (not to be confused with percentage points! - a common trick) is around 1/3 from previous levels.

And Juice: yeah, there are uncertainties. Even if I'm not so sure of the certitude of various feedbacks as some other commenters, I accept that it is a dangerous risk factor. Like I said, worry about certainty is a red herring - dumping CO2 is *dangerous.*

And just think, if Al Gore didn't make that movie there'd be no need for all of this time wasting.

You compare a minute amount of LSD in a body to a minute amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. "it's not the gross percentage by mass of the system that matters - it's the actual effect of the molecule on the system"
Analogy: a process of arguing from similarity in known respects to similarity in other respects.
You are the one formulating the flimsy hypothesis, the proof is on you. Dishonesty and deception is your trade, it's all you have when the science falls apart and your psuedo religion is exposed.

Titian@90: ok, then - take my example @81.

Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared light. We can't see infrared light, but we can see the wavelengths absorbed by common dyes. Add some ink (or food colouring) to water at 80 parts per million (a drop is generally about 20 microlitres, to give you a starting point) and let us know what it comes out looking like.

This is a *much* more direct analogy.

One of the major problem I face when talking to people about global warming is the temperature data.

The problem is how did we get that data? After 1950s, we understand we have enough technology to monitor temperatures through the world. What about 1700s, 1800s.. how do we know the temperature of our planet at a particular point of time in the past?

Proving a hypothesis with a particular data is easy for me, but I dont have answers on how we got the data in the first place. (That is the reason why most developing nations dont trust US and Europe for legally binding emission cuts because most of us dont trust the 'data'. Everybody agrees here that if that data is correct then CO2 causes global warming but the problem in this part of the world is to convince people that data is correct and not another sinister plot by western political forces to slow down industrial growth here.)

Titian, since you are asking for scientific evidence for CO2 forcings:

IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007), Working Group 1, Chapter 2, "Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing"

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_fourth_asses…

All of the information in this document is properly cited, so you can go read the original papers yourself, if you feel that the IPCC is untrustworthy.

Attempting to cut-and-paste the relevant material from these documents into blog comments is unlikely to be useful, and I recommend you read these documents yourself.

Rohith, if you want information on paleoclimate modeling:

IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007), Working Group 1, chapter 6, "Paleoclimate"

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_fourth_asses…

As I said before, all of the information in this document is properly cited, so you can go read the original papers yourself.

Your reasoning abilities are defective, Titian. If I were presenting the LSD example as evidence or plausibility for the hypothesis that a small percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere can have a significant effect on the climate, then you would have a point. I am not, so you do not.

To save you the trouble of actually rereading and thinking about what I wrote, I will repeat myself:

LSD in the human body is a counterexample to the notion that a small change in a system cannot have a large impact on the system. This is logically a solid refutation of your, ahem, argument that a small amount of CO2 cannot have a large effect on climate simply because it is 'small'.

If it is not your argument that CO2 cannot have a significant effect on climate simply because it is a small percentage of atmospheric gases, what is your argument?

A possible better analogy for Titian, since it involves atmospheric gases:

Chlorine gas has an LD50 in atmospheric concentrations of 800-1000 parts per million, and there are chemical agents that are even more lethal than that.

Neil you obviously do not know much about the shape of absorption curves. They are not even close to normal curves. The net result is those tails which I will admit I ignored are so insignificant that they simply do not matter. Further, this nonsense about re-radiation is a joke. When a greenhouse gas absorbs a photon it nearly never re-emits a photon at any place close to the absorbed photons wavelength. Rather, it emits are far longer wavelengths which often are at infrared transparent wavelengths. Half of these go into space. Actually almost all absorbed photons are never re-emited at all. They are degraded into vibrational and twisting energy spread through the molecule and consist of low level heat.

You really need to learn about Beer's law. It aint new at all. It is well documented science that goes back to the 1850s.

Incidentally, a number for the molar absorptivity of CO2 at the 4 micron band is surprisingly hard to come by. The best I've been able to come up with is the spectrum at http://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?ID=C124389&Type=IR-SPEC&Index=1. Making an assumption on temperature (which wasn't given - I assumed 273K) I came up with 15,900 mol-1 m-1. At current atmospheric concentrations, this gives a ~370-fold reduction in original intensity over 100m, leading me to suspect that my estimate is a little high.

Anyone have a better source?

Doughter, as a Ph.D., where have you published this material about how CO2 cannot act as a greenhouse gas due to its absorption properties? This is a fairly radical notion and I'm sure any reputable scientific journal would be very pleased to publish a paper that would have such a tremendous effect on one of the foundations of modern climate science.

If this material is not your original research, where else can I read about it? Please restrict your citations to the peer-reviewed scientific literature; I have access to one of the largest university libraries in North America and I'm sure I can track down whatever you have, no matter how obscure.

Doughter has it right. The carbon dioxide absorbs IR radiation emitted by the earth, which excites the carbon dioxide into a higher vibrational state. Then the carbon dioxide thermalizes this vibrational energy, which heats the surrounding air, which leads to a temperature increase. More carbon dioxide, more thermalization, higher temperature.

(Some of the absorbed IR radiation is re-emitted randomly; some of that is absorbed by the earth, which heats the earth; some is emitted to space or to other carbon dioxide molecules.)

Rob, Doughter said back up in comment #26:

"Until you can address these facts you can not convince this PhD that carbon dioxide has anything to do with recent changes in earths mean temp. Earths mean temp has varied widely for a long time. Sometimes much warmer than today like is was 1000 years ago. Sometimes much cooler like it was 300 years ago."

This rather strongly suggests that Doughter believes that his analysis of the absorption and emission of infrared radiation by atmospheric CO2 indicates that it is not actually a greenhouse gas.

If he would like to clarify, that would be fine, but I think it's pretty clear that he believes that current temperature increases are a natural cycle.

And speaking of which, Doughter, since you apparently acknowledge that there has been an increase in the Earth's temperature in recent years, and just disagree about the cause, what do you think about folks like Mockton who deny that there has been any increase at all?

@Neil Craig: 1. Jones' statement, at the time, was that post-1995 warming couldn't be proven with 95 percent certainty. In the last month, he has now said such certainty exists. The rest of your claims aren't even worth the bother.

@ Gord: From what institution did you escape?

@Titian: You're smoking crack if you refuse to understand atmospheric sensitivity to either CO2 or water vapor. Otherwise, yes, since you don't understand the basics of math enough to choose the proper divisor, you're wrong anyway.

===

But, more and more and more, whether here, Discover or elsewhere, we see trolls spouting stuff that's not even wrong ... and, IMO, doing so in the hopes they can just add enough noise to the signal that those of us who know better will be overwhelmed, stop commenting or whatever.

Doughter

Earths mean temp has varied widely for a long time. Sometimes much warmer than today like is was 1000 years ago. Sometimes much cooler like it was 300 years ago.

Tide goes in. Tide goes out. Earth gets warm. Earth gets cold. Never a miscommunication. You can't explain that.

Nice post!

And AGW denialists are still stupid and boring.

Re: Post #42
Maxwell,

What a HOOT!

Watts are NOT a Vector Quantity but Watts/m^2 (The Electomagnetic Field) IS!

Where are you getting your information from?

Do you just make this stuff up?
----------

Here is the Physics link showing the Heat Flux (w/m^2) is a Vector Quantity:

"Heat flux or thermal flux, sometimes also referred to as heat flux density or heat flow rate intensity is a flow of energy per unit of area per unit of time. In SI units, it is measured in [W·m-2]. It has both a direction and a magnitude so it is a vectorial quantity."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_flux
--------
Electromagnetic radiation
"Electromagnetic radiation (sometimes abbreviated EMR) takes the form of self-propagating waves in a vacuum or in matter. EM radiation has an electric and magnetic field component which oscillate in phase perpendicular to each other and to the direction of energy propagation. Electromagnetic radiation is classified into types according to the frequency of the wave, these types include (in order of increasing frequency): radio waves, microwaves, terahertz radiation, infrared radiation, visible light, ultraviolet radiation, X-rays and gamma rays. Of these, radio waves have the longest wavelengths and Gamma rays have the shortest."

"EM radiation carries energy and momentum that may be imparted to matter with which it interacts."

"Electric and magnetic fields do obey the properties of SUPERPOSITION, so fields due to particular particles or time-varying electric or magnetic fields contribute to the fields due to other causes. (As these fields are vector fields, all magnetic and electric field vectors add together according to vector addition"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_radiation
-------
Vector fields
"Maxwell's equations allow us to use a given set of initial conditions to deduce, for every point in Euclidean space, a magnitude and direction for the force experienced by a charged test particle at that point; the resulting vector field is the electromagnetic field."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_field

Hey Maxwell, ever hear about MAXWELL'S EQUATIONS?
-------------
Like I said...

Try using Vector Mathematics for Vector fields to show how IR Radiation can flow from Cold to Hot.

Good Luck!
------
PS:

Any luck finding:

- Even ONE Law of Science that supports the Fantasy "Greenhouse Effect"?

- Even ONE Measurement, EVER DONE, that shows that a Colder Atmosphere can HEAT UP a Warmer Earth?

No?
They simply DO NOT EXIST.

Great clear article and run through from the very start of the basics on this issue. Some excellent charts, graphs & illustrations too. Nicely done. I have bookmarked this and will quite probably link to it in future discussions. Thankyou.

Wow, so many negative comments...

Pissed off a lot of people this time, Ethan.

Nobnodty Special 21 you are quite correct to say that these questions have been asked on many other "scienceblogs" sites. However Rob 24 is lying in saying that they have been "rebutted" (how do you rebut a question?) unless vituperation, lies and censorship count as "rebuttal" in the anti-scientific universe so many here inhabit.

Chris 28 since you accuse me of being a liar, without producing evidence thought i would do it for you. According to GISS, which I'm sure you will accept as not unduly "denialist" the rise from 1980 to 2010 was .42 C not the 0.6 you claimed so I await your admission that you are a liar and that I am not. Incidentally, since you claim the 30 year measure as, if you are not making this up as you go along, the be all and end all you will be on record as denouncining all thaose alarmists who, in the 1980s, announced catastrophic warming on the basis of a 0,2 rise over the previous 30 years - 0.07 C per dacade. I would be interested inseeing where you thus proved yourself not to be a complete hypocrit.

Gadfly 102 from 1995 to 2010 there was, as Jiones has said, no significant warming. Jones has since said that subsequent figures do allow "significance", not on the basis of warming but that more figures lower the level needed for "significance". That is a very questionable action but nobody honest can dispute that, for the period in question, there was not such warming. In any case "significant" on a measurement scale is not even closely related to significant on a scale to justfy alarm.

I note still no honest attempt to answer simple questions with other than vituperation. That is not compatible with a respect for science.

@Neil Craig

They weren't questions. They were assertions put forth with a request for someone to accept or deny the assertion. Every one of the assertions was been rebutted.

"Do you accept that the earth orbits the sun?" This is not a question about the earth and the sun, it is a question to a reader about whether or not they accept a certain fact.

"Does the earth orbit the sun?" This is a question.

Both are framed as questions, and both have yes or no answers, but the first can only be answered in the affirmative or negative, whereas the second can be answered in the affirmative and be accompanied by an explanation about the factual basis of the answer.

The bigger problem with your post is that each supposition, for example #3, is false. Mann's calculations have been improved upon by many, many people, and each time the answer is the same. There were problems with the initial work, but Mann has corrected these problems.

Fuck of Neil Craig. You are a disgusting lier.
I have bookmarked this interview with Phil Jones just to cite it in the face of dishonest liers like yourself. I am sure you have read it so you know you are lying. That is why you get no respect from me.

Neil Craig:

I note still no honest attempt to answer simple questions with other than vituperation.

I note that you fail to withdraw the lie that you started with. I have no interest in answering the questions of someone who precedes them with a lie.

That is not compatible with a respect for science.

Your lie is not compatible with a respect for science and you are a hypocrite.

"Why go to the effects on reefs based on a Scientific American article?"

To show that the ocean is taking up CO2.

Duh.

"This; somewhat UK-centric book by a Cambridge Physics prof. free to read online. Discusses quantitatively what traditional renewables can achieve. Precis: They can't do enough; even with near massively optimistic assumptions about what you could get built you're off by a factor of 2."

Premise: false, rendering conclusion likewise faulty.

Tip: The author is heavily into promoting nuclear fuels.

The factor of 1/10th is taken "as true" but throughout he ignores that the occupied area of a windfarm is a miniscule fraction of a percent of the area taken. Also ignores that there are 3.5-7.5 MW turbines out today.

Also ignores offshore which, for the UK alone, could make up 5-8x as much power as the UK currently uses itself if completely utilised.

Tristan @ 91: I agree with Rob, you have no math skills.
I will be happy to do your experiment by adding 8/1000ths of 1% to your bucket, a miniscule amount. Thank you for proving my point. This is a much more "direct analogy".

"That means that at the background level of carbon dioxide (280ppm) 100% of the radiated energy at wavelengths where carbon dioxide is active will be absorbed by an altitude of under 100 meters."

Indeed it does. So what happens to that 100m lowest layer?

It warms.

What happens when it warms?

It radiates more.

But that will warm the ground and the upper air equally (isotropic radiation from a planar source).

Then the next 100m will absorb 100%.

Which then does the same.

And so on until you get up to a level where the egress of IR radiation is no longer impeded appreciably.

This will be after some number of such thicknesses have been passed. And that will be at some height.

Since temperature drops with height and radiation goes as the fourth power of the temperature, that release will be limited by the height of that last important layer.

Now, what happens if you increase the CO2 concentration throughout the atmosphere?

Your level becomes even less than 100m and you have to go higher to get to that last important layer.

If you go higher, you get colder, if you get colder, you get less radiation out.

The release of energy from the system is lower and your entire system has to warm up to increase that temperature at that higher level.

Just like wearing a jumper over your shirt keeps you warmer because your jumper radiates/convects less than your t-shirt by dropping a larger temperature differential over the thickness of the jumper than your thin shirt does.

Or are you going to deny your purchases of winter and summer clothing as fictitious superstition?

"- Next, it is IMPOSSIBLE for any Greenhouse gas radiant Electromagnetic Fields to propagate from a colder atmosphere to a warmer Earth surface and HEAT UP THE EARTH."

However, it is impossible for the warmth of a body to impede the radiation of a nearby body even if said body is warmer.

Therefore your cooler layer WILL STILL RADIATE toward the warmer body, increasing the input of energy into that body since it is insensate to the origin of the radiation. Said increase in input radiant energy will increase the temperature of the warmer body above that were the cooler one absent.

The cooler body will warm the hotter one.

"Maxwell,

Heat IS RADIATION OF EM FIELDS.

Heat Radiation"

Wow.

How false.

Radiation is one method of HEAT TRANSFER. However, it isn't in itself heat any more than conductive phonons are heat nor convective cells heat in a more fluid medium.

@Wow, 112:

I don't think you have read the book. For one, he does not promoting nuclear fuels. He just mentions that they can buy us more time while we try to figure things out but he emphasizes that they are not renewable. And two, he does not ignore offshore. You might want to argue with his conclusions or numbers but you can't say he ignores them. Also, I do not get your argument about the windfarms. Care to elaborate?

Nibi @ 95
My reasoning is defective? All you've got is name-calling and deception. Thank you and Tristan for proving my points.
Please go back and read the analogy definition. Bullying and stupitity are not part of the scientific method.

"The question then becomes, what other forces increase because of increased CO2. Does it cause more foliage to grow? Does it cause more cloud cover? Are there others? These other effects aren't typically addressed by those making the CO2 argument."

Because these would be feedbacks.

And models give a feedback resultant of 3C per doubling of CO2 whilst measurement of the current warming and the contribution of H2O/CO2 would indicate a feedback resultant of near or around 4C per doubling (where Arrhenius early work gave 6C per doubling and Gilbert Plass later computation gave about 3.5C and Hansen's even more recent model gave 3.2C). Current changes over the last 100 years also gives a current (with the system still out of equilibrium, therefore an underestimate) of over 2.3C per doubling of CO2 feedback resultant.

Those who make the CO2 argument mention feedbacks all the time.

You're just not listening.

"I don't think you have read the book. For one, he does not promoting nuclear fuels."

I have read the book.

It is full of adhoc rationalisations. The author is heavily into promoting nuclear and the only reason to preclude renewables is that nuclear then is the "must be" option.

It promotes nuclear by excluding every single other option.

"He just mentions that they can buy us more time while we try to figure things out"

Given that the old designs are demonstrably unsafe to roll out in large numbers, the 5-10 year lag before operations can start producing energy and the new designs have not managed to be brought in on time or under budget, nuclear power doesn't buy us any time, but instead gives us a money hole to pour money into whilst giving us nothing back.

"You might want to argue with his conclusions or numbers but you can't say he ignores them."

Yes I can.

He ignores them.

He calculates a figure based on how much space you need for a wind farm, IGNORING larger designs that are more efficient, IGNORING that 99.9% of the land remains unused in a windfarm, therefore able to be purposed for some other method (try feeding daisy the cow on Sellafield).

And when those figures don't work, he then FOR NO REASON GIVEN then says we can only use a small fraction of that.

You may have read the book, but you've been far too gullible in believing it.

"Solar and Wind are expensive, that's OK, but when you consider that wind does not always blow "

So for how long and when was the continental contiguous 48 states becalmed?

"and that Connecticut covered border to border with solar panels would only supply New York City with electric, it becomes problematic. "

Sorry, a square little over 230km across in a desert area like the central southern USA like Arizona would produce 100% of the global power needs.

Please explain what area connecticut is, the power requirements of NYC and your solar panel power efficiency that produced your metric.

"3 - The Chinese are building approximately one new coal-fired electrical plant per day."

Funny you should ignore how many solar panels and wind turbines they're building.

I mean, if you're going to use their production rates to prove anything about their intent over AGW and renewables and all that.

"One volcano, Mt Pinatubo, in one eruption, produced the full complement of human emissions since 1810, before the industrial revolution."

Care to tell us how much CO2 Mt Pinatubo produced?

Then compare and reference with the ~30billion tons per year from humans currently.

Of course, you're just repeating what you heard in the fraudulent (as in the author had to change his piece dramatically or be had up for civil and criminal penalties) TGGWS.

@Wow:

It promotes nuclear by excluding every single other option.

Please tell me exactly how this is a heavy promotion of nuclear energy:

Are you eager to know the end of the story right away? Here is a quick
summary, a sneak preview of Part II.
First, we electrify transport. Electrification both gets transport off fossil
fuels, and makes transport more energy-efficient. (Of course, electrification increases our demand for green electricity.)
Second, to supplement solar-thermal heating, we electrify most heating
of air and water in buildings using heat pumps, which are four times more
efficient than ordinary electrical heaters. This electrification of heating
further increases the amount of green electricity required.
Third, we get all the green electricity from a mix of four sources: from
our own renewables; perhaps from âclean coal;â perhaps from nuclear; and finally, and with great politeness, from other countriesâ renewables.

"Divide 80 by 1,000,000 and you come out with 0.00008. Convert that to percentage terms and you come out with 0.008%."

What rubbish.

Since most of that ppm doesn't do anything wrt either IR or Vis light, why are you using it to work out how much change in temperature from the IR/Vis Greenhouse Gas effect would be?

Would it be because you don't understand the physics, but only multiplication/division?

300ppm then. 380ppm now.

Divide them, take the log: 0.23638877806423. Call it 0.236.

Temperature change over that time: 0.8C.

Sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 would then be: 0.8/0.236 = 3.3842554056548. Call it 3.4C. Or 2.35 C per doubling. And we haven't reached equilibrium yet.

Pretty close to the IPCC figures and a LOT higher than yours.

I'll have to add, the only numbers that I really tried to check was his numbers on solar panels. As far as I can remember, his numbers were a bit low but not by much but I don't think his book is a heavy promotion of nuclear energy. The message that I took, as he puts it, is the following:

Something Iâd like you to notice about this race,
though, is this contrast:
how easy it is to toss a bigger log on the consump-
tion fire, and how difficult it is to grow the production stack. As I write this
paragraph, Iâm feeling a little cold, so I step over to my thermostat and
turn it up. Itâs so simple for me to consume an extra 30 kWh per day. But
squeezing an extra 30 kWh per day per person from renewables requires
an industrialization of the environment so large it is hard to imagine.

"The problem is how did we get that data?"

We used thermometers.

"After 1950s, we understand we have enough technology to monitor temperatures through the world."

We still use thermometers, just like back in the 1800's.

"What about 1700s, 1800s.. how do we know the temperature of our planet at a particular point of time in the past?"

By using thermometers and, where not possible other analogues of temperature. Remember, your thermometer doesn't measure temperature, it measures the expansion of the content in a restricted tube. A temperature proxy.

Titian said:

"Thatâs 8/1000ths of 1 percent, gang. So mankind, after doing his fossil fuel-burning worst for 150+ years, has only succeeded in altering the composition of the Earthâs atmosphere by a paltry 8/1000ths of 1 percent.

Anyone who seriously believes that this kind of miniscule increase in the amount of a trace gas in the atmosphere can, in and of itself, cause the glaciers to retreat and the seas to rise is smoking crack."

First, we may have changed overall atmospheric concentration by a very small amount, but the actual concentration of CO2 has changed from ~280ppm to ~395ppm, an increase of 115ppm, or approximately 40%.

So the increase in the amount of the trace gas is not miniscule.

Moreover, let's take the example of ozone, a much less abundant gas than CO2 (peak concentrations are about 6-8ppm in the ozone layer). So ozone could decrease by 'only' 8ppm in the ozone layer, a change in atmospheric composition of only 8/10,000ths of one percent (and that's being generous and not correcting for different ozone concentrations with height and the lower pressure up there), and all life on Earth would be fried by UV and be wiped out. Indeed ozone would not need to be reduced to zero for there to be serious effects...

So yeah, anyone who seriously believes that this kind of miniscule decrease in the amount of a trace gas in the atmosphere can, in and of itself, lead to extensive genetic damage in animals and plants is smoking crack. Wait, no they're not, they're right on the ball.

"They are not even close to normal curves."

No, they're pretty good exponential decay curves (the normal distribution curve) because they're the result of random stochastic processes: quantum mechanics.

"The net result is those tails which I will admit I ignored are so insignificant that they simply do not matter."

Uhm, nope. Where the tail was interfering 0.1% (insignificant effect) will after 100x100m (10km, about an atmosphere), now be 100% (very significant effect). And, since this is a normal distribution, that hundred-fold increase will be the case for the rest of the tail length.

It all adds up.

"When a greenhouse gas absorbs a photon it nearly never re-emits a photon at any place close to the absorbed photons wavelength."

EXTREMELY false. QM and the reciprocity theory requires that the emission of a photon be at the same wavelength as it was absorbed at, within the uncertainty principle limits of accuracy. As in "can't get any closer to the same value".

"Rather, it emits are far longer wavelengths which often are at infrared transparent wavelengths. Half of these go into space."

Since they don't exist, half of nothing is still nothing.

"Actually almost all absorbed photons are never re-emited at all."

Well, now we're getting somewhere. At the surface and throughout most of the troposphere, the emission time of an excited CO2 molecule is much less than the collision time, therefore there's not enough time to release the emergy without the opportunity for several inelastic collisions to leech away the energy.

"You really need to learn about Beer's law."

You really need to learn about Beer's law. It's not about the energy density in the medium, it's about the transparency through it.

It also describes, and only works for, a homogenous medium not radiating at significant levels in the wavelengths being monitored.

Neither describe the atmosphere we have an the 15micron wavelengths we're interested in.

"The message that I took, as he puts it, is the following: "

Then follows with "you cannot do this with renewables" screed.

Why?

Precluding the options other than the one he wants taken. It's a common tactic to upper management to get them to do what you want them to do.

Cut all the other options out.

"But squeezing an extra 30 kWh per day per person from renewables requires an industrialization of the environment so large it is hard to imagine. "

Did he ANYWHERE explain his calculation of the cost of 30kWh/day (1 ~1.2kW) in renewables? Since it now costs less than 2 dollars per W for solar (and solar is the most expensive of the renewable options), that would be a one-off cost of a few grand per person, amortised over 20 years.

Who couldn't manage a couple of hundred a year? Hell, US medical care, even cheap care, costs more than 150 dollars A MONTH.

NOTE: rather cheaper than he seems to believe renewables would cost would be to reduce the heat loss from his room so he doesn't need to turn the thermostat up.

"Please tell me exactly how this is a heavy promotion of nuclear energy:"

Please tell me you don't think that's the entire book.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6860181.ece

âThis plan would involve a fourfold increase in nuclear power over todayâs levels,â he said. âSo at Sizewell, for example, you would have four Sizewell Bs and at other nuclear sites you would have another four Sizewell Bs, and so on.â

He added: âBritain could never live on its own renewables. If the aim is to get off fossil fuels, we need nuclear power or solar power generated in other countriesâ deserts, or both.â

@Wow:

Okay, I'm almost convinced. BTW, do you have other books or sources that cover the issue of renewables, their efficiency and the related issues?

My reasoning is defective? All you've got is name-calling and deception. Thank you and Tristan for proving my points.
Please go back and read the analogy definition. Bullying and stupitity are not part of the scientific method.

This is nothing but a content free whine. You complain about a few gratuitous insults while steadfastly refusing to address the actual arguments. Complaining about being picked on or insulted after popping in here and saying

Anyone who seriously believes that this kind of miniscule increase in the amount of a trace gas in the atmosphere can, in and of itself, cause the glaciers to retreat and the seas to rise is smoking crack.

is ridiculous. You set the tone, bub. So how about actually addressing any of my points? Simply pointing your finger and declaring "It's teh specious analogy!" is not an argument. As I've pointed out repeatedly, my claim is that argumentum ad small numberum is flawed. You refuse to address this actual point.

Many commenters have provided arguments and evidence against your "CO2 concentration is small" objection which you choose to ignore. You have not provided any counterarguments or evidence to support your position. This, despite the fact the burden of proof is on you to support your position, not us to 'prove you wrong'.

Thank you Ethan for your well reasoned scientific explanation.

Yes, #2
http://theconversation.edu.au/pages/clearing-up-the-climate-debate
is well worth a look; if you are interested in the science of global-warming.

But the skeptics-of-global-warming do not point to any site (scientific or political) that defends their view. Their unreason is shrill and inconsistent. Unreason uses the appearance of reason only to bully its way.

When the science of your psuedo-religion falls apart the screams get louder. The dilution of the CO2 is the issue, bub. An issue which you can niether refute or prove. Your straw-man arguement is laughable.

Titian have you read my post @127? From your latest reply it seem like you haven't. Please do, and then present any objections you have to what I said.

Good cleanup work, Wow, but let me add regarding "Dr. Doughter"'s [interesting phonetics] claim: "Actually almost all absorbed photons are never re-emited at all." Well, sure about the delay but if that were true then the atmosphere would be soaking up net energy and keep heating up and up all the time, extra CO2 or not!

Furthermore, it is *certain* and not disputable at all the "the greenhouse effect" exists and that Earth's surface would be colder without an atmosphere: the only question is, *how much more* temperature increase will more CO2 (and more water vapor from evaporation, more CH4, etc.) cause given all the interactions like positive forcings, possible negative ones hoped for by many (cloud cover, but with uncertainties and sometimes surely catch net outgoing IR like at night), etc.

Yeah, we can see that these talking points are rarely someones' intelligent reflection (so to speak ...) but *constructed* for them by propagandists: as someone said here or there: anti-social billionaires who want even more at any cost to *the rest of us.*

BTW blog owner and moderators, it would be nice to have "remember personal data" (or is there, that I can't see because of using Linux?)

Titian,

Beer's Law states that the absorption of light by a molecule is directly proportional to the concentration (weight/volume) of the molecule, given the same path length and wavelength of the measurement. That means, very simply, that if the concentration goes from 300 ppm to 380 ppm, the absorption of light by carbon dioxide will increase by about 25%. That is irrefutable. Your issue of dilution is absolutely irrelevant, unless you are arguing that the volume of the atmosphere has increased so that the increase in amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been proportionally diluted by the increased volume. Somehow I don't think the volume of the atmosphere has changed significantly in the past 100 years.

Stu N:

Since climate skeptards copy/paste the same bullshit arguments over and over again, it is obvious that they don't read posts. They just see them as trolling fodder.

@138 Libtards don't listen to logic and reason they just keep blowing CO2 out of thier pie hole.
@137 "That is irrefutable"
Your belief that temp. increase follows a rise in CO2 is bogus. That myth was debunked long ago. CO2 is a lagging indicator. What kind of scientists state that "the science is settled"? Here's a clue: The worst freaking scientists in the world!

Tristan @ 91: I agree with Rob, you have no math skills.
I will be happy to do your experiment by adding 8/1000ths of 1% to your bucket, a miniscule amount. Thank you for proving my point. This is a much more "direct analogy".

Prediction: Titian will perform this experiment, then come back and apologize profusely for his misconception.

... Hah. Who am I trying to kid. For the more science literate: at its peak absorbance around 500nm, FD&C red 40 has an extinction coefficient of around 20,000 L mol-1 cm-1. If you got your hands on the pure stuff, a ~75 mg / liter solution (7.5/thousandths [sic] of one percent) would give you an absorbance of 3 - in other words, every centimeter would reduce the intensity of incident light by 1000-fold.

Of course, this example is strictly to demonstrate the fallaciousness of the idea that such a small concentration can't do anything - the extinction coefficient of CO2 is, thankfully, much lower.

Lotharloo, I know. I thought I'd give Titian a chance to prove he has some critical thinking. Answer? Frankly, no.

He responds to none of the actual content of posts, and as I tried to make my original post as relevant and factual as possible, I'm not surprised I haven't got a reply.

@Tristan:

I am not that optimistic. Some people are morons and Titian is one of them. The reason why a significant percentage increase in the amount of a trace gas can have big consequences has been explained pretty well and to be honest it is not that difficult to get.

Like I said: who am I trying to kid?

Titian, back in post #93 I gave you a resource for evidence that atmospheric CO2 is an important element in radiative forcing. Have you looked at this material yet? I would hate to think that you are asking for things and then ignoring them when they are provided.

Titian: There is a resource at http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/03/geological-history-does-n… about the long-term climate history, explaining that the claims of no correlation (or lag, which contradict each other anyway) are unsupported.

I am not a physical scientist, per se, just an ordinary biologist, but I'd like to make a suggestion. I would like to see some calculations involving; specific heat of carbon dioxide, total amount of carbon dioxide now in the atmosphere, total energy input from the sun and cooling rate of carbon dioxide. I would love to make this into a meaningful set of equations and see, with real numbers and without any guesses, what carbon dioxide has to do with any heat build-up here on earth whatsoever. Please help us "soft" scientist's see what's up!
I remain skeptical.

""Somehow I don't think the volume of the atmosphere has changed significantly in the past 100 years.""
>Posted by: Rob | June 29, 2011 2:18 PM

Really???? Where did all that carbon dioxide go that you sorely need to supposedly warm up our planet so much?

Are you really sceptical? You already sound quite closed-minded with:

"Really???? Where did all that carbon dioxide go that you sorely need to supposedly warm up our planet so much?"

Well for starters all the O2 that bonds with the C was already in the atmosphere. And compared to the mass of the atmosphere, the additional C is negligible (not in terms of radiative effect, I might add).

Anyway. The specific heat of carbon dioxide is of little consequence. When CO2 absorbs an infrared photon, one of two things happens: the excited atom re-emits an infrared photon in a random direction, or it hits a nearby molecule and transfers some energy to that by collision. The collision is the much more likely scenario, particularly near sea level where the spacing between molecules is smaller. Then random collisions will eventually transfer the right amount of energy back to a greenhouse gas molecule, whereupon it will radiate an IR photon.

So, in the simplest possible terms, the heat build-up caused by carbon dioxide has nothing to do with the heat capacity potentially added to the atmosphere by adding more CO2, and everything to do with the absorption and re-emission of IR by CO2.

re: GodsCountry @146,147.

I would like to see some calculations involving; information content of DNA, total amount of DNA now in the biosphere, total energy input from the sun and mutation rate of DNA. I would love to make this into a meaningful set of equations and see, with real numbers and without any guesses, what DNA has to do with any diversity and complexity of life here on earth whatsoever. Please help us "hard" scientist's see what's up!

Where did all that DNA come from that you sorely need to supposedly explain the diversity and complexity of life on our planet?

I'm sure a brief reply in the comments of a blog post will satisfy my skepticism!

Titian @ 139:

[The] belief that temp. increase follows a rise in CO2 is bogus. That myth was debunked long ago. CO2 is a lagging indicator.

In the context of the present warming, this claim is false.

If you wish to demonstrate otherwise, please provide evidence (either direct links to peer-reviewed literature or links/cites to texts which accurately interpret the literature will do). Your unsubstantiated assertion will simply not do.

While it is certainly the case that, during (for example) glaciation/melt cycles, CO2 acted as a climate feedback rather than a climate forcing (see here for an elaboration), this is not the mechanism at play currently.

We know CO2 levels are rising, we know from isotopic analysis that the excess carbon is coming from fossil fuel emissions, and we know that other forcings (solar, volcanic greenhouse emissions, Milankovitch cycles) are neutral or even slightly negative.

This is such a great article. Hopefully you see my comment way down here. I have one quibble: why does one worry about the tiny fraction of greenhouse gas represented by CO2, with so much water vapor? Isn't it drowned out by variation in water vapor? And if water vapor is so variable, what are its controls so that it doesn't cause a runaway greenhouse effect?
I know this is all on Wikipedia, but cmon you're only a few slides away from tying up the loose ends (at least at this level of analysis).

Just one shot aimed at the denialists here:
@139,

Your belief that temp. increase follows a rise in CO2 is bogus. That myth was debunked long ago. CO2 is a lagging indicator.

Whether it's leading or lagging is entirely dependent on whether CO2 (added or subtracted) is the forcing on the system, silly. During the Pleistocene, it was orbital wobble that was driving the periodicity of climate- it was the forcing on the system, by changing the summer insolation on the northern hemisphere (critical for determining ebb and flow of ice sheets). So CO2 and the rest of the feedbacks trailed this change in icesheet extent and temperature. On the other hand, if you have a bunch of basalt flows belching CO2 into the atmosphere in a short time period, CO2 is the forcing to which other components respond to.

Holy fuck!!!

Tristan or whatever it is just disproved Beer's Law. I'm really impressed.

These morons couldn't prove 2+2=4.

Titian abandons 'it's only a trace gas!' and shifts to 'CO2 is caused by temperature!"

Gish galloping his way thru the hit parade of denialist idiocy.

@Stu N:

LOL! You forgot to ask for he birth certificates of all the humans and all the chimpanzees going back to 6 million years to prove that we have a common ancestor. Until GodsCountry provides the long forms, I'll be skeptical.

This thread is making me think seriously about changing my name...

Well what ever you do, don't change it to (Titian)

:?0

*snark*

Titian @139:

Your belief that temp. increase follows a rise in CO2 is bogus. That myth was debunked long ago. CO2 is a lagging indicator.

Oh dear! You really don't have a clue about the science behind climate change, do you? You could make a start by studying some of the sites listed here.

While you are at it, you should also find out about regression analysis and the effect of using longer series of data.

If you guys would spend less time arguing and more time putting all that knowledge to work we would have the answer by morning, and yes, Alex wins.

Rob 108 claims that my questions were not questions.This is the sort of total contempt for any sort of honesty normally to be found among supporters of the warming scam. He could have tried to defend a claim that my questions were unimportant or erankish or some other lesser lie but he went straight for the gold saying they weren't questions. Clearly not a man limited by any remotest trace of honesty and unsurprisingly an ecofascist. Any supporter of warming who has any honesty will obviously feel driven to disagree with such obvious lies but, as my question 6 implied, there has been a blanket refusal among alarmist "scientists" to dissociate themselves from the blatant liars which does not engender credibility in the entire edifice.

109 Lothario and 110 Chris O'Neil (who has been previously proven a complete liar) do not, this time, even reach the standard of wholly dishonest since they limit themselves to fact free vituperation. There are 5 year old children with more respect for and understanding of scientific principles than them.

Neil Craig, anyone calling the AGW theory itself a "scam" is a fraud: even if the forcings wouldn't cause *as much* warming as the high-end predictions, we *know* that the greenhouse effect is real in that the Earth would be cooler if had no atmosphere, and cooler if less CO2. Again, are you aware of Svante Arrhenius in freaking 1896 making the basic case? His figures were a decent try at the time and not precise, but his argument was sound. So even a denier of strong effect, *if honest*, would not talk about the issue that way you do. But if you accept that much then you should make it clear that you just disagree about feedback etc. and magnitude, and come across accordingly. Which is it?

@Neil Craig:

You don't read any links, you don't respond to any challenges, you keep copying and pasting the same stuff and then you come repeating honesty, facts, and science like a mantra. You are just a troll who came here for LOLz.
By the way, how is this for a fact free vituperation, you pathetic little creature?

@Neil Craig

I'm so sorry you're insulted. Yes, you asked questions. Now, I'll answer all seven, and you can happily move along and post your questions elsewhere for others to be enlightened by.

1 - NO

2 - NO

3 - NO

4 - NO

5 - PARTLY

6 - NO

7 - YES

@156
Thanks for your input. Oh dear! Do you even know how a greenhouse works? Your indoctrination is not education or science. Please explain how your bogus IR theory heats a greenhouse so we can all have a good laugh. Moronic alarmisism is not science.

"do you have other books or sources that cover the issue of renewables, their efficiency and the related issues?"

At the moment, the entire system is in such great flux that you can't get any better than googling about.

The technology for Solar PV for example, is undergoing multitudinous ways of increasing efficiency or decreasing cost. E.g. nanoscale structures, lenses, differing substrates and exciting media (extending the absorption into the IR to harvest more energy).

The realm of related issues is rather massive too.

Google around for the actual technologies will get you closer than generic terms since even a search for "California renewables cost" will get you 20 links from a rightwing blog about how it costs 10x as much as nuclear which is obvious crap.

http://www.nirs.org/climate/background/sovacool_nuclear_ghg.pdf

is a start to the relative costs environmentally. Google for wind turbines and that'll show you how they've morphed over the years. WP may work too for PV, but lurking on tech sites and geek sites may serve better.

"I would like to see some calculations involving; specific heat of carbon dioxide, total amount of carbon dioxide now in the atmosphere, ...."

Try here:

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/

NOTE: most of the things I replaced with an elipsis have no real bearing on the system. For a paper on it, try this which includes work you could now do on your programmable calculator.

Plass, G.N. (1956c). "Infrared Radiation in the Atmosphere." American J. Physics 24: 303-21.

Plass, G.N. (1956d). "Carbon Dioxide and the Climate." American Scientist 44: 302-16

online with commentary here:

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2010/1/carbon-dioxide-a…

Titian @162:

Please explain how your bogus IR theory heats a greenhouse so we can all have a good laugh.

Read the links.

"I have one quibble: why does one worry about the tiny fraction of greenhouse gas represented by CO2, with so much water vapor?"

Because Water Vapour will fall out as rain.

Carbon Dioxide Vapour much less likely.

WV then becomes a feedback, increasing the effect of any other warming/cooling forcing occurring.

PS note that despite water vapour in the tenths of a percent whilst CO2 is in hundredths of a percent, the ratio between the results of GHG warming between the two is not 1:10 but more nearer 1:3.

Don't keep judging things by their size.

P.S. You seem to believe that the so-called greenhouse effect works by the same principles as in a greenhouse. You might want to check that out too.

"Rob 108 claims that my questions were not questions."

Well, they aren't.

Since Jones didn't say what you say he said, asking whether we believe what he said isn't a question. It's a lie with a question mark on the end.

Do you agree, Neil, when Anthony Watts has said he's been paid by the Koch Industry?

Just asking the question.

"Do you even know how a greenhouse works?"

Yes.

"Please explain how your bogus IR theory heats a greenhouse"

It doesn't. The sun heats a greenhouse.

You seem to think that the Greenhouse Gasses are supposed to create a greenhouse shed over the earth.

I'm afraid you're mistaken.

The very first commenter was right.

That said, note that when Bush put a College Republican in charge of all communications at NASA, the two things he censored from publication across the board were cimate change ... and the Big Bang. Because acknowledging the Earth is more than 10,000 years old and the Grand Canyon wasn't made by the Flood loses GOP votes. And acknowledging climate change might lead to stricter regulations, a workable EPA, and a loss of fossil fuel subsidies from the taxpayer.

It puts these pretentious faux scientific concern trolls in perspective, that.

Wow@169
"the sun heats the greenhouse" Hahahahahha.....
Wow@164
I've read this tripe before. Please give me the formula for: Decreased outgoing radiation = Increased temprature.
This idea that sun-heated ground emits infrared radiation that, absorbed by certain IR gasses and is emited back to the ground, thereby raising the surface temperature is unsupported theorum.
Reducing a body's temprature decreases it's outgoing radiation, yes, but it simply stays at that temperature, like a thermos.
@166 Wow Mr. Science you discovered a new source of energy, call Al Gore. Inject CO2 into your geenhouse panels and wait for it to explode.

""the sun heats the greenhouse" Hahahahahha..."

So what do you think does it?

"Please give me the formula for: Decreased outgoing radiation = Increased temprature."

You just gave one. However, it's false.

HOWEVER, here IS a formula you need to know:

q = ε Ï T4 A

where

ε = emissivity of the object (one for a black body)

"Reducing a body's temprature decreases it's outgoing radiation, yes, but it simply stays at that temperature, like a thermos."

No it doesn't. It continues to lose energy by radiation. There's no end point except at T=0 where q (the energy lost) is zero.

What a moron you are, child.

@Titian #171

"This idea that sun-heated ground emits infrared radiation that, absorbed by certain IR gasses and is emited back to the ground, thereby raising the surface temperature is unsupported theorum."

Really, truly, and in all seriousness, this is a scientific fact. No one with a modicum of scientific knowledge of spectroscopy and heat transfer has the least bit of doubt about this. Carbon dioxide is has a strong absorption band in the infrared. When carbon dioxide is photoexcited, it has one of two choices: (1) re-emit light thereby relaxing to the ground state; (2) transfer its excited state energy by collision with other molecules. In the first case, the emission is random with respect to direction, with a significant portion being emitted towards the earth, which absorbs this energy and becomes warmer. In the second case, the collision increases the kinetic energy of the other molecule, effectively increasing the temperature of the atmosphere. In the absence of a molecule to absorb the IR radiation emitted by the earth, the vast majority of the energy is emitted into space. Oxygen and nitrogen are transparent at the relevant wavelengths. Molecules like carbon dioxide and methane are not.

"Inject CO2 into your geenhouse panels and wait for it to explode."

Now you seem to think that CO2 is an accelerant.

Your knowledge knows no bounds. It doesn't know any content either.

I guess tit-head here doesn't put a jumper on in the warm weather, since that can't make it warmer.

That should have been cold weather.

Titian's trolling is becoming more and more moronic (and lets's be fair, his first post set the bar pretty high to start with).

But that's what it is: trolling. If he believes all this stuff he's saying, clearly he believes all the other crap his moron cronies tell him. As a result of his willful stupidity he'll probably shuffle off this mortal coil in a tragic but unsuprising ironing board accident or something within a week or two, so I wouldn't bother feeding this troll any more.

If he doesn't believe what he's saying, then again I wouldn't bother feeding this troll any more.

@Titian:
"This idea that sun-heated ground emits infrared radiation that, absorbed by certain IR gasses and is emited back to the ground, thereby raising the surface temperature is unsupported theorum."

Well no, it isn't. Given the proper instrument, it is trivially easy to point it up into the atmosphere, and measure the IR radiation being emitted back to the ground from the atmosphere. It is trivially easy to look at its frequency, and see that it is emitted by CO2, for example.

Not only is it easy, it has been done. One can MEASURE the back radiation. It isnt theorem, it is observed fact.

One can also measure the increase in back radiation as [CO2] increases. This has been published. You could look it up.

Titian @171 says:

Wow@169
"the sun heats the greenhouse" Hahahahahha.....

He has a point, Wow. Sometimes a heater heats the greenhouse. Of course that heater is fuleed by fossil fuels - which are solar eneargy. Or perhaps by electricity, from fossil fuels or hydroelectric - which is water falling that was evaporated by the sun, so it is solar.

Perhaps, if it is nuclear energy for those heaters... But one can argue that even that is solar energy, albeit not from this sun.

So no, actually, Wow - Titian doesn't have a point, does he?

Titian, the energy source for a greenhouse is solar - solar heats it. The reason it gets hotter than the surrounding atmosphere is that the greenhouse panels stop convective heat transfer, so more heat gets trapped inside. This has next to nothing to do with how the 'greenhouse effect' works in the atmosphere - you're throwing out a particualarly decayed and stinky red herring here.

In the atmospheric greenhouse effect, CO2 and othar greenhouse gasses slow radiative heat transfer, so more heat spends more time at the surface. This is analagous to the mechanism that makes a greenhouse warmer than the outside air, not homologous.

More precisely, the atmospheric greenhouse effect causes a reduction in the mean free path of radiated IR. This in turns means the the efective radiative altitude from which the earth emits radiation, moves to a slightly higher - and colder - altitude. Colder means that less radiation is emitted to space, and the radiative balance of the earth become unbalanced.

To regain equilibrium, the earth must heat until that effective radiating altitude is hot enough to emit enough radiative heat to balance the incomoing energy from the sun. IE, until the new higher altitude heats to the same temperature as the older, slightly lower altitude.

The temperature profile of the atmosphere is maintained by the moist adiabat. Move the radiating altitude higher and at the same temp, and the entire profile moves up - which effectively moves the surface to a 'lower' altitude relative to the effective radiating layer, which causes the surface to be warmer.

This is all simple straightforward physics - and it appears to be utterly beyond your ability to comprehend, Titian.

@174@175 You're not very smart are you. Please go back to the "how to talk to a climate skeptic" site. People like you w/o thier own critical thinking skills need each other. It is an echo chamber with a mixture of actual science and junk science, it's your speed.
@172 What does the phrase "decreases it's outgoing radiation" mean to you? Your formula is bogus, nice try. Deception for the masses.
@177 Lame, you add nothing to the discussion. Skeptisism is what makes the scientific method possible. Comments like "skeptard" demonstrate an ignorance of the scientific method. You should use it.
@173 Rob you seem to be sincere so I'll continue the discussion with you.
"...this is scientific fact" With all due respect, no it is not.
You are confusing a infrared absorber with a infrared
barrier. Let's use a greenhouse for an example:
A greenhouse is simply a physical structure that traps heated air. Solar radiation initiates the heating inside the greenhouse when photons in the visible spectrum enter
through the glass, and are obsorbed by opaque objects. Reflected photons exit freely, neither the photons or their heat are trapped inside. The second law of thermodynamics prohibits the carbon dioxide from reversing a downhill flow of energy. This fictitious "trapped heat" concept, labled with a dishonest "greenhouse gas" metaphor, simply can not pass honest peer review. It is a misrepresentation of natural obsorption and emission energy transfer.

@179
"...CO and other greenhouse gasses slow radiative heat transfer, so heat spends more time on the surface" That imaginary barrier is just fantastic.

Titian,

As you very well know, the so-called greenhouse effect and an actual greenhouse work by different mechanisms.

A greenhouse works when shorter wavelength IR light passes through the glass and is absorbed by something in the interior. When re-irradiated by the plants and soil, the wavelength is longer and cannot penetrate class. It is trapped as heat. In addition, and more importantly, simple convective heating occurs with the air in the greenhouse heated by the soil/plants. The hotter air rises and cooler air falls, to be heated. Even though glass transmits heat well, the efficiency of this transfer is initially lower than the rate of heating. This is also how a car heats up in the sun.

The so-called greenhouse effect is different, and occurs by the mechanism I detailed in #173. The mechanisms are different.

@182 Now fill the glass with "greenhouse gasses". What happens with enthalpy? Up,down,same?

Neil Craig:

Chris O'Neil (who has been previously proven a complete liar)

I stated citable data. You stated nothing.

"@177 Lame, you add nothing to the discussion. Skeptisism is what makes the scientific method possible. Comments like "skeptard" demonstrate an ignorance of the scientific method. You should use it."

Heh. So when I write a comment actually discussing your 'points' (c.f. 127) you ignore me completely, and when I post pointing out that you fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down, I get a response. Classic trolling.

@185 The post was 180
Anyway, I reject the hypothesis that a rise in surface temp. is caused by "geenhouse gasses" for the reasons outlined above. Read Rob @173 then read responses @180 and
@182 then answer the question @183 and we'll talk. If you're cut and paste you won't be able to. This should lead to the blackbody temp. of the earth discussion.

The enthalpy of what?

If you fill the glass with carbon dioxide (between two panes obviously), then some of the incident IR radiation would be absorbed, heating the gas and glass. Same reason that when a cloud covers the sun, you feel cooler.

Now tell me why double pane windows are sometimes filled with argon.

Isn't it true, although most of the effect of real greenhouses is the structure trapping the heating air, that absorption of IR is *part* of the effect. So the IR absorption of the glass went up as analogy, the GH would get hotter? It may not involve reradiation (much) but it's still a partial analog to the GH effect.

Titian:
"I reject the hypothesis that a rise in surface temp. is caused by "geenhouse gasses" for the reasons outlined above."

Rejecting reality - we have a word for that. What it the 'bleckbody' (or graybody) temperature of the earth? What is the surface temperature? What is the reason for the difference?

Titian:
"The second law of thermodynamics prohibits the carbon dioxide from reversing a downhill flow of energy."

Jesus on a stick!! How many times and how many ways does it have to be explained to you, Titian, that there is nothing in radiative theory about 'reversing a downhill flow of energy?' There is still a net 'downhill flow' of heat from the surface to the effective radiating altitude, and thence to the universe. The thing happening is that extra CO2 reduces teh mean free path of IR, so the effective radiative altitude goes up, and the moist adiabat temperature profile shifts upward.

Ignoring that this has been said to you already, in several different ways, does not make the fact go away.

Your incorrect use of buzzwords simply betrays your deep ignorance, dude.

Actually, since soda-lime glass is already essentially opaque to infrared past about 3-3.5 microns and the operative distances involved in atmospheric absorption of IR are in the tens to hundreds of meters as a minimum, adding CO2 to a greenhouse is going to do sweet f.a. to the temperature inside.

It's an analogy fail on Titian's part. The whole point is that CO2 acts (kinda) like the glass in a greenhouse, in that it blocks heat loss by thermal infrared. In the greenhouse case, the glass also blocks convective loss. In the case of the Earth, which happens to be sitting in a near-perfect vacuum, convective loss is non-existent. Barring a small amount of actual, physical loss of atmosphere to space, radiation is the Earth's only way of losing heat.

Anyway, I think it's time to give up on this particular troll. It's starting to smell.

@187
What were we talking about genius? Oh pardon me, the total heat load inside the theoretical greeeeenhooousssse. Slow enough for ya.

@188 wrong

@190 your a fool cut and paste. Get some skills

Anyway, I think it's time to give up on this particular troll. It's starting to smell.

Just now? I'm reminded of the old saw[1] comparing arguing with creationists and playing chess with a pigeon: The pigeon will knock over all of the pieces, shit on the board, declare victory and then fly away.

This pigeon, however, is a bit more clever. It repeatedly shits on the chessboard, but rather than simply knocking all of the pieces over, it randomly moves a piece from one square to another in order to create the illusion that it is actually interested in playing a game of chess. Meanwhile, its erstwhile opponents ignore the mess on the board, the illegal moves, and continue to play under the delusion that the pigeon is actually interested in the game or cares about the rules of the game. Ignore it and it will fly away.

[1] old in internet years

Your accusing me of using buzzwords? Look who's talking. Did total heat increase? Or are you just all bullshit and guess work.

@190 your a fool cut and paste. Get some skills.

Google my post. I guarantee you won't find it anywhere else on the web. Honestly, this stuff really isn't that difficult to work out.

Oh, and @194 - I know, I know. Read "starting to smell" as "the smell is getting overpowering."

@196 Cut and paste was refering to paroting psuedoscience dogma. Your statements show a lack of critical thinking and education not plagiarism. My apologies. My bad.

@ Titian:

Oh christ.

Assuming your greenhouse is in approximate thermal equilibrium with its surroundings, its temperature is set by the amount of energy entering the system, and the conduction and radiation of heat from its surface. No convection, which is of course why a greenhouse gets warmer inside than its surroundings. Adding CO2 to the greenhouse will not change either of these, so no, the heat content of the greenhouse ('heat content', BTW, not 'heat') will not change.

Other than - perhaps - very minutely and trivially, if the CO2 re-radiating IR causes some small shift in local internal heat flow, and therefore in the conduction/radiation characteristics of the boundaries of the greenhouse.

But again, the planet is not a greenhouse. The radiating surface of the earth system MOVES as we add CO2 to the atmosphere.

Incoming energy to the earth is ~ 342 W/M2. This means that the temperature of the effective radiating 'layer' of the earth's atmosphere must be that which radiates 342 W / M2.

Reducing the mean free path of the radiated photons, necessarily requires that the effective radiating 'layer' move to a higher altitude with less CO2 between that layer and the universe.

Which means that adding CO2 requires that the effective radiating 'layer' be higher altitude, but the same temperature.

The temperature profile of the atmosphere below that radiating altitude is primarily set by the moist adiabat - ie, is essentially fixed as a function of distance below that layer. Moving the radiating layer to a higher altitude, means that the temperature profile shifts up in altitude - which means that the surface gets warmer.

The relevant difference between the greenhouse, and the atmosphere, is that the radiating/conducting surface of the greenhouse is fixed, but the radiating surface of the earth/atmosphere system is NOT fixed. This is also the reason that your attack by way of the greenhouse non-change in internal energy is completely irrelevant toe the 'greenhouse effect' on the earth itself.

This is the third time in this thread alone that I myself have explained this, Titian. Is this now going to be the third time you divert to meaningless crap, and ignore it?

Titian outs himself as a Tom C. sock.

Brilliant!

So, TomC (@197) and Titian (@193) are the same person? Interesting.

Lee - you do an excellent job of accurately summarizing the science in concise, readable posts.

So, TomC (@197) and Titian (@193) are the same person? Interesting.

If you look at the consistent misspelling of pseudo (i.e., psuedo), it's possible that Brian @35 is also a sock.

Gord, other people are trying to explain the science to you (not that you're listening). So I'm going to simply try to explain something about writing style you need to know:

Going into ALL CAPS for emphasis rather than NECESSITY makes you appear ABSO-FRIGGIN-LUTLY BONKERS.

Why do all the cranks have a capslock problem?

Ah. I see Tom C (aka Titian) has a long and "illustrious" history here at ScienceBlogs. I wonder why he would want to leave it behind?

Enthalpy does NOT equal heat content or temperature. Sorry, but Titian FAILS.

Enthalpy does NOT equal heat content or temperature. Sorry, but Titian FAILS.

First rule of pigeons: When the pigeon insists on shitting on the chessboard, stop playing with the pigeon.

"Enthalpy does NOT equal heat content or temperature. Sorry, but Titian FAILS."

Well yeah. But he knows the buzzwords, don't he. And he inspired me to write about the effect o CO2 on the effective radiating layer, so there's that.

@198
Thanks for disproving your own hypothesis and exposing your ignorance all in one post. One problem with your answer; it's true the heat remains the same, but not because of the bullshit you just laid out. Assuming you meant "adding CO2" to the glass you still have problem. You see, Niel B was on the right track, but he obligated to use the psuedoscience of your religion(sorry @202 I make other typos too: litbard). He understands that you're missing some heat content, that is, according to your psuedoscience. "...if the CO2 re-radiating IR causes some small shift in local internal heat flow...." BULLSHIT. It's nice to be able to gloss over that part, isn't it? How convienient, your IR effect stops at our theoretical greenhouse. When this greenhouse and contents reach it's max. heat, Lee, it can't and won't take on more heat. Our theoretical greenhouse might explode using your science. That leaves you with some missing IR heat, Lee. Where did it go? I'll tell you. Right back up past the "greenhouse gasses" just like it would if the CO2 glass were made of salt or just plain glass. It has no effect on the internal temp other than making it reach it's max heat slightly faster.
I see your still using the 342W/M2. One step at a time, figure this out first then I'll be happy to take on the rest of the junk science in your last post.
@199 yes I'm Tom C. I always like to make apologies with my real name.

Did anyone else notice that Titian just told me I was wrong about the greenhouse, and then laid out an explanation of what is actually happening that is exactly what I just fucking said?

"When this greenhouse and contents reach it's max. heat, Lee, it can't and won't take on more heat."

Precisely - although very sloppy in the way you said it. this, Titan / TomC, is PRECISELY what I said in my post.

Because the thermal boundary of the greenhouse is fixed, adding CO2 inside the greenhouse will not cause any change in the energy content of the greenhouse. I SAID THAT! Changing the materials inside, so that the mean specific heat changes, would - but that's really outside the scope here.

I also explained how the 'greenhouse effect' is different from a greenhouse - that is, the thermal boundary of the earth/atmosphere system is NOT fixed. It moves. It changes altitude. I notice that, once again, you simply ignore that part, the relevant part of my post.

Honestly, anyone who's still with the thread and hasn't realised by now that Titian/Tom C is basically nuts... is almost certainly beyond reach.

You are missing heat from IR, moron. The laws of physics don't stop at your lack of understanding. You know less about heat transfer than a first year student. You are either obtuse, stupid or just plain dishonest and everyone here knows it. You reach the limit of your understanding and then start the name calling, a real class act. "Precisely what I said in my post." I'll let your followers be the judge of that, good luck with your religion.

Honestly, anyone who's still with the thread and hasn't realised by now that Titian/Tom C is basically nuts... is almost certainly beyond reach.

Sockpuppetry is a hangin' offense in most parts the sciblogs wild wild west. I'm new here, though.

sockpuppetry and batshittery - a potent and common combo.

Can anyone even figure out what the hell Titian's last post is actually saying? Is there an argument in there?

Oh right. I'm "obtuse, stupid or just plain dishonest and everyone here knows it." So of course I don't understand his post.

But of course, y'all can reread my @198, and see for yourself.

Figure out what the hell Titian's last post is actually saying? I'm gonna go with a resounding 'no'. Especially this bit:

"You are missing heat from IR, moron."

To what is Titian referring? Where should this missing heat be inserted into what Lee has already said?

If "You are missing heat from IR, moron" is meant to be anything other than an inpenetrable distraction, Titian has failed. Significantly improved coherence is required.

Everyday new research papers are out and new stories are told about "Global Warming". I realize that while talking about global warming we tend to avoid discussing few major causes of Global Warming, I happened to watch this documentary "Meat The Truth" in online film festival "Green Unplugged" this documentary made me aware of few other things about global Warming which I never thought would be contributing so much towards it

I would suggest everyone to watch this documentary.
http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/6449

Interesting post. A few good points are made especially about needing to do something fast whether this is all fairy tales or reality.

Over at TogetherWeCanFixThis that is what we are actually doing. We are trying to introduce a new technology that will replace every fossil fuel using energy source on the planet. That would also include the internal combustion engine. A post that might interest most here is called "Render The Debate Moot! Ending the Climate Wars."

The technology that we are introducing will immediately reduce the use of any other power source from day one. As the first power unit will be used to power the construction of the second unit and so forth. As manufacturing lines are added to cover the various sized units, these will already be powered by the initial production line. This eliminates almost all of the carbon footprint of constructing these units. These power units will range in size that can be used on your person, or be big enough to power cities.

If you are interested, come over and see what we are proposing!

@216: Yeah, that site doesn't set off my snake-oil detectors one bit. No sirree Bob.

Mesmerizing isn't it, Ethan. Many blog posts about (astro)physics and two dozen comments at best on each, and one post about climate change and you never knew you had that many readers who were only following your blog to comment on how climate science gets it all wrong.

Does anyone ever get the feeling that as soon as a scientific blog posts about climate science, almost always a flurry of denialists lands to cause as much discredit to the climate science as it can? It almost feels as if it is... Organized. (And I hate myself for thinking along conspiracy theories)

Maxwell,

What a HOOT!

Watts are NOT a Vector Quantity but Watts/m^2 (The Electomagnetic Field) IS!

Where are you getting your information from?

Do you just make this stuff up?
----------

Here is the Physics link showing the Heat Flux (w/m^2) is a Vector Quantity:

"Heat flux or thermal flux, sometimes also referred to as heat flux density or heat flow rate intensity is a flow of energy per unit of area per unit of time. In SI units, it is measured in [W·m-2]. It has both a direction and a magnitude so it is a vectorial quantity."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_flux
--------
Electromagnetic radiation
"Electromagnetic radiation (sometimes abbreviated EMR) takes the form of self-propagating waves in a vacuum or in matter. EM radiation has an electric and magnetic field component which oscillate in phase perpendicular to each other and to the direction of energy propagation. Electromagnetic radiation is classified into types according to the frequency of the wave, these types include (in order of increasing frequency): radio waves, microwaves, terahertz radiation, infrared radiation, visible light, ultraviolet radiation, X-rays and gamma rays. Of these, radio waves have the longest wavelengths and Gamma rays have the shortest."

"EM radiation carries energy and momentum that may be imparted to matter with which it interacts."

"Electric and magnetic fields do obey the properties of SUPERPOSITION, so fields due to particular particles or time-varying electric or magnetic fields contribute to the fields due to other causes.(As these fields are vector fields, all magnetic and electric field vectors add together according to vector addition"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_...
-------
Vector fields
"Maxwell's equations allow us to use a given set of initial conditions to deduce, for every point in Euclidean space, a magnitude and direction for the force experienced by a charged test particle at that point; the resulting vector field is the electromagnetic field."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_field

Hey Maxwell, ever hear about MAXWELL'S EQUATIONS?
----------
Like I said...

Try using Vector Mathematics for Vector fields to show how IR Radiation can flow from Cold to Hot.

Good Luck!
------
PS:

Any luck finding:

- Even ONE Law of Science that supports the Fantasy "Greenhouse Effect"?

- Even ONE Measurement, EVER DONE, that shows that a Colder Atmosphere can HEAT UP a Warmer Earth?

No?
They simply DO NOT EXIST.
---------
Pro-AGW CULT sites are all the same.

They ALWAYS RUN FROM THE TRUTH.

You can't say that Duckbilled. That would be, like, accurate.

tithead tom C is just repeating a garbled account mixed of Nassif Nahle's atrocious mathematical skills and the failure of a paper by G&T.

It's nothing other than a garbled regurgitation of memes he's found. No intelligence in evidence.

"Assuming your greenhouse is in approximate thermal equilibrium with its surroundings, its temperature is set by the amount of energy entering the system, and the conduction and radiation of heat from its surface."

And since the net radiation would reduce if you increased the CO2 content outside the greenhouse, that would cause the greenhouse to warm.

The GHG effect.

"Your formula is bogus, nice try. Deception for the masses."

Ah well, proof (if needed) that tithead here has absolutely not qualms lying like a twat.

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/radiation-heat-transfer-d_431.html

Is where the equation comes from off the internet.

Or anyone who has a science book can look it up.

tithead, however, just wants to shit his pants and scream like a spoiled toddler wanting sweeties.

"He has a point, Wow. Sometimes a heater heats the greenhouse."

No, lee. A point would have been if tithead had said "not just the sun", but no, tithead neither gave that answer nor apparently agrees that the sun heats a greenhouse IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER.

"@172 What does the phrase "decreases it's outgoing radiation" mean to you?"

It means "gets less". Just like x=y decreases x as y decreases. HOWEVER, it doesn't decrease to nil intil y is nil.

Your radiating object will radiate all its energy away until it gets to absolute zero.

"You are confusing a infrared absorber with a infrared
barrier."

So how does an infrared barrier stop IR radiation? Tell it to stop? It hasn't got a mouth and IR doesn't have ears anyway.

PS Kirchhoff's laws.

"Let's use a greenhouse for an example:"

Lets not.

Lets use the earth's atmosphere which isn't a greenhouse.

Neil B 159 if questions 3,4,6 or 7 cannot be answered supportively anyone reading them can see the scam must be a fraud. Clearly you have read them and are unable to answer honestly.

Lothario you have already proven yourself wholly dishonest.

Rob - NO

Chris 184 you are still a liar. My 107 gave figures. You gave no truthful ones.

Note that if even one of them could actually answer any of the questions about the alarmist fraud without proving it am obvious fraud they would do so instead of these playgroubnd antics.

Wow @219: I'm not too surprised. I'm noticing a trend where denialist tactics follow those of creationists elsewhere.

Thumbs up for tirelessly rebutting the follies dumped in this thread.

@Neil Craig #223

I know this is very hard for you to understand, but I honestly answered all your questions. Each one of them is basically a yes/no question, true/false. I'm not going to explain the fallacies and/or errors behind the basis of the question, because you know you are wrong, we know you are wrong, and each and every supposition you have placed in your little yes/no questions has been proven false. There is no fraud. Sorry to disappoint you.

"if questions 3,4,6 or 7 cannot be answered supportively"

Question 3 has been answered "No" categorically both here and with the National Academy of Science in the USA.

Question 4 needs there to be an "Alarmist" side. There isn't one, so there is no possible answer. How can you comment on something that doesn't exist?

Question 6 also needs an alarmist side. There isn't one, so there's no possible answer.

Question 7 is pointless. You've just made up a criterion that doesn't prove a thing. George Bush was the President of the USA when Pachuri was put in charge of the IPCC. Do you think GWB was wanting to continue any form of scam for socialists to take over the world?

And answering "no" to it doesn't prove a fraud is taking place, deliberate or not.

Does anyone ever get the feeling that as soon as a scientific blog posts about climate science, almost always a flurry of denialists lands to cause as much discredit to the climate science as it can? It almost feels as if it is... Organized. (And I hate myself for thinking along conspiracy theories)

You may find this Monbiot piece interesting:

Robot Wars

@220 Now we're getting somewhere. The "GHG" effect is exactly what Lee had to ignore in an attempt to answer the greenhouse guestion. You and Niel B.seem to understand
that you can't ignore your own "science" when it's convenient. What happens with the so-called "GHG effect" when the theoretical greenhouse can no longer take on more heat. Where does you extra heat load go? It's still warming the contents, that is, according to your Psuedoscience.

Tithead, no the GHG effect isn't what Lee had to ignore in an attempt to answer the greenhouse question. The GHG effect isn't a greenhouse.

"What happens with the so-called "GHG effect" when the theoretical greenhouse can no longer take on more heat."

Why isn't it able to take on more heat? If you keep putting more and more energy into a greenhouse it can't lose, then it heats up.

Even Roy Spencer gets it.

You don't.

So how does an infrared barrier stop IR radiation? Tell it to stop? It hasn't got a mouth and IR doesn't have ears anyway.

"Where does you extra heat load go? It's still warming the contents, that is, according to your Psuedoscience."

If you are putting extra heat into something, it heats up. It's what "putting extra heat into something" means.

Why is this a problem for you?

Do you think if you put extra heat into something it will cool down? Wouldn't THAT be a violation of the laws of thermodynamics?

Titian is a shill for the petroleum industry. He has an economic stake in this argument. He/she gets paid on a per post basis. I hope he has kids and grandkids, who one day will ask him what the fuck he was thinking. Thanks, Grandpa.

Neil Craig, those questions have been answered and the explanations with them in the comments: all about absorption of IR, re-radiation, the observed 0.2 degrees per decade predicted and shown in graphs etc. Why don't *you* answer anyone else's questions? For example, do you think CO2 etc. aren't even GH gasses at all? Question, put up or shut up: would the Earth be cooler if it had no atmosphere? Would it be cooler on average if atmosphere but without CO2? Are you denying any effect at all which is insane and which even risk-denier Lubos Motl won't do - he admits that CO2 warms the Earth more, just says not much. And why talk of "alarmism" as basis, when seminal outline of effect pub. 1896 - ! - by a guy who thought the outcome desirable? Well?

Titian: Like Neil Craig, you never make your own coherent point but just complain. What's your answer to those questions? And the real greenhouse: are you one of those unable to understand that more than one process can cause outcomes like getting warmer? BTW I did not say add CO2 to the glass, I said if increase glass absorption of IR then heating inside would be *even more* than just from holding in direct heat. Can you understand complexities like that? BTW if you are really Tom C. you should admit it. (Moderators, URL tags? BTW also I will abbr. my name until you get a stinking RPI in here.

Rob, you actually have any evidence for that claim?

Yes.

Just in case anyone thinks titian has any clue what he's talking about:

++++
221

"Your formula is bogus, nice try. Deception for the masses."

Ah well, proof (if needed) that tithead here has absolutely not qualms lying like a twat.

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/radiation-heat-transfer-d_431.html

++++

Doesn't even know Stefan's Law.

It is conclusive, the skeptics-of-global-warming have the "truth", they are "true believers"!! All else is falsehood or fraud.

"All mass movements generate in their adherants a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and single hearted allegiance." Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

And as for you science minded folks, frustrated with fanatics of various colors. Eric Hoffer says this, "A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor."

If you read about the history of cults, such as christianity you come to the realisation that throughout history, they have been trying to make the bible come true by whatever means possible, they continuely forcast *the end*, they hate life and are decieved into believing life after death, christianity is a death cult, they want to see the demise of all life. Sure the normal everyday person does not feel this way, yet they follow like sheep the doctrine that if it has it's way will destroy life on this planet...now can you see where the denialist come from?

There are dominionists and rapturists who are like that. Most of those religiously against AGW are so because of the story of Noah and the flood. And/or certain that "God" wouldn't hurt "His People" therefore they can't be in trouble. A few may be looking at the "this world and all its creatures are yours" as carte blanche to fuck up the environment for their gain, but that's blending into the bigger section of denialists: the greedy bastards.

What makes it dumb is that those funding this denial to ensure their greed are making so much money they have no way of spending all they have now, never mind what they're currently getting, making it absolutely clear that it isn't the actual money that they're after.

Most are after the power that money gives them. And anyone with more money than them has more power and can therefore impose their will on anyone else poorer than they. So you HAVE to hoard the cash or you lose the power.

Then there are the plain old nutcases. tithead could be one, or he could just be paid to shill, but his insanity is shared by a very apparent but miniscule lunatic fringe who are absolutely livid that

a) a black man is president

b) their version of christianity is not the universal law

c) they're being made poorer and poorer

HOWEVER, they can't blame rich people: they know that when God smiles on them, they'll be rich too, and THEY aren't a nasty person, they're CHRISTIAN, ergo nice. So it must be someone else's fault.

Oooh, look! Liberals! It must be THEIR fault!

The rage of the teabaggers is the rage of the congnitively dissonant downtrodden who cannot wrap their minds around the idea that it is capitalism that's doing the stamping.

Therefore ANYTHING that isn't for capitalism is what's doing it.

Hence their rage.

@Wow

In other words, Titian and other anti-science denialists are fucked up.

I've never read a longer list of whinning excuses in my life, not one of you here has a working, practical knowledge of heat transfer.
As the greenhouse heats, any heat above and beyond it's satuation point(superheat) would be removed through the glass (DUH) as it normally would. (Thanks for your brilliant cut and paste answers btw.)
The simple calculation would involve (1) the surface area of the glass in square feet x(2)The reciprical of the 'R' factor (resistance to heat) x (3) the entalpy difference (total heat inside and outside the greenhouse)= BTUH

Glass is opaque to thermal-IR and this was mistakenly thought to be a heating mechanism (ie.. Trapping outward radiation = raising the interior temerature). Right, isn't this the underlying basis for global warming theory? The same mechanism is assumed (by alarmists) to heat the earth's atmoshere.
By further mistaking an infrared ABSORBER as an infrared BARRIER, then, IR gasses become the sole focus of your atmospheric heating, as demonstated by your answers above.

Reflecting an emitter's own radiation back to it doesn't raise it's temperature in the real world, only on paper. The earth (and our theoretical greenhouse) emits to space the same magnitude of radiation it takes on. Once you decide that thermal energy can be counted twice you can get any temperature you want for our theoretical greenhouse. Yes, the "law" of radiative equalibrium is wrong.

Should read temp. difference not enthalpy.So sorry

"Reflecting an emitter's own radiation back to it doesn't raise it's temperature in the real world, only on paper."

Congratulations, Titian. You have just proven that blankets are useless, that insulating your house wont work, that clothes wont keep you warm in the cold.

"Once you decide that thermal energy can be counted twice"

No one is counting thermal energy twice. We are simply continuing to count it for a long as it remains in the system. If it remains longer in the system, we count it for a longer time.

"Yes, the "law" of radiative equalibrium is wrong. "

All of published physics is wrong - Titian is right. Got it.

And also, Titian, you continue to ignore the key point of my post re: the greenhouse. yes, I AGREE WITH YOU that the FIXED properties of the glass (the entire envelope, actually) of the greenhouse is what 'sets' its temperature. The greenhouse will get warmer until it reaches a temperature where it emits as much energy as it is absorbing, and then it will stop getting warmer. Its emission properties are set by its FIXED boundary, so changing conditions inside the boundary will not change the temperature - except perhaps secondarily if it changes the way energy flows to the boundary.

BTW, this is nto true of the ENERGUY in teh greenhouse. Adding more materials with high specific heat, for example, will cause the inside of the greenhouse to absorb more energy, before it reaches the same temperature. You consistently misuse heat, energy, and temperature, Titian, in ways that confuse the heck out of the issue, are are in fact simply wrong.

But what you continue to ignore, Titian, is that the earth system IS NOT LIKE A GREENHOUSE. Its boundary is NOT fixed. Adding CO2 to the earth and atmosphere, causes the emitting 'boundary' of the atmosphere to move - to change its emitting characteristics.

I'm not ignoring the 'greenhouse gas effect' in the greenhouse, Titian - I'm telling you that it is irrelevant because a greenhouse has a fixed emitting envelope, and therefore your greenhouse analogy is irrelevant to how the earth/atmosphere system works, and I'm telling you why. My @198 is very clear on this.

Your continuing to ignore that part of what I said, tells us what we need to know about your scientific honesty, Titian.

Tomian C (I'm combining your two names, whatever), if the greenhouse structure can get hotter then it proves that some things irradiated by the Sun *can* get hotter than other things, and hotter than they were earlier. That's true even if there's a saturation point. In fact, that is our point whether you realize it or not: the saturation point - the temperature peak - *is* reached at a certain CO2 level. Add more CO2 and the SP is even higher. And about that reflecting emitter radiation back - many people's lives have been saved by those foil coated "space blankets". Are you denying they work? I bet you'd use one if you had to ..

BTW I get sick of denialists bringing up that "real greenhouses don't work because of trapping IR." The rest of you here, isn't the structural GH effect due to some of *both* effects? I can't believe that two SGHs that were ID except for the other having more IR absorption in the glass, would peak at same temperature in the Sun. That heated glass would have to do something even if not a large effect. (And, it reradiates too albeit *too thin* to make much difference.)

@NielB:

Yes, emission / re-emission from the glass does contribute to greenhouse heating. This is easy to verify - go into a greenhouse and put your hand on the glass. It's warm.

It's just that in a greenhouse, radiative effects are typically quite small compared to the effect of containing convection.

Adding greenhouse gasses to the INSIDE of a greenhouse, wont change the temperature, except trivially and secondarily.

But Wow made a key point earlier. Adding greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere OUTSIDE the greenhouse, will increase back radiation to the greenhouse, and therefore increase the temp of the greenhouse - perhaps only slightly, maybe immeasurably, but surely.

It will do so, because it will change the nature of the emissive boundary of the greenhouse - in this case the glass/atmosphere system surrounding the greenhouse.

@244
Hahahahahahah Bullshit

I think some of you are starting to get it. You know nothing.

I'm taking a bow.

Titian/Tom C.

At first I thought you might just be ignorant but since, you have proven yourself stupid and unwilling to learn.

You have been told time and time again that a greenhouse and the actual earth system are not completely identical, a green housen analogy only goes so far, you consistantly confuse and combine terms that do not make sense to do so, I'm not convinced that their is any hope for you!

@243 "...the CO2 and the SP is even higher". Hahahahahha....
Do you even know what any of this means?

@248 You mean what your doing?

Should read you're. so sorry.

BTW: Greenhouse gasses now make up 100% of your atmosphere. How's that math for ya.

So sorry!

Nibi @ 227: Thanks for the link. I did suspect things along those lines, but I hoped it had not gotten to the point of semi-automation as described in that article.

The Internet, obviously, isn't a place for exploring opinions alone, it's becoming a place to control them. Scary. Will have to head over and exchange ideas on how to fight that.

@254 Really? Paranoia x 100. Math to hard for ya? I undersatand. Do you!

Neil Craig, if you come back: how does it feel to have an absolutely wild and crazy sidekick like Titian/Tom C? I mean, mega WTF moment here ... It's funny, people like you might be intelligent in principle but pawns of the Kochtopus. But then your movement, being ultimately anti-rational and pumped up by bullying emotional people like Rush who diddle amygdalai, attracts immature bomb throwers like the one I'll call "TitToc" from a combination of his two names - and who keep going back and forth, making clicking noises and saying nothing. It's pathetic

@256
The scientific method is dead. Go back to your masters and bow to your pagan earth God. I've fired better people than you. Get some skills moron.

Tom C/?, sadly I think you're right: so many people now have bought into your kind of anti-reality game (and I'd rather worship the Earth than lying destructive megamillionaires) that the scientific method is on life support.

Cha-ching.

Titian/Tom, did you ever get a chance to look at that material I linked you to? The summary from the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report that I linked back in #93?

It's heavily cited, and since you claim to have a science background, I'm sure you were able to breeze right through it.

Class warfare comrade.

The U.N. just appointed North Korea to tha arms board. Is that the scientific method you want?

Assuming #261 was pointed at me, could you be more clear? It sounds like you are suggesting that the IPCC is a Communist organization, but I want to make sure that I'm not misreading a very short reply.

And if I'm reading you correctly, was that its original purpose? Because the IPCC was founded in 1988 with full backing from the United States government under President Reagan, and it seems unlikely that Reagan would support such an effort.

Duckbilled Platypus:

Nibi @ 227: Thanks for the link. I did suspect things along those lines, but I hoped it had not gotten to the point of semi-automation as described in that article.

The Internet, obviously, isn't a place for exploring opinions alone, it's becoming a place to control them. Scary. Will have to head over and exchange ideas on how to fight that.

I suspect that most of the sciblog infestations are just highly motivated zealots. However, if you read the denialist/pseudoskeptic comments following climate articles in the prominent national media outlets, it starts looking a lot like professional astroturfing.

@260
Yes, I can "breeze" right through it. That's what happens when you have skills.

@263
I'm not "suggesting it" . I'm saying it outright.

Just in case it isn't clear to the casual observer, I'd like to point out here that Titian / TomC has now completely abandoned even a pretense of a rational argument supported by facts.

Not that this is a surprise.

@ 264
I rest on your face, sorry, I mean I rest my case. 100% paranoid.

@267
What color is the sky when you wake up everyday?

Titian/Tom, North Korea was not "appointed" to anything. The operating rules of the UN's Conference on Disarmament define a rotating presidency with a term of four weeks, and it was North Korea's turn. Should the UN have made an exception for a single country based on its poor relations with other nations?

http://www.unog.ch/80256EDD006B8954/(httpAssets)/1F072EF4792B5587C12575…

"9. When the Conference is in session, the Presidency of the Conference shall rotate among all its members; each President shall preside for a four-working-week period. The rotation which began in January 1979, based on the English alphabetical list of membership, shall be followed."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jiohKYLgAJ6kgueemT0OE…

"But an official at the U.S. mission to the United Nations in Geneva, where the Conference on Disarmament is based, said the move was dictated by the rules of the 32-year-old body.

Spokesman David Kennedy said as far as the United States was concerned "it's business as usual.""

See above. It is no longer maintaining the pretense of actually playing the game but just strutting around, squawking, and shitting all over the board.

@263 The IPPC was founded in 1988?

Your science is undeniable. Moron!

Astroturfer behind @255 + @268: please handle your sock puppets better, they're starting to say the same things.

Isn't it cute, the boogeyman in the closet stating you're foolish for thinking there is a boogeyman in the closet.

@ 270 Is this a joke?

Yes, the IPCC was founded in late 1988 with the support of the United States government. This is well-documented and easily verifiable. It was predated by the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases, which (I believe) was formed in 1985. The IPCC released its first major report (the First Assessment Report) in 1990.

Is there a problem with this?

Titian@274, why would it be a joke? That is a direct quote from the Rules of Procedure for the UN's Conference on Disarmament, and a direct quote from a representative of the United States at the UN in Geneva. I provided sources for both these quotes, and you can read that material yourself to make sure I am not misrepresenting anything.

I'm not sure what relevance this has to the IPCC, since the CoD and the IPCC are two different bodies, but I felt that a correction was in order.

"Doubt, indulged and cherished, is in danger of becoming denial; but if honest, and bent on thorough investigation, it may soon lead to full establishment of the truth." -Ambrose Bierce

Nobody special
Look it up as you go along. That way nobody will discover you're an idiot.

So sorry, should read 'a'.

nibi:

I suspect that most of the sciblog infestations are just highly motivated zealots. However, if you read the denialist/pseudoskeptic comments following climate articles in the prominent national media outlets, it starts looking a lot like professional astroturfing.

I don't think we should underestimate that Scienceblogs may be seen as authoritative and popular enough to be actively targeted. They're communicating science for the laymen here, so this is a good platform to go opinionating.

I'm still looking in surprise on how many comments this topic attracts all of a sudden. I can't imagine we're fine with scientists talking about science and hardly raising a hand in question, but throwing tomatoes at them when they start talking climatology and evolutionary biology, as if they're running a really bad show.

Titian/Tom, I've been nothing but polite to you so far. I've provided you with citations and links, in the hope that you might respond positively.

I see that I have been wasting my time, since your response has been to call me an idiot for no reason that I can see.

I hope that you are trolling (i.e. saying things specifically to get a reaction out of people), because if you are genuine, and actually believe what you say, you are doing more harm than good to your cause through your behavior.

If you would like to address the actual science in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, instead of simply calling then "Communists" and ignoring what they have to say (which is pretty much the definition of an ad hominem argument), then go ahead. I'm very familiar with the material and may be able to address any criticisms you have of it.

But if you're just going to call me an idiot, I have better things to do.

Read @35 and my first post @25. Thanks Brian! You know more than these idiots. Indoctination (instead of education) is a bad thing. The proof is in front of you. God's speed.

@ 280
That answer is simple. This caped moron has been pushing his pseudo 'cut and paste' science on the masses. Dumb asses
like 'Lee' have been suseptable to his propagand because they have no real skills. This site is not listed at 'clear science' because you people are smarter. It's listed as the epitome of Liberal indoctrination. Hahahahahahah

Duckbilled Platypus:

I don't think we should underestimate that Scienceblogs may be seen as authoritative and popular enough to be actively targeted. They're communicating science for the laymen here, so this is a good platform to go opinionating.

I'm certainly not going to dig my heels in and insist that the ScienceBlogs are not an astroturf target. I expect that the blogs where climate change is regularly topical are. I just don't underestimate the enthusiasm of the committed ideologues. I believe, however, much of the disinformation and zombie talking points they recycle are products of professional astroturf organizations.

I'm just reluctant to accuse any particular commenter as a paid shill without evidence, though I don't doubt that some are.

@ 284
Thanks!

Lex parisimany

It has been a pleasure to read each one of the 286 (so far; a new record) comments. As you know, I try to always leave the comment threads open on my posts, and I do appreciate the efforts that so many of you made (and continue to make) to stand up and tell the truth -- the best scientific truths that we've discovered so far -- about Global Climate change.

I am reading an excellent Rolling Stone article right now, written by everyone's favorite polarizing figure, Al Gore: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/climate-of-denial-20110622

Rob 225 you NO,NO,NO answers are not real answers because they don't answer anything. Also, of course they are in no way honest, fopr example you are literally claiming that increased CVO2 never, without any qualification, improves plant growth which is clearly a lie and could only be said by somebody whose contempt for the scientific method is far greater than that of most creationists. I ask you to apologise for it.

Wow 226 you have repeatedly proven yourself wholly dishonest. Your contention that there is not an alarmist side, while clearly represrnting the highest standard of honesty to which you ever aspire is is disproven by your own every word.

Neil B 232 no real answer, which did not turn out to be a lie, has been made but feel free to try. Perhaps you could repeat the, presumably more than 7 questions (with numbers), that yopu claim have been specificly put to me and that I haven't answered and I will do so. Clearly if you are not lying that would be easy. Perhaps not.

As for your new questions -

"For example, do you think CO2 etc. aren't even GH gasses at all? Question, put up or shut up: would the Earth be cooler if it had no atmosphere? Would it be cooler on average if atmosphere but without CO2? Are you denying any effect at all which is insane and which even risk-denier Lubos Motl won't do - he admits that CO2 warms the Earth more, just says not much. And why talk of "alarmism" as basis, when seminal outline of effect pub. 1896 - ! - by a guy who thought the outcome desirable? Well?"

No - I have never said CO2 has zero efect anjd I challenge you either to say where I have saiod that or admit your a liying piece of filth making up straw man arguments. I think the outcome likely to be desirable too - alarmists like yourself don't (otherwise it wouldn't be alarmism_.

Angel 236 if you demounce scientific scepicism as a religious movement that "demand blind faith and single hearted allegiance" perhaps you, not being a total hypocrit, would either point to alarmists here who have reacted to simple questions with something other than simple hearted allegiance, usually manifested as ad hom attacks, sometimes obscene. Alternately, being honest, you will denouce the alarmists as a science free faith, albeit a state funded one. Or you will demonstrate your corrupt simple hearted allegiance by not doing so.

Neil B 256 "pawns of the Kochtopus" indeed. I assume you have no actual evidence for that, evidence being a foreign concept to eco-Nazis. Really immerse yourself in Cthulhu do you? . You should know about having "wild & crazy" pals, or is there anybody on the alarmist side who has some respect for facts?

Obviously all of the above are corrupt liying ecofascist parasites and any remotely honest supporter of alarmism will wish to dissociate themselvves from them. I look forward to finding if there actaully are any alarmists who believe in telling the truth. We shall shortly see.

"Obviously all of the above are corrupt liying
ecofascist parasites"

It's almost like they're stabbing you in the back, isn't it?

Neil Craig: I didn't insist on all those negatives applying to you. I was giving you an option, "which is it" - which you should admit. But if you don't want to be criticized like that, why do you make an bomb-throwing entry with all that inflammatory language about "warming scam" and how dishonest all your critics are? How the hell do you expect to be taken seriously, respectfully, etc if you *start* that way? I didn't myself, even if some denial critics begin harshly. I began here with a respectful criticism of a fallacious argument. But a "scam" means a deliberate fraud and isn't just "thrown around." Again, was Svante Arrhenius a scammer back in 1896?

You OTOH began with "Yet so much of what we have been told is evicdent lies; the predictions of 0.2 C per decade rise have obviouslt not happened; ..." Anyone who would say "evident lies" then "obviously not happened" - ! Even if someone could rationally challenge the widely accepted graphs shown here, they wouldn't 1. calling such arguments and presentations "lies" instead of simply "mistaken" as any persona considered mature and respectible will start with, nor 2. say what is purported is *evidently* not true, Such a person cannot be taken seriously as a mature debater in good faith.

Well then, if there was warming but not close to 0.2 C/decade, what was it? You could at least show an alternative. Not doing so is *your* problem as far as given an impression you think nothing perceptibly changed (you are aware, that if the change was much lower than show here, it wouldn't be perceptible *as change* among the noise anyway? So what's the legitimate point in saying you believe in a specific amount of real warming, that is nevertheless enough lower than the accepted chart for the latter to count as "evident lies" even apart from unwarranted attribution of bad motives?

The rest of your deranged rant is nothing any responsible advocate of a position would do. Remember, you have a blog addressing these issues and aren't just some random commenter dropping in here to argue - you "represent" your cause to the public and intellectual community. Do you want to be a disgrace to that cause? Your conduct just serves to reinforce the negative impressions of people in your camp. It gives cause to wonder, "what kind of people are attracted to such ranter" ... do you realize that?

As for Koch: they are known funders of your kind of shtick:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/28/climate-change-scepti…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/25/michaels-climate-scep…
"A leading climate sceptic patronised by the oil billionaire Koch brothers faced a potential investigation today on charges that he misled Congress on the extent of his funding from the oil industry."
And there is so much more ...
Are you getting from them too? I don't know, I said "people like you" can be. Well then, instead of complaining about being so charged, why not just say so if not true? If someone accused me of X, I wouldn't *just* complain about purported lack of evidence, I'd say "no" if it wasn't so - to keep people from wondering.

OTOH, Cthulu is an imaginary being used satirically by many people. Funny for you to throw around complaints about religiosity or the supernatural on people who are mostly rationalists, atheists, or at least (like me) consider evidence a constraint on speculative theology and do not accept faith or "revelation." BTW I applaud the vigorous movement of the sincerely religious who do care about taking care of the Earth.

BTW you are able to make mostly reasonable comments, such as one at HuffPo including e.g. "ConventionÂal coal plants send 50 times as much radiation up their chimneys as nuclear so those who understand hormesis could support coal on those grounds but unfortunatÂely coal [plants also emit a lot of genuinely nasty pollutants too.â Being consistently like that would do wonders for your image. BTW', I can accept bridging use of well-done nuclear and was a licensed Radcon for the US naval nuclear program.

Neil perhaps your call for me to be polite would have been more credible if you hadn't used the term "deranged rant" to describe me, but I shall, in deference to your wishes, not respond to you in kind.

I did not first come on "scienceblogs" using inflamatory language. I first put these questions on Mrof Myer's Pharaagula to the resoponse that I am a "fuckwit", which I trust you will agree is both insulting and a deliberate lie. When I continued to ask the for an answer and also suggesterd, relatively politely, that scientific debate should be conducted on a higher level none of the alarmists suggested it should and Professor Myers censored me. Most of the other "sciencblogs" have shown a similar (perhaops rather less extreme) contempt for honest debate. I would have more respect for your position if you, or indeed any supporter of alarmism here had previously suggested that discussion should indeed be conducted on the basis of fact rather than obscenity - but no alarmists have demonstrated traces of anything so honest. Perhaps yopu might like to break that trend by condemning those whose instant response has, releatedly, been ad homs and obscenity and the site authors who support such behaviour. I look forward to seeing.

I do accept that scientists can make mistakes, indeed that it is inherent in science that they must. However when the mistakes are proven beyond reasonable doubt or when all "errors" err in the same direction (which is statistically impossible) and they continue maintaining them then we are not dealing with honest error but with deliberate lies. Catastrophic warming was a possible hypothesis (not theory) before the search for evidence began )say up to 2000). That is clearly not the case now. And we certainly have seen deliberate fraud from Prof Hide the Decline among others.

The Soon case is certainly questionable, though far less so than Ptrof Jones' £13.6 million and you must acknowledge that the amount of money available from openly sceptical sources is not a drop in the bucket compared to the 10s (100s?) of billions alarmists are paid. More importantly specific allegations were made against McIntyre and Singer which, if the commenter had the remotest trace of honesty they wopuld have benn able to support and if any other alarmist had they would have been willing to say was a disgraceful slander. No evidence has been produced and neither have such denunciations.

If you insist on me denying receiving any money from Mesrs Koch, even though you refuse to produce the slightest trace of evidence that I have I hereby deny it. Moreover I ask you to produce that evidence or acknowledge that (A) you have none & (B) no human being whio was not a disgusting lying creature with no place in any scientific movement could have said it without the slightest evidence & (c) that any honest members of such a movement would have chosen to dissociate themselves from such a person.

BTW while I acknowledge your acceptance that when I say things tah support your position have you not considered that I am being exactly the same person when I take on your shibboleths.

NC @ 291:

I did not first come on "scienceblogs" using inflamatory language.

His 2nd comment on Orac's blog back in March:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/03/ann_coulter_versus_physics_gu…

Since then he has hopped from blog to blog here in true crank fashion, derailing threads and getting hammered again and again and again and again for his literal ineducability.

He feels he has found something of a home here, a way to demonstrate his self-perceived brilliance that is, shall we say, underappreciated out in meat space where people likely avoid him as completely barking.

He'll tire of this post eventually and move on to another post or blog and repeat this performance.

Ah, Bartleby...

Funny about all the "CO2 is just a trace gas, it's foolish to think it could possibly have an effect" in the same set of arguments as the "CO2 is plant food, more is better" trope.

Neil Craig, your being insulted by various commenters over the course of time still doesn't validate your being like that, don't you realize? Even if harsh responses to specific critics is justified, that doesn't validate collective punishment of all of us. (You're not a collectivist, right?) Ironically, I've been ragged on - often very bitterly - at Pharyngula too, but don't consider that a license to insult people all over scienceblogs. BTW PZM is overly insulting and harsh and does not come across as very mature (in the tone) as contrasted e.g. with Ethan.

Also, you haven't answered my questions. AFAICT, all of yours are "answered" - like the answers or not - in this post and thread, often many times. In particular, if you accept the reality of the warming by CO2 as you claim, then why don't you just give your case for it being some lesser figure expected, instead of some big stink about the whole idea as if a wrong matter of principle?

I referred to a "rational comment" from you elsewhere, not to imply that could only mean one I *agreed* with, I meant the *tone.*

And you keep misrepresenting what I say. I said, you came in "here" like that - I clearly meant this thread: "bomb-throwing entry with all that inflammatory language about "warming scam"" And I said "like you" and a pawn of a network - kochtopus implies such - doesn't necessarily get money, they are just duped and sucked into their purpose, perhaps by *reading the propaganda* generated by their puppets - that's not getting money. But if you need the satisfaction of someone apologizing, then: I'm sorry I said that in connection with your name, implying to some readers it could mean funding.

Also, you want a general critique of bad manners: OK, you say it's OK to retaliate so I won't even try to claim it's always wrong, you wouldn't even agree - true? But I will say, BOs and commenters shouldn't insult people just for disagreeing or posing an alternative view per se. It's a confusing subject, there are various ins and outs, many people sincerely don't get how warming could occur or have sincere misdirection and maybe sometimes, genuine challenges to offer about radiation, spectroscopy, etc. Of course, that means you shouldn't either, right? Ball in your court ...

NJ is being transparently dishonest by defending the claim that I start with inflammatory stuff by linking to my 2ND post. If the first one supported his claims then he would obviously link to it but it (#44) is a technical critique of the linear no threshold theory of radiation damage )LNT).

Anybody following the thread will find that despite most of the responses being along the lines of "buh-bye" and "good for a giggle", with a blanket refusal of Orac or others to defend his position (unsurprisingly I have since been censored from his site) it ended with a reasonable discusion with 1 person and ultimately the conclusion that while there is indeed no real evidence for LNT the evidence that radiation is beneficial may not be wholly conclusive.

The final discussion was a good one but entirely due to there being 1 commenter alone who was interested in intellectual debate. Clearly this is a greater number than has been found on some other "scienceblogs" sites.

Neril V to answer your question "in this post and thread, often many times. In particular, if you accept the reality of the warming by CO2 as you claim, then why don't you just give your case for it being some lesser figure expected, instead of some big stink about the whole idea as if a wrong matter of principle?"

I have never denied that CO2 might raise temperature. What I have said is that the scare story is a fraud. My guesstimate would be 0.1 C though I would not be surprised if that were out tenfold down, or even up. However even 1 C would be well within human experience and beneficial. Obviously 0.01 C is not something to be concerned about. A comparison would be that stories of Armageddon are false despite wars, famines, earthquakes etc being real.

I do believe that civilised discussion requires that people show a certain amount of criticism of those, on their side who are uncivilised and indeed obscene. Such criticism here has been virtually entirely missing. People can and should be measured by the allies they choose.

My questions have specifically not received answers which are truthful and responsive. "NO" alone without explanation, is clearly not responsive.

If you wish to criticse my manners that would only be reasonable if you first criticised those who were first unmannerly and to a far greater extent. I am perfectly capable of having a polite discussion when that is possible (see the end of the thread NJ posted or this on alarmism with Professor Wolff who is a gentleman http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/search?q=wolff+ ) I believe I am entiteled to respond robustly when attacked. I believe anybody is.

"However even 1 C would be well within
human experience and beneficial"

When was the last time this happened?

How many people on are this planet now, compared to the last time this happened?

How long did it take for the 1C change to occur the last time it happened? What adaptations were made during that period?

What were the changes in sea level the last time this happened? How many human beings were displaced, and how have populations changed in the affected areas?

You are making a very specific claim here, that the human race had experienced exactly this sort of thing before, and you are strongly suggesting that it will haver no greater effect than it did the last time. You need to back up these claims with data, preferably with proper citations.

I'm also curious about something. We know about historic climate change, especially prehistoric climate charge, due to the work of paleoclimate researchers. You have continuously claimed that these researchers are not trustworthy; if this is the case, how do you know that human beings have experienced these sorts of climate shifts in the past? If you don't trust climate scientists to tell you about today's climate, why do you trust them when they tell you about prehistoric climate?

In short, if climate science is all a grand hoax, where are you getting your data?

"However even 1 C would be well within
human experience and beneficial"

Really? So the Sahara people can manage an extra 1C? How about an extra 7m of water? We also aren't looking at 1C. What was the temperature of the earth last time we had 400ppm CO2?

How much extra energy is in the system if it's 1C warmer?

"@263 The IPPC was founded in 1988?

Posted by: Titian"

Note how Tithead Tom doesn't even know when the IPCC was founded.

He has no desire to investigate because he already knows he's right before even looking.

The level of idiocy is, frankly, astounding. E.g:

"BTW: Greenhouse gasses now make up 100% of your atmosphere."

No appearance of having read a damn thing, this troll is just waving and screaming for no reason whatsoever.

Nobody - it was that much warmer at the height of the Medieval Warming roughly 900- 1300.

There was probably a slight sea level rise of under a foot but, because this was unimportant it is difficult to tell.

It was an era of prosperity. The onset of cold led to the Black Death, which was less happy.

These have been known for many years. The "Climate Optimum" 5,000-9,000 BC was named long before the presebt scare was ever thought of. Perhaps the greatest scientist involved was Hubert Lamb, founder of the CRU. After he retired it was taken over and fed millions by government to promote the fraud but Lamb himself nnever accepted it.

Wow cave paintings in the middle of the Sahara, showing extensive wildlife, including hippos, during the Climate Optimum suggest the Sahara was not less habitable than now.

looks like crybaby just woke up. What would that make it? Easter Seaboard?

"it was that much warmer at the height of the Medieval Warming roughly 900- 1300."

It was cooler during 900-1300AD than it has been for the past 10-20 years.

"It was an era of prosperity."

It was an era of the Feudal system in Europe. Poverty was rife and lifespans short.

"The onset of cold led to the Black Death"

No, fleas transported around Europe by rat infestations led to the Black Death, whilst religion led people to kill cats as emissaries of the Devil (when those cats could have reduced the onset by killing rats).

"The "Climate Optimum" 5,000-9,000 BC was named long before the presebt scare was ever thought of."

So when was that? Before 1896?

"After he retired it was taken over and fed millions by government to promote the fraud but "

After the theft of 10 years of emails from the CRU, no evidence of any fraud was found.

But crybaby doesn't want to hear that. See him spit his dummy out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum

"The Holocene Climate Optimum warm event consisted of increases of up to 4 °C near the North Pole "

Recent temperature anomaly in the north Pole: 6C.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

Neil: "Nobody - it was that much warmer at the height of the Medieval Warming roughly 900- 1300."

No, it wasn't.

http://ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-6-10.html

If you believe that these temperature reconstructions are in error, please specify why. Please provide criticism of the actual methods used; "the IPCC are a bunch of communists" is not scientific criticism.

Yes it was Nobody. http://www.murdoconline.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/gisp2-…

Real measurements not ther sort of figgling the alarmists do.

Wow you are still wholly dishonest. If yopu wish to make any claim prove that it is thousnads of times more honest than the highest standard of honesty alying fascist paraite like you aspires to.

Hmm. Murdochonline.net. What sort of science institution is that?

And how do you know it's "real measurements not ther sort of figgling the alarmists do"? Did you watch them?

Several other problems:

Where were the thermometers 655 years ago?

Was the earth -31C 1500 years ago?

Why is Nopbody's graph wrong when yours is right?

Of course, you are not honest, so your intent is not to echume the truth but to bury it under a pile of lies.

Neil@304:

You appear to be claiming that the IPCC's list of temperature reconstructions are *all* flawed, and the sole evidence you provided for this extraordinary claim is a single graph of measurements from a single Greenland ice core, citing a single paper.

Here's the paper cited by that graph, "The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland" by Richard Alley as published in Quaternary Science Reviews 19 (2000), 213-226:

http://www.pages.unibe.ch/products/books/qsr2000-papers/alley.pdf

and here is Alley's original reconstruction data, which appears to be the *actual* source of the data used in your chart, since nothing like it appears in Abbey's paper:

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/i…

The original source of the chart you linked appears to be a guest post by Easterbrook on the "Watts Up With That" blog:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/28/2010âwhere-does-it-fit-in-the-war…

Something you failed to note in Easterbrook's graph is that it ends at 1905, as it would have to since that's the most recent date in the dataset he used. On the other hand, Easterbrook himself failed to note this either.

So there's numerous problems here.

1) The chart you provided does not actually support your argument, since it ends at 1905 (95 years prior to 2000) and therefore does not include any temperature data from Greenland for the last century, which is when the recent temperature increases have occurred. This makes it unsupportive of your claim that the MWP was warmer that it is today, because this chart does not reach as far as today.

2) This chart only covers temperature data for a particular physical locations, the GISP2 cite in Greenland. Alley's article is about how worldwide the climate shift during the Younger Dryas period might have been, and does not make comparisons for more recent, less extreme changes, like the MWP, since it only covers data between 10,000 years ago and 16,000 years ago. There is some debate about whether or not the MWP was a global event or localized to Europe, but this chart does nothing to address that.

3) Providing only a single chart with dodgy attribution does nothing to address your claims that other temperature reconstructions are in error. The chart I linked you to in the IPCC assessment report references eleven different temperature reconstructions, which used a wide variety of temperature proxies. If you would claim that they are *all* flawed, and that only Alley's data from the GISP2 cores should be used, then you need to tell us *why* those other reconstructions are wrong, and why Alley's is correct, since his data is *also* a reconstruction from proxies. (This ties in with my earlier question about the trustworthiness of paleoclimate data.)

In addition, Alley is probably not the sort of person that climate skeptics ought to be citing:

http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml

I would like to believe that you have simply been misled by Easterbrook's misleading chart (which appears to have been re-posted around various conservative political blogs), and that when faced with this fact, you will re-examine the primary sources instead of relying on blogs (including this one).

Wow, I have just finished up an extensive reply about where the data for that chart came from, but it contained a number of external links and is therefore awaiting approval before it will show up here.

One problem is that the issue of anthropogenic global warming has been conflated with the whole liberal-left agenda. Thus, in order to accept the warnings about AGW we are politically required to also accept socialism, abortion, gay marriage and atheism. You can see it in these posts where AGW advocates say the reason people don't accept the theory is that they say prayers to Jesus and vote Republican and if they would just stop doing these things they would see the light. Advocates of AGW gratuitously create their own opposition.

Similarly, advocates of AGW push remedies involving windmills, solar cells, curlie cue light bulbs and such which cannot possibly have any more than a slight marginal effect on the CO2 trajectory. They mostly oppose nuclear power which might possibly offer a success path. This behavior further raises the suspicion of the people you work so hard to alienate.

Russell@308, you've sort of got that backwards.

Climate change was made into a political issue by conservatives. The idea that solutions for climate change are tantamount to "socialism" is a claim made by the skeptics, not by the scientists.

It is very useful for conservatives in the United States to conflate climate change science with "socialism", gay rights, abortion, etc, because it means that they can just stick climate change scientists over with the rest of the groups they use to scare their political base. Why waste time fighting on two fronts, when you can just say "global warming is a hoax by international homo-Marxists to destroy America"? It means you only have one Other to make people afraid of and you can focus your resources.

If climate science has found a home among the left, it is because the right drove it there.

"Thus, in order to accept the warnings about AGW we are politically required to also accept socialism, abortion, gay marriage and atheism."

Really?

So if we abort children, allow gay marriage (what about lesbians?) and accept atheism, the temperature will reduce?

What, precisely, is the mechanism by which this would happen, Russell?

"Similarly, advocates of AGW push remedies involving windmills, solar cells, curlie cue light bulbs and such which cannot possibly have any more than a slight marginal effect on the CO2 trajectory"

Windmills: don't burn fossil fuels, therefore don't add to the 30 billion tons of CO2 each year we currently exhaust into the atmosphere.

Solar cells: don't burn fossil fuels, either.

Economical light bulbs: turn more of the energy into light, meaning we don't waste so much electricity on light bulbs not doing their thing: lighting the dark places.

So the result of using them is that for windmills and solar, we don't have to burn fossil fuels and efficient light bulbs mean we don't need as much power produced. This means that most of that 30 billion tons of CO2 we humans produce by our economic activity are no longer made.

Please explain why this won't have any effect on the CO2 trajectory.

"They mostly oppose nuclear power which might possibly offer a success path."

How? After all, the nuclear power doesn't use as much fossil fuel as coal, etc, but you still need to mine, refine and so on the continuing fuel requirements.

And the electrons produced by nuclear power production are exactly the same as the ones produced by windmills and solar panels. So if they won't change the CO2 trajectory, then neither will nuclear.

Oh, and two words for you:

Chernobyl
Fukijama

The point about the ice core evidence is that it is physical evidence and repeatable science. The fact that the MWP is visible in Greenalns shows it was not limited to Europe, always a non credible suggestion without evidence since air and water move around the world and the sun shines on all of it.

As the aforementioned actions of the IPCC show, there must be a great degree of doubt about any figures, unsubstantiated by non-believers, that they produce.

You make a fair point about the end date - however the IPCC's own figures claim the increase from 1995 to be 0.7 C which is still, albeit marginally, below the height of the MWP and considerably lower than other peaks.

Nobody Special I am pleased to acknowledge somebody, at last, debating on facts.

The point about ice core evidence is that it would lead you to consider the earth was -32C 600 years ago.

And it is no less repeatable than the IPCC measurements you claim from your conspiracy-laden psyche is made up. I note by the way you haven't explained why that graph is "real temperature" and not made up.

"The fact that the MWP is visible in Greenalns shows it was not limited to Europe"

It doesn't show it was global. And it's already known that a warming period moved around the earth like the water in a waterbed with a restless fat bloke lying on top.

"As the aforementioned actions of the IPCC show"

What aforementioned actions?

"however the IPCC's own figures claim the increase from 1995 to be 0.7 C"

Globally. The further north you go, the higher the anomaly. It's 4-6C warmer over the Arctic Circle than the baseline (which was higher than the 1905 temperature).

Neil@311: "The point about the ice core evidence is that it is physical evidence and repeatable science."

I don't think you understand how ice core measurements work.

Here is the raw ice core data from GISP2:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/document/gispda…

Note that there is no "temperature" measurement. If we look at Alley's work:

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/i…

it is specifically labeled "temperature interpretation based on stable isotope analysis, and ice accumulation data, from the GISP2 ice core, central Greenland". Alley's work is a paleoclimate reconstruction based on a set of temperature proxies. The raw data for those stable isotope proxies is here:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/document/gispis…

So while yes, Alley's temperature reconstruction work is based on "physical evidence" and is "repeatable science", so are other temperature reconstructions. You can find a relatively recent analysis of different reconstructions and their differences and limitations in this 2007 paper (which also includes an analysis of the MWP):

http://www.clim-past.net/3/591/2007/cp-3-591-2007.pdf

So again, the question is:

Why are you willing to take Alley's reconstruction at face value, but not other reconstructions, when they are all based on the interpretation of proxy data? What makes Alley's work special?

wow@310:

I think Monbiot makes the case for nuclear power more succinctly than I can:

http://www.monbiot.com/2011/07/04/corporate-power-no-thanks/

He makes it succinct by "forgetting" both his past queries about nuclear power (see his talks in 2003) and current problems.

e.g. he still says that the nuclear industry is corrupt and that's the cause of past problems with nuclear. He then goes on about how nuclear is entirely safe if we have transparency and openness in nuclear power. then he forgets the "if".

That's a bloody big "IF" to forget about.

IF CO2 weren't a greenhouse gas, we'd have no problem.

IF we stopped burning fossil fuels right now, we'd have no problem.

IF wishes were fishes, we'd all cast nets.

It's a big if he's forgetting.

And NOT ONE PERSON has an answer to how to make that if come out true.

First: I wrote up a rather substantial reply to Neil@311, and it appears to have been eaten by the moderation system due to large number of links in it. I will wait a bit, and if it doesn't show up, I will write an abbreviated version again.

Second: wow@314, Monbiot has not forgotten anything. The very last paragraph of that piece:

"All these arguments have been obscured by the justifiable distrust bred by industry spin and collusion. There is no contradiction between favouring the machines and opposing the machinations. A new generation of nuclear power stations should be built only with unprecedented scrutiny and transparency â and the same applies to all our energy options. Corporate power? No thanks."

The very last paragraph of that piece reaffirms what you say he "forgot".

If your argument is "it is not possible to build nuclear technology with enough transparency", then just make that argument and provide evidence to support it. Don't misrepresent his argument.

Sorry, Nobody, you did it wrong.

You're *supposed* to whine and bitch about how you're being oppressed and your view is proven by the fact that the blog owner is silencing you.

Sheesh, get with the program, man!

As to your quote, he STILL after all that, doesn't actually say HOW we get transparency and scrutiny. BUT he STILL says "we should go nuclear".

He also COMPLETELY gets wrong the timing.

Nuclear will take (he admits) 10-15 years. He then states that it will take 10-15 years for renewables.

a) A windfarm can produce power after the first wind turbine is up.

b) nuclear has only 50 years left. So we'd have to move anyway.

c) "Don't worry, the NEXT version will work!" nuclear.

"If your argument is "it is not possible to build nuclear technology with enough transparency""

No, it's that you and George BOTH agree that we don't have the transparency and scrutiny.

And that neither have a way of ensuring it.

It's just wishes for fishes.

IF we have transparency? Then don't you think you need to work out how to get it first?

Meanwhile, a wind fallout emptying 50km of land is impossible no matter how corrupt the company making the turbines.

Wow, you're misrepresenting Monbiot's arguments and I don't feel the need to defend an argument neither him or I is making. People can read his article themselves and come to their own conclusions about what he's actually saying.

How can I misrepresent Monbiot's argument when he hasn't argued how to make it transparent by saying he must explain how we can make it transparent?

Maybe you, then, can explain how it is that nuclear power is now transparent and scrutinised properly?

If it isn't transparent nor properly scrutinised, then nuclear isn't an option after all, is it.

wow@318: "If it isn't transparent nor properly scrutinised, then nuclear isn't an option after all, is it."

Well, yes. That's precisely what Monbiot is saying.

IF that was precisely what Monbiot is saying, what do these titles mean?

"Nuclear power - a Q&A session

George Monbiot debates with readers about his reasons for supporting nuclear technology, but not the industry
...
I've shown that the choice between renewables and nuclear is a false one: we appear to need both. And that, contrary to popular belief, it is the cheapest of our low-carbon options in the UK."

Why the hell does it matter if it's cheap if it isn't transparent?

"I've argued that there is no inconsistency between opposing the machinations and corruption of the nuclear industry and supporting the technology."

But you can't support the technology until you've worked out how to oppose the machinations and corruption of the damn nuclear industry itself.

And you yourself, Nobody:

"I think Monbiot makes the case for nuclear power more succinctly than I can:"

How can you be FOR nuclear power if you believe that its implementation will be corrupt UNTIL you've explained how the heck to implement it without corruption?

Back to Monbiot's rhetorical questions:

"Why must UK have to choose between nuclear and renewable energy?"

Because nuclear is currently opaque and corrupt, perhaps?

Also, something else came to mind.

wow@316: "Meanwhile, a wind fallout emptying 50km of land is impossible no matter how corrupt the company making the turbines."

How much room would a wind turbine farm require to replicate the power output of a single modern nuclear plant?

If a modern nuclear plant that produces, say, 1200MW, was replaced by the most efficient modern wind turbines under perfectly ideal conditions, which would give you about 5W per square meter (which never actually happens in real implementations), the space required would be 240,000,000 square meters, or 240 square kilometers. A more realistic estimate, with a 2W/m^2 average output for wind turbines, or about 600 square kilometers.

Given that people don't generally live or farm on the land taken up by wind farms (for obvious reasons), that 600 square kilometers means that roughly half the area of the Fukushima evacuation zone would be permanently rendered uninhabitable, by design, without any catastrophe needing to occur.

I'm not arguing that nuclear accidents are somehow less of a bad thing, but if you argue that nuclear reactors very occasionally require evacuations, and therefore wind farms are the superior choice, this is an obvious comparison to make.

Would you be willing to live directly under a wind turbine? If not, why is that different from not being willing to live next to a nuclear plant?

wow@320: "Because nuclear is currently opaque and corrupt, perhaps?"

Why do you believe that "alternative" energy sources (like wind and solar) will not be run by companies just as opaque and corrupt?

"Why do you believe that "alternative" energy sources (like wind and solar) will not be run by companies just as opaque and corrupt?"

I don't.

What is the downside to nuclear corruption? Glowing cows.

What is the similar downside to renewables corruption? Uhm.

Or, in words you have yourself attested to, why is it NECESSARY for nuclear to be run transparently and with appropriate scrutiny?

So that we're not overcharged for our electricity?

"How much room would a wind turbine farm require to replicate the power output of a single modern nuclear plant?"

If a single nuclear plant is 400MW, a 7.5MW turbine takes up about 10m2 of ground. 400/7.5*10 = 533 m2.

wow@323: "What is the downside to nuclear corruption? Glowing cows."

Please tell me that this was a joke and that you don't actually believe that this is how radiation accidents work.

"Given that people don't generally live or farm on the land taken up by wind farms (for obvious reasons),"

Really?

http://www.farmersguardian.com/home/business/business-news/wind-turbine…

"Please tell me that this was a joke and that you don't actually believe that this is how radiation accidents work."

Please answer the question. That was a joke answer. I can quite understand that you want to avoid answering the question and therefore are making out that you're too dumb to know that, but your avoidance technique isn't going to work.

What is the reason why nuclear power plants have to be run transparently with scrutiny on operations?

wow@323: "If a single nuclear plant is 400MW, a 7.5MW turbine takes up about 10m2 of ground. 400/7.5*10 = 533 m2."

1) That is a very lowball estimate for a nuclear plant's output capacity. Each of the four problematic reactors at Fukushima had an output of over 1000MW *each*.

2) I don't know where you got the idea that a 7.5MW wind turbine only uses 10 square meters. Here is an example of a modern 7.5MW turbine:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enercon_E-126

The turbine blades have a diameter of 126 meters; even if somehow we were able to pack them in with no clearance between turbines (which is a ridiculous idea), they would require far more than 10 square meters per turbine just for the size of their blades.

An idealized modern wind farm is probably Markbygden in Sweden, which uses a mixture of 7.5MW E-126s and smaller units.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markbygden_Wind_Farm

This is probably the most optimal possible location, and they hope to get about 8W per square meter (better than what I thought was possible when I wrote my earlier post). Even if they are correct in their estimates, this wind farm still uses a 500 square kilometer area, a bit under half the size of the Fukushima evacuation zone, to generate the power from four of the six reactors at Fukushima Daiichi.

Your "7.5MW per 10 square meters" number is simply ridiculous. What is Sweden doing wrong, if you consider this to be an accurate number?

wow@326: "Really?"

A single turbine on an agricultural farm is not in any way equivalent to living or farming on a full-capacity wind farm and it's silly to claim otherwise.

If you did set up residential areas on wind farms, all that would be required is a single accident involving a fan blade and somebody's bedroom, and wind power would suddenly have a PR nightmare on their hands. The wind power companies know this, which is why you will never see turbines with houses under them.

"That was a joke answer."

Good.

"What is the reason why nuclear power plants have to be run transparently with scrutiny on operations?"

Because doing otherwise causes bad PR. Even badly-run nuclear power plants have proven themselves very safe; the Fukushima incident is, if anything, proof of this. TEPCO was about as incompetent as possible, and *yet* there were no deaths after an unprecedented natural disaster hit an obsolete forty-year-old nuclear plant. We now know that the absolute worst case scenario actually happened, a full meltdown within three different reactors, and yet nobody died and the long-term public health affects were negligible.

But without transparency by the nuclear companies, the public will not support nuclear power due to distrust of the companies masquerading as distrust of the technology. Transparency is required, not because nuclear power is unsafe, but because it *is* safe, and without total transparency the public will not believe this.

Total transparency by wind, solar, etc companies is not required for public acceptance because they already have a reputation for safety.

"1) That is a very lowball estimate for a nuclear plant's output capacity."

OK, 1200MW makes it 1600m^2. Less than 1/6 hectare.

"2) I don't know where you got the idea that a 7.5MW wind turbine only uses 10 square meters. Here is an example of a modern 7.5MW turbine:"

Go look at the area used up.

It's a square of about 10-20ft on a side.

"The turbine blades have a diameter of 126 meters;"

The wind turbine isn't lying down on the job.

"and they hope to get about 8W per square meter "

No, they hope to get 4GW out of it.

The extent of the area isn't the area used up.

"Your "7.5MW per 10 square meters" number is simply ridiculous."

Nope, it's accurate.

You can use the remaining 99.98% of the space for, say, feeding your cows, as a solar PV array and so forth.

Your 8W/m2 is ridiculous. It assumes you're laying your wind turbine flat.

"A single turbine on an agricultural farm is not in any way equivalent to living or farming on a full-capacity wind farm"

Excuse me, did you not say, and I quote:

"Given that people don't generally live or farm on the land taken up by wind farms (for obvious reasons)"

And yet huge numbers of farmers DO rent out their land as a wind farm and still farm underneath. And even farming organisations believe that it will be commonplace soon.

But maybe the farmers don't know anything about farming compared to you, hmm?

""What is the reason why nuclear power plants have to be run transparently with scrutiny on operations?"

Because doing otherwise causes bad PR."

Really? Bad PR. So fukijama is just a PR problem.

No. For someone who prattles on "that's ridiculous" you certainly show little qualm in making up the most outlandish tosh.

"Even badly-run nuclear power plants have proven themselves very safe;"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cumbria/4589321.stm "Sellafield leak 'lay undetected' "

http://www.realistnews.net/Thread-nuclear-radiation-leak-in-ohio-goes-u…

http://visionsgreen.com/tag/fukushima-fire-goes-unreported-by-media/

http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/nuclear-leak-threatens-nj-dr…

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=111699.0;wap2

http://www.byronbodyandsoul.com/articles/unreported-nuclear-accident-at…

THAT is the problem of a hidden culture of secrecy.

"Even badly-run nuclear power plants have proven themselves very safe; the Fukushima incident is, if anything, proof of this. ... *yet* there were no deaths after an unprecedented natural disaster hit an obsolete forty-year-old nuclear plant"

Ah, so smoking CANNOT cause cancer because people are smoking today and they're not dead yet.

"after an unprecedented natural disaster hit an obsolete forty-year-old nuclear plant"

So how old are our reactors? The reactors we have are 30 years and up. many are over 40.

So, not only do we have to build more nuclear power, we have to replace all the obsolete stations we have.

Getting expensive, isn't it.

"Total transparency by wind, solar, etc companies is not required for public acceptance because they already have a reputation for safety."

No, total transparency isn't needed because wind, solar etc don't leak toxic nuclear waste.

"Total transparency by wind, solar, etc companies is not required for public acceptance because they already have a reputation for safety."

No, total transparency isn't needed because wind, solar etc don't leak toxic nuclear waste.

Your ten square meter estimate is purely the ground footprint of the tower, then, and not the operational size of the complete turbine? You are operating under the assumption that all land that does not have an actual tower on it can be used for other purposes, including all of the space that has turbines spinning above it?

Where is this actually being done? I know of no full-capacity wind farms that are using the land under the turbines for residential, agricultural, or solar purposes. They are, as far as I know, always kept fallow, which is part of the appeal of wind farms in the first place. If you have any counterexamples I will gladly look into them.

wow@330: "No, total transparency isn't needed because wind, solar etc don't leak toxic nuclear waste."

You're just demonstrating my point, you know.

"Your ten square meter estimate is purely the ground footprint of the tower, then, and not the operational size of the complete turbine?"

Yes.

You see the operational bit is in the sky.

Where nobody lives.

"You are operating under the assumption that all land that does not have an actual tower on it can be used for other purposes, including all of the space that has turbines spinning above it?"

Yes.

"Where is this actually being done?"

In 14 farms near me.

Unless they've put some hallucinogenics in the water here and are using subliminal messaging to make the illusion, it's been happening for at least 12 years.

"I know of no full-capacity wind farms that are using the land under the turbines for residential, agricultural, or solar purposes."

And?

All that means is you don't know of one.

Please tell me why "for obvious reasons" it can't be done.

Personal incredulity isn't an answer.

"You're just demonstrating my point, you know."

So how much nuclear waste DOES a wind turbine exude?

PS do a google for "unreported nuclear leak". Links have gone to the author to audit.

wow@333: "In 14 farms near me."

That does me no good in my attempt to look up information on them. If you want to provide these farms as evidence in the hope that I admit that I was wrong, you need to give me a way to verify this information.

Where are these farms and what are their names? Are they full-capacity wind farms designed to power urban grids, or are they agricultural farms with a single wind turbine on them to provide power locally?

You need to give me these details, or a way for me to look up these details myself, if you expect them to support your argument.

Please tell me why "for obvious reasons" it can't be done.

Personal incredulity isn't an answer.

wow@334: "So how much nuclear waste DOES a wind turbine exude?"

You appear to be arguing based on worst-case scenarios. Under normal conditions, nuclear reactors do not leak, toasters do not set fire to your kitchen, and your neighbors do not come over and stab you at night. One of my friends had their house burn down due to a faulty toaster, and one of my uncles was killed by a crazy neighbor; do you suggest that I also get rid of all my electrical appliances and move out to the country?

You are making your decisions based on an irrational fear that overwhelms your ability to analyze the real risks involved. Under normal conditions, people make decisions based on possible risk all of the time, and most of the time we go ahead with things even though there is some minor risk involved. Driving, for example, is far more dangerous than living near a nuclear plant, if you look at the actual odds, but it is also more convenient and in many cases a necessity, even though walking is technically always an option.

But nuclear power is special. It has a mystique. No amount of evidence can convince someone that a nuclear plant isn't actually dangerous because there was that three-eyed frog on The Simpsons and that big scary drawing of a radioactive plume covering the pacific and somebody found a *plutonium atom* somewhere it wasn't supposed to be. It sets something off in most people who don't come from an engineering or physics background, and it even scares some of *them*.

No one is denying that wind power is technically safer than nuclear, in the same way that living without electricity is safer than owning a toaster, and walking is safer than driving. But risk management is something human beings do every minute of every day, *except* when it comes to nuclear power. It's an absolute, nuclear reactors are so bad that we can't even consider the option because they "leak toxic nuclear waste" even when it's obvious from the most casual research that they don't except under the most extreme of circumstances.

Wow, it's clear that fear is driving your argument here. I can't fix that. The damage has been done, the world fears nuclear power, and the western nations are going to keep burning fossil fuels while waiting for solar and wind power to someday become efficient enough, if ever. And meanwhile the Chinese are going to keep working on their newer, safer, more efficient reactors, and one day they're going to suddenly stop relying on fossil fuels like the rest of the world, and then the west is going to feel really silly when China keeps the technology to themselves. You are in very company.

Monbiot knows he's fighting a losing battle, because human beings are really just engines fueled by fear. He's going to keep fighting, I expect. I, on the other hand, am tired of trying to argue against irrational fears, and I am going to go do something more useful.

Take care. I hope you are not electrocuted by any household appliances, or that you are near any sort of industrial accident, or are in a car wreck.

Oh, and I also give you permission to gloat about how you "won" this argument because I left.

"You appear to be arguing based on worst-case scenarios."

No, common case scenarios. Nuclear facilities leak and the accident covered up.

A worst-case scenario is an explosion like Chernobyl or fukijama where tens of thousands of square kilometers are affected, livestock and plants unfit for sale and tens of thousands moved from their homes for decades.

Compared to bessy being flattened by a turbine falling on her head.

"You are making your decisions based on an irrational fear that overwhelms your ability to analyze the real risks involved"

You are making decisions based on uninformed faith that you've been told everything.

HOWEVER, If you were told everything, then why does there need to be transparency?

"Wow, it's clear that fear is driving your argument here."

Nope, facts.

It's clear that dogma is driving your argument.

That and personal incredulity and personal lack of knowledge.

"Monbiot knows he's fighting a losing battle"

He knows that he's talking bullshit. He's afraid more of global warming than nuclear accidents.

I note that you still can't answer what "obvious reasons" there are for the land underneath a wind turbine to be unusable.

Yes, you left because you can't and won't answer a simple question:

Please tell me why "for obvious reasons" it can't be done.

Personal incredulity isn't an answer.

If Wow is being honest about his alleged fear of the escape of nuclear radiation he will be on record as havging been 4 times as critical of coal fired power for releaseing at least 4 times as much radiation per kwh.

If he is being honest about his fear of nuclear accidents he will have been hundreds of times more critical of windmills which kill far more people and generate about 100th as much of the world's power.

Anyubody thinkm he, or anybody else in the anti-vuclear movement, is?

Why does that follow? So you can divert attention?

"he will have been hundreds of times more critical of windmills which kill far more people"

Really. Any stats on that, or are you just making shit up again, hoping some will stick?

"generate about 100th as much of the world's power."

Really? How much does nuclear do? And your figures again, or is this pulled from your anus as usual?

Neil's just gotta hate.

Once again Wow attempts to dispute my figures with ones of his own where he has made no attempt to support his own figures.

Perhaps I should just point out that he is a wholly corrupt liar and leave it at that. Or let him Google for himself but seeing as |I am infinitely more honest than him, or than any other ecofascist not willing to call him a liar, here is his evidence of windmill deaths. http://www.inquisitr.com/18588/wind-power-causes-more-deaths-than-nucle… By comparison there have been 2 dnuclear deaths opver the last 20 years, neither at Fukushima where nobody was lkilled or injured.

Nuclear produces 20% of the world's electricity. Wind almost none.

Now Wow I cal on you either to produce figures to support your lies or acknowledge that you are a wholly dishonest, corrupt, obscene piece of filthn who could have no place in any remotely honest movement and have a place in both the warming alarmist and anti-nuclear alarmist movements.

Once again Neil whines and whinges and lies his arse off again.

So how many died when the power station was built? Or do people only fall off buildings that are renewable power generators? Some form of force-field effect?

"neither at Fukushima where nobody was lkilled or injured."

So because people smoked six months ago and are still alive, smoking doesn't cause cancer?

What an arse you are.

Nuclear power production 2010: 374,958MW
Total power use 2008: 15,000,000MW

That would make it 2.5% (a little less since energy use grew since 2008).

In 2008, Renewable Energy Policy Network for 21st Century reported that renewable energy supplied around 19% of the world's energy consumption.

Worldwide hydroelectricity installed capacity reached 816,000 MW in 2005

Electricity produced from biomass sources was estimated at 44,000 MW for 2005.

At the end of 2009, worldwide wind farm capacity was 157,900 MW, representing an increase of 31 percent during the year, and wind power supplied some 1.3% of global electricity consumption

In 2007 grid-connected photovoltaic electricity was the fastest growing energy source, with installations of all photovoltaics increasing by 83% in 2009 to bring the total installed capacity to 15,000 MW

In 2007, the world had a global capacity for 10 GW of electricity generation and an additional 28 GW of direct heating, including extraction by geothermal heat pumps. Heat pumps are small and widely distributed, so estimates of their total capacity are uncertain and range up to 100 GW.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption

"Nuclear power production 2010: 374,958MW
Total power use 2008: 15,000,000MW"

I don't doubt that these figures are accurate, but you need to make the comparison in terms of energy generated rather than installed capacity. You should be looking at energy rather than power. The picture will probably be pretty much the same, I'm just a stickler for these things.

Stu, in this case, the statement is power production. How much was produced, not how much COULD have been produced if it hadn't had to be shut down or whatever. That would be "Installed Capacity".

In the case of nuclear, you get about 60% of the nameplate, though France got quite a lot less than that in the last heatwave where they had to shut them down and import Danish and German (high renewable fractions) power because the water was too hot to cool the system.

The 15TW is actually both electrical and other power use (travel, heating, etc). Then again, renewables produced 19% of electrical power, so even if that made Nuclear the 21% of electrical production, the statement that he made about their relative importance is incorrect.

You can't use energy because you then have to talk about how long that energy was over, which would probably make "wood burning" the biggest energy producer apart from "eating food" for humanity.

Thanks Stu. Windmills do produce at an average of about 25% of nominal capacity because the wind is often to sl;ow, or too fast.

Another deliberate lie - Wow has told is where I specifically referred to "20% of the world's electricity" that I am lying by producing a figure for "Total power use". He must know that most power use is not in the form of electricity.

While accepting that Wow's total contempt for any form of honersty represents at least the normal maximum honesty of most Luddites I am pleased to see one other person on "sciencblogs" willing to, gently, point out that he is a liar.

I note that the obscene scum still makes no attempt to provide evidence for most of his claims.

And nuclear produce about 60%. However, since that means baseload is overproduced at night and underproduced in the daytime, the overproduction of nuclear means that France have SERIOUS problems: sell the nighttime overproduction at "fire sale" prices, then buy back from neighboring countries at peak times for peak prices.

It's why France is in such a pickle.

"where I specifically referred to "20% of the world's electricity" "

No, you lied when you said that renewables produced less than 1%.

Absolutely false.

But Neil cannot countenance any facts that don't support his case.

So he ignores them. And the links to evidence for them.

Childish.

At the end of 2009, worldwide wind farm capacity was 157,900 MW, representing an increase of 31 percent during the year, and wind power supplied some 1.3% of global electricity consumption

Compared to the 374,958MW from Nuclear. Note: Wind has increased again in the year since 2009.

"Almost none" according to Neil "whiner" Craig.

I'm (the other Neil) and impressed to see wind power producing so much, around 40% as much as nuclear. I also note the irony of those like Neil Craig calling opponents of non-renewables "Luddites" when Luddites were against *new technology.* Neil, you should be more supportive of new ways of doing things and solving problems. What, afraid people in the oil industry will loose jobs, or minions lose funding (not necessarily you)? That's just what Luddites were afraid of, even if mostly falsely. BTW in a modern civilized nation, mechanisms exist to gently move workers from one industry to another instead of having a Dickensian-style banana-Republican/Cato type pig sty for most people.

BTW I'm not puppeting myself, I just get tired of typing in these damn forms with no "remember personal info" etc.

Wow lying again, though I await your apology for the previous lie (& the one before that and the one...._ . I dod not claim that "renewables" made up only 1% of electricity over the last 20 years but that wind did, which if you were not an obscene lying thieving fascist parasite you would admit is true. Hydro makes up the serious part of "reneable" power and although less renewable than nuclear is not something I oppose.

Neil B obviously, with your criticism of me you must, for honesty, have been far more critical of the obscene lying fascist Luddite parasite, assuming you are indeed honest. Please point to where you have done so.

I would also be impressed with windmills if they were truly supplying 40% as much power as nuclear. Perhaps, in the interests of showing some integrity in the Luddite movement you would care to withdraw or support that claim.

Hah, if you want to see REAL bare-faced lying-your-arse-off, take a look here:

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2011/06/open_thread_2.php#comment…

Yup, he doesn't even read the links he supplies that gives him "the evidence" for his claims.

"I dod not claim that "renewables" made up only 1% of electricity"

From earlier:

Whiney McWhiner: "Nuclear produces 20% of the world's electricity. Wind almost none."

So if 19% is "almost none", then nuclear produces almost none.

This kid gives weasels a bad name, doesn't he?

"I would also be impressed with windmills if they were truly supplying 40% as much power as nuclear."

They're doing more than that. Wind power is growing at 20-30% a year currently, and that would have been higher if the banks hadn't been too rich to fail.

But this just proves your vapid ignorance: you won't be impressed because you'll refuse to believe the evidence since it's devastating to your "case".

I have already explained to Wow how it is possible, inded inevitable that when "wind" supplies under 1% of all power and all "renewables" provide more. In claiming not to understand this Wow isclaiming that he lies purely because he is such a drooling imbecile that he is incapable of understanding the simplest thing even when explained to him repeatedly.

I believe he is not claiming to be a drooling imbecile honestly but merely to make hinmself look better.

You have explained that you believe that.

However, the facts don't support your beliefs.

However, this has never stopped you in the past, has it.

At the end of 2009, worldwide wind farm capacity was 157,900 MW. growing at near 40% a year.

Nuclear power production 2010: 374,958MW

I, too, have seen wind farms on rural land with working farms underneath. It is easy to find proof of this with a few seconds on Google:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/09/090904-farm-energy/

http://www.mywindpowersystem.com/2009/07/land-for-wind-farms-have-you-g…

Video of cows living with a wind farm:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3aopQGUZmo

The largest onshore wind farm in the world occupies land from 400 different farms, apparently:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscoe_Wind_Farm

Why wouldn't the farmland still be usable?

In terms of actual power generation (rather than nameplate capacity), nuclear was 2558 TWh in 2009 and wind was 430 TWh in 2010. Wind nameplate capacity grew 22% (36 GW) in 2010, 32% (38 GW) in 2009, and 28% (26 GW) in 2008. That's an increase in actual power generation capacity (~30% of nameplate capacity) equivalent to about 17 of the new third generation nuclear reactors, installed in just three years. Meanwhile the first of those new third generation nuclear reactors is still under construction at Olkiluoto and has been since 2005. (Now set to start in 2013.)

All this talk in school about Violence, Bad Economy, & Global Warming is really getting to me.

make sure your insurance is up to date and fully covers you for all possible weather related damages. unfortunately that is all an individual can do. there is no will or cooperation worldwide that reverse climate change so now it's about adapting to it.