So all you skeptics want answers to how much warming we should expect from adding CO2 to the atmosphere? An interesting new study has been released which matches quite closely to Nic Lewis’s work. The difference is that 14 of the authors are lead-coordinating lead authors of the pending AR5 IPCC report. It is being hosted at Bishop Hill blog and WUWT.
Since Skeptical Science pooped all over Nic’s result just last month, and that result has now been replicated by 14 lead authors for the IPCC AR5, I wonder if they will take back their critiques…. Seriously though, these studies represent an important result because it seems like we are finally coming to realize the magnitude we should expect from CO2 based warming. It also seems like the leaked AR5 draft is going to need an update for its projected warming — downward. This is the very issue that has given most of us science-minded critics the label skeptic. You know the label that causes people to put us on lists and declare that skeptics are dangerous, should be charged with crimes and such. So now that a large group of IPCC authors agree with us that higher projections from models aren’t matching observed sensitivity, are they skeptics or are skeptics now climate scientists?
From Nic:
The take-home message from this study, like several other recent ones, is that the ‘very likely’ 5–95% ranges for ECS and TCR in Chapter 12 of the leaked IPCC AR5 second draft scientific report, of 1.5–6/7°C for ECS and 1–3°C for TCR, and the most likely values of near 3°C for ECS and near 1.8°C for TCR, are out of line with instrumental-period observational evidence.
In a less politicized field, there might need to be some additional time for the IPCC to absorb this information through all of its chapters. Because of our long history with the advocate crowd controlling this field, I’m sure it still means doom for us all, but at least we won’t be as hot when the world ends. ;D
the Air Vent 
…are out of line with instrumental-period observational evidence.
The case is therefore far from complete.
Here is the official line from the first author
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/news/alex-otto-article
Basically, nothing much has changed, it’s all ‘consistent with’ what they thought before…
On the subject of “the label that causes people to put us on lists and declare that skeptics are dangerous”, have you seen this piece of McCarthyism from your president?
http://www.barackobama.com/climate-deniers/
I do not have access to internet on my computer. When I regain that access I will try to communicate that Climategate is but our first glimse of the monster that grew out-of-sight, feeding on public funds, in government research agencies after the United Nations was established on 24 Oct 1945.
Oliver K. Manuel
A. Here’s the rest of the story, as a word document with links that work: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Peaceful_Resolution.doc
B. Here’s the same story as a pdf file with links that do not work for me: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Peaceful_Resolution.pdf
Insight into the tragedy that befell official science in 1945 was made possible by information left behind by three remarkable people of that era:
1. P. K. Kuroda recognized the birth of the world in the ruins of Hiroshima in Aug 1945. He became my research mentor in 1960.
See page 2 of: http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Chemical-Elements-Oklo-Phenomenon/dp/3540116796
2. Sir Fred Hoyle revealed in his autobiography that the model of H-filled stars was unanimously adopted without debate or discussion in 1946.
See pages 153-154 of: http://www.amazon.com/Home-Where-Wind-Blows-Cosmologists/dp/093570227X
3. George Orwell moved to the God-forsaken isle of Jura in 1946 to start writing his warning to the public that a tyrannical government based on deceit was rising from the ruins of World War II and would be visible by 1984. Orwell was dying of tuberculosis in 1946.
Actually five heros from the 1945-46 era managed to record forbidden information:
4. David Snell: Reported in the 3 Oct 1946 issue of The Atlanta Constitution hidden information on Japan’s successful atomic bomb test off the east coast of Konan, Korea on 12 Aug 1945:
http://web.archive.org/web/20121201034437/http://www.my-jia.com/The_Flight_of_the_Hog_Wild/Atlanta_Constitution.htm
5. Robert Jungk: Recorded the deep sense of guilt in atomic scientists of Allied forces for having killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Aug 1945. Their guilt was used to compromise the integrity of science and constitutions.
A personal friend, Bill Streifer, is still releasing information that links events in 1945 with those in 2013:
http://www.nknews.org/2013/05/do-sang-rok-the-father-of-north-koreas-nuclear-weapon-program/
http://www.my-jia.com/The_Flight_of_the_Hog_Wild
With kind regards,
– Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
After more than six decades of lock-step consensus science about attractive forces between neutrons converting neutron stars into “dead nuclear embers”, today Nature published a paper showing how little is known about the erratic behavior of neutron stars – including the one at the core of the Sun that sustains every atom, life and world in the solar system.
See: R. F. Archibald, et al., “An anti-glitch in a magnetar,” Nature 497 591-593 (2013)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v497/n7451/full/nature12159.html
Craig Rucker and CFACT issued an advisory on new UN climate talks that will be held in Bonn, Germany on 3-14 June 2013:
http://tinyurl.com/l8uh2pp
Thanks to Climategate emails that surfaced in Nov 2009, we now know the 1945 decision to form the UN sacrificed:
a.) Civilian control of government, and
b.) The integrity of government science
Fear and loathing that humans would destroy life on Earth with the energy that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 Aug 1945 convinced world leaders and their advisors to undertake a human engineering experiment sixty-eight years ago by:
c.) Forming the United Nations on 24 Oct 1945,
d.) Ending national boundaries and national governments, and
e.) Compromising the integrity of science to hide that source of energy.
The best scientific argument I have seen puts climate sensitivity to increasing CO2 at 0.0degC.
Ask yourself this; how does 1 molecule in 2500 that is not a heat source have a power greater than the Sun, which is, and the AMO and PDO all combined (and all of which are entering a minimum, simultaneously)? Also ask yourself this, as only IR reactive gases (i.e. mainly CO2 and water vapour) can cool the planet, as IR radiation is the ONLY cooling mechanism Earth has, how can CO2 simultaneously cool and ‘trap’ heat?
Nobody claims that CO2 has over 1000 w/M^2 of forcing. The warming mechanism is well understood and not contested in any way whatsoever.
Just wondering, but if the mechanism is well understood, why are sensitivities given as estimates derived from correlations? 😉
Mark
Sensitivities are an entirely different subject from whether there is or is not warming.
They have a way to go. Down some more guys.
More papers (eg this recent one from Nick Scafetta) have been coming out showing the Sun in aggregate caused roughly 0.33 C rise out of AR4’s 0.74 C rise between 1906-2005. The AMO-PDO combined ocean cycles caused about 0.28 C of ‘rise’ due to the endpoints (ie 1906 was bottom of the combined cycle, 2005 was the top of the next cycle).
Deduct these from AR4’s 0.74 C and the residual is consistent with a 2XCO2 about 0.7 C/doubling.
NASA has acknowledged the solar indirect influence. The UK Met Office has started to acknowledge ocean cycles. When (ok…’if’) they compare notes and include both in the GCM’s the derived sensitivity will be low also, because the models are trained to the AR4 magic century.
Bruce,
From my reading, your comment might be accurate but we don’t really know. These papers take into account ocean heat content and various observations and try to regress their way to a balance. To be honest, I haven’t spent enough time to understand the details, but the function of the math is interesting and VERY slippery stuff. Like the Antarctic work, truncated regression isn’t always easy to bring to a stable conclusion and only those who actually do it really understand the stability (accuracy) of the result. In my opinion you won’t find a better person than Nic to do this kind of work in an unbiased fashion but that by itself doesn’t eliminate effects of assumed influences.
This kind of math is very much “tweakable” so for me it was very interesting to see that the mainstream government funded group landed only slightly higher than Nic. With another 20 years of data these discussions may become moot.
Sure Jeff, I’ve done plenty of stats work with messy data myself.
But there are a good number of studies around saying the Sun caused, directly and indirectly, 40 or 50% of the temperature rise last century. Which isn’t in the GCM’s.
Likewise even mk 1 eyeball you can see the magnitude of the ~60 cycle on the temperature record, which even Mike Mann has a paper on showing the AMO is persistently cyclic (Knight et al 2005 GRL). And I can link several papers which quantify it.
As to 2XCO2 around 0.7 C, give or take, I also determined that myself by difference using the CET (I updated my simple model recently to end 2012 and was quite chuffed how well the fit has been going…and last few months have also been on the money, very cold). Using SST’s the implicit 2XCO2 is 0.4 C over 50 years (from the data in Gleckler et al 2012) – which is a lag dataset, but not so much a lag that four fifths is hiding in the deep ocean.
I am seeing well below 1 C/doubling, which is in LC2011 and SB2010 zone. I have yet to see any data which persuades me it is above 1 C and I’ve been dealing science data for thirty years. And models – I know full well what happens when you leave a significant variable out of a multiple regression model, which the GCM’s effectively are since they backcast.
I’m very willing to keep an open mind. My own personal test though fell squarely on LC2011 median. My second cross-check using the Gleckler et al data was consistent. Other studies say similar. What else as a scientist should I say?
On other hand I have not read Dr Lewis’ paper as yet, as the heat balance approach hasn’t interested hitherto. My impression is the delta is noisy (difference between two large numbers) and the data insufficient yet, since we have only short datasets. Which was one reason why I’d preferred the CET at the time, as the longest and most internally consistent one.
Like Jo Nova, you give Alarmists way too much respect by accepting their idea that “Doublings of CO2” have relevance to global temperatures. The Arrhenius theory is false so it is just coincidence if you can find periods of correlation between CO2 concentration and temperature.
If the Arrhenius theory was real science it would predict a value of the “Climate Sensitivity” that could be compared against observations. Instead the best the IPCC could come up with in their woeful AR4 was a range of 1.5 to 4.5 K/doubling. That is not science. It is not even good guesswork.
Even “Climate Scientists” like Jeff Severinghaus admit that CO2 followed temperature during the recent Ice Age cycles:
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/the-dog-that-did-not-bark/
Bruce of Newcastle,
As a fan of Scafetta, I recommend his latest peer-reviewed publication that points to errors in the statistical analysis in Jevrejeva et al papers aswell as some others that get top billing in the AR5 WG1 drafts.
Scafetta, N.: Discussion on common errors in analyzing sea level accelerations, solar trends and global warming, Pattern Recognition in Physics 1, 37-57, doi:10.5194/prp-1-37-2013, 2013.
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/1/37/2013/prp-1-37-2013.html
Click to access prp-1-37-2013.pdf
If you believe that planetary surface temperatures are all to do with radiative forcing rather than non-radiative heat transfers, then you are implicitly agreeing with IPCC authors (and Dr Roy Spencer) that a column of air in the troposphere would have been isothermal but for the assumed greenhouse effect. You are believing this because you are believing the 19th century simplification of the Second Law of Thermodynamics which said heat only transfers from hot to cold – a “law” which is indeed true for all radiation, but only strictly true in a horizontal plane for non-radiative heat transfer by conduction.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics in its modern form explains a process in which thermodynamic equilibrium “spontaneously evolves” and that thermodynamic equilibrium will be the state of greatest accessible entropy.
Now, thermodynamic equilibrium is not just about temperature, which is determined by the mean kinetic energy of molecules, and nothing else. Pressure, for example, does not control temperature. Thermodynamic equilibrium is a state in which total accessible energy (including potential energy) is homogeneous, because if it were not homogeneous, then work could be done and so entropy could still increase.
When such a state of thermodynamic equilibrium evolves in a vertical plane in any solid, liquid or gas, molecules at the top of a column will have more gravitational potential energy (PE), and so they must have less kinetic energy (KE), and so a lower temperature, than molecules at the bottom of the column. This state evolves spontaneously as molecules interchange PE and KE in free flight between collisions, and then share the adjusted KE during the next collision.
This postulate was put forward by the brilliant physicist Loschmidt in the 19th century, but has been swept under the carpet by those advocating that radiative forcing is necessary to explain the observed surface temperatures. Radiative forcing could never explain the mean temperature of the Venus surface, or that at the base of the troposphere of Uranus – or that at the surface of Earth.
The gravitationally induced temperature gradient in every planetary troposphere is fully sufficient to explain all planetary surface temperatures. All the weak attempts to disprove it, such as a thought experiment with a wire outside a cylinder of gas, are flawed, simply because they neglect the temperature gradient in the wire itself, or other similar oversights.
The gravity effect is a reality and the dispute is not an acceptable disagreement.
The issue is easy to resolve with a straight forward, correct understanding of the implications of the spontaneous process described in statements of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Hence radiative forcing is not what causes the warming, and so carbon dioxide has nothing to do with what is just natural climate change.
Work, heat, entropy are all bulk concepts. The second law is a law only in the bulk context. It is a law in that after twenty trillion rolls, the probability is toward the heavy side of the die.
Backradiation is a sub-process which in no way “violates” the second law. This is a common misunderstanding from those who didn’t grok the meaning of their basic physics rules. Saying it can or can’t be explained by either theory is rather amusing to me because mathematically – en bulk – they are equivalent. Where slayers here have faltered is that they don’t give a coherent message and too many members are scientifically weak.
I would be very happy to debate this issue. We have to start with fundamentals though and work our way up from there. This is necessary because I have been taught classical physics and we need to determine where our understanding bifurcates.
I have not spoken about back radiation, let alone any issue as to whether or not it violates the second law. It seems you have just picked up the words “Second Law of Thermodynamics” and thought I was on about whether or not there’s a net effect. Read the comment again please, a little more carefully.
As it happens, I agree that there appear to be two schools of thought among the ‘Slayers’ and that is perhaps understandable when some of their members appear to be starting to believe in this gravity effect which has been called the “21st century new paradigm shift” in one of their articles..
To be clear, I am talking about the process which the Second Law talks about. I gave you a link, but maybe I need to copy the law here so we have a common starting point. It reads:(with my bold) “An isolated system, if not already in its state of thermodynamic equilibrium, spontaneously evolves towards it. Thermodynamic equilibrium has the greatest entropy amongst the states accessible to the system.”
A still column of gas in a well insulated, sealed container “spontaneously evolves” towards the state of thermodynamic equilibrium which must have a thermal gradient to ensure that (PE+KE) is constant at all heights. Now, if a new source of energy is absorbed at one end of the column (top or bottom) then a new state of thermodynamic equilibrium will be established as the air which is now warmer at one end moves by convection and/or diffusion towards the cooler end. Notice that it moves over the sloping temperature plot, and it can move either way depending on which end absorbs the extra thermal energy.
Hence it is possible for a new source of thermal energy absorbed by the atmosphere (such as from incident Solar radiation starting to be absorbed at dawn) to actually flow towards warmer regions (downwards in the troposphere) because all it is doing is ensuring that a new state of thermodynamic equilibrium evolves spontaneously.
Hence the autonomous temperature gradient must exist in any atmosphere, as it does. How else can you explain why it occurs in the depths of the Uranus atmosphere where none of the mere 3W/m^2 at TOA penetrates. For example, at a depth of 350Km where the (theoretical) base of the Uranus troposphere is 320K, there is clearly no incident Solar radiation, and no surface anyway. And it gets hotter further down – like to thousands of degrees. The energy must have accumulated over the life of the planet from some of that 3W/m^2 and the energy has been “trapped” down in the depths of the Uranus atmosphere by the very gravitational effect I am talking about. If there were no gravitationally induced temperature gradient, then all that heat would never have got down there – why would it? Not much Solar radiation causes any warming in the depths of our own oceans below the thermocline, partly because the theoretical gravity gradient in ocean water is very shallow (about 2C/Km) and currents tend to eclipse it, and also because the thermocline is far hotter from the insolation absorbed, rather like the thermosphere and stratosphere. (The gravity effect acts slowly at the rate of diffusion, and so it can be over-ridden by high levels of absorption, or currents and wind, such as at the South Pole where strong downward winds prevail.)
So the thermal energy absorbed in the atmospheres of all planets gets to the surface (or to the depths of gaseous planets) by non-radiative processes, as well as some direct Solar radiation in the case of Earth.
But the Sun could never have heated the Earth’s surface to a mean of 288K without the “support” of the temperature at the base of the troposphere, which temperature is just a “point” on the plot of temperature against altitude which must have a gradient determined and maintained by gravity, with or without upward convection. Of course the overall level of the plot is determined such that there is radiative balance with the Sun. My best estimates are that the 255K should really be closer to 260K (adjusting for a spherical Earth) and that the real altitude around which the whole plot rotates towards a less steep gradient (because of inter-molecular radiation between water molecules) is at about 3.5Km. So the gravity effect raises the temperature to about 295K and water vapour cools it back to 288K – quite the opposite of the radiative forcing effect of water vapour which is supposed to occur. This very anomaly speaks for the validity of the gravity effect, rather than the radiative forcing effect of any GH conjecture.
Absolutely gravity will create a temperature gradient (lapse rate). I am not aware of anyone contesting that. Let’s consider the case of nitrogen though where IR re-emission from a planet is not a factor. If you increase the concentration of nitrogen by .1 percent, would it be possible to get a 2 percent increase in absolute temperature? What about CO2?
If you run a model of planet Venus with a nitrogen atmosphere, what would the surface temp be?
About the same, because the specific heat of nitrogen is similar to that of carbon dioxide. The nitrogen atmosphere would radiate as explained in my next comment.
Your answer is incorrect so I think we need to take the discussion to a more basic level to find our disagreement.
I’m really not interested in unsupported assertive statements like nitrogen and oxygen never absorb any incident Solar radiation and thus never re-emit any such short wave radiation. See the bit about that in the longer comment below.
However, this discussion of radiation is off topic as far as I am concerned, because I am explaining to you and your silent readers how non-radiative processes can transfer thermal energy to lower and warmer regions of the troposphere (and thus slow surface cooling) because the process is that described in the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
When I teach students, Jeff, I find that interposing thought-provoking questions gives me feedback on what they are understanding. I’m not getting any such feedback from you yet.
How about you start by answering the far more relevant question: Would the Earth’s surface be warmer or cooler if the atmosphere had only one-third as much water vapour and absolutely no other so-called greenhouse gases?
If you answer that it would be warmer because all you think of is back radiation warming the surface, then I suggest you need to pull apart my explanation (which is based on the process described in the Second Law) and try to demonstrate with valid physics why you think it to be incorrect, given that it leads to an opposite answer.
I think you have our relationship confused. First, my readers are silent because I haven’t posted in weeks. Last time I put up something interesting there were 5K views/day. If you put something coherent up supporting your theory, you may find the same. Second, you are not here to “teach” you are here to describe an extraordinary difference in your interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics such that it can be evaluated by your peers who understand such things.
Thirdly, I own a fair sized company so you wouldn’t like my hourly rate very much. So now that we have the pissing match done, can we get to business?
I don’t have any interest in answering these questions until we nail down the basic second law concepts. This isn’t stubbornness, it is a simple requirement in order to find an actual understanding. My radiation question is right at the heart of the matter. You have made statements which violate basic physics rules that PSI regularly seems ignorant of. Once we nail down the concepts you are promoting, we need to discuss the quantum effects and relativity problems such that I can understand your points. Once we reach agreement on those issues, we can discuss greenhouse gasses.
In the case of the Earth. If the atmosphere were transparent to incoming and outgoing radiation, you would simply require ground based albedo to set the temperature of the base of the atmosphere. The atmosphere in this example is radiatively transparent so only thermal conductivity would heat the base layer. In this example, we know from very basic thermo that t_ground = t_air at the ground level.
If you use Venus as an example with a nitrogen atmosphere, you would calculate a far lower ground temp than with back-radiation as a driving influence.
All these thought experiments regarding the supposed possibility of a non-radiating atmosphere are unrealistic for a start. Consider the 83% hydrogen and 15% helium atmosphere on Uranus. It is estimated that the uppermost layers of the atmosphere do indeed re-emit virtually all the absorbed 3W/m^2 of incident radiation. I seriously doubt that all this radiation is done by the sprinkling of methane in that atmosphere. Below that upper layer you have something very much like your pure nitrogen, and yet there is still a thermal gradient, and heat is still transferred down there (to warmer regions) by non-radiative processes.
There would also by a thermal gradient in an insulated, sealed cylinder of pure nitrogen. Consider what happens in the thermosphere. Is the only absorption and re-emission up there by carbon dioxide etc? I seriously doubt it. My postulate is that incident Solar radiation does in fact excite some molecules to exceptionally high energy levels comparable with those associated with UV and visible light. The same may happen to a very small percentage of molecules in the troposphere of any planet, I suggest. These molecules may re-emit similar wavelengths and/or share the energy by diffusion with neighbouring air molecules. So I really don’t believe there is any such thing as a non-radiating atmosphere, but even if there were it would exhibit the -g/Cp temperature gradient. The level of the plot would still be determined by the need for radiative equilibrium, and so that would indeed occur at the surface, but the thought experiment is irrelevant.
Hence, when considering the effect of so-called greenhouse gases, I would suggest that a better thought experiment would be to postulate Earth’s atmosphere as having only, say one-third as much water vapour and no other GH gases. So I ask you, would the surface then be warmer or cooler than it is? I say warmer, because the gradient (approaching the dry adiabatic lapse rate) would be steeper, as you would agree. But because of the autonomous balancing of radiative flux, the temperature plot must rotate around some intermediate altitude, whether that be 5Km, or as I calculate using T^4 and integration, about 3.5Km. Because the plot rotates thus, the surface end is lower.. And because I say that surface temperatures are primarily “supported” by the underlying thermal plot, I deduce that the surface would be cooler. A study published on PSI (in the Appendix here) confirms that, for inland tropical cities below 1,200m altitude, mean daily maximum and minimum temperatures (adjusted to an altitude of 600m) are cooler in the more moist regions.
Water vapour has a net cooling effect, because the slowing of radiative cooling of the surface is only marginal and is dominated by the over-riding fact that water vapour lowers the surface end of the supporting thermal plot by several degrees.
Now to Venus. Although the incident radiation at the Venus TOA is indeed about double that reaching Earth, it is not of the order of the required 16,100W/m^2 to raise the Venus surface to 730K. The temperature does in fact rise and fall about 5 degrees between the four-month long Venus day and night periods, so there is indeed some additional thermal energy added to the surface each Venus morning. But, it would appear that you are assuming that radiation from the cooler Venus atmosphere can in fact add thermal energy to the far hotter Venus surface. In fact you are multiplying the energy received into the top of the atmosphere in order to “acquire” 16,100W/m^2 on the other side of the atmosphere where it meets the surface. I’m sorry, but I have to disagree. My reasons are much the same as those in the paper “Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics” published in March 2012 on the PSI site and several other websites. What I have been saying to my students (for nearly 50 years now) is that a “system comprises interdependent components, as even Wikipedia explains in the linked article. And, after all, the Second Law is talking about a system. If on earth radiation from a small region in the atmosphere were to strike a small region of a warmer surface then I consider that to be a complete system. If there were any thermal energy actually transferred to the surface, then that energy does not “remember” that it came from radiation, so it can exit by conduction. I see no interdepence between two components of the one system in this scenario, I agree with Prof Claes Johnson (and most others at PSI) that radiation from a cooler body can only slow down that component of cooling by a warmer body which is itself by radiation. So back radiation from a cooler atmosphere does indeed slow radiative cooling of a warmer surface, but not non-radiative cooling. And it can never have its electro-magnetic energy converted to thermal energy in a warmer target. The non-radiative cooling is free to accelerate and perhaps compensate for slowing of radiative cooling. The electro-magnetic energy in the radiation is not converted to thermal energy, but is instead used for some of the “SBL quota” of radiation by the surface. So the surface does not have to use as much of its own thermal energy to generate that radiation. Hence much of the radiation from the surface is not transferring its own thermal energy to the atmosphere, but rather just re-emitting the back radiation in a process which looks like scattering, and which physicists are starting to call “pseudo scattering.”
Now, all of the above paragraph has little relevance to the non-radiative process which I have described and which you have ignored in your comment. So please tell me how you think the energy gets down into the atmosphere of Uranus and why it stays there. The thermal gradient in the atmosphere of Uranus is indeed matching the -g/Cp value, but there is no upward convection from any surface heated by direct insolation, and virtually no intra-atmospheric radiation down there either.
It’s one thing to agree that temperature gradients exist in all planetary atmospheres, but quite another to accept that the mechanism I have described in which heat is transferred up the thermal gradient by non-radiative processes actually can occur. Do you or do you not agree, Jeff?
This process is what “supports” the temperatures in the atmospheres, and even in the crust and mantle of Earth, where the same -g/Cp gradients can be observed. Loschmidt was right about these gradients in solids, liquids and gases. Anthony Watts got it wrong in the article that tried to rebut PSI member Dr Hans Jelbring’s paper about the gravity effect. The wire outside the cylinder in the WUWT article also has a temperature gradient, and so it does not conduct heat all the way back to the top. There is no continuous energy flow, and poor old Roderich Graeff got his physics in a muddle when he incorrectly multiplied by the degrees of freedom and thought he had invented a “gravity machine.” Pity he had no formal education in physics, as he admits. But his experiments’ were done well and some of them (without extra particles inserted) can probably be consider empirical evidence of the gravity-induced thermal gradient.
All these thought experiments regarding the supposed possibility of a non-radiating atmosphere are unrealistic for a start. Consider the 83% hydrogen and 15% helium atmosphere on Uranus. It is estimated that the uppermost layers of the atmosphere do indeed re-emit virtually all the absorbed 3W/m^2 of incident radiation. I seriously doubt that all this radiation is done by the sprinkling of methane in that atmosphere. Below that upper layer you have something very much like your pure nitrogen, and yet there is still a thermal gradient, and heat is still transferred down there (to warmer regions) by non-radiative processes.
There would also by a thermal gradient in an insulated, sealed cylinder of pure nitrogen. Consider what happens in the thermosphere. Is the only absorption and re-emission up there by carbon dioxide etc? I seriously doubt it. My postulate is that incident Solar radiation does in fact excite some molecules to exceptionally high energy levels comparable with those associated with UV and visible light. The same may happen to a very small percentage of molecules in the troposphere of any planet, I suggest. These molecules may re-emit similar wavelengths and/or share the energy by diffusion with neighbouring air molecules. So I really don’t believe there is any such thing as a non-radiating atmosphere, but even if there were it would exhibit the -g/Cp temperature gradient. The level of the plot would still be determined by the need for radiative equilibrium, and so that would indeed occur at the surface, but the thought experiment is irrelevant.
Hence, when considering the effect of so-called greenhouse gases, I would suggest that a better thought experiment would be to postulate Earth’s atmosphere as having only, say one-third as much water vapour and no other GH gases. So I ask you, would the surface then be warmer or cooler than it is? I say warmer, because the gradient (approaching the dry adiabatic lapse rate) would be steeper, as you would agree. But because of the autonomous balancing of radiative flux, the temperature plot must rotate around some intermediate altitude, whether that be 5Km, or as I calculate using T^4 and integration, about 3.5Km. Because the plot rotates thus, the surface end is lower.. And because I say that surface temperatures are primarily “supported” by the underlying thermal plot, I deduce that the surface would be cooler. A study published on PSI (in the Appendix of the paper “Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures”) confirms that, for inland tropical cities below 1,200m altitude, mean daily maximum and minimum temperatures (adjusted to an altitude of 600m) are cooler in the more moist regions.
Water vapour has a net cooling effect, because the slowing of radiative cooling of the surface is only marginal and is dominated by the over-riding fact that water vapour lowers the surface end of the supporting thermal plot by several degrees.
Now to Venus. Although the incident radiation at the Venus TOA is indeed about double that reaching Earth, it is not of the order of the required 16,100W/m^2 to raise the Venus surface to 730K. The temperature does in fact rise and fall about 5 degrees between the four-month long Venus day and night periods, so there is indeed some additional thermal energy added to the surface each Venus morning. But, it would appear that you are assuming that radiation from the cooler Venus atmosphere can in fact add thermal energy to the far hotter Venus surface. In fact you are multiplying the energy received into the top of the atmosphere in order to “acquire” 16,100W/m^2 on the other side of the atmosphere where it meets the surface. I’m sorry, but I have to disagree. My reasons are much the same as those in the paper “Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics” published in March 2012 on the PSI site and several other websites. What I have been saying to my students (for nearly 50 years now) is that a “system comprises interdependent components, as even Wikipedia explains in the linked article. And, after all, the Second Law is talking about a system. If on earth radiation from a small region in the atmosphere were to strike a small region of a warmer surface then I consider that to be a complete system. If there were any thermal energy actually transferred to the surface, then that energy does not “remember” that it came from radiation, so it can exit by conduction. I see no interdepence between two components of the one system in this scenario, I agree with Prof Claes Johnson (and most others at PSI) that radiation from a cooler body can only slow down that component of cooling by a warmer body which is itself by radiation. So back radiation from a cooler atmosphere does indeed slow radiative cooling of a warmer surface, but not non-radiative cooling. And it can never have its electro-magnetic energy converted to thermal energy in a warmer target. The non-radiative cooling is free to accelerate and perhaps compensate for slowing of radiative cooling. The electro-magnetic energy in the radiation is not converted to thermal energy, but is instead used for some of the “SBL quota” of radiation by the surface. So the surface does not have to use as much of its own thermal energy to generate that radiation. Hence much of the radiation from the surface is not transferring its own thermal energy to the atmosphere, but rather just re-emitting the back radiation in a process which looks like scattering, and which physicists are starting to call “pseudo scattering.”
Now, all of the above paragraph has little relevance to the non-radiative process which I have described and which you have ignored in your comment. So please tell me how you think the energy gets down into the atmosphere of Uranus and why it stays there. The thermal gradient in the atmosphere of Uranus is indeed matching the -g/Cp value, but there is no upward convection from any surface heated by direct insolation, and virtually no intra-atmospheric radiation down there either.
It’s one thing to agree that temperature gradients exist in all planetary atmospheres, but quite another to accept that the mechanism I have described in which heat is transferred up the thermal gradient by non-radiative processes actually can occur. Do you or do you not agree, Jeff?
This process is what “supports” the temperatures in the atmospheres, and even in the crust and mantle of Earth, where the same -g/Cp gradients can be observed. Loschmidt was right about these gradients in solids, liquids and gases. Anthony Watts got it wrong in the article that tried to rebut PSI member Dr Hans Jelbring’s paper about the gravity effect. The wire outside the cylinder in the WUWT article also has a temperature gradient, and so it does not conduct heat all the way back to the top. There is no continuous energy flow, and poor old Roderich Graeff got his physics in a muddle when he incorrectly multiplied by the degrees of freedom and thought he had invented a “gravity machine.” Pity he had no formal education in physics, as he admits. But his experiments’ were done well and some of them (without extra particles inserted) can probably be consider empirical evidence of the gravity-induced thermal gradient.
Sorry, the third paragraph may be confusing because half way through I started talking about how water vapour lowers the surface end of the thermal plot and how this leads to lower supported temperatures. Hence if there were only a third as much water vapour there would be warmer surface temperatures than at present.
Now Jeff, all your responses so far have not been addressing the main points that I am making which relate to the “new paradigm” which is all about non-radiative processes playing the key role in supporting warmer temperatures at the base of the atmosphere which slow and even stop the cooling of the surface in the pre-dawn hours each morning. We know that the base of the atmosphere can cool much more quickly, because we can observe this in the afternoon of a hot day. But it does not keep cooling at that rate all through the night, and I say this is because all the thermal energy in the whole troposphere is available to flow downwards (by the process I have described) and thus support the temperature at the base of the atmosphere and, consequently, also slow the rate of cooling of the surface as the temperature gap narrows.
Please focus on discussing this issue, even if it means you may need to re-read all the above comments. If that’s not enough, then read “Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures” and the article on the “21st Century new paradigm shift” which you’ll find on the Principia Scientific International website to which you appear to have blocked links.
There is no need to “educate” me in standard IPCC and greenhouse conjectures, net radiation effects and the like because I’ve probably studied all that every bit as much as you may have. What I am talking about is altogether different.
See, there is so much language here that it is impossible to work with. I can argue 20 different points here and get nowhere. I don’t agree with your numbers for venus but lets get to the crux if we can.
The second law as it pertains to radiation: ” I agree with Prof Claes Johnson (and most others at PSI) that radiation from a cooler body can only slow down that component of cooling by a warmer body which is itself by radiation. So back radiation from a cooler atmosphere does indeed slow radiative cooling of a warmer surface, but not non-radiative cooling. And it can never have its electro-magnetic energy converted to thermal energy in a warmer target.”
I don’t agree with Claes, but I do enjoy the puzzle he promotes. My hypothesis is that Roy Spencer and Anthony Watts seem to have missed that the bulk math of heat transfer in Claes’s proposal is the same as the bulk transfer in standard physics. The theory doesn’t fail there. What I would like to know is if you recognize that “slowing down radiation” vs “adding electro-magnetic energy” results in the same net value of added energy to the cooler object.
We cross-posted, and may do so again.
The problem with PSI is that we cannot have a discussion when we cannot at least nail down the scientific differences on something as basic as the second law of thermodynamics. You cannot contradict the second law without explanation. I have never met a single PSI individual who can accurately explain the classical version of the second law and then define the differences. I can define the standard version of the second law very succinctly in my own terms, because I understand it. It makes perfect sense. What I really want is a PSI person to do the same, and then explain the differences in opinion without getting into global warming which is a more complex subject. How is it that you expect anything different when you disagree with the standard understanding of a basic rule of thermodynamics?
I repeat, I am not here to discuss either radiation or PSI opinions. If you want to learn about ground-breaking considerations regarding how non-radiative processes transfer thermal energy to lower warmer regions in planetary atmospheres (as must be the case for Uranus) then you will need to read and understand all that I have spent quite a bit of my time writing above.
I am not contradicting the Second Law in any way shape or fashion. I showed you a statement of it which refers to a system, and I showed you a definition about how a system has one or more interdependent components. If you want to discuss interdependency, then fine, I’m happy to diverge briefly from the topic I’m talking about. But none of that is relevant to what I am talking about, namely the process in the Second Law whereby thermodynamic equilibrium evolves spontaneously. So far you show absolutely no comprehension of the point I am making.
Nailing down the scientific differences is exactly what I (a PSI member) wish to do with you, right here and now, so answer the question about an Earth with one-third as much water vapour and no other GH gases.
All these thought experiments regarding the supposed possibility of a non-radiating atmosphere are unrealistic for a start. Consider the 83% hydrogen and 15% helium atmosphere on Uranus. It is estimated that the uppermost layers of the atmosphere do indeed re-emit virtually all the absorbed 3W/m^2 of incident radiation. I seriously doubt that all this radiation is done by the sprinkling of methane in that atmosphere. Below that upper layer you have something very much like your pure nitrogen, and yet there is still a thermal gradient, and heat is still transferred down there (to warmer regions) by non-radiative processes.
There would also by a thermal gradient in an insulated, sealed cylinder of pure nitrogen. Consider what happens in the thermosphere. Is the only absorption and re-emission up there by carbon dioxide etc? I seriously doubt it. My postulate is that incident Solar radiation does in fact excite some molecules to exceptionally high energy levels comparable with those associated with UV and visible light. The same may happen to a very small percentage of molecules in the troposphere of any planet, I suggest. These molecules may re-emit similar wavelengths and/or share the energy by diffusion with neighbouring air molecules. So I really don’t believe there is any such thing as a non-radiating atmosphere, but even if there were it would exhibit the -g/Cp temperature gradient. The level of the plot would still be determined by the need for radiative equilibrium, and so that would indeed occur at the surface, but the thought experiment is irrelevant.
Hence, when considering the effect of so-called greenhouse gases, I would suggest that a better thought experiment would be to postulate Earth’s atmosphere as having only, say one-third as much water vapour and no other GH gases. So I ask you, would the surface then be warmer or cooler than it is? I say warmer, because the gradient (approaching the dry adiabatic lapse rate) would be steeper, as you would agree. But because of the autonomous balancing of radiative flux, the temperature plot must rotate around some intermediate altitude, whether that be 5Km, or as I calculate using T^4 and integration, about 3.5Km. Because the plot rotates thus, the surface end is lower.. And because I say that surface temperatures are primarily “supported” by the underlying thermal plot, I deduce that the surface would be cooler. A study published on PSI (in the Appendix here) confirms that, for inland tropical cities below 1,200m altitude, mean daily maximum and minimum temperatures (adjusted to an altitude of 600m) are cooler in the more moist regions.
Water vapour has a net cooling effect, because the slowing of radiative cooling of the surface is only marginal and is dominated by the over-riding fact that water vapour lowers the surface end of the supporting thermal plot by several degrees.
Now to Venus. Although the incident radiation at the Venus TOA is indeed about double that reaching Earth, it is not of the order of the required 16,100W/m^2 to raise the Venus surface to 730K. The temperature does in fact rise and fall about 5 degrees between the four-month long Venus day and night periods, so there is indeed some additional thermal energy added to the surface each Venus morning. But, it would appear that you are assuming that radiation from the cooler Venus atmosphere can in fact add thermal energy to the far hotter Venus surface. In fact you are multiplying the energy received into the top of the atmosphere in order to “acquire” 16,100W/m^2 on the other side of the atmosphere where it meets the surface. I’m sorry, but I have to disagree. My reasons are much the same as those in the paper “Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics” published in March 2012 on the PSI site and several other websites. What I have been saying to my students (for nearly 50 years now) is that a “system comprises interdependent components, as even Wikipedia explains in the linked article. And, after all, the Second Law is talking about a system. If on earth radiation from a small region in the atmosphere were to strike a small region of a warmer surface then I consider that to be a complete system. If there were any thermal energy actually transferred to the surface, then that energy does not “remember” that it came from radiation, so it can exit by conduction. I see no interdepence between two components of the one system in this scenario, I agree with Prof Claes Johnson (and most others at PSI) that radiation from a cooler body can only slow down that component of cooling by a warmer body which is itself by radiation. So back radiation from a cooler atmosphere does indeed slow radiative cooling of a warmer surface, but not non-radiative cooling. And it can never have its electro-magnetic energy converted to thermal energy in a warmer target. The non-radiative cooling is free to accelerate and perhaps compensate for slowing of radiative cooling. The electro-magnetic energy in the radiation is not converted to thermal energy, but is instead used for some of the “SBL quota” of radiation by the surface. So the surface does not have to use as much of its own thermal energy to generate that radiation. Hence much of the radiation from the surface is not transferring its own thermal energy to the atmosphere, but rather just re-emitting the back radiation in a process which looks like scattering, and which physicists are starting to call “pseudo scattering.”
Now, all of the above paragraph has little relevance to the non-radiative process which I have described and which you have ignored in your comment. So please tell me how you think the energy gets down into the atmosphere of Uranus and why it stays there. The thermal gradient in the atmosphere of Uranus is indeed matching the -g/Cp value, but there is no upward convection from any surface heated by direct insolation, and virtually no intra-atmospheric radiation down there either.
It’s one thing to agree that temperature gradients exist in all planetary atmospheres, but quite another to accept that the mechanism I have described in which heat is transferred up the thermal gradient by non-radiative processes actually can occur. Do you or do you not agree, Jeff?
This process is what “supports” the temperatures in the atmospheres, and even in the crust and mantle of Earth, where the same -g/Cp gradients can be observed. Loschmidt was right about these gradients in solids, liquids and gases. Anthony Watts got it wrong in the article that tried to rebut PSI member Dr Hans Jelbring’s paper about the gravity effect. The wire outside the cylinder in the WUWT article also has a temperature gradient, and so it does not conduct heat all the way back to the top. There is no continuous energy flow, and poor old Roderich Graeff got his physics in a muddle when he incorrectly multiplied by the degrees of freedom and thought he had invented a “gravity machine.” Pity he had no formal education in physics, as he admits. But his experiments’ were done well and some of them (without extra particles inserted) can probably be consider empirical evidence of the gravity-induced thermal gradient.
Even though irrelevant to the non-radiative process I am describing, I will not leave your questions unanswered. You asked “What I would like to know is if you recognize that “slowing down radiation” vs “adding electro-magnetic energy” results in the same net value of added energy to the cooler object.” Yes, as in the paper “Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics” the mathematics gives the same answer regarding the (net) transfer of thermal energy from the warmer body to the cooler one. But the physical significance is different because, as already explained above, non-radiative cooling cannot be affected when there is no actual transfer of thermal energy. Also, the process is very strictly only one of slowing radiative cooling. Something else has to raise the surface temperature to a higher level first, because back radiation only slows cooling. Hence back radiation cannot warm the Venus surface by 5 degrees during its sunlit period, and nor can direct incident Solar radiation of only about 10W/m^2 getting through the atmosphere to the surface.
The only thing that can actually add thermal energy to the Venus surface is the non-radiative process I have been describing and which you avoid talking about like the plague.
You’ll get nowhere with me by avoiding questions or just dismissing what I have spent hundreds of dollars worth of my unpaid time writing herein. You could save me a lot of time by reading the paper on planetary temperatures, though be warned it Is 20 pages.
I will move your comment to the next thread for answers.
You disagreed with my Venus analysis, did you? Well, imagine just a few seconds of sunshine striking the Venus atmosphere above its equator in the middle of its daytime. Energy with a flux of about 2,600W/m^2 reaches the planet, and well over half is reflected back to space. Let’s say that some energy with a flux of the order of 1,000W/m^2 continues down into the atmosphere for those few seconds. So I am talking about a fixed quantity of energy that enters the atmosphere in those few seconds, and we will ignore other energy entering before or after that period. Calculations show that only about 2.5% of the original energy makes it through to the surface, so it seems you are counting on radiation from the atmosphere to boost this somewhat. Now, you seem to think that somehow the net effect is that amount of energy that entered the atmosphere in those few seconds can come out at the base of the atmosphere and into the surface with a flux of about 16,100W/m^2 in order to start heating it from, say 725K to 730K. Please explain how you multiply the incoming energy by a factor of 16.
Jeff,
Climategate emails and documents were the key to solving an intriguing 63-year scientific mystery.
On pages 153-154 of his autobiography, Sir Fred Hoyle admits that he and his entire circle of astronomers and astrophysicists believed interior of the Sun to be mostly iron (Fe) before the Second World War ended [1]. Their opinions abruptly changed, without discussion or debate, in 1946 [2].
Climategate emails and documents – released in late Nov 2009 – provided the key to solve both parts of this sixty-three year solar mystery (2009 – 1946 = 63 yr):
_ 1. Why the “official” composition of the Sun suddenly changed from iron (Fe) to hydrogen (H) in 1946, and
_ 2. Why that “official” dogma remained in vogue, despite hundreds of measurements and observations that directly falsified it during the Space Age, e.g., http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1983Data.htm
Now we can see why science and society have been spinning increasingly closer to disaster since the Second World War ended with the release of energy (E) stored as mass (m) from the cores of uranium (U) and plutonium (Pu) atoms to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945.
_ 3. Fear and loathing of humans with knowledge of nuclear energy convinced world leaders to try to save the world and themselves from possible nuclear annihilation by forming the United Nations on 24 Oct 1945 and sacrificing the integrity of: a.) Government science, and b.) Constitutional limits on government
_ 4. Scientists – filled with guilt and remorse for having used nuclear energy in this manner – agreed to hide the fact that the same energy that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasakin is the source of energy in the core of the Sun, and
_ 5. Scientists were blinded to this common truth of science and spirituality: The core of the Sun is the Creator, Destroyer and Preserver of all atoms, lives and worlds in the solar system – a volume of space that is now larger than the combined volumes of ten billion, billion Earths 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 Earths.
With deep regrets,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
[1] Fred Hoyle, Home Is Where the Wind Blows, (University Science Books, 441 pages, published on April 1, 1994): http://www.amazon.com/Home-Where-Wind-Blows-Cosmologists/dp/093570227X
[2] Fred Hoyle, “The chemical composition of the stars,” Monthly Notices Royal Astronomical Society 106, 255-259 (1946); “The synthesis of elements from hydrogen,” Monthly Notices Royal Astronomical Society 106, 343-383 (1946).
Here’s a CSPAN News video that shows NASA belatedly releasing data from the 1995 Galileo probe of Jupiter – in 1998 – data that confirmed the interior of the Sun is mostly iron (Fe), . . . as Fred Hoyle and his circle of astronomers and astrophysicists believed before the Second World War ended
Summary: Data from the 1995 Galileo probe of Jupiter confirmed [1] the 1983 conclusion from analysis of samples collected in the 1969 Apollo Mission to the Moon [2], and reaffirmed the assumption of mainstream astronomers and astrophysicists before the Second World War ended [See above reference #2]: The interior of the Sun is mostly iron (Fe), as University of Chicago Professor William Harkins concluded in 1917 from wet chemical analysis of hundreds of ordinary meteorites.
[1] “Isotopic ratios in Jupiter confirm intra-solar diffusion”, Meteoritics and Planetary Science 33, A97, 5011 (1998).
Click to access 5011.pdf
Click to access windleranalysis.pdf
[2] “Solar abundances of the elements”, Meteoritics 18, 209-222 (1983); http://tinyurl.com/224kz4
Click to access SolarAbundances.pdf
[3] W. D. Harkins, “The evolution of the elements and the stability of complex atoms”, J. American Chemical Society 39, 856-879 (1917) .
The vast bulk of the atmosphere is composed of N2 and O2, non-radiative non-GHGs. They are unable to dispose of sensible heat except through evaporative loss from the top of the atmosphere. Only GHGs can radiate energy to space. Hence, in their absence, the atmosphere would heat until it could “boil” away enough mass to counterbalance solar irradiation.
Hence GHGs are cooling agents which preserve atmospheric mass. The Warmist (and Luke-warmist) positions are 180° wrong. As usual.
Brian,
Non radiative gases aren’t mirrors. In the absence of GHG, the planetary surface radiation would emit directly to space. Heat in the atmosphere would transfer to the surface of the planet by conduction keeping the ground level atmosphere at surface temp. Since emission to space is unresisted, the net ground level temp is known to be cooler than without GHG.