Richard Tol
“It is pretty damn obvious that there are positive impacts of climate change, even though we are not always allowed to talk about them,” he said. ”
Article here: Simple reality just the way normal people like it
Richard Tol
“It is pretty damn obvious that there are positive impacts of climate change, even though we are not always allowed to talk about them,” he said. ”
Article here: Simple reality just the way normal people like it
the Air Vent 
The truth seems to be, as Steven Goddard reported recently,
“There isn’t one shred of evidence or even a pretense of science remaining in the global warming scam.”
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/time-to-move-on/
Now Lovelock acknowledges that environmentalism has become a religion.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/30/james-lovelock-environmentalism-religion
What would Saturday be without snipping a Doug Cotton comment?
oooooohhhhhhhh
So tempted to post a smart ass response
A nicer Saturday?
While its fair enough to compare the benefits and otherwise of warmer vs cooler climates – it is not the whole picture. We also need to look at the way this outcome is achieved.
The way that the ‘green folk’ want to bring the temperature down is by making large cuts in the use of carbon based fuels. This translates directly into our energy supply. So the comparison should also look at the the reduction in benefits to society of energy. Over half of the world’s electricity comes from coal, nearly all vehicles run on either petrol or diesel, and so on. An adequate supply of electricity to our homes, businesses, hospitals, schools, etc, the value to society would be nigh on immeasurable. Our society as we presently know it, is not possible without reliable and efficient energy. It is time that this was factored into the cost / benefit analysis too.
That is the giant elephant in the corner. While it is blatantly obvious that there are good effects of warmer climate, it is equally obvious that restricting energy is a highly, massively, powerfully (insert adjective here) destructive and damaging reaction. All the good and healthy things that have come from a powerful energy industry and the left has demonized them and business in general to the point where countries still go Venezuela – thinking that it is a good idea to adopt those policies.
Information control is the real problem. The governments control all messages to the point where people don’t understand the world they live in. Factoring in benefits of the industry being attacked, is difficult because that attack is what really drives the funding of climate change. AGW “science” is fundamentally a mechanism for increasing government control. Control over energy, the thing which also fundamentally changed society, is nearly as powerful as control over information by itself. In reality, expensive energy limits the ability of an individual to control their own life. Travel, construction, material movement etc…
Another aspect of the elephant (trunk versus tusk, that sort of thing…) is the whole antique debate between advocates of centrally planned efforts and what James Hansen and others sneer at while describing “Business As Usual”. BAU means that I spend my dollar and you spend yours. Typically both of us spend as wisely as we know how, and buy things that fulfilled at least two goals… tastes great and less filling, a floor wax and a dessert topping, whatever. Planned efforts, the “moral equivalent of war” collect my dollar, rake off a percentage for the collectors, rake off another percentage for the planners, and spend whatever’s left on the one existentially important issue: war, warming, snail darters, cow farts, again, whatever. The other difference is when you and I and drunken sailors run out of dollars, (or very shortly afterwards) we generally stop spending. Great planners with the power of nations behind them and the guns of the collectors around them feel no such constraint.
Even were I to completely buy into the diagnosis of CAGW, the proposed therapy of giving up BAU would leave me vigorously seeking a second opinion.
I liked that “Going Venezuela” meme. A new kind of madness.
You know, we had a little bitty, less than 2000 gallon oil spill in the great lakes (they call em great because they are big) and our politicians are making it into a big issue about safety and health. The oil doesn’t even do anything to the environment except go away. There is no attachment between left-think and common sense, it is all power and politics.
Ross McKitrick has done that.
http://www.rossmckitrick.com/index.html
You’ll have to find the specific paper on your own.
When the cost benefit analysis is done, it come out to be a negative and a drain on the limited resources that could have been used for something more serious and actually tangible.
“When the cost benefit analysis is done, it come out to be a negative and a drain on the limited resources that could have been used for something more serious and actually tangible.”
That’s my opinion, not Ross’s
Historically, warming has always meant boom times, while cooling makes for famine, war, and disaster.
The argument that planets are still cooling off, or are somehow generating internal energy that maintains their existing temperature is not valid because …
(1) Every planet cools on its dark side at a rate which could easily have enabled it to cool right down (even in its core) to about the temperature supported by any external radiation. Venus cools about 5 degrees in 4 months, Earth cools by about 10 degrees in 12 hours etc. In other words, if the Sun existed but emitted no significant energy, it would appear that all planets in our Solar System could have cooled down close to absolute zero.
(2) So it must be energy from the Sun which is maintaining the existing temperatures on all planets and satellite moons, even down to their cores, and it must be doing so by raising the temperatures back up again by the amount equal to the cooling the night before. Why, for example, is the core of our Moon so much hotter than the surface ever is?
(3) Hence we require an explanation as to how the necessary energy gets into the lower troposphere, the surface and even below the surface of a planet or moon in order to maintain the current temperatures. In general, radiation from a colder atmosphere cannot actually add net thermal energy to a warmer surface and thus contribute to raising its temperature, because that would decrease entropy. This is established by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
(4) The original NASA net energy budgets for Earth did not show radiative energy transfers by the atmosphere to the surface, but they then found that the radiation from the Sun alone does not explain the mean surface temperature when using Stefan-Boltzmann calculations. Such calculations are inappropriate anyway, because what is effectively “the surface” is a very thin layer (let’s say 1cm thick) and about 70% of this thin 1cm layer is transparent water. A black or gray body is not transparent by definition, and so S-B should not be applied to a thin 1cm layer of transparent water. The mean temperature of the ocean thermocline (all of which is absorbing the solar radiation but not back radiation) is about 8 to 10 degrees below the mean surface temperature.
(5) Whilst for Earth climatologists and IPCC authors then claimed to overcome this shortage of direct solar radiation by adding back radiation, you cannot possibly imagine that this would “work out” on Venus. Such back radiation cannot participate in any raising of the temperature of the Venus surface and, even if you think it could, you would have to explain how it could be over 16,000 watts per square meter, somehow multiplying the energy in the incident solar radiation (20 watts per square meter at the surface) by nearly 1,000-fold. If you shine a light such that it reflects multiple times between parallel mirrors, do you create more energy? That is what the radiative greenhouse conjecture is implying can happen with radiation back and forth between the surface and the atmosphere.
(6) Between the base of the nominal Uranus troposphere and the TOA there is a mean thermal gradient which is very close to the usual calculated value (for the “Dry adiabatic lapse rate”) which is the negative quotient of the acceleration due to gravity and the weighted mean specific heat of the gases. On Venus (as on Earth) the effective (environmental) lapse rate (thermal gradient) is reduced by about 25% to 35% by inter-molecular radiation between carbon dioxide molecules on Venus, and water molecules on Earth, together with some release of latent heat on Earth which may play a small part in producing the “wet adiabatic lapse rate” though not the major part. So, why is it so? Is it just a coincidence that the base of the nominal Uranus troposphere is 320K (hotter than Earth’s surface) which is just the right amount for the correct thermal gradient to exist in the 350Km of troposphere above, such that the temperature at the so-called radiating altitude is just right at around 60K? Likewise on Venus and other planets?
” Why, for example, is the core of our Moon so much hotter than the surface ever is?”
The lunar bedrock is at a temperature of 240 Kelvin while the average surface temperature is 197.3 Kelvin.
That is no big deal as the first eight inches of the Moon’s regolith takes care of the temperaure gradient.
If you are talking about the higher temperatures a greater depths below the Moon’s surface, rocks don’t conduct heat very well so it will take billions of years to cool the Moon’s core to match the surface bedrock temperature.
Venus, Item (5),
Sagan in 1967 and 1968 advanced a simple hypothesis to explain the surface temperature on Venus. Today few people remember that. Instead the general public prefers to believe James Hansen’s deranged fairy tales about a “Runaway Greenhouse Effect” that have no scientific basis.
Here is a link to a correction that Sagan made when he realized that Cp (the specific heat of a gas at constant pressure) is a function of pressure:
Just click on the “Send PDF” button:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/doi/10.1086/149625
Uranus, Item (6),
The adiabatic lapse rate is observed in all seven bodies in the solar system that have significant atmosheres.
On Jupiter the lapse rate down to the point that the probe failed was within 0.1 K/km of the theoretical DALR (Dry Adiabatic Lapse Rate). Likewise for Saturn.
On Venus, Earth and Titan the observed lapse rates fall between the dry and wet adiabats.
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/unified-theory-of-climate/
We don’t have probe data for Uranus and Neptune yet but it seems plausible that they will display DALRs like Jupiter and Saturn.
I learned the derivation of the adiabatic lapse rate in high school using Newtonian mechanics/gravity and thermodynamics. It predicts what is obserevd without involving the radiative properties of gases.
I can’t beleive he’s hanging his hat on the dry adiabatic lapse rate. It’s insane, you can find the thing on wiki. I have asked him several times who disagrees with the dry adiabatic lapse rate but he ignores the question.
Jeff,
Apologies. I forgot who “Thinker” is.
No problem for me. I’m glad someone answered him-again. I’ve given up.
You all don’t understand that it is not a “lapsing” process as hot air rises and cools from a hot surface. There is no surface at the base of the nominal Uranus troposphere.
The temperature on Uranus builds up (towards the surface) from the radiating altitude that sets the level of the thermal profile at about 60K near TOA.
It is not just a coincidence that the temperature builds up to the “right” 320K temperature 350Km further down at the base of the troposphere. It follows very closely the-g/Cp gradient because that is the gradient we expect at thermodynamic equilibrium, the state of maximum entropy. It all happens at the molecular level, not due to “hot air rising and cooling” conjectures.
Correction “towards the surface” should be “towards the base of the nominal troposphere”
Uranus may have a vaguely defined surface at about a quarter of its radius where the hot solid core (5,000K) transitions to the mantle. Why is this “surface” far hotter than the Venus surface? It’s not because of CO2 – it’s because of the height of the atmosphere above it.
Nikolov and Zeller developed a pressure based theory to explain surface temperature on rocky bodies:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/unified-theory-of-climate/
I tested the N&K equations on gas giants:
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/unified-theory-of-climate/
The predicted temperature for Uranus at a pressure of one bar was 67 Kelvin compared with the observed 72 Kelvin.
Robinson & Catlin have developed a model that predicts a temperature in close agreement with observations:
Click to access Robinson2014_0.1bar_Tropopause.pdf
April Fools Day is over, so now we face reality, because the world has been fooled too long with garbage such as Wikipedia promulgates about there being a radiative greenhouse effect on Venus, when even all the solar flux reaching the top of the Venus atmosphere could not raise the Venus surface temperature. You cannot expect to get out from the base of the troposphere many times the energy flux that entered at the top.
This is what really happens on Venus, if you’re curious and want to learn …
Firstly, you need to know that the gravito-thermal effect is confirmed empirically by the Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube, as I’ve now explained in the talk page for the vortex tube in the second note here
This effect is what can be used to explain “heat creep” which is downward convection (diffusion and advection) driven by a temperature inversion which disrupts a prior state of thermodynamic equilibrium, that being the same as hydrostatic equilibrium.
That is the process by which the Venus surface receives thermal energy and that process maintains existing temperatures in all atmospheres, surfaces and sub-surface regions in all planets and satellite moons in the Solar System.
While I agree with much of your theory I am more convinced by physical models such as recently published by Robinson & Catlin. Please take the time to read their letter (Nature Geoscience).
R&C’s see Venus as an anomaly. The other six bodies with substantial atmospheres have well defined tropopauses where the sign of the lapse rate reverses at a pressure of ~0.1 bar. On Venus the negative temperature gradient is preserved into the stratosphere with an inflection where the tropopause should be.
R&C present calculations to explain the anomalous stratosphere of Venus in terms of stability criteria. The final 23 pages of the letter show the equations used to create their model so anyone can check their work. That alone convinces me that here are a couple of real scientists whose behavior contrasts sharply with charlatans who use the courts to block access to their calculations.
Who are those charlatans? Thomas Stocker, Michael Mann, the “Hockey Team” and their fellow travellers.
Unfortunately for the “Hockey Team,” Gallopingcamel, they were caught doing much the same thing as the scientists who presented us with Standard Models of stars and nuclei after 1945.
In 1946, George Orwell started writing his warning to the public:
“Nineteen Eighty-Four”
When the truth is out, Wikipedia watch out! An attitude of “we don’t care” may warrant a legal opinion.
When Wikipedia talk pages are edited with comments based on valid physics, which point out errors in their various articles, they take a “we don’t care” attitude. They deliberately introduce greenhouse talk, even in an article about Venus, where the surface temperature cannot possibly be raised by the small amount of radiation reaching it. All they do is cite 1980’s literature which contains nothing but assertive assumptions that the carbon dioxide atmosphere is “obviously” the cause of the high temperatures.
I’m just making a suggestion as to what I believe Wikipedia administration ought to find out for themselves from their lawyers, because I don’t think they can hide behind the cover of an encyclopedia (in the eyes of the law) and excuse the propagation of fictitious propaganda about the greenhouse effect, now disputed by hundreds (if not thousands) of scientists and academics. But I’m not a lawyer and I’m not suggesting that I would be involved, unless called to address some committee investigation or court hearing.
Just suppose, for example, when the truth comes out about the carbon dioxide political hoax, that large companies (affected by elecricity and carbon tax costs) pool their funds to mount a global class action against those parties who have contributed significantly in the promulgation of biased “information” likely to be read by voters and politicians alike, and likely to have led to corruption in numerous ways pertaining to research funding, and also likely to have wasted many billions of taxpayer funds.
The radiative greenhouse hypothesis is false. It is a part of a sinister political agenda. It does not stand up to the rigors of valid physics theory, such as (ironically) WP does also publish. Nitrogen and oxygen hold about 98% of the energy in the Earth’s atmosphere, and they slow the surface cooling. But the cooling stops at night where the gravitationally induced thermal gradient supports the surface temperature. Carbon dioxide and water vapor cool by radiating energy (mostly from nitrogen and oxygen) out of the atmosphere, and also lowering the gradient so that lower surface temperatures result. The key fallacy in the radiative greenhouse effect is assuming that all the radiation from the surface is transferring thermal energy out of the surface, when in fact most of it is just scattering the back radiation.
I agree: The deception is serious, and worldwide. The historical facts are these:
Through the study of dog’s responses to food, Pavlov discovered the powerful influence of feeding appetites on the behavior of animals.
After WWII, world leaders realized that humans might destroy the whole earth, including world leaders themselves, via nuclear annihilation. They took totalitarian control by:
1. Forming the United Nations on 24 Oct 1945, and
2. Hiding information about energy in cores of atoms and stars in 1946.
The good news is that the benevolent force at the core of the Sun – the force that made our elements and sustained the origin and evolution of life – is still in total control of planet Earth [1].
The bad news for egotistical world leaders is that acceptance of reality [1] will probably be as painful for them as for a camel “passing through the eye of a needle!”
1. “A Journey to the core of the Sun,” – Chapter 2: Acceptance of Reality“
Click to access Chapter_2.pdf
Yes Omanuel, I agree about Aston’s neutron repulsion being the source of energy in the Sun, and the big cover up it had is not unlike the cover up of the gravito-thermal effect. .
Furthermore, it is the Sun which maintains all temperatures in the Solar System. Planets are not cooling off. Any spot on their equator warms a little by day, and cools the same amount at night. Gravity sets up the thermal gradients all the way to the core, enabling downward convection and conduction which is re-establishing disrupted thermodynamic equilibrium in accord with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Thanks, WikiWatcher.
The dangerous reality for us today is our lack of preparation to safely harness and use nuclear energy for the survival of society if the Sun enters another cyclic quiet period (Maunder Minimum):
1. Aston’s nuclear packing fraction correctly predicts nuclear stability
2. Von Weizsacker’s nuclear binding energy does NOT tell stability
3. After 1945, nuclear physics textbooks replaced Aston with von Weivzsacker, probably to hide the source of energy that causes fission: NEUTRON REPULSION !
Politically motivated climate science is humorous.
Politically motivated nuclear physics is dangerous !