Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[aleCcowaN]

Several of you above have lamented the fact that when you link to a contrarian site, it indirectly boosts their PageRank. Well, in HTML you can stop Google from following links for this purpose by setting rel="nofollow" in a link. But the JREF forums use BBCode in these comments, and there is no way to do this using the provided BBCODE [url] tag. But I just had a look at the BBCode reference for this site, and they do provide a special code for this purpose: nfURL! You use it like this:

[nfurl]http://climateaudit.org/[/nfurl]

Here it is in action, as a test:

[nfurl]http://climateaudit.org/[/nfurl]

I checked the generated source, and there is a rel="nofollow" in the link

Knock yourselves out! Unfortunately, the BBCode variant of a link that includes explanatory text does not seem to be supported:

[nfURL=http://climateaudit.org/]"nofollow" linky to McI's site[/nfurl]

It's easier than that. Here's the same quotation

We've already established that this is not the case.
Freeman Dyson.
Consider also...Richard Lindzen, Harrison Schmitt, Ivar Giaever, David Evans (Whom I just found while seeking the Giaever video). I thought it was interesting that he observed (as I did in this discussion earlier) that the stability of the Earth's climate over long periods implies that dominant feedbacks must be negative (damping).

without the links, and that's it. Simply always sanitize the quotes by using "remove link" feature in the editor.

About "no follow" an other robot standards, Googlebot and others will comply but that doesn't mean the system is blind to the link. As Google and others don't reveal their methods to avoid artificial boost of pages in their indexes, the conservative approach is just don't link what you don't want to be enhanced. The forum editor is straightforward and simple.

If you wanted to place a link to some trash site, you just can write down the url as simple text:

climateaudit.o[delete this]rg/multiproxy-pdfs/.

(don't leave the http:// part as the editor automatically converts it into an working link, and wrong links diminish the Page rank of this very webpage)

Every person who is serious about reading the linked material will take an instant to copy-paste, focus and delete.

 

[aleCcowaN]

...

You'all insist it's "basic physics"...

And you alone continue to twist things and exploit the wrong meaning of "basic" in "the fundamental physics is rock solid". You are doing it again now because it allows you to continue spamming what follows:

... as though only ignorance of elementary school science prevents me from accepting the theory, but Dyson, Giaever, Lindzen, et. al, certainly understand "basic physics" better than anyone in this discussion, so this insistence that "basic physics" implies CO2 causes measured global warming looks like psychological extortion to me and it only discredites the voice of people who make that argument.

and by feigning you didn't understand well the first, second, ... and umpteenth time, you can easily slander posters here by accusing them of saying about Lindzen what we're saying about you.

I reckon that the same way I'm here to practice my English, you're probably here to practice your dialectics as the phrase «so this insistence that "basic physics" implies CO2 causes measured global warming looks like psychological extortion to me and it only discredites the voice of people who make that argument.» has four breakages in logic -in fact, it doesn't make any sense as a whole- but it looks so deep and felt that you can easily sell it to housewives during the commercials of Days of Our Lives. C'mon, nobody is deceived here by those cheap techniques.

If ithe effect of increased CO₂ is not dominated by variations in the solar flux, yes. Dropping one additional heated BB into the swimming pool will raise the temperature in the pool.

And yet you repeat your physical travesty. It looks like you are running out of distorted arguments to deviate attention to your anti-physics (remember it's you and not Lindzen who ignores it, and avoid us in future posts the litany of answering again and again that knowing basic physics don't lead to Lindzen's conclusions to be any right). Your twist this time is retouching the image and making your calorimetric trace, played by your tiny little BB, even smaller in front of an augmented atmosphere, represented here not by a flask but by a whole swimming pool while you try to sell again your "it's the sun" bull.

Your well chained dialectics towards propaganda, even within a single phrase, are clearly spotted against the dark background of your lack of physical knowledge and your lack of variety. In that point, your participation here is clearly of a lower quality when compared with other pseudo-sceptics that have posted here. And this would be attached to your real in case you had used it.

 

[Halsu]

For example, since "temperature" of a vacuum means nothing, everything "traps heat".

In this context, we mean that the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere reduce the flux of heat that radiates from the surface to the space, thus increasing the temperature of the atmosphere.

Greenhouses work by preventing convection from moving air that's heated in daytime away from the surface. That's not how CO₂ affects the relation between sunlight and shaded thermometers in open air.

Greenhouses work both by preventing convection but also to a smaller degree by reducing radiation of heat, as far as i know, but that's of course not too important. Real greenhouses are not a great analogy to the atmospheric greenhouse effect, but the name sticks... this is why i added "as described by mainstream scientists".

Parameters (e.g., the strength of feedbacks) change when the theory changes. Variables change when measurements (e.g., solar flux, CO₂ concentration) change.

I changed the wording accordingly.

Equilibrium is a problem. This is a confession I made from the outset. Remember? "I'm still trying to understand how the temperature can depend on anything other than solar output and the radius of the orbit"? Obviously other factors matter (I can feel the difference between day and night, sea level and 13,000 feet, summer and winter).

I think you make it much more complicated than it actually is. Let's try another analogy:

You stand outside in chilly weather, wearing a shirt and thin coat. You have a thermometer in your shirt pocket. The reading is stable, and somewhere between your body temperature and that of the air surrounding you. This is equilibrium number one.

Then you change the jacket to a much thicker one. As you are now better insulated, you will get warmer, and the reading on the thermometer will rise, but not indefinitely. At some point, a new balance will be reached, and the thermometer will stabilize to a new, higher reading. This is equilibrium two.

And that's all there's to it, really.

You'all insist it's "basic physics" as though only ignorance of elementary school science prevents me from accepting the theory, but Dyson, Giaever, Lindzen, et. al, certainly understand "basic physics" better than anyone in this discussion

The thing is, as far as i know, Dyson, Giaver, Lindzen etc. all in fact do accept the basic physics behind man made global warming. Their argument is not that the basic physics are flawed, but rather that for one reason or another, the net effect of applying those physics is less than what the large majority of specialists in the field have estimated.

If ithe effect of increased CO₂ is not dominated by variations in the solar flux, yes. Dropping one additional heated BB into the swimming pool will raise the temperature in the pool.

I don't know why, but i often have difficulties parsing your sentences - anyway, from all this, i gather that

- You agree that the atmosphere traps heat.
- You agree that there is a greenhouse effect as described by mainstream science and that changes in the strength of the greenhouse effect can change the temperature on earth.
- You agree that there's an energy balance that will always seek a new equilibrium, when variables change.
- You agree that a change in the composition of gasses (like increasing CO2) in the atmosphere changes the strength of the greenhouse effect.
- You agree that a rising concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause global warming.
- You agree that human activity is the main cause for the increase in atmospheric CO2.

Combining the above, we come to the next step: Do you agree that human activity causes global warming?

 

[aleCcowaN]

Halsu, I think we're way past of explanations here. If you want to understand Malcolm's you may need a roll call of his ideas to check against what he said post by post. Imagine there's somebody who thinks:

C02 is a tiny molecule which is scattered in the atmosphere because it's a trace gas. They tell me it heats up with infrared radiation. So it heats up, and what? there's so little of it that it can't do much change in the giant pool of the atmosphere. Meanwhile, lots of "heat" are coming straight from the Sun. Besides, they say that it is an increase of CO2 what causes their warming, so I can easily forget the CO2 that was already there, so it is the increment what they're saying causes warming. But so little heated CO2 that everyday reaches the atmosphere can do little when compared with the Sun, no matter how much heat is trapped in it. And certainly for any to there's a fro, and plants can absorb that extra CO2 and the sea can cast it into rocks and withdraw that extra heat cooling the planet, so, the only permanent thing here is the Sun. An intelligent person I like says that it's the sun and not the CO2 so I rather believe him than believing these antipathetic people.

Take this and compare it to every of Malcolm's mental experiments and every reply to any attempt to teach him the most basic among fundamental physics behind climate change, and then tell me.

 

[Halsu]

Take this and compare it to every of Malcolm's mental experiments and every reply to any attempt to teach him the most basic among fundamental physics behind climate change, and then tell me.

Well, i am in the midst of kind of an experiment here actually - i'm trying to go a tiny bit at the time, have those confirmed and only then move on to the next tiny bit. I want to see what's left of the "contrarian argument" after actually going through each step with someone that's at odds with the mainstream science, and i do my best to do this without losing patience, without being too blunt, and always trying to explain each point clearly, never giving up.

 

[CapelDodger]

Aside from minor issues with words, yes, mostly I agree. For example, since "temperature" of a vacuum means nothing, everything "traps heat".

What does "traps heat" even mean?

Greenhouses work by preventing convection from moving air that's heated in daytime away from the surface.

The Tyndall Effect doesn't, and the Tyndall Effect is the heart of the issue.

That's not how CO₂ affects the relation between sunlight and shaded thermometers in open air.

CO₂ does not affect the relationship between thermometers and air. At all.

Parameters (e.g., the strength of feedbacks) change when the theory changes.

When the theory changes let us know.

Variables change ...

It's in their nature.

... when measurements (e.g., solar flux, CO₂ concentration) change.

No, measurements of variables change when the variables change. That's in the nature of measurements, the point of measurement being to find the current value of a variable.

Equilibrium is a problem.

Which perhaps explains why you sound so unbalanced. (OK, cheap, but come on, who's gonna turn that one up?)

This is a confession I made from the outset. Remember? "I'm still trying to understand how the temperature can depend on anything other than solar output and the radius of the orbit"?

This might help : the effective radiating temperature of the planet depends only on solar output, orbit and albedo. That temperature is found way up in the troposphere where the air becomes so thin that radiated IR gets clean away into space. This is the effective radiating surface of the planet. Add more CO₂ to the air and it has to get that much thinner before the IR can escape, which means that the radiating surface moves higher (as it has).

Down on the surface, a long way below that radiating surface, things are different. Temperatures here depend on how easily heat gets from up to the effective radiating surface, and the Tyndall Effect acts to make this passage more difficult, hence raising temperatures.

 

[CapelDodger]

Well, i am in the midst of kind of an experiment here actually - i'm trying to go a tiny bit at the time, have those confirmed and only then move on to the next tiny bit. I want to see what's left of the "contrarian argument" after actually going through each step with someone that's at odds with the mainstream science, and i do my best to do this without losing patience, without being too blunt, and always trying to explain each point clearly, never giving up.

I can let my patience slip occasionally because I know I have a friend in the Delete key .

 

[aleCcowaN]

Well, i am in the midst of kind of an experiment here actually - i'm trying to go a tiny bit at the time, have those confirmed and only then move on to the next tiny bit. I want to see what's left of the "contrarian argument" after actually going through each step with someone that's at odds with the mainstream science, and i do my best to do this without losing patience, without being too blunt, and always trying to explain each point clearly, never giving up.

Fair enough. Then I'll get back to this in a couple of weeks. Only consider the "possibility" that the subject has goals and values and understanding is not one of them.

 

[bit_pattern]

A light hearted diversion from the conversation. Who doesn't feel like this from time to time:

 

[CapelDodger]

Warmer Temperatures Make New USDA Plant Zone Map Obsolete
http://www.sciencedaily.com/

Gardeners and landscapers may want to rethink their fall tree plantings. Warming temperatures have already made the U.S. Department of Agriculture's new cold-weather planting guidelines obsolete, according to Dr. Nir Krakauer, assistant professor of civil engineering in The City College of New York's Grove School of Engineering.

The new USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map, which predicts which trees and perennials can survive the winter in a given region, was a long time coming. Temperature boundaries shown in the latest version have shifted northward since the last one appeared in 1990. But the true zones have moved even further, according to Professor Krakauer's calculations.

"Over one-third of the country has already shifted half-zones compared to the current release, and over one-fifth has shifted full zones," Professor Krakauer wrote this summer in the journal "Advances in Meteorology."

Professor Krakauer found a weakness in how the agency came up with the zones, however. The USDA averaged annual minimum temperatures over a 30-year span, from 1976 to 2005, but winters have warmed significantly over that period. Zones now average about 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the USDA's 30-year average.

"What is happening is that the winter is warming faster than the summer. Since [my] hardiness temperatures are based on minimum temperatures each year, they are changing faster than the average temperatures," Professor Krakauer said. He found that these lowest yearly temperatures warmed roughly two and a half times faster than the average temperatures.

A similar zoning exercise for temperature-sensitive pests would be interesting to see.

 

[CapelDodger]

A light hearted diversion from the conversation. Who doesn't feel like this from time to time

I don't any more. Something broke in my brain back around when my belief was finally beggared, in my late 20's or so.

 

[CapelDodger]

Greenhouses work both by preventing convection but also to a smaller degree by reducing radiation of heat, as far as i know, but that's of course not too important. Real greenhouses are not a great analogy to the atmospheric greenhouse effect, but the name sticks... .

Perhaps it would unstick if we could popularise the use of Tyndall instead of greenhouse - Tyndall Effect, Tyndall gases. Anything to finally see the end of this hackneyed "OMG! Greenhouses don't work like that! The house of cards has crumbled at the final nail!" **********. Anything. Really. Who do I have to kill? So help me, who do I have to sleep with? Just get it out of my freakin face!

That's how I'd sometimes get before the thing in my brain broke. I don't miss it.

On a serious note, it can provide an opening to the long history and basic physics of the Tyndall Effect early in a conversation which would otherwise go down the same old rut.

Edited, breach of Rule 10.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Locknar

 

[lomiller]

Greenhouses work by preventing convection from moving air that's heated in daytime away from the surface.

Irrelevant, since this isn't the effect greenhouse gasses have nor is it the effect anyone has ever claimed they have. The earth is already a perfect "greenhouse" for convection because no heat can be carried any higher than the top of the earths atmosphere.

I've already explained to you several times how the greenhouse effect in climate science works. Others have explained it as well, so why are you still trying to base your arguments on your own incorrect imaginary version of it?

Once again, since heat cannot escape the atmosphere by either conduction or convection the ONLY way for this energy to leave the atmosphere is by radiation that happens to be in the frequency band absorbed by CO2. The more CO2 the harder it is for energy to escape and the warmer the Earth needs to be for the same amount of energy to escape.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Perhaps it would unstick if we could popularise the use of Tyndall instead of greenhouse - Tyndall Effect, Tyndall gases. Anything to finally see the end of this hackneyed "OMG! Greenhouses don't work like that! The house of cards has crumbled at the final nail!" **********. Anything. Really. Who do I have to kill? So help me, who do I have to sleep with? Just get it out of my freakin face!

That's how I'd sometimes get before the thing in my brain broke. I don't miss it.

On a serious note, it can provide an opening to the long history and basic physics of the Tyndall Effect early in a conversation which would otherwise go down the same old rut.

Edited by Locknar: 

Moderated content removed.

I tend to agree with that, but I tend to avoid naming it Tyndall Effect as it is widely known as strictly causing light scattering in particles and the skies looking blue -or yellowish, reddish at dawn-. Calling them Tyndall gases doesn't explain a iota, and calling it Tyndall gas effect promotes it mixed up with Tyndall effect.

I think I can guess all the distortions that may come from the united estates of denialsphere, like wattsupyourhat, the lone star estate, and similar crowd by exploiting that confusion:

• The sky is blue but the surface doesn't look blue, so what happens in the skies stays in the skies.
• The Tyndall effect depends on the fourth power of the frequency, so you have blue skies and blue irises in melanin-poor people, but long wave radiation goes easily through, so there's not "trapped heat" at all in the atmosphere as infrared goes through the atmosphere the same way radio waves go through walls.
• Ours is called the blue planet because it looks as blue from space as the skies look blue, so there's nothing bouncing down in the atmosphere
• ...

and surely a lot more I am too lazy to imagine now. Besides, it is common knowledge that when educated intelligence finds a way stupidity finds a myriad more.

I'm afraid, my friend, that we would have to call it "the Tyndall gas greenhouse-like effect" and carefully explained it. If such the case, the denialspherites would exploit the masses atavistic distrust on science and any pseudo-aggression common people feel when they are repeatedly told they are wrong as human beings have a natural instinct about being treated unfairly and inequitably and are prone to disregard wrong things in order to tight their social ties, so they wrongly assume a natural right to have a part of the truth in every debate, even when they know they lack the knowledge. In this last field they had the M and 3b and mh that will guarantee it to be a field of thorns so the visceral in the masses will pop up.

 

[jimbob]

It is worth pointing out that Solar Chimneys (or Solar updraft towers) do not rely on trapped air, as they create convection currents and rely on raised air temperature due to trapped IR radiation.

 

[Halsu]

Perhaps it would unstick if we could popularise the use of Tyndall instead of greenhouse

Possibly. But i find it unlikely. The analogy is inaccurate but "greenhouse effect" is now a part of common vocabulary and that's unlikely to change.

Also, calling it "Tyndall effect" could just as well only cause more confusion (especially as the term already has a different meaning).

For example, it was originally the US Republican party that started to promote "climate change" instead of "global warming" because it sounded less threatening (as demonstrated by the notorious Luntz memo). Ironically, the denialosphere sometimes attributes the change of vocabulary to "alarmists", then touts this as evidence that "global warming" has somehow ceased to be an issue as even the "alarmists" have ceased to talk about it. And of course they can now use the boring old evasion: "climate changes, sure, but climate is always changing...".

The funny thing is, "climate change" actually IS a better term, as it's more inclusive of all the various effects caused by the phenomenon.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Greenhouses work by preventing convection from moving air that's heated in daytime away from the surface. That's not how CO₂ affects the relation between sunlight and shaded thermometers in open air.

CO₂ does not affect the relationship between thermometers and air. At all.

Ummm...

...Temperatures here depend on how easily heat gets from up to the effective radiating surface, and the Tyndall Effect acts to make this passage more difficult, hence raising temperatures.

Which is it? You're starting to look like a reflexive critic.

 

[Reality Check]

I don't know what is all this foolishness about ice cores that Malcolm-McIntyre are talking about, but the ice bodies from which such ice cores were suposedly taken, aren't they still there?

I would assume that the lglciers and ice caps are still there.
But McIntyre's foolishness is more like arrogance and hypocrisy.
The hypocrisy comes in his not allowing readers access to raw data - the very thing he accuses climate scientists of ! In this case it is his implied quote mining of part of an emal which says that thier (one, some, all?) ice core data is archived at NOAA Paleoclimatology. Certainly some of their data is archived there.
The arrogance is in his demand that all ice core data should be archived in publicly accessible databases like NOAA Paleoclimatology.

McIntyre presents no evidence that any ice core data is missing. He is just pissed off for some reason that he cannot get access to the data without actually contacting the people who collected it!.

 

[Reality Check]

Malcolm Kirkpatrick:

Originally Posted by Reality Check
Malcolm Kirkpatrick: Species of Foraminifera could not adapt to CO2 changes that took millions of years to happen.
What do you think will happen to Foraminifera when CO2 changes over decades?

First asked 10 September 2012
7 days and counting!

And a reminder about why Steve McIntyre's blog posts were so off topic because they were not about climate scientists actually withholding data that they collected and could provide:

A handful is not "numerous". There are 1000's of climate scientists. Numerous would be a significant fraction of them. Read the posts

• One about AGU policy and Steve McIntyre's unsupported assertion that it is not beeing enforced. All it is about is a crank sceintist being ignored by a journal (I wonder why!)
• One about the 2 Thompsons and his unsupported assertion that their data is not archived.
• Another about the 2 Thompsons!
• Another with no examples of climate scientists withholding raw data!

These 4 blog posts boil down to Steve McIntyre's tantrum demanding that scientists archive their raw data in the databases that Steve McIntyre wants them to archive them !

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

...Let's try another analogy:

You stand outside in chilly weather, wearing a shirt and thin coat. You have a thermometer in your shirt pocket. The reading is stable, and somewhere between your body temperature and that of the air surrounding you. This is equilibrium number one.

Then you change the jacket to a much thicker one. As you are now better insulated, you will get warmer, and the reading on the thermometer will rise, but not indefinitely. At some point, a new balance will be reached, and the thermometer will stabilize to a new, higher reading. This is equilibrium two.

And that's all there's to it, really.

We agree, so far. Careful that your friends don't start calling you names and impugning your intelligence and/or education. Of course, we've agreed to discount geothermal heat. Given that, what happens if we wrap a thermometer, with no internal heat source, in insulation?

...as far as i know, Dyson, Giaver, Lindzen etc. all in fact do accept the basic physics behind man made global warming. Their argument is not that the basic physics are flawed, but rather that for one reason or another, the net effect of applying those physics is less than what the large majority of specialists in the field have estimated.

We agree, again.

...
- You agree that the atmosphere traps heat.
- You agree that there is a greenhouse effect as described by mainstream science and that changes in the strength of the greenhouse effect can change the temperature on earth.
- You agree that there's an energy balance that will always seek a new equilibrium, when variables change.
- You agree that a change in the composition of gasses (like increasing CO2) in the atmosphere changes the strength of the greenhouse effect.
- You agree that a rising concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause global warming.
- You agree that human activity is the main cause for the increase in atmospheric CO2.

Combining the above, we come to the next step: Do you agree that human activity causes global warming?

to some degree, and if it's not overwhelmed by variations in the solar flux.