Follow-up on Global Warming issues:

Steve Schwartz of Brookhaven Nat Labs has a very interesting analysis — HEAT CAPACITY, TIME CONSTANT, AND SENSITIVITY OF EARTH’S
CLIMATE SYSTEM — here.

I highly recommend a read. I find myself more comfortable with this critical assessment and its recommendations on a way forward, than with the one I was looking at above on your request.

One thing is clear, the science in question is simply not cut and dry, “settled.”

GEM of TKI

He correctly hihglights that there are questions on too close parallels form glass houses to the atmosphere, given the role of convection in the latter and the implications of the glazing imposing a relatively effective barrier to such a dispersing of heat acquired effect in a car etc.

But, responsible, pro AGW discussions of GHE also do that, and men like Lindzen do not dispute teh basic physics involved relative to radiative forcings, but ask on the feedback loops and positive/negative feedbacks. (Negative feedbacks would stabilise the atmosphere against change; if positive ones predominate, a runaway effect can occur.)

The crucial matter is the question of the balance of factors in the atmosphere , which of course has major convective systems of flow. I suspect that his analysis is distinctly in a minority view, and that there are all sorts of subtleties that need to be addressed.

Haughton’s GW Briefing, 1994, makes this distinction between the effects.

In the more technical Phys of Atmospheres, 1995, Ch 2, he analyses radiation effects and goes to a grey atmposphere, then argues tot he centrl importance in teh process of atmospheric dynamics on the scale of months or more, of radiative effects. He then factors in the issue of a positive feedback through enhanced creation of water vapour [which is where the Lindzen debate over cloud formation vs greater humidity comes in], contrasting to our case the situation of Venus.

to those effects and issues, if I have time I will turn, others may wish to look also.

But the authors Janice links are correct that major scientific claims need to be audited relative to the underlying physics.

I have begun to look.

he is right that “consensus” is a political term not strictly a scientific one, though of course there is a question that he majority of qualified practitioners on a topic will be expected to get basic facts straight and have an idea of the relevant laws, models and issues.

Archiv, where the paper appears, is a free-for all posting physics site, so wait on the responses to see where the dust falls. I think he has some points but there is more than one side tot he story, e.g. in principle we CAN make a statistical average global temp at any given time and over any given period, but an average itself is a fictional typical value, thus inert causally.

However, it may be connected to other factors and trends that are not fictions, and have causative force, thus in models it may have material bearing on what is going on.

Thereby hang many debates and many issues.

GEM of TKI

The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861, and Arrhenius 1896, and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 ºC is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.

Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics.

By G. Gerlich (Institut für Mathematische Physik Technische Universität Carolo-Wilhelmina) and R.D., Tscheuschner.

In summary, there is no atmospheric greenhouse effect, in particular CO2-greenhouse effect, in theoretical physics and engineering thermodynamics. Thus it is illegitimate to deduce predictions which provide a consulting solution for economics and intergovernmental policy.

Might the earth’s climate be intelligently designed? An awful lot of unlikely factors conspire to keep it in a range conducive not just to life but to an industrial civilization of 6 billion (and growing) large mammals. Every time we think we can’t feed ourselves something good happens – like now – CO2 levels are rising into a more productive and water-efficient growth regime for crops, growing seasons are getting longer, and formerly frozen land is becoming arable.

I think the jury’s still out on global warming and the human contribution thereto, BUT there’s no question that global warming is being sold to the public like hell-and-damnation at a tent revival.

For example, I was warned earlier this year to expect a horribly hot, sticky summer in Toronto, on account of global warming, with freak thunderstorms.

This summer was in fact cool and dry, and I was praying for those thunderstorms because I hate pouring drinking water on plants.

Yes, yes, it’s true that the globe could be warming even if Toronto’s summer is unexpectedly cool – just like a failing business can make money over Christmas even if it is doomed.

So agreed, the big picture is what counts. But that leads us back to Dr. McIntyre. What exactly IS the big picture?

With GW, as with ID, there is a concerted effort to make the public put its faith in something that isn’t there.

With GW, we are supposed to put our faith in unusually sweltering summers. With ID, we are to put our faith in the miracle of Darwinian evolution that produces intelligence from mud (or, more often now, the “intelligence” is seen as merely an illusion on the part of us mud).

My suggestion, here and elsewhere, is that we focus on the way in which the global warming apocalypse is sold to the public, and its lessons for ID. Most of us (me especially) are not qualified to evaluate the raw data on which a real science controversy depends. So we are stuck, for better or worse, with Al-Gore-ithms, and must make what sense we can of them.

P.S.: Yes, the 1930s were horribly hot. My late grandparents spoke of them with a shudder. Their area of my birth province, Saskatchewan, had no rain for three years, and was spiralling into Third World conditions. People would have starved, except that the other provinces sent so much help. – d.

The other common thread is detecting intelligent causation, in this case anthropogenic climate change and the impact of human activity on climate.

Recommend focusing on those two issues rather than global warming per se.

Recommend adding policy / rules to focus on these issues in such posts.

Oh yes, and talk about World Coming to an End? Just go to any Green site, they have the signs out. Doom, Despair and Death – the end is near if we do not act now. People are acting out irrationally over this issue.

“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method. … On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. … To avert the risk (of potentially disastrous climate change) we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public imagination. That of course means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. …Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective, and being honest.”

–Stephen H. Schneider, author of the book Global Warming (Sierra Club), in an interview in Discover Magazine, October 1989.

http://stephenschneider.stanfo.....itNews.pdf