2014 hottest year on record

azure said:
How many independent investigations does it take to clear someone accused on the basis of emails purloined from a private server and taken drastically out of context? Apparently, once someone is tried and found guilty in the court of public opinion, no amount of facts can overturn the verdict and it doesn't matter that a long list of independent investigations cleared all of the scientists involved in that exchange of any unethical scientific conduct. In particular, Mann was thoroughly investigated by Penn State -- by at least two separate boards, which were made up of people in fields completely unrelated to climate science.
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Out of contex? Go back to post 499 and see what a climate scientist from Berkeley had to say about it.
 
write-stuff said:
By stating that you argue in a subject that you apparently know little to nothing about is NOT an ad hominem. If I had said you were fat or ugly, or a lousy pilot, that would have been an ad hominem.

Ok, on to your lack of knowledge about evolution. There have been countless laboratory experiments where evolutionary changes have been witnessed in short periods of time. All you have to do is read. This stuff is out there.

As I've said before, new species don't spontaneously appear. There is a gradual differentiation as offshoots from a species diverge. No one wakes up one morning and there is a new species of quadruped that has suddenly popped into existence.

Look, I'm sorry, but a statement like you just made is so outlandishly ignorant. It really does demonstrate how little you know about biology. You may be a great lawyer, I don't know. But you ain't no scientist and really should shy away from debates on these subjects.
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Next time buy a size larger on your tighty whities. ;) You should welcome the opportunity to share your vast knowledge with us in the unwashed masses.
 
Gary F said:
Will somebody refute any of the points in the video?
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I just tried but unfortunately the PoA server ate my entire post.

I'm not going to waste any more time on this. You should know that the points raised in that video are not genuine points of contention offered in good faith, but "talking points" that exploit half truths intended to confuse people who are not familiar with the subject.

If you don't, you're an MD and have enough intelligence and resources to research the subject on your own.

In brief:

The talking point about human CO2 emissions being dwarfed by natural emissions is a common canard that is a little like saying that just because my flying expenses are a tiny fraction of my total income (not talking about myself here!), I can't be in any financial danger from flying. Of course, if my other expenditures use up my entire income so my net cash flow is zero if I don't fly, then if I fly without supplementing my income, all other things being equal bankruptcy is in my future.

The other claim that the greenhouse effect due to CO2 is negligible because H20 is a stronger greenhouse gas and CO2 is only a trace gas neglects the water vapor feedback, which not only enhances greatly the effect of CO2 but also makes the climate more sensitive to changes in the planet's energy budget. If you really want to understand how the greenhouse effect works then you need to study some physics. The book I'm finding most helpful is Ray Pierrehumbert's Principles of Planetary Climate, which is written at an advanced undergrad or beginning grad level. (Yes, P. really does derive the effects of the different gases from their properties as measured by "infrared spectroscopy", that term the teddy-bear character uses to impress the snowgirl who doesn't have a clue - the thing is, neither does he.)
 
azure said:
I just tried but unfortunately the PoA server ate my entire post.

I'm not going to waste any more time on this. You should know that the points raised in that video are not genuine points of contention offered in good faith, but "talking points" that exploit half truths intended to confuse people who are not familiar with the subject.

If you don't, you're an MD and have enough intelligence and resources to research the subject on your own.
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I also have a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and 4 years of grad school in electrical/biomedical engineering and physiology. I completed all the coursework requirements for both degrees but could not complete the theses requirements before the start of med school. I did manage to publish a paper as lead author in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering on digital signal processing of ECGs that has been cited by 797 scholarly references. So don't try to imply that I can't understand the science. I know when somebody (Climate scientist) is trying to pull a fast one as is the case with this subject.
azure said:
In brief:

The talking point about human CO2 emissions being dwarfed by natural emissions is a common canard that is a little like saying that just because my flying expenses are a tiny fraction of my total income (not talking about myself here!), I can't be in any financial danger from flying. Of course, if my other expenditures use up my entire income so my net cash flow is zero if I don't fly, then if I fly without supplementing my income, all other things being equal bankruptcy is in my future.

The other claim that the greenhouse effect due to CO2 is negligible because H20 is a stronger greenhouse gas and CO2 is only a trace gas neglects the water vapor feedback, which not only enhances greatly the effect of CO2 but also makes the climate more sensitive to changes in the planet's energy budget. If you really want to understand how the greenhouse effect works then you need to study some physics. The book I'm finding most helpful is Ray Pierrehumbert's Principles of Planetary Climate, which is written at an advanced undergrad or beginning grad level. (Yes, P. really does derive the effects of the different gases from their properties as measured by "infrared spectroscopy", that term the teddy-bear character uses to impress the snowgirl who doesn't have a clue - the thing is, neither does he.)
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Later, I'm on call until Monday the 29th and am severely time limited.
 
Isn't Mann the dude that claims to have won the Nobel prize?
 
Gary F said:
I also have a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and 4 years of grad school in electrical/biomedical engineering and physiology. I completed all the coursework requirements for both degrees but could not complete the theses requirements before the start of med school. I did manage to publish a paper as lead author in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering on digital signal processing of ECGs that has been cited by 797 scholarly references. So don't try to imply that I can't understand the science. I know when somebody (Climate scientist) is trying to pull a fast one as is the case with this subject.
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I intended my comment to be taken at face value - I wasn't insinuating that you can't understand the science. More a "do your own homework" comment out of frustration, after a couple of hours of trying to craft a careful quantitative argument from some material in P.'s book, that went into the aether when I tried to post it.

I might try to redo it later, but I'm running out of patience with this kind of argument. I'm quite serious when I say that the video was made in bad faith. There are lots of real things to be skeptical about in climate science and I look forward to discussing them with you sometime if you would like. The basics, the stuff that is covered in textbooks, is very unlikely to be among them unless the laws of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics are somehow overturned.
 
azure said:
I intended my comment to be taken at face value - I wasn't insinuating that you can't understand the science. More a "do your own homework" comment out of frustration, after a couple of hours of trying to craft a careful quantitative argument from some material in P.'s book, that went into the aether when I tried to post it.

I might try to redo it later, but I'm running out of patience with this kind of argument. I'm quite serious when I say that the video was made in bad faith. There are lots of real things to be skeptical about in climate science and I look forward to discussing them with you sometime if you would like. The basics, the stuff that is covered in textbooks, is very unlikely to be among them unless the laws of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics are somehow overturned.
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Explain how, under the laws of thermodynamics, heat is transferred from a cold body ( atmosphere) to a warm body ( Earth) with out any WORK being performed. You can do that with a machine like a heat pump, but it doesn't occur naturally. There will not be any net exchange, heat will not move against the heat gradient.
 
vintage cessna said:
Out of contex? Go back to post 499 and see what a climate scientist from Berkeley had to say about it.
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Yes, out of context. Those who had access to the full context say that it had to do with grafting instrumental temperatures onto the reconstructed temperatures. Obviously for temperatures before the 1800s or so the best we can do is reconstructions from proxies. I don't see any ethical issue with what they did, as long as the text makes clear that the recent data is instrumental AND the limitations of the proxy are not hidden, i.e. they're either spelled out or are well known by others in the field. My understanding is that the tree ring issue was well known.

Yes, the elephant in the room is, how can we trust the proxies if they lie about the current climate? This thing is why I've grown more skeptical of proxy record reconstructions and why I'm not longer sure whether the MWP and LIA were or weren't global. It's why we need different reconstructions that make use of independent proxies. When multiple lines of reconstruction yield different results, I think the most honest answer is just "we don't know".
 
vintage cessna said:
Explain how, under the laws of thermodynamics, heat is transferred from a cold body ( atmosphere) to a warm body ( Earth) with out any WORK being performed. You can do that with a machine like a heat pump, but it doesn't occur naturally. There will not be any net exchange, heat will not move against the heat gradient.
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We've hashed this through already. The second law doesn't prohibit heat transfer from cold to warm as long as the NET flow is in the other direction. In this case, it is: the net heat flow is from the Earth to the atmosphere.
 
azure said:
We've hashed this through already. The second law doesn't prohibit heat transfer from cold to warm as long as the NET flow is in the other direction. In this case, it is: the net heat flow is from the Earth to the atmosphere.
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You can't have any net flow without any work performed. What work is Mother Nature doing in the atmosphere?
 
azure said:
Yes, out of context. Those who had access to the full context say that it had to do with grafting instrumental temperatures onto the reconstructed temperatures. Obviously for temperatures before the 1800s or so the best we can do is reconstructions from proxies. I don't see any ethical issue with what they did, as long as the text makes clear that the recent data is instrumental AND the limitations of the proxy are not hidden, i.e. they're either spelled out or are well known by others in the field. My understanding is that the tree ring issue was well known.

Yes, the elephant in the room is, how can we trust the proxies if they lie about the current climate? This thing is why I've grown more skeptical of proxy record reconstructions and why I'm not longer sure whether the MWP and LIA were or weren't global. It's why we need different reconstructions that make use of independent proxies. When multiple lines of reconstruction yield different results, I think the most honest answer is just "we don't know".
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Either you have not examined the issue enough or you are not being intellectualy honest with yourself.
 
azure said:
We've hashed this through already. The second law doesn't prohibit heat transfer from cold to warm as long as the NET flow is in the other direction. In this case, it is: the net heat flow is from the Earth to the atmosphere.
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The human face can detect very minute changes in temperature. Place your face close to a mirror, since your body is burning energy to maintain a constant temperature, you should feel your face warming. If you are correct, that is.
 
vintage cessna said:
You can't have any net flow without any work performed. What work is Mother Nature doing in the atmosphere?
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Is this question for real? Did you even read what I said? The net heat flow is from warmer to colder... no work, any more than work is needed when you stick a metal spoon in hot soup and it gets too hot to handle...
The human face can detect very minute changes in temperature. Place your face close to a mirror, since your body is burning energy to maintain a constant temperature, you should feel your face warming. If you are correct, that is.
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No you shouldn't. The temperature of your face will still drop, just a little less quickly. If you don't believe that heat loss by radiation can be slowed down by a reflective surface, then explain how space blankets work... or why the inner surface of a thermos container is usually silvered.

You seem to think that radiation from a cooler object has no effect on the radiation budget of a nearby warmer object. Think about it. The cooler object radiates, its radiation strikes the warmer one. The warmer object has a certain absorption coefficient and therefore absorbs some of the radiation. As a result, it doesn't cool quite as quickly. Do you really think that violates the 2nd law? What physical mechanism could prevent it from happening?
 
azure said:
Is this question for real? Did you even read what I said? The net heat flow is from warmer to colder... no work, any more than work is needed when you stick a metal spoon in hot soup and it gets too hot to handle...

No you shouldn't. The temperature of your face will still drop, just a little less quickly. If you don't believe that heat loss by radiation can be slowed down by a reflective surface, then explain how space blankets work... or why the inner surface of a thermos container is usually silvered.

You seem to think that radiation from a cooler object has no effect on the radiation budget of a nearby warmer object. Think about it. The cooler object radiates, its radiation strikes the warmer one. The warmer object has a certain absorption coefficient and therefore absorbs some of the radiation. As a result, it doesn't cool quite as quickly. Do you really think that violates the 2nd law? What physical mechanism could prevent it from happening?
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Heat will NOT move from a cooler to warmer object without WORK. What you just stated is junk. Not talking about radiation, talking about heat. Heat is transported from the surface of the Earth up into the atmosphere, there is no mechanism in the atmosphere to force the heat back down to the surface.

The thermos and the blanket work because they are well insulated and trap HEAT, not radiation.

You sound like the scientists of yesteryear who thought a Greenhouse heated up from trapped radiation rather than hot air that was trapped.
 
vintage cessna said:
Heat will NOT move from a cooler to warmer object without WORK. What you just stated is junk. Not talking about radiation, talking about heat. Heat is transported from the surface of the Earth up into the atmosphere, there is no mechanism in the atmosphere to force the heat back down to the surface.
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Yeah there is. Conduction for one. Latent heat of condensation for another. Radiation for another. Heat is a form of energy. The energy carried by radiation becomes heat when absorbed. It sounds like you really don't believe in radiation at all, in which case you must have trouble understanding how an electric stove works, or for that matter an incandescent light bulb.

How do you explain the measurements of back radiation from the atmosphere?
The thermos and the blanket work because they are well insulated and trap HEAT, not radiation.
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Right. So there is no purpose at all to the silvering then? Why waste the money?
 
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azure said:
Yeah there is. Conduction for one. Latent heat of condensation for another. Radiation for another. Heat is a form of energy. The energy carried by radiation becomes heat when absorbed. It sounds like you really don't believe in radiation at all, in which case you must have trouble understanding how an electric stove works, or for that matter an incandescent light bulb.

How do you explain the measurements of back radiation from the atmosphere?

Right. So there is no purpose at all to the silvering then? Why waste the money?
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Space blankets and thermos both have vacuums for insulation . I think they have stopped wasting money because I don't see silver color in newer themoses and they work just as well if not better than the old ones. The real old ones had a glass interior but would break if dropped. For a good thermos you need a material that is a poor conductor of heat.

So this back radiation in the atmosphere, have they measured the heat content of of it? Has anyone measured any heat moving from the atmosphere down towards the Earth? The big concern is that we will heat up too much. All this back radiation, why doesn't it make a difference in a Greenhouse?

You missed the point of the analogy of your face. Your face is not cooling down, it is continuously putting off heat. If this back radiation made a difference, you should feel your face warm when close to the mirror from the back radiation.
 
azure said:
Yeah there is. Conduction for one. Latent heat of condensation for another. Radiation for another. Heat is a form of energy. The energy carried by radiation becomes heat when absorbed. It sounds like you really don't believe in radiation at all, in which case you must have trouble understanding how an electric stove works, or for that matter an incandescent light bulb.

How do you explain the measurements of back radiation from the atmosphere?

Right. So there is no purpose at all to the silvering then? Why waste the money?
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Put your hand above an electric burner. Won't feel much at all. Put your hand on the burner. You will feel a great deal.
 
azure said:
Yeah there is. Conduction for one. Latent heat of condensation for another. Radiation for another. Heat is a form of energy. The energy carried by radiation becomes heat when absorbed. It sounds like you really don't believe in radiation at all, in which case you must have trouble understanding how an electric stove works, or for that matter an incandescent light bulb.

How do you explain the measurements of back radiation from the atmosphere?

Right. So there is no purpose at all to the silvering then? Why waste the money?
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If this "back radiation does anything, it is so minute as to defy measurement. None of this back radiation was measured in the Greenhouse experiment.
 
azure said:
Is this question for real? Did you even read what I said? The net heat flow is from warmer to colder... no work, any more than work is needed when you stick a metal spoon in hot soup and it gets too hot to handle...

No you shouldn't. The temperature of your face will still drop, just a little less quickly. If you don't believe that heat loss by radiation can be slowed down by a reflective surface, then explain how space blankets work... or why the inner surface of a thermos container is usually silvered.

You seem to think that radiation from a cooler object has no effect on the radiation budget of a nearby warmer object. Think about it. The cooler object radiates, its radiation strikes the warmer one. The warmer object has a certain absorption coefficient and therefore absorbs some of the radiation. As a result, it doesn't cool quite as quickly. Do you really think that violates the 2nd law? What physical mechanism could prevent it from happening?
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There is no work being performed with your spoon. Heat is simply being conducted from the hot end to the cold end. To get any heat to move from the cold end to the hot end of the spoon would require work, as you claim is happening in the atmosphere, which is impossible without some sort of work involved.
 
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azure said:
Yeah there is. Conduction for one. Latent heat of condensation for another. Radiation for another. Heat is a form of energy. The energy carried by radiation becomes heat when absorbed. It sounds like you really don't believe in radiation at all, in which case you must have trouble understanding how an electric stove works, or for that matter an incandescent light bulb.

How do you explain the measurements of back radiation from the atmosphere?

Right. So there is no purpose at all to the silvering then? Why waste the money?
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This back radiation you speak of is key to the cause of MMGW. If you can't explain why back radiation makes no discernible difference in a Greenhouse, your theory is junk.
 
vintage cessna said:
Put your hand above an electric burner. Won't feel much at all. Put your hand on the burner. You will feel a great deal.
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So conduction via metal transfers heat a lot more quickly than radiation. So what? Radiant heat is still very real. Ever roast a marshmallow in a fire that is out except for red hot embers? You don't let it touch the logs, but it still cooks very well!
If this "back radiation does anything, it is so minute as to defy measurement.
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Incorrect. It is very measurable, in fact it's greater than the solar flux reaching the ground.
There is no work being performed with your spoon. Heat is simply being conducted from the hot end to the cold end. To get any heat to move from the cold end to the hot end of the spoon would require work, as you claim is happening in the atmosphere, which is impossible without some sort of work involved.
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No. The hot end of the spoon is the ground. The cold end is space. If you insulate the spoon - give it an atmosphere - you can slow down the heat transfer. All else being equal, the soup will be a tiny bit warmer. But the net flow of heat is still from hot to cold.

From your way of thinking, why does a blanket not violate the 2nd law? The blanket was cooler than you when you put it on. Now you are warmer. How is that not heat flow from cooler to warmer?
This back radiation you speak of is key to the cause of MMGW. If you can't explain why back radiation makes no discernible difference in a Greenhouse, your theory is junk.
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That's the first correct thing you've written. The back radiation is (apparently) the main mechanism by which part of the energy absorbed by GHGs reaches the surface. "Back radiation" in a greenhouse, i.e. from the glass warmed by longwave radiation from the interior, might actually make a significant difference. It depends on how fast conduction and convection at the outer surface of the glass carry away heat. But that's quite different from the situation we're discussing. As I've said before, the ONLY way the Earth can lose heat to space is through radiation.
 
Henning said:
How does the government turn it into a cash cow? Government is a conduit for money, not a terminus.
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For friends. The guy who had the technology and servers already stood up and (surprise!) the government "certifications" necessary to run the carbon credit brokerage house was... A longtime friend and supporter of Al Gore.

Seemed like no one else could manage to get those "certifications" at first. Funny that.
 
azure said:
So conduction via metal transfers heat a lot more quickly than radiation. So what? Radiant heat is still very real. Ever roast a marshmallow in a fire that is out except for red hot embers? You don't let it touch the logs, but it still cooks very well!

Incorrect. It is very measurable, in fact it's greater than the solar flux reaching the ground.

No. The hot end of the spoon is the ground. The cold end is space. If you insulate the spoon - give it an atmosphere - you can slow down the heat transfer. All else being equal, the soup will be a tiny bit warmer. But the net flow of heat is still from hot to cold.

From your way of thinking, why does a blanket not violate the 2nd law? The blanket was cooler than you when you put it on. Now you are warmer. How is that not heat flow from cooler to warmer?

That's the first correct thing you've written. The back radiation is (apparently) the main mechanism by which part of the energy absorbed by GHGs reaches the surface. "Back radiation" in a greenhouse, i.e. from the glass warmed by longwave radiation from the interior, might actually make a significant difference. It depends on how fast conduction and convection at the outer surface of the glass carry away heat. But that's quite different from the situation we're discussing. As I've said before, the ONLY way the Earth can lose heat to space is through radiation.
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The blanket, seriously? You don't know how a blanket works to keep you warm?
There is no transfer of heat from cold to warm with a blanket. The blanket traps the air heated by your body. The air is not allowed to escape and therefore there is no convective cooling, just like in a greenhouse. The blanket also insulates your body from the cold air on the outside of the blanket.

As for the greenhouse, you can use a double pane window to greatly reduce convective heat loss to the outside and it wouldn't make a difference. But you are not talking about heat loss from conduction, you are talking about back radiation, so no back radiation is lost from conduction or convection. So how would heat loss from conduction or convection affect the experiment? This has been done experimentaly but you will not accept the results because it is an "ugly fact" . If a theory can't be proved but it can be disproved, the theory is not valid.

Got a ref for this back radiation measurement?
 
vintage cessna said:
There is no transfer of heat from cold to warm with a blanket. The blanket traps the air heated by your body. The air is not allowed to escape and therefore there is no convective cooling, just like in a greenhouse. The blanket also insulates your body from the cold air on the outside of the blanket.
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Bingo! You realize that there is no net heat flow in the "wrong" direction with a blanket. So why do you think there has to be a net heat flow from cool to warm when the dominant mechanism of heat transfer is radiation instead of conduction or convection? In terms of heat flow (not what is going on on the microscopic level), the atmospheric GHGs act exactly the way a blanket does, slowing the flow of heat to the outside and allowing heat to build up on the inside.
Got a ref for this back radiation measurement?
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Google "downward longwave radiation flux", you'll get a ton of hits. Mostly to discussion blogs, but also to a couple of scientific papers and even to a NASA site where you can plot measurements of the mean DLR over large sections of the globe from 1948 to present.

You should also compare the upward longwave radiation flux, which will (hopefully) convince you that the net heat flow is still in the right direction.
 
azure said:
Bingo! You realize that there is no net heat flow in the "wrong" direction with a blanket. So why do you think there has to be a net heat flow from cool to warm when the dominant mechanism of heat transfer is radiation instead of conduction or convection? In terms of heat flow (not what is going on on the microscopic level), the atmospheric GHGs act exactly the way a blanket does, slowing the flow of heat to the outside and allowing heat to build up on the inside.

Google "downward longwave radiation flux", you'll get a ton of hits. Mostly to discussion blogs, but also to a couple of scientific papers and even to a NASA site where you can plot measurements of the mean DLR over large sections of the globe from 1948 to present.

You should also compare the upward longwave radiation flux, which will (hopefully) convince you that the net heat flow is still in the right direction.
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http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html


Try this. It is a simple and logical explanation, counter to your unproven, convoluted back radiation theory. Which is why you would probably never accept it. You won't even admit there was fraud and deliberate deception perpetrated in the climate science field. I fully expect you to call the author of the link above a crackpot.
 
vintage cessna said:
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html


Try this. It is a simple and logical explanation, counter to your unproven, convoluted back radiation theory. Which is why you would probably never accept it. You won't even admit there was fraud and deliberate deception perpetrated in the climate science field. I fully expect you to call the author of the link above a crackpot.
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I looked this guy up and he has his own "interesting" ideas about the universe.

The Earth, indeed the entire solar system, was re-formed wholesale, in the millennia prior to the beginning of known human history; c. 15,000 BC marked the decisive event, when the Earth first began to orbit the Sun as it does today. Worldwide ancient myths and sacred traditions all refer directly but metaphorically to the core elements of the world design. Megalithic monuments such as the pyramids, Sphinx, and temples with fundamental celestial alignments commemorate the establishment of those alignments within the passed-down memory of mankind. All of the ancient mysteries originated or passed through the filter of this design event. This short book is based upon the author's original, longer work, The End of the Mystery. It is both a good introduction to the world design, and an open correction to modern scientific theories that dismiss the idea of deliberate design of the natural world.
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http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Messa...=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419352133&sr=1-3
 
vintage cessna said:
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html


Try this. It is a simple and logical explanation, counter to your unproven, convoluted back radiation theory. Which is why you would probably never accept it. You won't even admit there was fraud and deliberate deception perpetrated in the climate science field. I fully expect you to call the author of the link above a crackpot.
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Well he's wrong from the get-go, when he says that:
Since the radiating temperature of an isolated body in space varies as the fourth-root of the power incident upon it, by the Stefan-Boltzmann law,
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The S-B law doesn't say that, it says that the the radiating temperature varies as the fourth root of the power radiated from it, which is not necessarily the same thing. For a perfect absorber in equilibrium with the incident radiation, it's true. Add in albedo or a non-equilibrium situation (like on the Moon immediately after sunrise) and it's not true. So he has happened on an interesting coincidence that doesn't quite show what he wants it to show, since by his own admission he has neglected albedo (which, for Venus, is quite large, something like 0.9). If the Earth's Bond albedo and Venus's were the same, then what he would actually have shown is that what climate scientists call p_rad, the pressure level from which outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) escapes into space, is the same for the Earth and Venus. At equilibrium, the temperature at that pressure level must equal the planet's radiating temperature because the fraction of incident solar radiation that is not reflected (1 - a where a = Bond albedo) must equal the OLR if the two are in balance. But the two albedos aren't the same, Venus has less available solar radiation, so its effective radiating temperature is lower than he says and Venus's p_rad is lower than Earth's (which agrees generally with the Greenhouse theory, stronger GHE means lower p_rad), and his "proof" is just a fortuitous coincidence.

edit: I take it back - he's comparing temperatures at the same pressure level in a naive way, using 288K as the *radiating* temperature of the Earth, which it is not, and would not be even if you neglected albedo. The radiating temperature for a perfectly absorbing airless planet at the Earth-Sun distance is about 278K, not 287K. So his theory is pure junk, no bearing at all on p_rad.

Did you look up DLR yet? What do you think of those measurements? If the atmosphere does not radiate and/or that radiation can't reach the surface, where is that radiation coming from?
 
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azure said:
Well he's wrong from the get-go, when he says that:

The S-B law doesn't say that, it says that the the radiating temperature varies as the fourth root of the power radiated from it, which is not necessarily the same thing. For a perfect absorber in equilibrium with the incident radiation, it's true. Add in albedo or a non-equilibrium situation (like on the Moon immediately after sunrise) and it's not true. So he has happened on an interesting coincidence that doesn't quite show what he wants it to show, since by his own admission he has neglected albedo (which, for Venus, is quite large, something like 0.9). If the Earth's Bond albedo and Venus's were the same, then what he would actually have shown is that what climate scientists call p_rad, the pressure level from which outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) escapes into space, is the same for the Earth and Venus. At equilibrium, the temperature at that pressure level must equal the planet's radiating temperature because the fraction of incident solar radiation that is not reflected (1 - a where a = Bond albedo) must equal the OLR if the two are in balance. But the two albedos aren't the same, Venus has less available solar radiation, so its effective radiating temperature is lower than he says and Venus's p_rad is lower than Earth's (which agrees generally with the Greenhouse theory, stronger GHE means lower p_rad), and his "proof" is just a fortuitous coincidence.

Did you look up DLR yet? What do you think of those measurements? If the atmosphere does not radiate and/or that radiation can't reach the surface, where is that radiation coming from?
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Theories are great, but you can't just keep ignoring empirical evidence that contradicts the theory. The climate scientists ignore ( or fudge) the temperature record
which shows no correlation to CO2 to temperature. They brush aside the Robert Wood experiment which demonstrates no temperature effect from back radiation. I fully expect them to ignore the simple pressure/temperature relationship of both the Earth and Venus. Their models are fixated on CO2, which is why they are always wrong.

If you drop the Greenhouse gas theory, everything begins to make sense. If you don't, you are trapped in a world of contradictions where facts don't match reality. The explanations become ever more complicated.
 
vintage cessna said:
His thoughts on other things doesn't detract from his analysis of Venus. Many scientist while considered brilliant in their field of study, were considered whacky in other areas.
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He's got some strange ideas about plate tectonics too.

This is where my discoveries come in. I have shown in my work that the Earth was re-formed--not created, re-formed--wholesale and by deliberate design, less than 20,000 years ago according to both ancient testimony and the design itself (which communicates a coherent, verifiable purpose). Remembrance of that design, through "sacred images" and "sacred stories", or myths, was the motivation for the subsequent religious obsessions, and all the greater endeavors (toward science as well as art and religion), of mankind. Plate tectonics as it is currently envisioned will never be confirmed, because physics has all along been against it, and now the design of the "gods" (as they were known in earliest recorded history, worldwide) makes it unnecessary.
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This is from the same blog you keep quoting.

http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2009/03/true-origin-of-continental-drift.html
 
vintage cessna said:
Like I said, his perceived eccentricity has nothing to do with his pressure/temperature analysis. Sometimes it takes an unfettered mind to discover the obvious.

One of the most brilliant of men alive today, Freeman Dyson, would shock Azure with his views on climate change.
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Azure has responded to many of your links directly and in apparent good faith. I think you should do ask s/he asks, look up the items s/he mentions here, and provide a reasoned response.
 
vintage cessna said:
Like I said, his perceived eccentricity has nothing to do with his pressure/temperature analysis. Sometimes it takes an unfettered mind to discover the obvious.
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You realize you are quoting from his blog, not some peer-reviewed paper.
 
Everskyward said:
You realize you are quoting from his blog, not some peer-reviewed paper.
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We could argue forever, but if people prefer theory to fact, what is the point? The Greenhouse Gas Theory was disproven in 1909 by Robert Wood. Wood was no crackpot, check out his career.

The theory won't die despite the evidence because it is exactly what some people want to hear.

I think it is clear from the record, that has been well documented ,that peer review doesn't not have the same meaning in climate science as in other fields.

What good are all the complicated explanations and the pointing out of what they see as errors in dissenters computations, if the facts simply don't square with their theories.

People like Azure can rebut the dissenters arguments forever, but they don't rebut with actual evidence, but with calculations that show what "should" happen. Guess what, in the actual world we live in , it ain't happening.

Like most, I am not a scientist, so I have not been trained in all the various theories. But I can evaluate real actual evidence, just like a jury is required to do on subjects in which the members are not expert.

So, as for the Greenhouse Gas Effect theory goes, all evidence and experimentation to date is contradictory to the theory. Do you believe the evidence or theory. BTW, I had already concluded the theory was invalid before I read anything from the blog in question. I just thought his observation of temperature/pressure relationship was interesting,as well as the thought that the atmosphere may well be heated from the top down, rather than bottom up .
 
To make it even easier for VC, here is the NASA link:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis.surfaceflux.html

and a link to the abstract of a paper describing measurements of the back radiation (the paper itself is apparently paywalled):

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00262.1

Finally there was a somewhat interesting discussion on Judith Curry's blog about all this a while back:

http://judithcurry.com/2010/11/30/physics-of-the-atmospheric-greenhouse-effect/

Lots of back and forth there with good contributions by Chris Colose and Leonard Weinstein, and even some participation from Harry Huffman (and a good rebuttal by TomP, who I think may have a good explanation for the Venus coincidence). With ~700 replies it's kind of tl;dr, but it's still worth a skim.

A lot of the whackier skeptic arguments seem to be driven by a need for a simpler, more transparent explanation for why it's warmer on the surface than it "should be". That's a laudable goal, I think we need to make the physics as simple as it can be and still be correct, *but no simpler*. The atmosphere doesn't seem to be like QED or even classical gravity where a simple mathematical formalism underlies all the apparent complexity. Even if you make lots of simplifying assumptions it's still a very complex system in which thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and radiative transfer interact in subtle ways. The bottom line is that it's never going to be as simple as distance from Sun + Stefan-Boltzmann + PV=nRT = temperature as a function of pressure, and trying to make things too simple only leads to wrong physics, which is if anything worse than overly complex physics.
 
vintage cessna said:
I think it is clear from the record, that has been well documented ,that peer review doesn't not have the same meaning in climate science as in other fields.
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You may think it's clear but I don't. He can post whatever he wants in his blog and it's obvious from his other theories that scientific accuracy doesn't mean much to him.
 
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