Mike Flynn asks [respectfully] “Would you mind expressing your personal definition of religion?”
A respectful and sincere question surely deserves a respectful and sincere reply.
Two words: continuing revelation.
Caveat Everyday experience, and history too, remind us that God and the Devil alike reside “in the details” … the details everyday life … and that the line between good and evil “runs down the middle of every human heart.”
Do Democrats have a position on GMO”s?
angech – P.S. Don’t confuse a half-year planetary warming and cooling (a global effect) with a summer-winter cycle, a local effect of a completely different origin.
Stephen: The list includes mercury, smog, ozone hole, fluoridation in water (dental health), acid rain, lead (e.g., gasoline) — and of course AGW.
Aspertame, alar, saccharine, etc.
From a conservative point of view, it is always worthwhile to make the govt provide strong justification for new rules. And it is true that progressives often propose new regulations for lots of things with little justification: oversized sodas, for example, sugared sodas, alcoholic beverages, and those listed above — and CO2. It isn’t unusual for progressives to avoid the issue of costs entirely (i.e., the benefits of what is about to be prohibited), and unwanted effects (relocation of manufacturing to China and India.)
David – when I first thought about this, I came to the conclusion that there would be no gravitational effect on temperature. I was considering the case of an 11 mile high column of air, say, 1 square meter in area. The column would be perfectly insulated WRT to heat and radiation.
Thinking about this some more, I think you may be right. On the molecular level, the temperature of an ideal gas depends on the speed of the molecules. Let’s say for simplicity that we are dealing with a single, monatomic, gaseous element.
The reason I have changed my mind is this. If a given atom moves straight up, it will lose speed, effectively cooling. If it strikes a second atom, the momentum imparted will be smaller the higher the molecule moves upward. At some point, the atom of gas would stop completely due to gravitational attraction. If it hits another, stationary for the sake of argument, atom at its apogee, it would impart no momentum to the second atom.
If the atom is moving downward, it will gain speed, i.e. it will carry more energy and since temperature depends on the speed of the molecules, it represents a hotter gas. It will impart more energy to a second atom the further it falls.
Therefore, if we conceptually divided the column of gas into equal volumes, there would be a temperature gradient while at the same time maintaining thermodynamic equilibrium.
Although I do not agree with David Springer and jim2, I believe that Dr. Brown’s attempted refutation suffers from faulty logic; as I explained here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/18/monday-mirthiness-spot-the-troll/#comment-1711550, it is based on what I called the “Brown-Eschenbach Law of Lapse-Rate Conservation,” a proposition for which they have advanced no proof.
Basically, the problem is this. The ensemble of microstates available to the gas molecules inside the pipe is changed by the ability to communicate heat to and from the external wire, so there’s no reason to believe that a kinetic-energy gradient that prevailed in isolation would prevail when the wire is connected. Therefore, the assumption of such a gradient in isolation does not, as Dr. Brown contends, imply that net heat would flow indefinitely.
One simple example presented in various places considers highly rarefied gas over a warm surface. The purpose is not to prove anything, but to figure out, what happens in this simple case.
It’s assumed that the gas is so rare that molecules almost never hit each other. They just bounce from the bottom at variable speed in all possible directions. It’s assumed that the speed that they have after bouncing is distributed with a Gaussian type distribution with the same coefficient multiplying each of the squared components of the velocity in the exponential. Each molecule starts to move up in a parabolic orbit. The horizontal velocity does not change during the flight, but the vertical velocity decreases due to gravity until the molecule reaches it’s maximum altitude and starts to fall.
One might expect that the average vertical velocity decreases with altitude, because every single molecule has a smaller velocity higher up, but a calculation tells that this is not the case. The molecules that had originally small vertical velocity start to fall very soon, and those with the highest vertical velocity reach highest altitudes. At every altitude some molecules have nearly zero vertical velocity. The maximal possible value is infinite at all altitudes (although very high values are exceptional). Doing the full calculation tells that the velocity distributions have exactly the same shape at every altitude, there are only more particles of each velocity near the surface than high up. This result is naturally true only for the assumed initial velocity distribution.
As I started, this does not prove much, but this should help in understanding, how it’s possible that the average kinetic energy of an ideal gas is independent of the altitude (not the sum of kinetic energy and potential energy, but the kinetic energy alone).
The exponential distribution of squared velocity is that of Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution.
My note that Pierre-Normand has mentioned a few times generalizes this argument to the case, where molecules collide and bounce, but I don’t try to prove that any other distribution would develop towards isothermal, only that a distribution that starts as isothermal Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution remains as such. It does not spontaneously develop any non-zero lapse rate.
Joe Born | December 6, 2014 at 3:23 pm |
Although I do not agree with David Springer and jim2, I believe that Dr. Brown’s attempted refutation suffers from faulty logic; as I explained here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/18/monday-mirthiness-spot-the-troll/#comment-1711550, it is based on what I called the “Brown-Eschenbach Law of Lapse-Rate Conservation,” a proposition for which they have advanced no proof.
Joe, when you feel you need to ridicule your adversary by making up a bogus “Law” that neither Dr. Brown nor I have advanced, you do your argument great damage.
Basically, the problem is this. The ensemble of microstates available to the gas molecules inside the pipe is changed by the ability to communicate heat to and from the external wire, so there’s no reason to believe that a kinetic-energy gradient that prevailed in isolation would prevail when the wire is connected. Therefore, the assumption of such a gradient in isolation does not, as Dr. Brown contends, imply that net heat would flow indefinitely.
I don’t even understand what this means, that the “ensemble of microstates available” is changed. What is the “ensemble of microstates” available to the gas molecules before and after connecting the wire?
Finally, Dr. Brown’s proof offers two possibilities. Either heat will flow FOREVER through the silver wire, or it won’t. If it does, as you seem to be claiming, this is a perpetual motion machine … and if it won’t flow it means that the top and bottom of the air in the pipe is at the same temperature.
Your choice … although from your words, it seems you imply a third state but I’m in mystery as to what that state might be.
w.
jim2 | December 6, 2014 at 3:01 pm
Therefore, if we conceptually divided the column of gas into equal volumes, there would be a temperature gradient while at the same time maintaining thermodynamic equilibrium.
If that’s the case, then Dr. Brown’s proof applies. Connect an insulated silver wire from the bottom to the top of the column. Since you say there is a temperature difference, heat will flow from the bottom to the top of the column.
But then, according to you, gravity will re-stratify the column and re-establish the thermal gradient … which means that the heat would flow through the wire forever.
Obviously, however, this is a perpetual motion machine. If gravity could do that, we could run a heat engine off of the temperature difference forever … sorry, but that’s not possible.
w.
FOMD, I trust you have the decency to finally admit that The Wicked Hockey Stick of The West is finally dead.
Let’s experiment. Magrathea (I may have misspelled it – where is my copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide when I need it) would be a place to start.
Willis. Heat “flows” in a solid by the atoms, of silver in this case, jostling each other. In a body of silver at a high temperature, the atoms vibrate with a higher amplitude than atoms in a body of silver at a lower temperature.
Analogous to the gas, the atoms in the solid have to vibrate, as gas atoms move in space, in order to conduct heat.
In the case of your silver wire, when one considers motion of a silver atom vibrating in along the “z” axis (up and down), when the atom moves up, it will be retarded by gravity. When it oscillates back down, it’s downward velocity will be enhanced. Thus, the effect hypothesized by me for the gas applies also to the silver wire.
Sorry, that’s weather, not climate.
I wonder why water is strangely absent in that list. That’s the worst greenhouse gas – and therefore a pollutant – of all.
Here’s what it looks like.
The ocean temps can be graphed with the Global Argo Marine Atlas and CERES data at CERES data products.
All the ocean warming is in the southern hemisphere.
The annual peak in both net toa flux (positive warming) and ocean occur in January and February. These large changes in outgoing energy completely dominate – almost – changes in incoming energy. The changes in outgoing energy is the net change in out of phase changes in short wave and longwave variability. The out of phase changes are due to differences in land and ocean areas between the NH and SH.
The ocean warming in the last couple of years is due in part to increase in solar intensity in the 11 year cycle.
Willis Eschenbach: “Dr. Brown’s proof offers two possibilities. Either heat will flow FOREVER through the silver wire, or it won’t. If it does, as you seem to be claiming, this is a perpetual motion machine … and if it won’t flow it means that the top and bottom of the air in the pipe is at the same temperature.”
It won’t.
Before the silver wire is connected, the gas is at equilibrium: no net heat flows, but there’s a non-zero kinetic-energy gradient. That gradient results from the statistics of the gas’s microstates–i.e., combinations of molecule position and momentum–that are available to the isolated gas. Those statistics follow from the constraint that total molecular energy is fixed.
Once the silver wire is connected, the statistics change; although in steady state no net heat flows on average between the gas and the wire, random exchanges with the wire cause some minute fluctuations in gas’s the total molecular energy, fluctuations that could not occur when the gas was isolated. As a consequence, the gas’s equilibrium kinetic-energy gradient changes. This change in kinetic-energy gradient requires no perpetual net flow through the wire.
Now, in a sense we’re talking past each other; in accordance with one definition of temperature, both of those (different) equilibrium kinetic-energy gradients are considered temperature gradients of zero. In accordance with another, they are considered (different) non-zero temperature gradients. Failure to keep track of which definition we used causes confusion in these discussions. By taking the starting point of his proof an equilibrium state with a non-zero lapse rate, however, Dr. Brown implicitly chose the latter definition.
And, no, I don’t know precisely what situation would prevail when the wire is connected. What I think, though, is that there would be an immeasurably small kinetic-energy gradient in the wire despite its being at equilibrium, i.e., despite its conducting no net heat flow. I recognize that this is at odds with Dr. Brown’s understanding of Fourier’s Law. But such is life.
Somehow I can’t picture Fan armed with anything more intimidating then an egg whisk.
DocMartyn,
And thus I defy you, ammonia!
You must be a defier. Is that better or worse than a denier?
I better stop before you strike me repeatedly with a strangely deranged Warmist – there are usually plenty on hand on this blog!
Sunday fun for all?
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Recent post at Real Climate that questions the pause:
Change point analysis is discussed with an answer of no. Interesting diagram that might be related this:
Look at the area under the line. It rearranges. Put the North pole on the right and the Equator somewhere to the left. “One of the most important and mysterious events in recent climate history is the climate shift in the mid-1970s. In the northern hemisphere 500-hPa atmospheric flow the shift manifested itself as a collapse of a persistent wave-3 anomaly pattern and the emergence of a strong wave-2 pattern.” – Tsonis. Just a thought.
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