</b>"“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”
H.L. Mencken"</b>
Right, let's cherry pick maxims, leaving out the inconvenient ones, that give us more rhetoric and semantic fuel to cling to our beliefs, and that have nothing to do with the issue.
Comment on The beyond-two-degree inferno by John Carter
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Comment on The beyond-two-degree inferno by Mike Flynn
John Carter,
You wrote –
“Right, let’s cherry pick maxims, leaving out the inconvenient ones, that give us more rhetoric and semantic fuel to cling to our beliefs, and that have nothing to do with the issue.”
I assume you copied this from the minutes of a Warmist tactics meeting?
Says it all, really.
Not a fact in sight – too inconvenient, I suppose.
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Comment on New research on atmospheric radiative transfer by Turbulent Eddie
hockeyschtick,
How does CO2 raise the temperature of the tropopause and then immediately become a cooling agent of the stratosphere?
This is an important question.
I started to write a reply but it becomes very detailed so I’ll try again with a shorter one with a picture.
Radiative transfer depends mostly on the constituents ( in this case CO2 ) and the vertical temperature profile. Other constituents are important but let’s keep things simple. Every molecule of CO2 absorbs and emits, but in practice, one calculates radiative transfer using layers ( bounded by levels ) of atmosphere. These layers are semi-transparent ( like looking through fog ). Also, bear in mind that the warmest level tends to be the surface and temperatures tend to decline to the coldest level at the tropopause.
The layers have mass and can experience a net increase or decrease of energy based on net absorption. When there is a change in the absorbed energy of a layer, it is reflected in the so called heating rate.
It turns out that the heating rate of the layers of the troposphere don’t change very much at all when CO2 is increased. However, because all layers become more opaque with more CO2, less net upward radiative flux reaches the tropopause. This implies that the troposphere as a whole is running a surplus of energy.
In the stratosphere, things are different. The individual layers do experience a negative change in heating rate. This is easiest to understand in terms of the very top layer. As this layer becomes more emissive, it sends more energy upward and downward, but still receives (next to) nothing from space and like all the stratospheric layers, receives less from the layers in the troposphere below.
Here is the result of a calculation for various concentrations of CO2 for an idealized tropical atmosphere:
The point labeled a. is of the difference of outgoing longwave radiation for more CO2. I’ve got the sign different than is customary (downward instead of upward ) so the amount indicates the flux that is kept by the troposphere ( reduced OLR ). The point labeled b. is the ‘Heating Rate’
for the upper stratosphere. You can see that the imposed cooling is very intense ( 5K per day ).
Clear as mud? The important parts are that temperature profile determines what the effect of increased apsorption/emission will be, and that the layers are semi-transparent so there’s complicating overlap of effects, and lastly that the implied warming of the troposphere by reduced OLR is different from the calculated change of cooling rate for the individual layers of the upper stratosphere.
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Comment on New research on atmospheric radiative transfer by Jim D
Bob Greene, this is how it works. If you warm your house at a fixed rate and then add insulation, it maintains a larger temperature gradient between the house and outside, and therefore the house gets warmer for a given outside temperature.
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Comment on Heat waves: exacerbated by global warming? by Jim D
Let me get this straight. So the whole surface and deep ocean are warming, and you say it doesn’t have to be net forcing? Or it has to be net forcing, but that doesn’t have to be us?
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Comment on New research on atmospheric radiative transfer by Jim D
GHGs are like insulation. They prevent the surface from cooling so much. Why is that so hard to understand?
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Comment on New research on atmospheric radiative transfer by Jim D
The bigger effect from the extra moisture is the positive feedback due to its extra emission from the atmosphere that adds to CO2’s and raises the ERL further. The lapse-rate effect only partially counters that.
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Comment on A key admission regarding climate memes by Willard
> The [contrarians] merely refer to this concept via the ‘C’ in CAGW to save a lot of typing, in the same way that both sides use AGW to likewise save typing the rest.
I disagree on two counts.
First, AGW refers to a theory, or rather an univocal consequence of a network of theories, while CAGW is the strawman contrarians built for their “alarmist!” meme.
Second, adding the C saves more than typing, it saves thinking about risks. AGW implies risks, and the CAGW strawman minimize those risks by caricaturing them. It would be really hard to deny that AGW contains risks that need to be dealt with. From the most conservative scientist who would make my fantasy draft:
1. What are your views about climate change?
Before we get to my views, let’s start with the facts. First, the climate is always changing. Second, our changing of the composition of the atmosphere is giving the climate system a bigger kick than it’s gotten in a long time. Third, science has been unable to pin down just how big an effect on global temperatures that kick is going to have, to within a factor of two or three. Fourth, apart from sea level rise, other climate change impacts are even less precisely known.
Now, my view is that climate change is an important issue that requires our attention. We need to confront the risks and make informed decisions about the extent to which we wish to slow down climate change or just deal with its impacts.
2. What are your key concerns about this issue in Texas with respect to its impacts?
For ecology, there are multiple threats to coastal ecosystems. Ocean acidification, sea level rise, reduced freshwater inflows, and rising temperatures will combine to lead to major changes. For society, there are lots of little problems. The most costly and pervasive would be reduced water availability, while the most dangerous would be increased chances of urban wildfires.
[…]
8. For Texas, what’s the most pressing concern of climate change? For example, is it drought or rising sea levels? And do you see these risks as a means of persuading skeptics?
I discussed the main risks earlier. However, people can’t be persuaded by those risks unless and until they recognize those risks as real. By the time such elevated risks are clearly apparent in the data, it will be too late to do much about it.
The two emphases underline the two aspects that the CAGW meme conceals.
It is not by whining about mediatic hyperboles that we’ll deal with AGW risks.
And that’s the memo.
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Comment on New research on atmospheric radiative transfer by Paul Linsay
“The average power is 1/pi times the maximum power and would lead to an absolute temperature 25% less than that obtained from the maximum.”
This correct for computing the average temperature of the surface because the insolation is delivered as a half wave rectified sine and the surface has a heat capacity that stores the energy. Regardless, the temperature at noon when insolation is at its maximum is going to be determined by the maximum insolation not by a 1/pi fraction. Just where does the extra 1 – 1/pi fraction, about two thirds, of the incident energy flux go to? You can’t wave it away by invoking some unknown albedo. The peak temperature at the equator will be 394 K at high noon.
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Comment on New research on atmospheric radiative transfer by jim2
“From our regression of low cloud factors with various solar activity related parameters, we have estimated the percentage change in cloud factor implied by the known variation in cosmic ray flux and solar activity during the past century. In addition, we have used cloud forcing factors derived by others to estimate the effect of cosmic ray-induced low cloud factor changes on global temperatures. Taken at face value, our results imply that, possibly excluding the last decade or so when an accentuated rise in global temperatures is widely accepted to have occurred as a result of the enhanced greenhouse effect, most of the global warming of the twentieth century can be quantitatively explained by the combined direct (irradiance) and indirect (cosmic ray induced low cloud) effects of solar activity. Similarly, we find the lower level of solar activity in the Maunder Minimum predicts an increase in the low cloud factor that gives rise to an increased albedo for the Earth and lower global temperatures.
”
http://www.solarstorms.org/CloudCover.html
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Comment on New research on atmospheric radiative transfer by matthewrmarler
Jim D: <i> The textbook science looks fine to me. </i>
Do you think that disproves the result reported in the PhD thesis?
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Comment on New research on atmospheric radiative transfer by Lawrence Giver
Angech: Indeed, the solar Fraunhofer “A” and “B” features at ~0.76 and ~0.69 microns in the near infrared are absorption bands of terrestrial oxygen. It’s true that for each molecule of CO2 added to the atmosphere, a molecule of O2 is consumed. But that is a very small portion of the total atmospheric O2 (which is about 21% of the total atmosphere). Therefore, the absorption by these O2 bands are decreasing with time as CO2 increases, but by an unmeasureable, tiny amount; their absorption can be regarded as constant for all modeling calculations.
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Comment on Heat waves: exacerbated by global warming? by curryja
stay tuned, post on ocean heat content coming tomorrow.
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Comment on Overreach at the EPA by Is the EPA’s Clean Power Plan legal? Lawyers and law professors disagree | Climate Etc.
[…] Richard Epstein: Overreach at the EPA […]
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Comment on New research on atmospheric radiative transfer by Horst Graben (@Graben_Horst)
What you desire to have spoon-fed is contained in his blog posts. Get back to us once you have caught up.
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Comment on Is the EPA’s Clean Power Plan legal? Lawyers and law professors disagree by fulltimetumbleweed/tumbleweedstumbling
“As we see it, the job of a lawyer is to read and interpret the law, and personal beliefs shouldn’t impact his or her legal analysis.” It is interesting to think that lawyers as a profession may well be more honest and less biased or subject to pressure to conform than scientists.
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Comment on New research on atmospheric radiative transfer by Jim D
I don’t think the thesis would dispute this textbook stuff. Antarctica may be as described. I have not seen if some GCMs have trouble with the inversion, so I can’t comment on why that may be.
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Comment on New research on atmospheric radiative transfer by angech2014
captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.3 | July 7, 2015 at 8:44 pm |
“”angech, “best explanation is RealClimate 7/12/2004″
That is a classic :)”
A real life Ripley’s believe it or not moment.
\ Have a look for a real laugh and real insight into how little RealClimate knew when they put up the article. Google
“Why does the stratosphere cool when the troposphere warms?”
second article down, not Stoat.
Gavin says “This post is obsolete and wrong in many respects.”
“NB. The following text was originally in the post ( , and has subsequently turned out to be wrong. It is left here so that the comments on it can remain comprehensible.”
“14/Jan/05: This post was updated in the light of my further education in radiation physics. 25/Feb/05: Groan…and again.”
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Comment on New research on atmospheric radiative transfer by micro6500
Of course you do, explain how it works, explain what an IR thermometer reads and why.
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Comment on New research on atmospheric radiative transfer by micro6500
” this is how it works. If you warm your house at a fixed rate and then add insulation, it maintains a larger temperature gradient between the house and outside, and therefore the house gets warmer for a given outside temperature.”
This is not an explanation.
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