Gaelic dancing part two: Arms – The missing half of the greenhouse effect

In his recent article on ‘the greenhouse effect’ Dr Roy Spencer presents his ‘Alabama Two Step’ argument which contends that the basic facts of radiative physics as presented by the IPCC are correct, but the devil in the detail, feedbacks, means that the warming effect of extra co2 in the atmosphere is strongly limited by Earth’s internal climate system. For Roy, the question of co2 driven warming is not a matter of whether it exists, but a question of how strong it is.

I think  this is correct as far as it goes, but misses out much of the real situation regarding the question of how energy flow in the Earth’s climate system is organised, and what causes what. Roy talks about ‘the greenhouse effect’ as if atmospheric radiation and convection are the only important factors. My contention is that he is only discussing the radiative greenhouse effect, and that this misses a large part of the totality of the ‘greenhouse effect’.

There is an old joke about the recent rediscovery of an ancient Gaelic book: ‘Gaelic Dancing part two: Arms’, and it applies to Roy’s Alabama two step as well. Atmospheric radiation and atmospheric convection are probably less than half of what really causes the Earth’s surface to be much warmer on average than the Moon’s.

So what kind of arm-waving argument am I going to offer in support of this assertion?

Doug Cotton: Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics

I have been asked by Doug Cotton to draw attention to the paper he has written. I’m happy to do so, despite some personal reservations regarding some of the inferences drawn from observations. I request that all comments are polite, and kind-hearted. Everyone is learning about radiation, the process is ongoing.

Radiated Energy and the
     Second Law of Thermodynamics
Douglas Cotton, B.Sc., B.A., Dip. Bus. Admin
March 12, 2012

ABSTRACT

The transfer of thermal energy by radiation is discussed in the context of the Earth’s
surface and its atmosphere. When considering what happens as the Sun is warming
the surface each morning, it is noted that its radiation is being directed onto the land
surfaces and some distance below the surface of the oceans. So, additional radiation
supposedly transferring further thermal energy from the cooler atmosphere to the
warmer surface would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This law must
apply (on a macro scale) between any two points at any particular time. An apparent
violation cannot be excused on the basis of “net” radiation, because “net” radiation has
no corresponding physical entity and is meaningless and useless for determining heat
flow in situations when other processes are also involved.

It may be deduced that none of the radiation from a cooler body (and only a portion of
the radiation from a warmer body) has any thermodynamic effect on the other body.
All such radiation from a cooler source is rejected in some way, and it can be deduced
that resonance and scattering occurs without any conversion to thermal energy. The
radiation continues in another direction until it strikes a cooler target, which could be
in space.

Stargazing from the high Sierra Nevada

I never got around to posting some of the pics we took in the high Sierra Nevada while we in Spain a fortnight ago. This is mostly because after the high Sierra we headed out into the sticks to have a look at some rural stuff in off the Costa Tropical, and a lack of an internet cafe prevented me from converting pics from the camera. Next time I’ll be better prepared as I can resize images in camera and if I’d had a usb host cable to connect it to the phone with, I could have blogged some great images.

 

Anyway, here’s a general shot of the Highest part of the Sierra Granada, with the main peaks (one cloud hidden) and the old telescope observatory is the dark hill amid the snow field on the flank of Pico Valeta.

Click for fullsize image

Book review: Wind Controlled Climate: Doctoral thesis by Hans Jelbring

[This article was first published 11th March 2012.
April 2015 Dr Tim Ball in a guest article at WUWT references Dr Hans Jelbring’s thesis.  This review may be useful.

Advection: The Forgotten Weather Factor

 Sadly there are no more copies of the thesis available.
— Tim, co-mod]

Tallbloke wrote: –

Yesterday I had a full day to myself and the opportunity to read one of the copies of the Doctoral Thesis Hans sent me.

This is a superb piece of work. It balances the known with the unknown, and encompasses all timescales from the birth of our planet to the weather pattern changes which occur overnight. As an overview of climate and how we can go about trying to understand it, condensed into 111 pages of readable cogent thinking written in plain language, I cannot think of a better primer for those who have a strong interest in the relative scale and interactions of the forces which shape the changing climates and weather on Earth.

Hans sets the scene by making a realistic assessment of the extent of the incomprehensibility of the systems we have to try to understand through the cave-shadow mimickry of proxy series. These he deals with in more detail in a later section, taking a closer look at 18O and 13C proxies from various locations, as well as dust indices and other proxies. Within the unknown limits set by variously assessable levels of uncertainty, Hans extracts the key elements of the big climate picture which are pulled together to provide his expert judgement on the causes of ice ages and interglacials, the general circulation of the Holocene and earlier epochs, and the longterm storage and release of energy through solar heating of the SH oceans and NH radiation to space.

Magic Turtle: On the wisdom of throwing stones at the greenhouse theory

My thanks to Talkshop commenter and now guest author ‘Magic Turtle’  for this  short essay expressing concern about the climate debate within the wider context of the scientific endeavour, and the society in which it is embedded. This concern is shared by people on all sides of the debate, and gives an opportunity for reflection on the non-partisan aspects of people’s motivation for being involved as well as an opportunity for critique of specific theoretical considerations.

I would like to start by declaring my position in the man-made global warming debate. I am not a ‘warmist’ and I do not buy the IPCC’s and the Hockey Team’s alarmist technobabble with which they claim to demonstrate that human society’s emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) are endangering the planet and making drastic mitigation measures urgently necessary. To my mind this claim has got ‘Political Scam’ written all over it – an impression that has only been reinforced for me by the Climategate emails.

However, I am less concerned about the politics of man-made global warming than I am about what is being done to science in the brouhaha surrounding it. Today’s political battles are transient and in a hundred years time they will be half-remembered history for schoolchildren to study, but I think the institution of science is one of the central pillars of civilization that needs to be preserved and continually perfected throughout time if civilization is to flourish. But it appears to have become something of a political football in the global warming debate and I think that has to be bad for science and civilization. It seems to me that the warmists have perverted science quite cynically and deliberately in order to make their false argument persuasive. Their so-called ‘climate science’ is no science at all in my eyes and it looks more like an exercise in manufacturing and maintaining a grand illusion to me.

The Grauniad strikes out

NOTE: TEXT ABOVE IS FROM WUWT, NOT THE TALKSHOP

Watts Up With That?

UPDATE: I’ve made a change to my policy on media interaction. See below. -A

Strong headline, I know. But the headline is rooted in actions (and lack thereof). Readers may recall the smear job done by Guardian reporter Suzanne Goldenberg to Tom Harris at Carleton University in Ottawa which I covered in detail here: Fake moral outrage translated to smear: media upset that students can choose to take an elective course on climate change at Carleton.

Readers may also recall that in that story there’s a recorded transcript of the interview with Harris by Goldenberg, and it seems nothing substantive that Mr. Harris had to say made it in to Goldenberg’s story.

Before I published my investigation, Mr. Harris wrote a letter to the editor to the Guardian to set the record straight. It has been 10 days now and they still have not published it. Harris sent me a…

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The Talkshop thrusts towards a new theory of climate

Hunting around for info on the timing of maxima and minima in annual sea surface temperatures I found the following snippet:

The annual range of surface temperature of the oceans is much less than that of the continents. The annual variation of the ocean surface temperature in any part of the world depends on the following factors:

a. Radiation income

b. Nature of ocean currents

c. Prevailing winds.

The annual variation of the surface temperature is not uniform; rather it changes from one area to another.

Doug Proctor: A geologist on sea level and dust

People post things on the Suggestions thread, in this case Doug wrote well at length and I think it works as a main article. I’ll add some links and images (click images for links to source web sites).

“I’m in the United Arab Emirates right now. Two things:

I’m off, being a geologist, to check out the sabhkas, the salt flats where gypsum and anhydrite, calcite and dolomite naturally deposit out of seawater. …

Here’s Harold’s followup post on the issue:

Talking About the Weather

I have been putting pressure on Dr. Peter Gleick to address the issue of the authorship of the most significant document that he presented to the world two weeks ago, the fake strategy memo purporting to show the Heartland Institute’s plans for the coming year. Specifically, I’ve asked that he admit to being the author, if he can. This presumes that he is the author, which I do.

Toward that end, I have e-mailed Dr. Gleick a handful of times requesting comment. I also wrote an open letter to Dr. Gleick. With time, I have come to be increasingly interested in the fact that Andy Revkin and the New York Times have failed to publish any substantive reporting on this last remaining piece of the Fakegate puzzle. And I have asked Revkin whether he was looking into the fake document’s authorship.

Revkin responded in a direct Twitter message: “ideas welcome…

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More from Harold Ambler, who has been getting interested in the Gleick/fakegate saga:

Talking About the Weather

It has been my impression that the New York Times leading writer on climate for the last 15 years, Andy Revkin, has been too close to Gavin Schmidt, James Hansen, and Michael Mann to have much in the way of perspective on their political agenda, or, if you prefer, their scientific agenda. I even argued this to the Times ombudsman shortly after Climategate broke in the fall of 2009. I was just aghast how comfortable Revkin was explaining away what was clearly malfeasance by his go-to list of scientific sources. Less than two weeks later, Revkin had left the news side of the Times, which was a strange coincidence. And, yes, I understand, nothing more.

Perched as he remains at the Times’ as the primary blogger on its Dot Earth Blog, he likes to insist that he is no longer part of the news apparatus at all. Particularly when…

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X-class, nice try, missed

Image, thumbnail from Wired Science, click for story.

Sunday two flares launched, the second will near miss the earth; a mass ejection.

And an aside…

Lunar Tides, Long-Term Variation Peak Latitude Anomaly

© Ian R.G. Wilson; Licensee Bentham Open

Lunar Tides and the Long-Term Variation of the Peak Latitude Anomaly of the Summer Sub-Tropical High Pressure Ridge over Eastern Australia

Ian R.G. Wilson; The Open Atmospheric Science Journal, 2012, 6, 49-60; Queensland Department of Education and Training, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia

PDF is here

Henrik Svensmark experiment overturns assumed laws, large clumps form

Fig 3 from paper, my words. Upper, red is supposed mathematical model where droplet size is unable to grow, blue is actual result. Lower, control without radiation, also a fail.

“Response of Cloud Condensation Nuclei (> 50 nm) to changes in ion-nucleation”

Henrik Svensmark, Martin B. Enghoff, and Jens Olaf Pepke Pedersen

“Windmill” Huhne lawyers up, trial set for October 2012

As reported here recently 1, 2, Huhne was due and appeared at Southwark crown court today. His legal blade was criminal lawyer John Kelsey-Fry, from recent success getting the Tottenham football manager off a tax evasion charge brought by Her Majesties finest taxidermists. They usually get to stuff people.

Andrew Breitbart, obit.

Image credit: Unknown, http://www.breitbart.tv/, Fox News Remembers Breitbart, post processed by author here.

The early death at 43 has been announced of a controvertial figure in the American political media world, Andrew Breitbart. As a Brit I had never heard of him. I look anyway.

Here’s another excellent common sense article from Harold Ambler.

Talking About the Weather

I would say that The New York Times has jumped the shark, but you have to separate from the shark first in order to jump it. The Times has been grasping the shark in a death-embrace for years now, when it comes to both weather and climate journalism.

I can barely stand to report how bad it has gotten, but will do my best. Let’s start with the Times‘ headline: “Storm System Crushes Midwestern Towns.” This plays on the pervasive sense, for which the Times itself is largely responsible, that weather and climate have gone to Hell. What were headlines like for weather stories at the Times before the advent of “climate change”?

Here’s one: “TORNADO DEATH LOSS 350 IN EIGHT STATES.” The year was 1908. Today, which would normally be March 1 but this year happens to be February 29, tornadoes were spawned by early-spring storms cutting through…

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