There’s Ken Rice’s nonsense, and then there’s thermodynamics

Ken Rice, an Edinburgh University academic who selectively censors dissenting comments at his pro-AGW “and Then There’s Physics” propaganda blog, has another of mine in moderation:

tallbloke says:

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

March 12, 2018 at 10:02 am

OK, I’ll drop that subject and deal directly with the subject of your blog post.
You state that:

“If the Earth’s atmospheric pressure is to contribute to the enhanced surface temperature, then that would mean that the atmosphere would need to continually provide energy to the surface. It could only do this through the conversion of gravitational potential energy to thermal energy. This would then require the continual contraction of the Earth’s atmosphere.”

This quote demonstrates that you’ve fundamentally misunderstood Ned Nikolov’s hypothesis. He’s not positing a raised surface T due to an ongoing gravitational collapse producing a compression, generating heat which is then lost to space.

Atmospheric pressure produces a density gradient; i.e. it forces there to be more air molecules per unit volume at lower altitude than at higher altitude. Denser air intercepts and absorbs more of the sunlight passing through it than less dense air, producing more molecular collisions and excitation. It therefore holds more kinetic energy.The more kinetic energy it holds the higher its temperature will be.

The Great American Eclipse of 2017 left ‘bow waves’ in Earth’s atmosphere

Credit: NASA

Researchers say: ‘Study of wave characteristics reveals complex interconnections between the Sun, Moon, and Earth’s neutral atmosphere and ionosphere.’

The waves in the upper atmosphere are similar to the V-shaped waves left behind by a ship moving through water, reports The IB Times.

The 21 August total solar eclipse that overshadowed the entire stretch from Oregon to South Carolina, not only offered some mind-boggling views, but also left a weird effect on Earth’s atmosphere.

The event created heat-energy ripples or “bow waves”, something akin to the V-shaped waves left behind by a ship moving through water, in Earth’s upper atmosphere, Gizmodo reports.

Waves in lakes make waves in the Earth

Waves in Lake Ontario [image credit: SYSS Mouse / Wikipedia]

Researchers say ‘a consistent signal emerges’ over longer periods. In theory the Moon should be a suspect given its role in tides?

Beneath the peaceful rolling waves of a lake is a rumble, imperceptible to all but seismometers, that ripples into the earth like the waves ripple along the shore, reports Phys.org.

In a study published today in the Journal of Geophysical Research Solid Earth, scientists at the University of Utah report that these small seismic signals can aid science.

As a record of wave motion in a lake, they can reveal when a lake freezes over and when it thaws. And as a small, constant source of seismic energy in the surrounding earth, lake microseisms can shine a light on the geology surrounding a lake.

Venus: giant gravity wave discovered in atmosphere

A wave from pole to pole in the cloud tops that doesn’t move – but then disappears? Another Venus conundrum emerges.

A massive, un-moving structure has been discovered in the upper atmosphere of Venus, reports the IB Times.

Scientists detected the feature with the Jaxa’s Akatsuki spacecraft and they believe it is some sort of gravity wave – although they do not understand how it ended up at the altitude of cloud tops.

The bow-shaped structure was first spotted in December 2015 and a team led by scientists from Rikkyo University in Japan were able to observe it over several days.

It measured 10,000km in length and was brighter and hotter than the surrounding atmosphere. When scientists attempted to observe it again a month later, it had disappeared. The team published their findings in the journal Nature Geoscience.

New Dawn Of Truth: London Climate Change Conference 2016

It’s finally happening. Thanks to Herculean efforts by Niklas Morner, we are presenting a two-day conference in central London on the 8-9th September. Speakers are coming from all over the world to present their work, and it is not to be missed!

Take the 8-9th September off work and join us for this historic event. The first UK climate conference in decades which will counter the scaremongering of the IPCC with a cool, rational approach to the study of climate change, presenting alternative explanations, new data, theory and commentary. Topics include solar-planetary theory, causes of ENSO, sea ice extent, sea level, ozone depletion, volcanos, regional forecasting, journal gatekeeping and many more.

The list of contributors is long, we are packing a huge number of presentations into this two day event. Speakers include Niklas Morner, myself, Ned Nikolov and Karl Zeller,  Nicola Scafetta, Per Strandberg, Jan-Erik Solheim, and thats before lunch on day one! Piers Corbyn will be there! So will  Christopher Monckton! See the full programme and the extended abstracts in this 35 Megabyte document for full details. There are also some travel and booking details on the geoethic.com website. An updated version is available on reseachgate

R.J. Salvador: Bi-monthly LOD model update

Two Months ago, solar system dynamics researcher  R.J. Salvador gave us an update on the performance of his length of day (LOD) model. Based on our planetary theory, the model has performed well so far, showing aberrations from the real world data within two standard deviations on a couple of occasions, but mainly tracking the model projection very closely indeed. Here’s the latest plot.

Rick says:

The model is within range. Even in the correlation period there are these wobbles where the actual deviates from the model by 2 std dev. We may have to wait until the seasons change again to know if the deviation widens or closes. I will update it again in two months.

I wish all the best for Tim.

Good luck with your BREXIT campaign. 

It’s going to be fascinating watching further updates as they arrive for signs of planetary periodicity in the aberrations and/or trying to correlate them with major weather patterns which could be responsible.

Logarithmic spiral beaches

Half Moon Bay State Beach, California
[credit: Wikipedia]

The Talkshop is dabbling in education today with this extract from Wikipedia.

A logarithmic spiral beach is a type of beach which develops in the direction under which it is sheltered by a headland, in an area called the shadow zone. It is characterized as a logarithmic spiral because if you look at it in plan view or aerially, it represents the same shape that is created from the logarithmic spiral relation.

These beaches are also commonly referred to as ‘half heart’ or ‘crenulate’ shaped bays, or ‘headland bays’.

Paul Vaughan: NOAA Corruption of SST records

NOAA’s vandalism of ERSSTv3b2 (good) to ERSSTv4 (corrupted) hinges on a single point.

Visual catalog of the beautiful natural patterns being systematically defaced:

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1. Secular

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Paul K: mini-paradox becomes a major paradox

Going through one of the old PRP shutdown threads I spotted a comment from regular A C Osborn I missed in all the hubbub. It linked to this thread on Bishop Hill, and I thought I’d repost it here for some consideration, since it’s right in our ~60yr oscillation in LOD ballpark. His grace’s intro follows:

Reader Paul K (a regular writer at Lucia’s) left this fascinating comment on the thread about the England trade winds paper. As BH regulars know, I don’t spend a lot of time on alternative theories of climate change, but I felt this was worthy of an airing.

As Nic correctly points out, from the observed data, the total global ocean heat flux shows a peak around 2001-2005 depending on which dataset one takes. TOA radiative measurements show a peak in net radiative incoming flux somewhere around 1997-2000, driven largely by SW changes in net albedo. Modern MSL data from satellite altimetry (or indeed from tide gauge data) shows a peak in its derivative function around 2001-2003, which should also be a proxy for net heat flux going into the ocean. (Using gravimetric data from GRACE, we can rule out the possibility that the peak in MSL derivative was caused by mass addition – it is a peak clearly driven by thermosteric expansion. There is a useful presentation here by Nerem.

So there is a consistent story from three data sources which says that the net incoming flux hit a peak and has since been decreasing overall for about a decade. This is not compatible with increasing forcing from GHGs and flat or declining tropospheric temperature – a mini paradox, if you will.

Chinese Company To Build Swansea Tidal Lagoon Barred By World Bank For Fraud

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All hail the Great Wall of Swansea! What could possibly go wrong?

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-32993437

I reported back in February on plans for a tidal lagoon in Swansea Bay. Evidently the plans are moving closer to fruition.

The BBC report:

A £300m deal to build the six-mile wall for the world’s first tidal lagoon power plant in Swansea Bay has been awarded to a company from China.

China Harbour Engineering Company will open a base in the UK and spend half of the contract’s value on a British workforce, partners and supply chain.

Prime Minister David Cameron said the deal was “win-win” for both countries.

About 1,850 construction jobs could be created by the £1bn lagoon project, which could operate from 2018.

Mark Shorrock, chief executive of Tidal Lagoon Power, said: “I have worked in China, speak Chinese and have huge esteem for China’s delivery capability and ability to deliver projects to time and budget.”

The two firms could also work…

View original post 1,293 more words

Paul Vaughan: Wind is an dominant player in climate variation

Paul Vaughan writes in suggestions:

It’s the wind.

Rial (2012) drew my attention to a fundamental correction that’s underway in oceanography (more notes forthcoming on this later) ….

Lozier, Susan (2010). Deconstructing the conveyor belt. Science 328, 1507-1511.
http://sites.duke.edu/mslozier/files/2010/11/Lozier_2010.pdf
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Though appealing in its simplicity, the ocean conveyor-belt paradigm has lost luster over the years […] the ocean’s eddy field, unaccounted for just decades ago […] figures prominently in the dismantling of the conveyor-belt paradigm. Another player in this dismantling is the ocean’s wind field. The traditional assignation of surface ocean gyres to wind-forcing and overturning to buoyancy forcing has ignored the vital impact of winds on overturning pathways and mechanics. […] the conveyor-belt model no longer serves the community well […] because it ignores crucial structure and mechanics of the ocean’s intricate global overturning.

[…] wind forcing, rather than buoyancy forcing, can play a dominant role in changing the transport of the overturning […]

Tidal power generator unveiling hailed as landmark

Propeller power [image: BBC]

Another technology hoping to make a splash on the renewable energy scene is tidal power. But can it be anywhere near to economically viable? Installation is known to be expensive, but tides are predictable and never take the day off.

My limited understanding of these things is that they work best where the tide is channelling water into a narrow passage so the rate of flow is higher than the open sea, so the number of suitable sites may be limited.

Apparent six minute slowdown in Saturn’s day length challenges current magnetosphere theory

From NASA:

Cassini took readings of the day-length indicator regarded as most reliable, the rhythm of natural radio signals from the planet. The results give 10 hours, 45 minutes, 45 seconds (plus or minus 36 seconds) as the length of time it takes Saturn to complete each rotation. Here’s the puzzle: That is about 6 minutes, or one percent, longer than the radio rotational period measured by the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft, which flew by Saturn in 1980 and 1981.

[Tallbloke notes that Venus has also slowed by an unexplained six minutes since 1997]

Cassini scientists are not questioning Voyager’s careful measurements. And they definitely do not think the whole planet of Saturn is actually rotating that much slower than it did two decades ago. Instead, they are looking for an explanation based on some variability in how the rotation deep inside Saturn drives the radio pulse.

Nicola Scafetta: Global temperatures and sunspot numbers. Are they related? Yes, but non linearly

Prolific solar-planetary scientist and long-time talkshop friend Nicola Scafetta has a new paper published in Physica A entitled ‘Global temperatures and sunspot numbers. Are they related? Yes, but non linearly. A reply to Gil-Alana et al. (2014)’ which comments on Gil-Alana et al 2014; a paper purporting to dismiss any correlation between solar activity and terrestrial surface temperature. Nicola gently points out the limitations of their methods and patiently explains how the astronomical-solar signal can be found in the data. Here is Figure 3 to whet your appetite:

 

Fig. 3. (A) Annually solved HadCRUT3 global surface temperature record [34] from 1850 to 2013. (B) Power spectrum density functions calculated using the MEM method (using M = N/2 = 82) and the MTM periodogram f (p) [35,36]: the calculations were made with the SSA–MTM Toolkit. Several spectral peaks (e.g.: at about 9.1, 10.4, 20 and 60 yr) are statistically significant above the 95% confidence level, and their solar, lunar and astronomical origin is explained in the literature (e.g.: Scafetta [10,32,33,25]).

Nicola also provides plots of several of the various solar and temperature related indices and techniques for representing them over a wide range of timescales which clearly demonstrate the plain fact of the close coherence between the activity of our host star which supplies all our energy, and the fluctuations of the lovely moderate temperatures we live in on the surface of our planet.

Are the Sun and Moon both acting on El Nino events?

While browsing Ian Wilson’s excellent Astro-Climate Connection blog, I found a graphic showing the coincidence of El Nino with the alignment of the Lunar line of nodes (declination cycle) and line of apse (orbital precession), with the Sun. I’ve taken the liberty of adding my Solar – El Nino hypothesis to it: the proposal is that El Nino tends to be initiated as the cycle starts to decline steeply and initiated again at solar minimum as it ‘bottom’s out’. I’ll reproduce Ian’s accompanying text below the break but to get to the point, here’s  the result:

Decadal lag of temperature response to solar input: A qualitative summary

I’m of the opinion that before getting into the complexity of numerical modelling, it’s wise to put considerable effort into trying to understand the physical processes at work in the climate system, and the origins of the energy flows that drive them. David Evans’ recent series of posts over at Jo Nova’s site have generated a lot of interesting discussion (despite being roundly ignored by Anthony Watts at WUWT), and I think we can shed some light on the ‘mysterious 11yr lag’ between solar input and climate response.

How ocean waves affect polar sea ice

Arctic sea ice [image credit: BBC/Getty Images]

The dynamics of ocean waves in polar regions give us important clues about the behaviour of sea ice in those areas, according to researchers.

“The ice floes bend with the waves, and over time you can imagine that this creates fatigue and eventually the ice will fracture. Interestingly, the fractures tend to be perpendicular to the direction of the waves, and to be of even widths.”

Re the Arctic, a related BBC report notes ‘that wave heights are going to change with increasing distance from the ice edge to the land, and that could have more of an impact on ice break-up.’

Could that suggest a ‘feedback effect’: greater distance to land = more ice break-up etc.?

BBC report: Ocean waves influence polar ice extent

Research letter:
Storm-induced sea-ice breakup and the implications for ice extent

Polar sea ice broken up by freewheeling ocean waves from distant storms

Pierre L. Gosselin reports on a Spiegel Online article

Models Wrong Again…Sea Ice Break-Up Caused In Large Part By Storm-Generated Oceanic Wave And Wind Dynamics!

By P Gosselin on 31. Mai 2014

Spiegel science journalist Axel Bojanowski has a fascinating piece on what likely causes most of the sea ice to break up. The Spiegel introduction:

Sea ice is disappearing in the Arctic, around the Antarctic it is growing – today’s conventional climate models are unable to explain this contradiction. One effect has just been measured by sensors: wave motion is able to crack ice, hundreds of kilometers away.”

Link to NoTricksZone article Follow his link to the Spiegel photos, magnificent.

Richard Merrick: Harmonic formation helps explain why phi pervades the solar system

This is a repost of an article by Richard Merrick  published on the Tokenrock.com website. This is highly relevant to the research Stuart ‘Oldbrew’ and I have been doing to try to define the mechanism by which sufficient energy is being passed between planets and the Sun to account for the observations we have been making in our Why Phi? series:

Harmonic Formation
By Richard Merrick

How do harmonics form?

As waves reflect and resonate inside a container or cavity, they cross one another. As they cross, they exchange energy at specific locations called ‘damping wells.’ In quantum mechanics this is explained by Landau-Zener theory (1932).

Known as Landau damping, waves that pass through one another mostly transparently, avoiding a direct collision, are called ‘avoided crossings.’ In such cases, energy is exchanged in a ‘parameter zone’ where one wave pushes against another, creating a kind of spinning well or vortex action. Like a kind of switch, energy is passed ‘adiabatically’ (without heat loss) across the damping well in a kind of torque action.

 

We can think of the damping well as a kind of low-pressure zone much like those in our atmosphere that create storms, hurricanes and tornados. The surrounding pressure differential causes an implosion toward the center of the low-pressure zone, forming a vortex.

Hans Jelbring: Big Bang – BICEP flexes it’s muscle

The press release from BICEP making claims regarding detection of gravitational waves which inform us about the origin of the cosmos has been doing the rounds of the world’s media organisations.  Hans Jelbring comments:

Big Bang – The greatest fairy tale ever told
Hans Jelbring – 18-3-2014

There is freedom of choosing religion in our country so there is no problem what you or I believe. On the other hand there is a problem when scientists mix facts supported by evidence and laws of nature with fantasy, unfounded hypotheses and faith.

There is no qualitative difference being a creationist believing that earth and our galaxy was created 6000 years ago or believing that the universe was created from a small cosmic egg 14 billion years ago. From where did this egg originate and what existed before that? There must have been something more (or rather, less) than a nuclear bomb within it since at that point not even matter are believed to has existed. None of these beliefs are or can be supported by scientific methods or verified experience. Hence, it cannot be classified as science.