I once walked onto Jackson Browne’s tour bus. I was walking down a street and it happened to be parked there. It appeared empty and no one was around. I was surprised when the door was unlocked. I walked up the stairs and as I turned into the aisle I saw a figure get up from the very back of the bus. It was Jackson Browne! I had obviously woken him up. I don’t remember what I said. I’m sure I apologized and said I would leave. He was pretty cool with the whole thing. And I left.
I worked at the concert venue where he had performed that night and a friend who worked the dressing room had told me she had heard that he wasn’t feeling well. The show had gone on, but when I saw him on the bus it did seem like he was ill, which would explain why he wasn’t out with the rest of the band and crew.
So, Jackson, if you’re reading this I apologize. About 15 years later I had a son and named him Jackson*, if that helps.
*Not after you. My wife just likes the name.
Thanks physicsguy for your reply yesterday.
If I understand you correctly, an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere will initiate a feedback loop that will continue to increase CO2 concentrations? Is there evidence that this will actually happen? It seems that the present % of CO2 in the atmosphere is of such a low concentration that its effect on global temperature is negligible. Is the fear of CO2 based not on present % but on a possible increase in CO2 concentration due to a feedback loop that will lead to catastrophe? Can the concentration of CO2 (or rate of increase) that should cause alarm be determined? From my point of view it seems that a scientific approach is not followed but rather a belief that borders on religious fervor guides the discussion. Not much evidence to change the world’s economy let alone to claim that the “science is done”.
Xylourgus,
I don’t know the chemistry (or Physics? Where does one stop and the other begin?) to answer your questions. Smarter folks will likely be along to do that. However, I made a more general point when you first posed this question that I will reiterate here, because I think you may be asking a different question.
First, as you now see from the replies you’ve received thus far, the climate is extremely complex with an immense number of variables. Trying to isolate one and predict its impact is really difficult. Almost certainly beyond our current understanding and capabilities. That doesn’t mean pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere is good, nor bad, it just means the whole thing is really difficult to model. As someone else pointed out, the model Michael Mann made and the IPCC bet the farm on has failed to correlate with the data since it was published. That, by definition, is bad science. The Conclusion has not fit the Hypothesis.
So, with all the different chemicals on this planet and in its atmosphere, with some known to have a greater greenhouse affect than others; why the focus on CO2?
When scientists look into the past they observe a correlation with CO2 and temperature. Core samples. Tree rings. Fossils (which species were living at which latitudes when). Warmer temps. More CO2. Cooler temps. Less CO2. This makes some climatologists believe that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere causes an increase in temperature, CO2 drives temperature, so they set about building a model to show how this might happen. You can kind-of understand how this may happen. More CO2 in the atmosphere could result in more sunlight trapped beneath the atmosphere (like a greenhouse) and the planet warms. As others have shown, there are a lot of steps to this, and the chemistry is complicated, but the basic gist is trying to find a reason for the correlation between CO2 and temperature in the geologic and biologic record and use it as a predictor for future climate.
But there is another camp that thinks it’s the other way around; temperature may drive CO2. That camp thinks CO2 is not the catalyst of the temperature increase, it is a result. This is pretty easy to understand. Plants love warm temperatures and plants give off CO2. Let’s not forget algae is a plant and also gives off CO2 and there is a lot of algae in surface water. Warmer temperatures = more plant life = more CO2 in the atmosphere.
From what I know, there really isn’t debate among scientists regarding the historic record. There’s a good correlation between CO2 and temperature. Warmer temperatures in a specific period in the past, more CO2 at that period. Cooler temperatures in a specific period in the past, less CO2 at that period. Scientists have only really been studying this for a brief time. 50 years? That’s a really brief window of data regarding climatology. Overall climate trends typically last hundreds of thousands of year cycles and within those cycles there are always blips; just as annual high and low temps wherever you live. A cooler summer in 2021 does not mean 2022 will be cooler.
Sold GE yesterday and finally made a few bucks to play with BUT had to hold it forever.
Watching Apple now. If it hits 100 i’m going in.
But i’ve never got this whole Apple cult following. Apple is one the most well known brands on the planet but there prices for products have always been sky high.
Couple years ago wife offered to by grand daughter a car because her junker kept breaking down. She turned her down and grand daughter said i could use a new IPhone and some cash! Wife said no deal.
Xylourgos,
The effect of water in the atmosphere is a much stronger agent in causing temperature changes than CO2. This includes humidity, clouds (which are reflective) and even ice and snow ground cover (extremely reflective), which precipitates out of the atmosphere. It is not the only other agent, but it is probably the biggest.
So the question is: If the CO2 level were increased by say 50%, how do the water effects respond to that?
By itself, the CO2 increase is worth about a +0.5 deg C temp. increase. Not tiny, but not a terribly big deal.
About 20 years ago, I attended a 1.5 hour lecture on all this, the presenter had about 20 or 25 journal publications about the water effect. They were all over the map. Some showed strong warming with increased temperature and water, some the opposite, and everything in between.
How to deal with that? The climate modelers just average all of the research results. The super smart guy sitting next to me whispered, “A consensus of gossip, is still gossip none the less.”
If the water effect is strong warming with increasing temperatures, then that is a positive (additive) feedback effect leading to instability. A +0.5 deg. C, CO2 effect could lead to +4.0 deg. C net result. That is large.
If the water effect is strong cooling with increasing temperatures, then that is a negative (subtractive) feedback effect leading to stability. A +0.5 deg. C, CO2 effect could lead to a +0.2 deg. C net result.
Check out the photo jokes at the bottom of this article.
Not only do I think the results are more realistic than CGI, I think it shows more creativity, artistry and ingenuity. Incredible stuff!
TommyJay,
If you read my reply, the real question is: Does CO2 drive temperature or does temperature drive CO2? Folks who believe the former are the folks who presented the lecture you attended. Looking at complex chemistry and variables to build a model that fits past data. Folks who believe the latter think warmer temps = more plant life, which, of course, means more CO2. Both are plausible (the latter is almost inarguable).
But that’s the fundamental question behind the models. It’s a chicken or egg thing.
jack,
I have never understood the cult of Apple. Well, in the late ’70s, early ’80s they made some great stuff!
Everything they sell is available cheaper, with more variety and with more openness and compatibility. Their stuff is good. It certainly looks good. But most of it seems to be the logo, status. People paying more than necessary to be part of a club; the Apple cult.
I should add that I am a big, Wozniak fan. The Woz is a genius who built an incredible machine nearly independently. He was also smart enough to get out at the right time and live a full life. Really impressive guy!
The fundamental question is power. Politics is the driver. CO2 is a tool, a MaGuffin, IMO.
Rufus,
No, I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding. Warming feedback effects are a very big part of the AGW modeling and worry, and it is generally not about more CO2 causing more CO2.
I did read your post, and there are interesting and confusing geologic time period issues there. If I remember correctly, the global temperature goes up, then later the Carboniferous era begins and the CO2 goes up. Backwards?
The modelers all use feedback effects, and they are not using paleontology as input data.
The big element of feedback used in models is the water effect. I’m not 100% sure, but I believe that nearly all these models have a net positive (instability) feedback mechanism, while probably having a weakly (or zero) negative (stabilizing) feedback mechanism for CO2.
More CO2 leads to more plant growth which removes CO2 for the air. More CO2 increases the temperature a little and this combined with land erosion removes CO2 from the air. I’m sure there are other effects thrown in.
Rufus,
Don’t you mean plants absorb CO2, not give off?
But then I ran across this article, that said:
“When plants go through the process of photosynthesis, they also release half of the carbon dioxide they take in back into the atmosphere via a process called respiration.”
That would seem to say that plants are a net reducer of CO2, yet later in the article it says that plants give off more CO2 than human activity.
“Whereas in the past, plants were estimated to only release up to 8 times as much carbon dioxide as humans, that number has jumped in recent years to nearly double- reaching a staggering 11 times the amount of carbon dioxide that human activities produce.”
If that’s the case, the solution is simple– kill all the plants. 🙂
}}} If I understand you correctly, an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere will initiate a feedback loop that will continue to increase CO2 concentrations?
As I understand the biggest legit concern would be if the permafrost melted or there were other deep-water effects. As I mentioned in a post some while back, there are “objects” down on the sea floor (clathrates) which trap methane (and similar ones under the permafrost), which might be broken/melted/affected, thus causing a fairly sudden and very massive release of methane (which is a much much stronger GHG than CO² and even water)… This would cause a major uptick in greenhouse heating effects in the atmosphere.
As to the matter of water, I am curious how much of a counter-effect IT has as a GHG, since it creates clouds, too, which raise the albedo of the earth and can also reflect sunlight back out of the atmosphere before it gets captured as heat. It might even be net-negative as to how much warming it actually produces. You could likely argue that heating also affects the various snowy areas (incl. mountain ranges, not just the ice caps) which lowers the albedo of earth.
I know that soot has been argued as relevant to this — by depositing more soot into the air, China has darkened the snow, thus making it melt more/faster.
Final point: Ocean warming. Before the atmosphere will warm, the oceans have to warm up significantly. And water is a truly MASSIVE natural heat sink. It will absorb a LOT more heat than the atmosphere can even begin to absorb. You would see a truly significant increase in hurricanes (and no, not just an unusual number in a single year, but a sustained increase in number and severity, which HAS NOT HAPPENED, despite the merdia suggesting otherwise) before there would be much atmospheric warming. Right now, there really hasn’t been all that much noted warming of not only the surface (of which there has been a small amount) and the deeper ocean (of which there is no noticeable change, last I heard — they’re trying to find a handwave to explain this last, mind you)
Part of the point here is, there are SOOOOO many different factors that are highly relevant, aren’t necessarily dealt with, etc., in all the models being applied. And the fact that they are not open with the models and how they work is the greatest challenge to their functionality by anyone who is actually a scientist. Being able to reproduce the results is the centerpiece of any scientific inquiry.
ALSO: The question about feedbacks in the modeling which is really of challenge is the question of how great it is — is the feedback positive (>1) or negative (<1) and how much so? All indications are that it is negative, not positive. But all the models assume positive.
jack:
“Wife said no deal”
You married well.
Rufus,
I reread your comment. The last part is backwards. More plant growth reduces atmospheric CO2. For some time the doomsayers said that forest growth didn’t matter, since fallen trees decay and release CO2. Then they studied the Amazon forest. Oops. The Amazon growth does suck CO2 from the air, on net. And the increased Amazon growth sucks more CO2 from the air in a negative feedback effect for CO2. More CO2 leading to less CO2.
jack,
Nice scenery in the music video. I love the drive in the area from western Nebraska though eastern Utah. Nearly every summer drive I’ve taken near the Medicine Bow National Forest area featured a spectacular thunder storm. So beautiful.
Rufus, said: “There’s a good correlation between CO2 and temperature. Warmer temperatures in a specific period in the past, more CO2 at that period. Cooler temperatures in a specific period in the past, less CO2 at that period. ”
Actually no. Going back through the paleological record at least 11,000 years shows an INVERSE correlation between CO2 and temperature. Temp goes up before CO2 increases. Easily explained by outgassing of CO2 from the oceans.
Other comments: yes, all the models depend on a feedback factor for water vapor. The actual equation used is
deltaT = deltaF*lambda*(1 – lambda*SUM ci)^-1
where deltaT is the climate sensitivity in net degrees change, deltaF is the radiation forcings, ie Planck curves, lambda is the feedback parameter, and the SUM of the ci’s are the various feedback factors. lambda and the ci’s are what the modelers put in for their various scenarios. As others have pointed out this is a very simple equation for a complex and chaotic (in a mathematical sense) system. Generally such thermodynamic/fluid dynamic systems use the general Navier-Stokes PDQs, which are very difficult to solve. Many critics have stated that clouds are generally not included in the feedback parameters, nor in their role in reducing radiative forcings. The deltaT 20 years ago was thought to be in the 3-4degree range, now even the IPCC says it’s closer to 1.5degree.
Sorry if I got the relationship between CO2 and temps wrong. It was early and my groggy mind botched terminology from a Junior High lecture on photosynthesis. And what I meant to say is plants thrive in both CO2 rich environments and warmer environments (that’s why we grow them in greenhouses in cold regions). I’m pretty sure when I first started reading about this (20 years ago?) Michael Mann was pointing to CO2 and temp correlations from ice cores and tree rings as an indicator of CO2 being a catalyst for warming and others (Judith Curry?) argue it’s the other way around; warming leads to natural processes that release more CO2 from trapped sources; oceans, plants (more wildfires, etc.).
The science is way over my head and within the grasp of others here, so I’ll shut up now. 🙂
Are we supposed to believe the migrants bought them?
Rufus, physicsguy et al.,
Thanks for the exchange and the link to Dr. Spencer’s (2013!) post. It put me in mind of this part of Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address:
“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present–and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Smart guy indeed. When a decorated General and Commander in Chief of the world’s most powerful military warns of a “military-industrial” complex, one ought to pay attention.
I see that they’ve now come for Pepe Le Pew,
that really stinks.
Rufus,
“But Adlai is so much wittier.”
People forget that in addition to being supreme commander of SHAEF, the first supreme commander of NATO, and the 34th President, Eisenhower was also president of an Ivy League university: at Columbia, from 1948-1952.
Everybody remembers the “military-industrial complex”. Very few people in my line of work remember Eisenhower’s warning about the domination and distortion of scientific research by Big Government. Not surprising, given academe’s dependence on and love for Big Government money (NSF, NIH, DOD etc.).
woo hoo … the checks in the mail … to prisoners, illegal aliens and only god knows what else!
The 13-year-old student who claimed that her teacher showed Muslim students a naked depiction of the prophet Muhammad has admitted that she was lying. This lie led to the beheading of that teacher.
The History and Geography teacher, Samuel Paty of Paris, France, was beheaded by a Muslim radical after the story the young girl told gained international attention.
“She would not have dared to confess to her father the real reasons for her exclusion shortly before the tragedy, which was in fact linked to her bad behaviour,” wrote Le Parisien.
Her father has now been arrested for “complicity in a terrorist killing.” Prosecutors say that the father’s actions had a direct “casual link” to the teacher’s death.
The 13-year-old faces slander charges.
Rufus,
Neo posted something years ago about John Updike’s defense of LBJ against the sneers of the bien-pensants during the Vietnam War. Same thing: class disdain, but directed against a Democrat in that instance.
Thomas Jefferson (Virginia), Woodrow Wilson (Princeton), and Eisenhower (Columbia): the only college president presidents I can think of (rector, in Jefferson’s case, and that was after he was president). Herbert Hoover graduated from Stanford, founded and took a lifelong interest in the Hoover Institution, and lived for many years in Palo Alto, but he was never a university administrator.
Robert E. Lee had a successful five-year term as president of Washington College (later Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia. More recently, David Boren served as the president of the University of Oklahoma.
jack: “Who bought all those migrants tee shirts at the southern border?”
Those caravans are organized and financed by outfits like Pueblos Sin Fronteras. (A Soros backed group?) These are not people who just left Honduras or El Salvador with no outside help. It seems to be a plan to overrun our system and break down all law and order. Until….El Supremo, whoever that may turn out to be, restores order with martial law. At least that ‘s what it appears to me.
Xylourgos,, Phyicsguy, et. al. Re: Global Warming and CO2.
I’m a retired professional physicist like physicsguy. I’ve even released several Ph.D. students into the wild. The smartest one became a Physics Prof. at U. Florida who gave it up to become a rich banker instead of chasing grants.
I once spent about six months looking into the whole CO2/Global Warming problem. My conclusions are quite heretical: the atmosphere is naturally quite hot and the so called greenhouse gases are just weak coolants. They do nothing to heat the Earth’s surface. The fatal flaw is that the models treat all the atmospheric heating as due to radiation and ignore the very large role played by conduction and convection. They also violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics
You can do a simple experiment to understand the convection argument. Light a candle and bring your open palm as close as possible to the side of the flame. You’ll feel the heat coming off the flame via radiation, just as you do under a heat lamp or sunlight on your face. Note how close you got to the flame.
Next place your open palm over the top of the flame. Be careful! It’s easy to burn your skin doing this. Notice that you can’t come nearly as close to the flame this way compared to approaching from the side. The heat you feel this way is air heated by contact with the flame which then rises by convection to your palm. This is exactly how a hot air ballon works.
In the case of the Earth, sunlight heats the oceans(80% of the Earth’s surface), the water evaporates and rises via convection to the top of the atmosphere where the water vapor condenses into clouds, rain, and snow that in turn fall back to the Earth’s. When the water vapor condenses it dumps large amounts of heat via radiation to outer space. The net effect is to cool the earth. None of this involves any greenhouse gas except water vapor and its radiative properties are irrelevant. It works because water can change phases from solid to liquid to gas all at natural atmospheric temperatures.
The chemical engineers who design and build electric power plants that use steam driven generators, all the fossil fuel and nuclear plants, recognize this instantly as the Rankine thermodynamic cycle that governs the operation of such generators. It was first developed by the engineer Rankine to understand and improve the operation of steam locomotives.
Without the condensation of the water vapor, the only way for the atmosphere to get rid of its heat would be via radiation of CO2, H2O vapor, and the other minor greenhouse gases. That’s very inefficient resulting in a hot atmosphere. I’ve debated this with a few people. Everyone agrees that the temperature of the atmosphere at the surface would be well above the boiling point of water if the water vapor cycle didn’t exist. I think that the atmosphere would have a constant temperature independent of height, the other guys think that the temperature would drop with altitude. In any case, the atmosphere near the ground would be extremely hot, well above the boiling point of water, and make life impossible.
Next, the modelers also get the issue of back radiation wrong, claiming the CO2 radiates energy back to the Earth’s surface to heat it. The back radiation is there alright but it can’t cause extra heating of the Earth’s surface, that would violate the Second Law of thermodynamics. The Second Law says that heat naturally flows from a hotter body to a colder body. If you put a hot pan on a kitchen counter, the pan will cool off and the counter will warm up. The heats flows from the pan to the counter.
Violation of the Second Law can be demonstrated with another experiment. It’s easy to get cylinders of a pure gas such as nitrogen, oxygen, or argon, the three main constituents of the air, none of them a greenhouse gas. You may have noticed one in your dentist’s office or in a hospital. They’re very common for many uses. If you place a thermometer inside the tank to measure the temperature of the gas, its temperature will be identical to the temperature of the tank’s surface which in turn will equal room temperature. If room temperature changes the temperature of the gas will adjust to match.
Suppose the cylinder is filled with carbon dioxide, the dreaded greenhouse gas. Its temperature will track the surface of the tank that in turn will be equal to room temperature. Unlike nitrogen, oxygen, or argon, it can absorb blackbody radiation emitted by the interior surface of the tank and then re-emit it to be reabsorbed by the interior walls of the cylinder. If you follow the modeler’s logic the reabsorption will be extra energy that should raise the temperature of the cylinder’s surface above room temperature. Viola, by filling the tank with CO2 you created a heater that would throw off heat perpetually without using any fuel or electricity. This is a violation of the Second Law.
Finally, there is another issue that I haven’t discussed: the mathematics of solving the model equations precludes the ability to make meaningful predictions since the atmosphere is a chaotic system, i.e., the butterfly effect is in full force for the computations. One small error and your predictions go off the rails after a short time. The modelers even state that in one of the IPCC documents. They then promptly ignore it.
Paul in Boston, thank you for the clearest explanation, that I have yet read, on the issue of global warming.
Jackson Browne… such early promise. What a great disappointment. Far more often than not, celebrity draws the recipient into an echo chamber and strangles further growth.
He turned out to be just another liberal useful idiot. Sad.
Paul in Boston:
Very clear thanks!
I’ve lost ‘friends’ by pointing out that solar flux is not constant and said variations might make mockery of the puny efforts of Man. These would be the same people who quote all kinds of statistics on solar power being a no-brainer. Go figure.
I’d like to see the carbon footprint figures for volcano eruptions in any given year vs. human contributions, too.
This is a report by an ex-Military guy who had a run-in with Antifa in Portland.
First!
Jackson Brown is great and all but I’m more in the mood for …
Life is a Highway
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3sMjm9Eloo
When we first met it was our song.
I once walked onto Jackson Browne’s tour bus. I was walking down a street and it happened to be parked there. It appeared empty and no one was around. I was surprised when the door was unlocked. I walked up the stairs and as I turned into the aisle I saw a figure get up from the very back of the bus. It was Jackson Browne! I had obviously woken him up. I don’t remember what I said. I’m sure I apologized and said I would leave. He was pretty cool with the whole thing. And I left.
I worked at the concert venue where he had performed that night and a friend who worked the dressing room had told me she had heard that he wasn’t feeling well. The show had gone on, but when I saw him on the bus it did seem like he was ill, which would explain why he wasn’t out with the rest of the band and crew.
So, Jackson, if you’re reading this I apologize. About 15 years later I had a son and named him Jackson*, if that helps.
*Not after you. My wife just likes the name.
Thanks physicsguy for your reply yesterday.
If I understand you correctly, an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere will initiate a feedback loop that will continue to increase CO2 concentrations? Is there evidence that this will actually happen? It seems that the present % of CO2 in the atmosphere is of such a low concentration that its effect on global temperature is negligible. Is the fear of CO2 based not on present % but on a possible increase in CO2 concentration due to a feedback loop that will lead to catastrophe? Can the concentration of CO2 (or rate of increase) that should cause alarm be determined? From my point of view it seems that a scientific approach is not followed but rather a belief that borders on religious fervor guides the discussion. Not much evidence to change the world’s economy let alone to claim that the “science is done”.
Xylourgus,
I don’t know the chemistry (or Physics? Where does one stop and the other begin?) to answer your questions. Smarter folks will likely be along to do that. However, I made a more general point when you first posed this question that I will reiterate here, because I think you may be asking a different question.
First, as you now see from the replies you’ve received thus far, the climate is extremely complex with an immense number of variables. Trying to isolate one and predict its impact is really difficult. Almost certainly beyond our current understanding and capabilities. That doesn’t mean pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere is good, nor bad, it just means the whole thing is really difficult to model. As someone else pointed out, the model Michael Mann made and the IPCC bet the farm on has failed to correlate with the data since it was published. That, by definition, is bad science. The Conclusion has not fit the Hypothesis.
So, with all the different chemicals on this planet and in its atmosphere, with some known to have a greater greenhouse affect than others; why the focus on CO2?
When scientists look into the past they observe a correlation with CO2 and temperature. Core samples. Tree rings. Fossils (which species were living at which latitudes when). Warmer temps. More CO2. Cooler temps. Less CO2. This makes some climatologists believe that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere causes an increase in temperature, CO2 drives temperature, so they set about building a model to show how this might happen. You can kind-of understand how this may happen. More CO2 in the atmosphere could result in more sunlight trapped beneath the atmosphere (like a greenhouse) and the planet warms. As others have shown, there are a lot of steps to this, and the chemistry is complicated, but the basic gist is trying to find a reason for the correlation between CO2 and temperature in the geologic and biologic record and use it as a predictor for future climate.
But there is another camp that thinks it’s the other way around; temperature may drive CO2. That camp thinks CO2 is not the catalyst of the temperature increase, it is a result. This is pretty easy to understand. Plants love warm temperatures and plants give off CO2. Let’s not forget algae is a plant and also gives off CO2 and there is a lot of algae in surface water. Warmer temperatures = more plant life = more CO2 in the atmosphere.
From what I know, there really isn’t debate among scientists regarding the historic record. There’s a good correlation between CO2 and temperature. Warmer temperatures in a specific period in the past, more CO2 at that period. Cooler temperatures in a specific period in the past, less CO2 at that period. Scientists have only really been studying this for a brief time. 50 years? That’s a really brief window of data regarding climatology. Overall climate trends typically last hundreds of thousands of year cycles and within those cycles there are always blips; just as annual high and low temps wherever you live. A cooler summer in 2021 does not mean 2022 will be cooler.
Sold GE yesterday and finally made a few bucks to play with BUT had to hold it forever.
Watching Apple now. If it hits 100 i’m going in.
But i’ve never got this whole Apple cult following. Apple is one the most well known brands on the planet but there prices for products have always been sky high.
Couple years ago wife offered to by grand daughter a car because her junker kept breaking down. She turned her down and grand daughter said i could use a new IPhone and some cash! Wife said no deal.
Xylourgos,
The effect of water in the atmosphere is a much stronger agent in causing temperature changes than CO2. This includes humidity, clouds (which are reflective) and even ice and snow ground cover (extremely reflective), which precipitates out of the atmosphere. It is not the only other agent, but it is probably the biggest.
So the question is: If the CO2 level were increased by say 50%, how do the water effects respond to that?
By itself, the CO2 increase is worth about a +0.5 deg C temp. increase. Not tiny, but not a terribly big deal.
About 20 years ago, I attended a 1.5 hour lecture on all this, the presenter had about 20 or 25 journal publications about the water effect. They were all over the map. Some showed strong warming with increased temperature and water, some the opposite, and everything in between.
How to deal with that? The climate modelers just average all of the research results. The super smart guy sitting next to me whispered, “A consensus of gossip, is still gossip none the less.”
If the water effect is strong warming with increasing temperatures, then that is a positive (additive) feedback effect leading to instability. A +0.5 deg. C, CO2 effect could lead to +4.0 deg. C net result. That is large.
If the water effect is strong cooling with increasing temperatures, then that is a negative (subtractive) feedback effect leading to stability. A +0.5 deg. C, CO2 effect could lead to a +0.2 deg. C net result.
Check out the photo jokes at the bottom of this article.
Meghan and Harry’s Oprah interview leads to media blowup …
In yesterday’s Open Thread Fractal Rabbit and I were discussing CGI.
This video shared at Ace’s place shows how some incredible special effect scenes were shot in the Silent Movie era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBSpuZDKaKI
Not only do I think the results are more realistic than CGI, I think it shows more creativity, artistry and ingenuity. Incredible stuff!
TommyJay,
If you read my reply, the real question is: Does CO2 drive temperature or does temperature drive CO2? Folks who believe the former are the folks who presented the lecture you attended. Looking at complex chemistry and variables to build a model that fits past data. Folks who believe the latter think warmer temps = more plant life, which, of course, means more CO2. Both are plausible (the latter is almost inarguable).
But that’s the fundamental question behind the models. It’s a chicken or egg thing.
jack,
I have never understood the cult of Apple. Well, in the late ’70s, early ’80s they made some great stuff!
Everything they sell is available cheaper, with more variety and with more openness and compatibility. Their stuff is good. It certainly looks good. But most of it seems to be the logo, status. People paying more than necessary to be part of a club; the Apple cult.
I should add that I am a big, Wozniak fan. The Woz is a genius who built an incredible machine nearly independently. He was also smart enough to get out at the right time and live a full life. Really impressive guy!
The fundamental question is power. Politics is the driver. CO2 is a tool, a MaGuffin, IMO.
Rufus,
No, I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding. Warming feedback effects are a very big part of the AGW modeling and worry, and it is generally not about more CO2 causing more CO2.
I did read your post, and there are interesting and confusing geologic time period issues there. If I remember correctly, the global temperature goes up, then later the Carboniferous era begins and the CO2 goes up. Backwards?
The modelers all use feedback effects, and they are not using paleontology as input data.
The big element of feedback used in models is the water effect. I’m not 100% sure, but I believe that nearly all these models have a net positive (instability) feedback mechanism, while probably having a weakly (or zero) negative (stabilizing) feedback mechanism for CO2.
More CO2 leads to more plant growth which removes CO2 for the air. More CO2 increases the temperature a little and this combined with land erosion removes CO2 from the air. I’m sure there are other effects thrown in.
Rufus,
Don’t you mean plants absorb CO2, not give off?
But then I ran across this article, that said:
“When plants go through the process of photosynthesis, they also release half of the carbon dioxide they take in back into the atmosphere via a process called respiration.”
That would seem to say that plants are a net reducer of CO2, yet later in the article it says that plants give off more CO2 than human activity.
“Whereas in the past, plants were estimated to only release up to 8 times as much carbon dioxide as humans, that number has jumped in recent years to nearly double- reaching a staggering 11 times the amount of carbon dioxide that human activities produce.”
If that’s the case, the solution is simple– kill all the plants. 🙂
https://www.plantedshack.com/do-plants-release-carbon-dioxide/
}}} If I understand you correctly, an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere will initiate a feedback loop that will continue to increase CO2 concentrations?
As I understand the biggest legit concern would be if the permafrost melted or there were other deep-water effects. As I mentioned in a post some while back, there are “objects” down on the sea floor (clathrates) which trap methane (and similar ones under the permafrost), which might be broken/melted/affected, thus causing a fairly sudden and very massive release of methane (which is a much much stronger GHG than CO² and even water)… This would cause a major uptick in greenhouse heating effects in the atmosphere.
As to the matter of water, I am curious how much of a counter-effect IT has as a GHG, since it creates clouds, too, which raise the albedo of the earth and can also reflect sunlight back out of the atmosphere before it gets captured as heat. It might even be net-negative as to how much warming it actually produces. You could likely argue that heating also affects the various snowy areas (incl. mountain ranges, not just the ice caps) which lowers the albedo of earth.
I know that soot has been argued as relevant to this — by depositing more soot into the air, China has darkened the snow, thus making it melt more/faster.
Final point: Ocean warming. Before the atmosphere will warm, the oceans have to warm up significantly. And water is a truly MASSIVE natural heat sink. It will absorb a LOT more heat than the atmosphere can even begin to absorb. You would see a truly significant increase in hurricanes (and no, not just an unusual number in a single year, but a sustained increase in number and severity, which HAS NOT HAPPENED, despite the merdia suggesting otherwise) before there would be much atmospheric warming. Right now, there really hasn’t been all that much noted warming of not only the surface (of which there has been a small amount) and the deeper ocean (of which there is no noticeable change, last I heard — they’re trying to find a handwave to explain this last, mind you)
Part of the point here is, there are SOOOOO many different factors that are highly relevant, aren’t necessarily dealt with, etc., in all the models being applied. And the fact that they are not open with the models and how they work is the greatest challenge to their functionality by anyone who is actually a scientist. Being able to reproduce the results is the centerpiece of any scientific inquiry.
ALSO: The question about feedbacks in the modeling which is really of challenge is the question of how great it is — is the feedback positive (>1) or negative (<1) and how much so? All indications are that it is negative, not positive. But all the models assume positive.
jack:
“Wife said no deal”
You married well.
Rufus,
I reread your comment. The last part is backwards. More plant growth reduces atmospheric CO2. For some time the doomsayers said that forest growth didn’t matter, since fallen trees decay and release CO2. Then they studied the Amazon forest. Oops. The Amazon growth does suck CO2 from the air, on net. And the increased Amazon growth sucks more CO2 from the air in a negative feedback effect for CO2. More CO2 leading to less CO2.
jack,
Nice scenery in the music video. I love the drive in the area from western Nebraska though eastern Utah. Nearly every summer drive I’ve taken near the Medicine Bow National Forest area featured a spectacular thunder storm. So beautiful.
Rufus, said: “There’s a good correlation between CO2 and temperature. Warmer temperatures in a specific period in the past, more CO2 at that period. Cooler temperatures in a specific period in the past, less CO2 at that period. ”
Actually no. Going back through the paleological record at least 11,000 years shows an INVERSE correlation between CO2 and temperature. Temp goes up before CO2 increases. Easily explained by outgassing of CO2 from the oceans.
Other comments: yes, all the models depend on a feedback factor for water vapor. The actual equation used is
deltaT = deltaF*lambda*(1 – lambda*SUM ci)^-1
where deltaT is the climate sensitivity in net degrees change, deltaF is the radiation forcings, ie Planck curves, lambda is the feedback parameter, and the SUM of the ci’s are the various feedback factors. lambda and the ci’s are what the modelers put in for their various scenarios. As others have pointed out this is a very simple equation for a complex and chaotic (in a mathematical sense) system. Generally such thermodynamic/fluid dynamic systems use the general Navier-Stokes PDQs, which are very difficult to solve. Many critics have stated that clouds are generally not included in the feedback parameters, nor in their role in reducing radiative forcings. The deltaT 20 years ago was thought to be in the 3-4degree range, now even the IPCC says it’s closer to 1.5degree.
As I stated yesterday, Roy Spencer has compared models to actual data, take a look here: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/still-epic-fail-73-climate-models-vs-measurements-running-5-year-means/
Sorry if I got the relationship between CO2 and temps wrong. It was early and my groggy mind botched terminology from a Junior High lecture on photosynthesis. And what I meant to say is plants thrive in both CO2 rich environments and warmer environments (that’s why we grow them in greenhouses in cold regions). I’m pretty sure when I first started reading about this (20 years ago?) Michael Mann was pointing to CO2 and temp correlations from ice cores and tree rings as an indicator of CO2 being a catalyst for warming and others (Judith Curry?) argue it’s the other way around; warming leads to natural processes that release more CO2 from trapped sources; oceans, plants (more wildfires, etc.).
The science is way over my head and within the grasp of others here, so I’ll shut up now. 🙂
Who bought all those migrants tee shirts at the southern border?
https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2021/03/10/the-morning-briefing-our-border-is-being-overrun-but-hey-no-more-mean-tweets-n1431242
Biden
Please
Let us in
Are we supposed to believe the migrants bought them?
Rufus, physicsguy et al.,
Thanks for the exchange and the link to Dr. Spencer’s (2013!) post. It put me in mind of this part of Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address:
“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present–and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Smart guy, Eisenhower. Prescient even.
RTWT at https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwightdeisenhowerfarewell.html.
Hubert,
Smart guy indeed. When a decorated General and Commander in Chief of the world’s most powerful military warns of a “military-industrial” complex, one ought to pay attention.
I see that they’ve now come for Pepe Le Pew,
that really stinks.
Rufus,
“But Adlai is so much wittier.”
People forget that in addition to being supreme commander of SHAEF, the first supreme commander of NATO, and the 34th President, Eisenhower was also president of an Ivy League university: at Columbia, from 1948-1952.
Everybody remembers the “military-industrial complex”. Very few people in my line of work remember Eisenhower’s warning about the domination and distortion of scientific research by Big Government. Not surprising, given academe’s dependence on and love for Big Government money (NSF, NIH, DOD etc.).
woo hoo … the checks in the mail … to prisoners, illegal aliens and only god knows what else!
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/03/10/congress-passes-democrat-1-9-trillion-coronavirus-bill/
I’ll use ours to pay federal taxes … it will be a wash.
The economy is saved!
Thank you daddy Biden.
Hubert,
“But Adlai is so much wittier.” Sounds a lot like, “but Trump’s tweets!”
I did not know that Eisenhower was the President of an Ivy League University.
This: https://thepostmillennial.com/french-schoolgirl-says-she-made-up-story-that-got-teacher-beheaded-by-muslim-radical
is awful. One man murdered and two to three other lives likely destroyed by a little girl’s panicked lie to avoid punishment from her father.
Rufus,
Neo posted something years ago about John Updike’s defense of LBJ against the sneers of the bien-pensants during the Vietnam War. Same thing: class disdain, but directed against a Democrat in that instance.
Thomas Jefferson (Virginia), Woodrow Wilson (Princeton), and Eisenhower (Columbia): the only college president presidents I can think of (rector, in Jefferson’s case, and that was after he was president). Herbert Hoover graduated from Stanford, founded and took a lifelong interest in the Hoover Institution, and lived for many years in Palo Alto, but he was never a university administrator.
Robert E. Lee had a successful five-year term as president of Washington College (later Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia. More recently, David Boren served as the president of the University of Oklahoma.
Found it:
https://www.thenewneo.com/2009/09/12/updike-on-war-and-the-intelligentsia/
From 2009.
jack: “Who bought all those migrants tee shirts at the southern border?”
Those caravans are organized and financed by outfits like Pueblos Sin Fronteras. (A Soros backed group?) These are not people who just left Honduras or El Salvador with no outside help. It seems to be a plan to overrun our system and break down all law and order. Until….El Supremo, whoever that may turn out to be, restores order with martial law. At least that ‘s what it appears to me.
Xylourgos,, Phyicsguy, et. al. Re: Global Warming and CO2.
I’m a retired professional physicist like physicsguy. I’ve even released several Ph.D. students into the wild. The smartest one became a Physics Prof. at U. Florida who gave it up to become a rich banker instead of chasing grants.
I once spent about six months looking into the whole CO2/Global Warming problem. My conclusions are quite heretical: the atmosphere is naturally quite hot and the so called greenhouse gases are just weak coolants. They do nothing to heat the Earth’s surface. The fatal flaw is that the models treat all the atmospheric heating as due to radiation and ignore the very large role played by conduction and convection. They also violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics
You can do a simple experiment to understand the convection argument. Light a candle and bring your open palm as close as possible to the side of the flame. You’ll feel the heat coming off the flame via radiation, just as you do under a heat lamp or sunlight on your face. Note how close you got to the flame.
Next place your open palm over the top of the flame. Be careful! It’s easy to burn your skin doing this. Notice that you can’t come nearly as close to the flame this way compared to approaching from the side. The heat you feel this way is air heated by contact with the flame which then rises by convection to your palm. This is exactly how a hot air ballon works.
In the case of the Earth, sunlight heats the oceans(80% of the Earth’s surface), the water evaporates and rises via convection to the top of the atmosphere where the water vapor condenses into clouds, rain, and snow that in turn fall back to the Earth’s. When the water vapor condenses it dumps large amounts of heat via radiation to outer space. The net effect is to cool the earth. None of this involves any greenhouse gas except water vapor and its radiative properties are irrelevant. It works because water can change phases from solid to liquid to gas all at natural atmospheric temperatures.
The chemical engineers who design and build electric power plants that use steam driven generators, all the fossil fuel and nuclear plants, recognize this instantly as the Rankine thermodynamic cycle that governs the operation of such generators. It was first developed by the engineer Rankine to understand and improve the operation of steam locomotives.
Without the condensation of the water vapor, the only way for the atmosphere to get rid of its heat would be via radiation of CO2, H2O vapor, and the other minor greenhouse gases. That’s very inefficient resulting in a hot atmosphere. I’ve debated this with a few people. Everyone agrees that the temperature of the atmosphere at the surface would be well above the boiling point of water if the water vapor cycle didn’t exist. I think that the atmosphere would have a constant temperature independent of height, the other guys think that the temperature would drop with altitude. In any case, the atmosphere near the ground would be extremely hot, well above the boiling point of water, and make life impossible.
Next, the modelers also get the issue of back radiation wrong, claiming the CO2 radiates energy back to the Earth’s surface to heat it. The back radiation is there alright but it can’t cause extra heating of the Earth’s surface, that would violate the Second Law of thermodynamics. The Second Law says that heat naturally flows from a hotter body to a colder body. If you put a hot pan on a kitchen counter, the pan will cool off and the counter will warm up. The heats flows from the pan to the counter.
Violation of the Second Law can be demonstrated with another experiment. It’s easy to get cylinders of a pure gas such as nitrogen, oxygen, or argon, the three main constituents of the air, none of them a greenhouse gas. You may have noticed one in your dentist’s office or in a hospital. They’re very common for many uses. If you place a thermometer inside the tank to measure the temperature of the gas, its temperature will be identical to the temperature of the tank’s surface which in turn will equal room temperature. If room temperature changes the temperature of the gas will adjust to match.
Suppose the cylinder is filled with carbon dioxide, the dreaded greenhouse gas. Its temperature will track the surface of the tank that in turn will be equal to room temperature. Unlike nitrogen, oxygen, or argon, it can absorb blackbody radiation emitted by the interior surface of the tank and then re-emit it to be reabsorbed by the interior walls of the cylinder. If you follow the modeler’s logic the reabsorption will be extra energy that should raise the temperature of the cylinder’s surface above room temperature. Viola, by filling the tank with CO2 you created a heater that would throw off heat perpetually without using any fuel or electricity. This is a violation of the Second Law.
Finally, there is another issue that I haven’t discussed: the mathematics of solving the model equations precludes the ability to make meaningful predictions since the atmosphere is a chaotic system, i.e., the butterfly effect is in full force for the computations. One small error and your predictions go off the rails after a short time. The modelers even state that in one of the IPCC documents. They then promptly ignore it.
Paul in Boston, thank you for the clearest explanation, that I have yet read, on the issue of global warming.
Jackson Browne… such early promise. What a great disappointment. Far more often than not, celebrity draws the recipient into an echo chamber and strangles further growth.
He turned out to be just another liberal useful idiot. Sad.
Paul in Boston:
Very clear thanks!
I’ve lost ‘friends’ by pointing out that solar flux is not constant and said variations might make mockery of the puny efforts of Man. These would be the same people who quote all kinds of statistics on solar power being a no-brainer. Go figure.
I’d like to see the carbon footprint figures for volcano eruptions in any given year vs. human contributions, too.
This is a report by an ex-Military guy who had a run-in with Antifa in Portland.
https://www.americanpartisan.org/2020/09/antifa-reality-check/
It’s worth reading to get an idea of what Antifa tactics look like. Very sobering.
Yes Paul in Boston, thanks.
Here’s a Leonard Cohen song not on his Greatest Hits albums.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nceRfJJZcP4&list=RDJTTC_fD598A&index=20
It’s live.
At the end he gives HIS answer to the mysteries.