Monday
Jan162012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Scientific disciplinarian
Jan 16, 2012 Climate: other Quotes Royal Society When I’m asked about the science I always start with the measured rise in atmospheric CO2 (the Keeling curve). This rise isn’t controversial; nor is its attribution mainly to the burning of fossil fuels. Straightforward chemistry tells us that the CO2 build-up will induce a long-term warming trend, superimposed on all the other complicated effects that make climate fluctuate.
Martin Rees is seems confused over scientific disciplines
Reader Comments (49)
There's a lot of confusion about these days.
I just saw a report on BBC TV news about the sampling of Antarctic lakes that have been isolated from the main atmosphere for 100's of 1000's of years. Fascinating science in it's own right, I would have thought, but apparently they are doing this "as it may give clues to future climate change."
And I recently saw a Horizon about the search for the Higgs Boson. One of the physicists drew a time-line to explain when the Higgs field formed, relative to how old the universe is. And he marked the right edge as the present, drew the age of the dinosours "a few hundred thousand years ago", DNA at a couple of billion years ago, bask to the Higgs field in the first second. How it is possible nobody spotted the dinosaur gaf? Why was this not re-recorded once the producers, directors, camera men, and everyong else pointed out the error?
Or if they all really don't know how wrong that was, and really don't know physics from chemistry, in what way are they better able to judge Climate Science (TM) than Joe Public?
"Maybe the best long-term option for Europe is solar energy — huge collectors, most perhaps in North Africa, generating power that’s distributed via a continent-wide smart grid. Achieving this would require vision, commitment and public-private investment on the same scale as the building of Europe’s railways in the 19th century. "
Is there some strange variant of Alzheimers which affects scientific advisers. Mad as a hatter.
He also proposes the usual false analogy of medicine.
Hopefully most readers will spot the lack of "successful record of diagnosis" in the last sentence! We rely on the advice of doctors when we're ill because we all know many people who've been successfully treated. There's no analogy with climate science.
The smashing of the Capitalists is the long-held Left/Green goal, and CO2 emissions by Western industry is the only plausible weapon they have, so don't be surprised if they cling to it tooth and nail.
Add that to the fact that the AGW scare funds hundreds of thousands of jobs worldwide, and (to quote Donna La F) "in a world in which politicians are popularly regarded as scumbags and pathological liars, fighting climate change casts them as admirable. They aren’t going to give that up easily."
Running throughout the post is the so called "precautionary principle". Yet the author seems to repeatedly ignore the lesson and the principle's continued, demonstrated failure. For example:
-"Banning ‘beef on the bone’, for instance, was in retrospect an over-reaction, but at the time seemed a prudent precaution against a potential tragedy that could have been far more widespread than it actually turned out to be."
In practice the "precautionary principle" merely turns out to be the most frightening worst-case scenario that the main stream media can use to terrorise the population and sell copy. We already know that pressure groups like Greenpeace will seize on any nightmare available in order to further their own agenda.
Steveta_uk
Heard a similar report this morning on the BBC Toady R4 programme where it was potentially giving clues to "Global Warming". So at least the telly took it down a notch; but we all know what is ultimately on their minds as the early morning news item let slip.
Can you imagine the pressure this group of scientists will be under to provide some "good copy" for CAGW and the BBC.
If they fail to deliver they won't see Shukman for diamond dust !
Martin Rees is a prime example of what Carl Sagan once said - that a scientist who is expert in his field can be just as dumb as anyone else outside it.
"Straightforward chemistry tells us that the CO2 build-up will induce a long-term warming trend"
I thought it was basic physics that was supposed to tell us that, except that from what I can see of it, it's far from basic physics.
To be fair to him, I teach a chemistry course about molecular spectroscopy, including IR absorption by CO2. That being said, I wouldn't call it "Straightforward" to go from CO2 chemical spectroscopy to an estimate of climate sensitivity.
"-"Banning ‘beef on the bone’, for instance, was in retrospect an over-reaction, but at the time seemed a prudent precaution"
I didn't think so at the time - there was no evidence, and consideration of any other plausible causes was suppressed. Sound familiar? The loud whirring noise audible all over the country at the time was Robert Koch spinning in his grave.
We should we have a name accepted by a consensus for this and other mass hysterias. Panicology, Scaremology, Apocalology - anything descriptive with a hint of derision will do.
Filbert Cobb:
Apocolepsy
Geoffchambers
I like that - but it describes a state or condition related to seizure, as in "Mann was climatoleptic when Montford's book was published"
We need an 'ology
Oh dear what are they going to do with themselves now this has been published? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/16/criegee_biradicals/
Will it be a case of 'where has all the warming gone?'.
By 'superimposed' he means additive and linear effect of that so called 'forcing' ..
If he truly believes that, then there is really nothing scientific at all about him ...
Remarkable!
Is there any direct thermalisation of absorbed IR energy by CO2 transferring that energy to N2 or O2.
I can't find any, but I don't have access to a specialised library.
Filbert Cobb:
Crimatology?
Jeremy Harvey
Are the IR absorption curves for CO2 published on line somewhere? I am rather curious to see what peaks it has.
I also have the same question and issues that mydogsgotnonose . I don't have access to a good technical library.
OllyD
That was true of Carl Sagan as well. And, you can throw Albert Einstein, Newton, and a few others into that category as well. Currently, Steven Chu is a particularly obnoxious example. Brilliant physicist who has absolutely no idea what the environment or US Constitution is about.
I have just come across a bit of really good thinking about the IPCC CO2-AGW hoax: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/15/sense-and-sensitivity-ii-the-sequel/
’higley7 says: January 16, 2012 at 7:56 am
The [IPCC] definition of GHGs is purposely tailored to lead the user to select CO2 and water vapor, but these are gases which actively convert IR radiation to heat and back. During the day, it’s a two way street and wrong to assume it is only IR to CO2 to heat to air. The air is equally capable of handing heat to CO2 which then releases IR. It is at night that the two gases are energy leaks, like many small holes in a greenhouse’s glass roof. As the climate models do not really model night-time, this piece is missing.
A real greenhouse gas cannot release IR to the environment, just as a greenhouse cannot release the warmed air. So, the proper definition of a GHG (a true heat-trapping bass) would lead one to the nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere which cannot radiate IR at all. Lacking heat input by CO2 or water vapor, N2 and O2 are heated by conduction by the Earth’s surface and they would, thus, only be able to lose heat by conduction back to the Earth’s surfaces which would then radiate IR. It is this blanket of impotent gases that is the real greenhouse blanket that keeps us warmer than otherwise. Without CO2 or water vapor, we would be much warmer!!!!!!
It beggars the imagination that the discussion appears to about gases that cannot retain heat, yet we call them greenhouse gases.’
We know CO2 with an IR photon energy added can't heat the N2 and O2 in the atmosphere, but the reverse can and does happen. The IPCC doesn't model night time; I think we've cracked it........:o)
Not so long ago Rees thought we'd all die as the atmosphere became a grey goo. Quite how that goo would admit enough light to warm up substantially I'm not sure.
Thinking a bit more about this, I realise it would all make a lot more sense if Martin Rees was the government's chief science fiction advisor.
The "straightforward chemistry" might refer to the "long term" part of the statement?
I started reading Rees' article, but I quickly realised that the man does not understand much about the behaviour of climate. There is plenty of good material on the web that he could use to educate himself.
"Straightforward chemistry tells us that the CO2 build-up will induce a long-term warming trend"
Yes, but which chemical do we have to snort?
"We need an 'ology" --Filbert Cobb
Disastrology?
Catastraphology?
Reading Martin Rees' book 'The Final Century' in which he casts doubt about our survival now reads, a decade after it was published, like a poor work of science fiction. Perhaps a great cosmologist is Lord Rees, but there it stops.
I'm not sure he's got a clue how this works. Scientists tell the politicians the problem, engineers will find the most cost effective solution based on the requirements put on them by the politicians. As far as I can see the solutions for this non-problem seem to have come from the green NGOs.
The only thing I've heard from the engineers is that our current objectives cannot be achieved using solar and wind power, and we 'don't have the ability to build enough nuclear pier stations in the time allocated by the scientists before armaggeddon. Of course these are activist scientists.
He is also wrong that attribution of the entire rise in carbon dioxide to humans burning carbon dioxide. That assumption is based on the ice core samples showing stable carbon dioxide before the industrial revolution. However the ice cores have very poor time resolution due to the time taken for the system to become sealed and the mixing of atmospheres of different time periods during that process. This means that the current change would not show up in ice cores if it were to reverse soon and drop as quickly. The definition of "soon" depends on unknown factors in the mixing and sealing in snow as it compacts to ice.
How do we know that carbon dioxide does not rise and fall over a timescale too short to show in ice cores? Of course we don't. In fact other evidence - plant stomata data from palaeobotanical studies - suggest that this does in fact happen. In times of low carbon dioxide (and we have been in a carbon dioxide crisis for 100 million years) plants need more, larger stomata to absorb carbon dioxide. In times of elevated carbon dioxide they produce fewer or smaller stomata to avoid loss of water. Little palaeo work has been done here, but what has been published suggests that stomata do indicate fluctuations in carbon dioxide on timescales shorter than the resolution of ice cores.
Jan 16, 2012 at 3:40 PM | Unregistered Commentermydogsgotnonose
Is there any direct thermalisation of absorbed IR energy by CO2 transferring that energy to N2 or O2.
I can't find any, but I don't have access to a specialised library.
As I understand it, it works like this. At higher atmospheric pressures the mean time between molecular collisions is much less than the average time that a GH gas molecule exists in the energized state and such collisions preferentially thermalize the energy from the GH gas raised energy state rather than the GH molecule being able to re-radiate the IR energy. So the IR radiation absorbed by the GH molecules is mostly thermalized in the lower troposphere. At low atmospheric pressures, the GH gases can largely re-emit the absorbed energy before collision with another molecule and thus there is negligible thermalization, that is absorbed IR energy converted to molecular kinetic energy by collision. Thus in the upper troposhere and stratosphere a good portion of GH gas radiation goes straight into outer space. And some goes back towards earth, thus delaying the energies trip to the stars. Anybody, feel free to correct my if my exposition is not quite correct, I am a civil engineer, not a physicist (or chemist!).
Don Pablo -
I recently found the following IR absorption curves online, although they may not be the best:
http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/image71.gif
http://members.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/h2oco2trans.gif
Filbert Cobb
We need an ology.
How about Phenolphthology
As for Martin Rees, what can one say, He sounds just like Paul Nurse to me. The only interesting observation related to the building of wind turbines at the rate of one or two per day. Other than that, I could not find anything remotley acknowledging that the science had moved on from the 1980s. All his points were based on the so calle dconsensus viewpoint that the science is settled. Altogether very discouraging.
Raeding this in isolation, it would be impossible to realise that:
1) global warming has Stopped/stalled
2) The IPCC has been comprehensibly compromised.
3) CG1 & CG2 have comrehensively discredited the TEAM and their "Cause"
4) The hockey Stick Graph has been conigned to the shredder.
5) Multiple predictions, especially those of James Hansen have failed miserably.
Need I go on, I don't think so.
I got cross even before I started reading it. Because of the screaming banality of the Head Banner of the In Verba blog itself, if it is supposed to be some sort of geological section. I would fail an A level student just for disgraceful lack of attention to vein boundary offsets, let alone the rest of it.
don Pablo, the IR spectrum of CO2 depends a bit on temperature and on pressure. You can see some different versions by searching google images for "co2 infrared spectrum" - e.g. shows a low resolution, high partial pressure version. The band at 800 cm-1 or so is the CO2 bending mode, responsible for IR absorption in the atmosphere. This is a higher resolution spectrum, showing the bending absorptions in dilute CO2. The IR spectrum is available also from HITRAN (http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/hitran/) in detailed form - you have to register to get it but it appears (!) to be free for all.
Global human CO2 emissions declined in 2009 yet the atmospheric rise in CO2 was unchanged. I don't mean that the RATE of increase of human emissions declined, I mean that emissions declined on an absolute basis. Yet atmospheric CO2 increased as usual, no noticeable change.
The hubris of this man disgusts me. "Straightforward chemistry", my foot. Another grandiose and arrogant statement is his "The science is intricate. But it's a doddle compared to the economics and politics of climate change". Yeah, right, the science is settled. It's a doddle. It's all over bar the shouting.
plenty of N2 and O2 molecules "heat" CO2 and H2O molecules (= exchange protons) and vice versa,
day and night.
these molecules have a boltzman distribution, some even are so hot they do nuclear fusion with each other (measured in measurable amounts in lightning, but probable, and happening at any time )
it is a bit a matter of chance who bumps on who and how hot both parties are.
Nothing different from your avg ibiza club.
Tutu, Jan 17, 2012 at 1:22 AM
Look at it this way. Diatomic molecules such as N2 and O2 that have no significant raised energy states in the infra red have a Stefan-Boltzman emissions profile. But, the emissivity coefficient is so small that the emissions are negligible compared to the radiative properties of the so called greenhouse gases. I think some of the conceptual problem arises from the human experience that near any warm substance we will sense the radiate heat. We expect warm N2 and O2 to radiate also, but they just do not radiate infra red to any significant extent. Polished metal can have an emissivity of .05 compared to an emissivity for concrete of 0.95 in the range of temperatures we are interested in. So think of the N2 as polished metal vs. CO2 as concrete but with a much greater spread in emissivity. Not an exact analogy but the best I can think of at the moment.
Armageddonology?
"I recently found the following IR absorption curves online, although they may not be the best:"--HaroldW
How were these curves derived? Did the apparatus have anywhere near the optical length of the atmosphere? I can't imagine any of these curves being accurate enough to really nail down the absorption.
Is this the same Martin Rees who allowed The Royal Society's name to be used to paper over the cracks in the Oxburgh review?
http://climateaudit.org/2010/06/10/british-due-diligence-royal-society-style/
There is a deplorable trend for the object of some disciplined study to be 'ologised' - as in supposing that the artifacts found in an archaeologist's trench are so much archaeology. So the explanations of the phenomena of unjustified fear and the manufacture of reasons to be fearful would be an 'ology' yet the thing explained would not be. Psychologists may study the written works of psychologists but they theorise about the working of the psyche.
CO2 and H2O (I am making this up as I write, no worries) have , due to their assymetry, a much denser spectrum , approaching continuum , as they should not be viewed as molecules but rather as a loose set of dimeres trimers up until quite large clumps wherewithin electron swims around. Think San Francisco nightlife.
how much and how fast excited CO2 molecules relax into the N2/O2 pool they are in, is something which can be estimated from their spectra.
actually I do not know what they really mean with spectra, the absorption lines should be just that: lines(frequencies) at which a transition and photon absorption is possible.spectra contain extra information such as pressure and temperature and the effect of the distributions.
anyways if CO2 has 10000 lines considered then there are 10k*9.999K frequencies/energy levels at which absorption and relaxation are possible.
A more neutral N2/O2 will have far less lines due to their symmetric nature.
but anyways if you have line spectra of both you can calculate how much they can engage at a certain temperature . it is a bit of calculus on probability distributions
Re: "entrust yourself to someone with manifest medical credentials"
As if on cue:
"What if the Doctor Is Wrong? "
"Sometimes doctors may simply get stuck on the idea of one diagnosis and ignore or overlook evidence it might be something else."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203721704577159280778957336.html
In fact if you add a trace gas with lots and lots of relaxation possibilities in a gas with less of that (N2/O2 mix)
what you should see is that the N2/O2 sheds heat to the CO2 which is then dispersed over a broader spectrum that not always can be absorbed by the coarser spectral of N2/O2 but is radiated away in outer space.
=> CO2 cools the mix.
just by some philosophising on the spectra
lol
from what comes from the sun, CO2 heats the mix, but re the internal state of the atmosphere it has a cooling effect.
now what comes from the sun was going to be converted into heat most likely on the whole trajectory to the earth surface, one does not change the albedo overnight
CO2 role as a heat trapper is neglible compared to H2O and the rest of the atmosphere that is in place already, but it acts as little lamps who switch on by N2/O2 bumping and make energy escape easier from the atmosphere
CO2 cools
qed.
I like climate science
low hanging fruit everywhere
one takes a snippet of info from our faux-scientists the warmists, looks at it from a distance, there are 10 blatant lies in it
this must be how earths surface looked like 10.000 years ago to the first humans: Hey look there a clump of gold ! next to thepile of diamonds.
Okay, that was weird...
I quoted the original quote but it did not show up at all. The lines quoted above were actually my comments.
Jeff Norman -
Apparently you put the quotation in the "cite=" attribute when you were writing, rather than after the ">" character which ends the blockquote tag.