Tuesday
Feb072012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Lindzen in London
Feb 7, 2012 Climate: Sceptics I've been remiss in not posting this notice earlier. I think four people have now pointed me to it:
You are invited to a free special seminar by MIT Professor Richard Lindzen
Global Warming: How to approach the science (Climate Models and the Evidence?)2pm-4pm 22nd February 2012
Grimond Room, Portcullis House Westminster, London
(Ask for Sammy Wilson MP's meeting and allow 30 minutes for security)Special guest speaker
Prof. Richard S. Lindzen
Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyChairman: Philip Stott Emeritus Professor
Emeritus Professor of Biogeography at the University of London, and former Editor-in Chief of the International Journal of Biogeography.
RSVP Eventbrite ticket required
See here.
Reader Comments (38)
I'd kill for a ticket but I'd also have to buy one from NZ :-[
The most importatnt questions is -
Which Pub afterwards?
Got my ticket, 29 left now.
Gixxer - you can still buy your ticket from New Zealand. Just send it to me.
Tickets are free. Just follow the links above!
Damn. Have to be in Scotland that week. Bugger.
I hope there will be a video...or at least copious notes taken.
Agree with Latimer A. I can't be there, but a video etc. would be great
Planet in Peril was £400 - this is FREE..
Just booked mine.
"this is FREE.."
It must be funded clandestinely by Big Oil.. :-)
Will it be recorded?
I think Prof Lindzen talks sense.
IMO it would be best for true believers rather than sceptics to get the tickets for this. They should also look at the arguments against Prof Lindzen before they go and see how he answers them.
I wonder if the BBC Science Editor will attend? "No views excluded" etc etc...
It will be interesting to see how many MPs turn up to listen. Last time a guest speaker I thought MPs needed to listen to was arranged, they changed the venue/room at the last min, no MPs made it, but at least they then had an excuse.
The great man is in London, I cannot attend, however he'd be talking to one - who is already a climate realist - I sincerely hope one or two Tory MP's can make it though......... Perchance, it would be far better, if Prof' Lindzen, were to address the lower and upper houses in a joint Parliamentary climate lesson.
Indeed, they allowed Obarmy's effort - make, what was a
speechunctuous sermon, can't remember but...........he probably ratted on about 'green jobs', 'renewable' energy and moonbeams too.Has anyone sent Chris Huhne a ticket?
Peter Stroud - he'd claim he couldn't attend because his wife had the ticket.
Frosty - last meeting with Matt Ridley, Doona Laframboise, Ruth Lee, Plimer, etc - I think it was 4 MP's that turned up.. and an interesting meeting or 2 with a minister affterwars (apparently) - sshh
Professor Stott is a very good speaker - (performed as chair, last meeting)
I can see why Mike Hulme, thought he trounced Houghton, and Milke Hulme wanted the BBC to deal with this sort of thing...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/27/climategate-2-impartiality-at-the-bbc/
---------------
Mike Hulme:
“Did anyone hear Stott vs. Houghton on Today, radio 4 this morning? Woeful stuff really. This is one reason why Tyndall is sponsoring the Cambridge Media/Environment Programme to starve this type of reporting at source.” (email 2496)
Mike Hulme clearly did not like this program and clearly sponsors CMEP to use its influence with it BBC seminars to change reporting at the BBC, with an apparent intent to suppress any sceptical voices. A commentator at the Bishop Hill blog tracked down the ‘woeful’ program, where Prof Philip Stott and the IPCC’s Sir John Houghton debate the “uncertainties” of climate change”, it is mentioned in a 25 Feb 2002 article by Alex Kirby, BBC online environment correspondent, there is an audio link in the article to the radio program (probably UK only, well worth a listen)
Alex Kirby in the article quotes Stott as saying:
“The problem with a chaotic coupled non-linear system as complex as climate is that you can no more predict successfully the outcome of doing something as of not doing something. Kyoto will not halt climate change. Full stop.” - BBC
I might agree with Mike Hulme that Sir John Houghton performed poorly, but here were 2 scientists talking about uncertainties, nearly ten years ago. I see nothing wrong with that program, it appears to present balance, with views from scientists with different opinions. In fact that quote of Stott appears to be almost directly from the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment report (the one with the ‘hockey stick’ graph in) around the time of the interview,
“The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system,
and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states
is not possible.” – IPCC 2001 TAR (pg 771)
Looking back at Stott’s quote now, and the now, near total failure of the Kyoto agreement, we can perhaps see with hindsight whose argument is treated more kindly by the passage of time.
I'm in. Good to hear about that ministerial-level contact after Donna's do Barry. The Westminster is quite a decent wine bar/pub Marsham Street way.
I plan to be there again, but need to pop off promptly at the finish, so no pub for me :-(. I'll try and say hello before the meeting!
Why not a web broadcast?
Just sent this to my MP:
Note there is a question embodied in the message, re: will someone attend? I understand that an MP is required to respond to questions, but may ignore statements. Don't know if this is true, tho.
Oh dear.
I've informed my MP of the meeting, and he has responded saying he is busy but will try and get a briefing from someone who does attend.
He also said "I have seen however that below the link there is some suggested reading which I will look through."
The list of suggested reading includes this: "Dr Tim Ball, Slaying the Sky Dragon".
Hence the "oh dear". I suspect Prof. Lindzen would not recommend that nonsense.
I attended a Lindzen event about a year ago. First class! You are in for a treat. The man really knows the science.
“The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system,
and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states
is not possible.” – IPCC 2001 TAR (pg 771)"
-Probably why they call them "projections" instead? I admit I still struggle with these semantics, a bit like when future "climate" becomes "weather".
@steveta_uk
He may be recommending it for the purposes of (partially or wholly) refuting it.
steveta_uk: I concur that 'slaying the Sky Dragon' is turgid prose, however there is a lot to recommend its attack on the incorrect heat transfer calculations in climate modelling. For you enlightenment, I believe I have finally discovered the root error from which all the other mistakes derive. It's here: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/abstracts/files/kevin1997_1.html
In figure 1, they claim '360 W/m^2 Surface Radiation'. This is what you get using the S-B equation for a black body in a vacuum. However, the surface of the Earth is not in a vacuum. From my many years measuring heat transfer in metallurgical plants, I know that to get more radiative heat transfer from a horizontal surface with emissivity similar to that of the earth, you need a temperature of more than ~120°C.
So, they have made the most elementary possible mistake and 'back radiation to which STSD and I object is needed to cope with this fundamental error in physics. If necessary I can explain why in combined convective plus radiative heat transfer you can have radiative flux much lower than |S-B predicts, even without taking into account Prevost Exchange from other heat sources.
PS S-B equation for 15°C assuming unit emissivity.
mydogsgotnonose:
A couple of questions for you.
When will you have finished your analysis and where will you be publishing it?
The figure of 360 W/m^2 (regardless of whether it is the correct figure) for the surface radiation assumes the surface area of a sphere of radius that of the earth, but with a smooth surface. Should they be using that area or should they be using an effective area taking account of the lumpy nature of the actual surface of the earth?
I already have a paper which fixes the incorrect aerosol optical physics. The heat transfer mistakes are clearly the next. I just put up a post on Tallbloke about this!
Regarding rough surfaces, it's plan area and for gases you have a volume contribution as well. Remember that in radiation physics the Prevost Exchange is a control mechanism to throttle net radiative flux so that for equal temperature in a vacuum the same number of photons arrive at the surface of one emitter, to be absorbed by the IR density of states, as move up from the kinetic energy of the molecular motion of that emitter.
Increase its temperature and still in a vacuum, the net radiative flux is the difference between the photons from the interior and the photons arriving times the average photon energy. But add a gas and the molecular motion can also couple from the solid directly to adsorbed gas molecules thus reducing the IR density of states for a given temperature, implying a much lower effective radiation temperature.
This is an interesting phenomenon because it means that you can also have pseudo 'back radiation'!. What climate science has done is to fix their analysis assuming that S-B defines the total IR from the solid surface then fix everything relative to this. When I was doing process engineering, you did this stuff empirically. There may be some theoretical work by now.
I already have a paper which fixes the incorrect aerosol optical physics. The heat transfer mistakes are clearly the next. I just put up a post on Tallbloke about this!
Regarding rough surfaces, it's plan area and for gases you have a volume contribution as well. Remember that in radiation physics the Prevost Exchange is a control mechanism to throttle net radiative flux so that for equal temperature in a vacuum the same number of photons arrive at the surface of one emitter, to be absorbed by the IR density of states, as move up from the kinetic energy of the molecular motion of that emitter.
Increase its temperature and still in a vacuum, the net radiative flux is the difference between the photons from the interior and the photons arriving times the average photon energy. But add a gas and the molecular motion can also couple from the solid directly to adsorbed gas molecules thus reducing the IR density of states for a given temperature, implying a much lower effective radiation temperature.
This is an interesting phenomenon because it means that you can also have pseudo 'back radiation'!. What climate science has done is to fix their analysis assuming that S-B defines the total IR from the solid surface then fix everything relative to this. When I was doing process engineering, you did this stuff empirically. There may be some theoretical work by now.
Christopher Monckton has been learning about the radiative physics as it is understood by Richard Lindzen, from what I can tell from brief sojourns on Watts Up With That. I gather that Phillip Bratby has been convinced for a while that that they and other popular communicators like Steve Carson of Science of Doom and Judith Curry, as well as the greatly-respected IPCC experts on the subject, are mistaken.
I can cope with any scientist being mistaken - Einstein certainly was - but I do second Phillip's question to mydogsgotnonose: when are you going to publish? And here's a subsidiary: do you think it's helped to use a pseudonym as you not only study these things but make bold public claims that seem to conflate what I might call Lindzonian scepticism with the skydragon kind? If you think pseudonymity is good for the last part I already consider you mistaken on one vital point.
Whether right or wrong on such details, Lindzen has paid a big price since 1988 for the stand he's taken. I take exception to any later revisionist pouring scorn on that from the comforts of pseudonymity.
steveta
"beleive .. breifing"
Sorry to be pedantic, but the recipient might be, too.
We have invited Roger Harrabin - no reply yet, We have tickets bought by The Guardian and Carbon Brief!
Where are the Telegraph and Daily Mail??
Sorry about relative shortage of tickets as we are aiming at MPs. and room size is a limitation.
steveta_uk
Well as I pointed out to someone else the other day - most of us believe in the Greenhouse Gas Effect (GHE), well since I was a schoolboy which is sadly a while ago now.
BUT it remains a theory that fits the facts pretty well - up to a point, rather like CO2 AGW theory. The points put forward by Dr. Pierre Latour who posts occasionally on the Dragon Slaying website are worthy of consideration. I note that he is not an armchair theory scientist who has sat in a university arguing that the science is settled (whatever that science was) but a scientist engineer who has been responsible for life-support on spacecraft inside and outside. He has needed to understand heat transfer and radiative balance for real.
"mydogsgotnonose" points to one area where the current understanding and application of the GHE is deficient, Pierre Latour points to what he sees as a fundamental misunderstanding - He points out that most of its proponents don't understand what they are measuring.
He may not be right, but he is worth listening to. Your tone about nonsense sounds straight out of the "consensus" book. After all Dr. Roy Spencer has had a spirited email exchange with Latour and certainly didn't accuse him of nonsense (though he didn't agree), but argued the GHE theory as he saw it. The email exchange is here
http://slayingtheskydragon.com/en/blog/185-no-virginia-cooler-objects-cannot-make-warmer-objects-even-warmer-still?showall=1
There is no doubt that many people who argue the GHE theory (which I still think is probably correct) confuse temperature (the air for example) with the incident radiation. As Latour points out there can be 200 deg C difference at the edge of the atmosphere between the rarefied air and the incident radiation, which is why spacesuits need to keep astronauts warm and cool. We all know how this feels on a winter day with a temp of zero C, no wind and the sun shining on us. He simply thinks that the GHE theory mixes these two things up fundamentally. Having read a few discussions between just sceptical scientists on the issue, you soon realise that the science is not settled.
To Richard Drake: my pseudonym is not frivolous. I am a scientist and an engineer. When, two years' ago I started to develop my ideas [based on 40 years' post PhD experience as a pioneer on renewables and CCS], I was accused of being a member of the BNP]. I then realised we were into political territory.
So, what you read is pure scientific analysis. There is a previous analogy, the Phlogiston story ['back radiation' is the equivalent.]. The mistake made by Arrhenius has lasted about the same time.
mydogsgotnonose
Please could you link your articles that are up @ Tallbloke Talkshop. I would like to give them a viewing.
Thank you.
Jack Cooper: http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/greg-elliott-use-of-flow-diagrams-in-understanding-energy-balance-part-2/#more-4790
Scroll down for my extended comment.
About 18 months' ago, Tallbloke exposed my then ideas on aerosol optical physics but at that time they were in gestation. Now the work is complete and I have a paper which will be published once it passes the pal review obstacle course [basically, it destroys the IPCC consensus by showing that net AIE is positive and accounts for the end of ice ages and the recent Arctic melting, a 50-70 biofeedback process!]
mydogsgotnonose
Best of luck to you in getting your paper published. Let's hope you do not run into the same problems that have hit Roy Spencer and Steve McIntyre.
Thanks.