The new novel Solar by Ian McEwan, Britain’s “national author” (as many call him) tackles the issue of climate change. I should perhaps start my review with a disclosure: I’m a long-standing fan of McEwan and have read all of his novels, and I am also mentioned in the acknowledgements of Solar. I met McEwan in Potsdam and we had some correspondence while he wrote his novel. Our recent book The Climate Crisis quotes a page of McEwan as its Epilogue. And of course I’m not a literature critic but a scientist. So don’t expect a detached professional review.
In interviews McEwan describes his difficulties in approaching the topic of climate change: “I couldn’t quite see how a novel would work without falling flat with moral intent.”
One solution is that he makes his protagonist who tries to “save the world”, the Nobel laureate physicist Michael Beard, thoroughly pathetic and unlikeable. (Actually quite unlike any scientist I know, but certainly less boring than us at Realclimate.) The only redeeming feature of Beard is his sarcastic humor. When his business partner is worried that claims of global warming having stopped will ruin their grand solar energy scheme, Beard (after expertly refuting the “no warming since 1998” myth) retorts:
Here’s the good news. The UN estimates that already a third of a million people a year are dying from climate change. Even as we speak, the inhabitants of the island of Carteret in the South Pacific are being evacuated because the oceans are warming and expanding and rising. Malarial mosquitoes are advancing northwards across Europe… Toby, listen. It’s a catastrophe. Relax!
This is McEwan’s funniest book. The humour in it is another way around the moral gravity of the subject. In an interview he said:
The thing that would have killed the book for me, I’m sure, is if I’d taken up any sort of moral position, I needed a get-out clause. And the get-out clause is, this is an investigation of human nature, with some of the latitude thrown in by comedy.
Half-way through the novel Beard gives a riveting speech on climate change to an auditorium full of pension-fund managers (representing 400 billion dollars of investments) – a speech that I’d be almost tempted to steal and use verbatim myself at some occasion. But what could have been tedious – a whole lecture embedded in a novel – is turned into a hilarious scene where Beard is engaged in a losing battle with his bowels, trying to continue speaking while swallowing down “a fishy reflux rising from his gorge, like salted anchovies, with a dash of bile”.
McEwan showing off that he can write such a speech better than a scientist is reminiscent of his novel Enduring Love, to which he appended an entire scientific paper about a psychological disorder (De Clerambault’s Syndrome) that allegedly inspired the book. Later he admitted this “paper” was part of the fiction. He’d even submitted it to a journal, but one of the reviewers smelled a rat.
McEwan’s deep (and often playful) affinity to science is one of the hallmarks of his writing and of course one reason why I like his novels. The other is his stunning power of observation; he seems to be reading people’s minds, cutting right through their delusions to get to the deeper truths. In that, his analytic work as a writer resembles that of a scientist.
McEwan is a forceful rationalist and well-versed in science culture, and his witty observations on that are a big part of the fun of his books. In Solar, for example, he pokes some hilarious fun at the social constructivists. Beard chairs a government committee to bring more women into physics, and a social scientist on his committee introduces herself with a speech on how a particular gene is not discovered by scientists, but is rather a social construct.
Beard had heard rumours that strange ideas were commonplace among liberal arts departments. It was said that humanities students were routinely taught that science was just one more belief system, no more or less truthful than religion or astrology. He had always thought that this must be a slur against his colleagues on the arts side. The results surely spoke for themselves. Who was going to submit to a vaccine designed by a priest?
This develops into my favourite subplot. At a press conference of his committee, the journalists are “slumped over their recorders and notebooks” and “depressed by the seriousness of their assignment, its scandalous lack of controversy”, as “the whole project was lamentably worthy”. Beard makes some fairly harmless remarks about the efforts of bringing more women into physics perhaps reaching a ceiling one day, because they may have a preference for other branches of science. The social constructivist explodes (“Before I go outside to be sick, and I mean violently sick because of what I’ve just heard, I wish to announce my resignation from Professor Beard’s committee.”) Predictably, that makes the predatory journalists spring to life, and in the following McEwan spins a completely credible story how Beard’s remarks turn into a media storm where Beard’s love life is dragged into the tabloids and his “genetic determinist” views are linked to Third Reich race theories. One journalist, “more in the spirit of playful diary-page spite”, calls him a neo-Nazi.
No one took the charge seriously for a moment, but it became possible for other papers to take up the term even as they dismissed it, carefully bracketing and legalising the insult with quotation marks. Beard became the ‘neo-Nazi’ professor.
McEwan knows what he is writing about: he became subject to a media storm about his Islam-critical views a few years ago. I read Solar in February (thanks to an advance copy that the author had sent me), in parallel with the unfolding surreal, but real-world media campaign against IPCC, and found that McEwan dissects the mechanisms beautifully.
McEwan says that the idea to make a Nobel laureate the main character of his new book came to him in Potsdam, when attending the Nobel Cause Symposium organised by our institute in October 2007 (and on page 179 his hero Beard returns from a conference in Potsdam). At the time I discussed with him whether this wouldn’t be a good topic for a novel: humanity facing an existential threat that is well-understood by its scientists, but largely ignored by a population who prefers to delude itself in creative ways about the gradually unfolding disaster. McEwan responded: everything there is to say about this situation has already been said by Thomas Mann in his novel Death in Venice.
I’m glad he tackled the topic of climate change nevertheless. It’s McEwan at his best. Intelligent, funny, and full of insights. Read for yourself!
Link: Here is McEwan speaking about Solar (and about his views on climate change) in a TV interview.
306
Ray Ladbury says:
8 May 2010 at 7:32 AM
“I see no evidence that Motl has ever even cracked a book on atmospheric physics. He has certainly never published a word on the subject in a peer-reviewed journal.”
Ray, you still have not answered my question: “Have YOU ever ever published as a primary author, a paper on climate science?” If not, then do not criticise Motl for not having done so. We each have our specialities. Perhaps your search for evidence of Motl’s invesigations into climate science is deficient for I have seen evidence of it.
Finally. You have seem to have completely missed the whole concept of the “appeal to authority” logical fallacy.
I haven’t followed this entire thread, but when I first moved to Village Homes, Davis, California, in 1980, we rented a house with a breadbox hot water heater. This sat on the roof, giving us hot water in the afternoon, but since the water storage also was on the roof, the water cooled down during our cool summer nights providing lukewarm water in the morning. It only was useful as a preheat to a natural gas water heater system.
When I built my house two years later, I put in an active system which determined when the water in the solar panels on the roof was warmer than the 240-gallon storage tank in my garage. Water then was pumped to the roof to warm, then down to the storage tank, From October until April, this preheated the small 40-gallon tank heated by natural gas. The rest of the year, we turned off the natural gas and got hot water without any additional energy input.
Unfortunately, during the winter of 1990, when wee got an unusual low of 17 degrees F, the fail-safe value that was supposed to drain the panels did not work (perhaps designed by the folks that built the fail-safe devices in the Gulf if Mexico?). The panels were replaced, but it took another 20 years to recover the cost. In retrospect, we could have just drained the panels during possible freezing months without relying on the (faulty) sensors.
However, if systems can be built without danger of freezing, much of he world can have enormous energy savings by using solar hot water panels for most of the year. In places like where I live, the sun shines down almost every day of the year. It’s a no brainerl
flxible 309: If there’s anyone here who regularly demonstrates the meanings of those terms it’s yerself Bart, one can only assume you were gazing in the mirror as you typed. Lighten up.
BPL: Go look up what the cake said to Alice.
JF 316,
The cold of the deep oceans is due to a circulation in which water sinks near the poles and rises near the equator. The cycle takes about a thousand years.
SA 326: BPL, in light of your response to flxible, what do you believe was “demonstrated” by your comment (#176) that “among those results” of Buddhist teachings “are” a long list of “historical ills”?
BPL: This is the sixth post you’ve made responding to that one post of mine. I’ve explained what I was saying several times now, and see no need to do so again.
Get a life.
“Is there some structural change that can help restore trust and communicate real science more effectively? Is the answer at our finger tips. Is it simply that we have to try harder?”
The problem is that some people are just flat out lying. They don’t CARE about the results or the consequences. They don’t care about truth, accuracy or anything other than their ideology.
Watts, for example.
Or Monckton.
Absolutely 100% couldn’t care less if they are wrong.
And the false balance that is the cheap version of responsible journalism lets them do their poison act with impunity.
What to do?
Neuter these actors in bad faith.
Which is now beginning to happen: sue the fkers. Sue the press. Sue them for the genuine reasons for their perjury. Make them reap the consequences of their mendacity. When their faithlessness and greed have consequences for them, they will begin to think about what they are saying and their poisonous actions will abate.
Then, when the people talking are genuine in their words and accurate in their statements, people will be able to assert their own level of trust in the science and in scientists.
But while the truth is twisted to sell the message big money want and while those lying brazenly are able to freely do so, and while the media collude in this in the race for eyeballs to sell, “try harder” only means more truth to twist.
Jim Eager says:
8 May 2010 at 5:48 PM
John Pearson @320: Perhaps a Real Climate article on the Venusian atmosphere is in order?,/em>
You mena like this: Venus Unveiled ?
Thanks for the link, but actually I was thinking of more along the lines of an in-depth discussion of the role of CO2 on the venusian atmosphere. I’ve spent the last hour perusing http://www.geosc.psu.edu/~kasting/PersonalPage/Pdf/Icarus_88.pdf
but Kasting was addressing how Venus would’ve gone into a run away greenhouse state in its early evolution perhaps lost an ocean’s worth of water. He says that the critical solar flux required for a runaway greenhouse is about 1.4 So (So = earths solar flux) which is about what Venus had in its early history . He also says that the critical flux is nearly independent of [CO2]. What Kasting doesn’t address is what the Venusian temperature would be with say a 90bar N2 atmosphere which is what the blogscientists are blathering about. Personally I think it is an interesting question. But I’ve spent the last hour thinking about it when I should have been working on a manuscript that has absolutely nothing to do with climate science and I’m not much closer to understanding the Venusian temperature than I was an hour ago! I’d kind of like hearing from someone who knows what they’re talking about on the issue. Take a water free venus and explain what the temperature is and what it would be for a 90bar pure CO2 atmosphere and a 90bar pure N2 atmosphere.
#343 Phillip, you could add the “bill of goods” Bill Gates sold to IBM management (you know the brightest and best). The managers didn’t listen to the lower level, and more experienced), software engineers.
Here’s a solar drainback hot water system in detail (and a good site for watershed information generally, with much specific to N. California):
http://www.oaecwater.org/education/solar-hot-water-booklet
“… . As of this writing, we have been able to record the following data and are impressed with the increase in efficiency of the system and the decrease in propane use (about 1/3 of the amount of gas we were using prior to the installation)”
“The problem is that some people are just flat out lying.”
I concur.
Gavin says:
“Response: If you think a century of science is going to be toppled by obviously ignorant blog posts on WUWT, you are very mistaken. There is a big difference between coming up with new insights that cause a reevaluation of current paradigms and just getting very basic physics wrong and misapplying completely other bits of physics. Goddard and Motl are engaged in the latter, not the former. – gavin”
I do not think any such thing. My point is that science is rarely built in stone regardless of the time frame or of the number of proponents of a particular hypothesis or theory.
I not think Motl is wrong and Goddard, like myself communicated his idea poorly.
But Gavin, can you please show me the equations and figures that support the concept of Greenhouse Theory being able to explain the majority of the temperature on the surface of Venus. I really would like to see the calculations.
[Response: Really? I suggest you read a textbook on planetary atmospheres, there are a few around. David grinspoon’s books have dealt with it as well. But this isn’t hard. The upward IR from the surface is thousands of W/m2, while at the top of the atmosphere the outgoing value is even smaller than on Earth. Thus thousands of W/m2 must be absorbed in the atmosphere – the very definition of an enormously strong GHE. With no greenhouse substances the surface temperature would be the blackbody emitting temperature (assuming no change in albedo). – gavin]
That was a financial decision, the PC was built on a shoestring. The biggest mistake IBM management made wasn’t an engineering mistake, but rather a business mistake, not buying out rights to DOS but rather letting MS maintain ownership and the right to license the software to others, once the PC was cracked by third-party reverse-engineering.
DOS was a POS but a very Profitable Operating System, as well … the point of business is to make money, not quality products, if you want to be downright cynical about it. Fortunately some businesses believe that the way to make the most money over the long term is to make quality products …
Steckis, OK, dude, concentrate. Think about this. I am not claiming that I know climate science better than the climate scientists. Motl is.
I have devoted a couple of years of my spare time to learning the science–and still consider myself a student. Motl expects to correct climate scientists without ANY study of the subject.
In other words, I am not passing myself off as an expert. Motl is.
Can you see the difference. Maybe if you squint.
Peter W @ 158. Nice reply.
The “running amuck” was a reference to the early days of IT in the 70’s and 80’s. By the 90’s controls had started to come in (ISO.., ITIL, SLA”s etc.) and IT was moved from under CEO’s to CFO’s in a bid to enforce the changes. Some company’s adapted but others, as you appear to have experienced needed the root and branch treatment.
I agree with you that businesses outsourced as a way of enabling focusing on core businesses. However, many took the route because they were not able to make the changes like your painful experience succeeded in doing.
The reference by some posts here to ‘product vs science’ lays at the root of the problems. A business generally wants to do the best it can to outdo its competitors. It has to be asked why the scientists were not able to communicate their ideas in the first place. Worth pondering?
Thanks for reply and I hope this makes sense……
BPL wrote: “I’ve explained what I was saying several times now …”
You have denied saying what you clearly said several times now, in addition to attributing to me words that I never wrote.
We all make ill-considered remarks from time to time. Some of us have the humility to admit it when we do.
#346 Richard Steckis
What you are presenting is truly a red herring argument. The more realistic point is, is there any theory that can even remotely challenge the established science that this global warming event is human caused?
Don’t forget that climate is now being studied by more scientists than ever before. DO you really think the theory has not experienced ‘valid’ attempts to falsify???
No one has a competitive holistic (considerate of the whole body of evidence) theory has made it through peer review and survived peer response. The only pet theories that came close were not looking at the body of science but rather are either generally myopic, or flat out wrong.
Take a look at Svensmarks theory that it’s GCR’s.
http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/henrik-svensmark
or Lindzen
http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/richard-lindzen
or Pielke, Sr.
http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/roger-pielke-sr
The only way to push the idea that this event is not human caused is to either narrow your scope or make claims or present opinions that reach beyond the scope of the research. Personally I call that fraudulent, but in reality, if possible, if they can remain ignorant to the overall body of science, they can honestly make ridiculous claims that are inconsiderate of the body of evidence.
. . . Or are you aware of one such theory, that I and so many others have missed. I know I don’t know it all, so please do inform me.
—
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#347 Shirley
It sounds like an interesting research question. If the wind streams mostly in one direction, there might be a signal in the vegetation/variety and one might also then check for temp differences in local spatial scales.
While CO2 is a well mixed gas it is concentrated before it is mixed. There is evidence in the observations of higher concentrations in the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere. I imagine that this is a result of the various cell circulation (Hadley, Polar, Sub-polar) that can temporarily prevent larger scale mixing.
Some imagery from NASA indicates that CO2 may be getting temporarily trapped in polar estuaries, but this is on a different scale then you are mentioning. However, it may be also contributing to the polar/northern amplification effect.
Please pardon my effrontery: Never be afraid to be wrong as it is the path to rapid learning. Whenever possible, put your full name on your work/questions, it presents integrity, and even humility which is important in exploration.
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I thought it was pretty good to be honest. I enjoyed his earlier novels more though..
http://www.onlinescience.info
# 351 Richard Steckis, as of yet you have produced zero of this evidence you claim to have seen. Care to share? Second many scientists who HAVE published in peer review ARE criticizing Motl’s work. Third having looked at at his writings there are several aspects that do not add up with what is known in physics.
#351 Richard Steckis
And you seem to have missed the whole concept of ‘appeal to red herring’.
Waving a $20 in the face of an officer does not change the fact that of how much an individual had been speeding.
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On China: The “US Farm Report” on TV this morning said China WAS an exporter of corn but is now an importer. Could be desertification is having an effect there. Perhaps reality will collide with their current policy/attitude on GW soon. Since Nature isn’t going to change her mind, perhaps some other minds will change.
On Venus: Mars has a thin but CO2 atmosphere and is cold. Which means: A bit more care is required in statements about Venus. You have to do the whole mathematical process. Innumeracy leads to nonsense. Radio shows are not good places to teach mathematical things. RealClimate avoids writing down equations because most people are highly allergic to math.
Arguing isn’t going to achieve anything. Writing the article on Venus is quite a challenge.
No, Steckis, it is you who missed the whole concept of the “appeal to authority” logical fallacy when you cited Motl and his credentials verses the the entire climate science community. You’re so deep in the hole you’re digging that you can’t even see the top anymore.
Titus, did it ever occur to you that it would be a good idea for managers to understand the scientific process? It sounds as if you are trying to pin blame for a dysfunctional organization on one group in that organization. After all, Bell Labs was tremendously successful, and even today IBM and others allow scientists rein to exercise creativity.
Scientists tend to be curiosity driven. That does not mean they are incapable of functioning in a goal-driven or even a production driven environment. Many very good scientists worked in industry up through the 70s and 80s. It makes me wonder what we’ve lost in management that has made them less productive.
The latest Climate Progress has an article on “Solar.”
Richard Steckis,
you are being absolutely ridiculous. Neither the adiabatic lapse rate, nor pressure, can physically cause the some 400 K hotter Venusian conditions than Earth (even though it absorbs much less solar radiation, due to its very high albedo). This is very elementary. Motl is full of it.
A couple of people here have claimed that because appeal to authority is classified as a logical fallacy, any argument including any appeal to authority is fallacious.
The mistake there is to confuse *formal* logic with everyday decision-making logic. In formal logic, every statement is either 100% true or 100% false. In formal logic, appeal to authority is a fallacy, because of necessity, it is a claim that the authority is infallible. In real-world logic (aka “fuzzy” logic) one is assessing not what is provably the exact answer, but instead what is probably the correct answer, give or take. Saying that I’m 95% confident that the climate sensitivity for 2x CO2 is between 1.5 and 4.5 is not a conclusion that can come from a formal logical process, but it is a conclusion that can be drawn from a careful survey of the scientific literature, where the surveyor uses real-world logic, the published scientists used real-world logic, the reviewers used … you get the idea.
If you want an example of a fallacy in real-world logic, I’d have to go with “confusing terms between different disciplines”.
Clearly, Richard Stekis has not read a textbook on adiabatic processes, either from physicists or physical chemists. Again I say, without my previous typo: Peter Atkins explains adiabatic. Very straightforward.
BPL: Go look up what the cake said to Alice.
Gracious apology accepted, this being Sunday and all.
Rattus Norvegicus #350: if you or anyone else wants to reminisce on computer history etc. find me at firstname.surname AT gmail.com.
RS 346,
Read my lips: Goddard is a babbling airhead when it comes to planetary astronomy. Venus is hot because of a greenhouse effect. That is so well established that questioning it is like questioning the shape of the Earth. It’s not the act of someone with a brave new idea, it’s the act of an ignoramus.
Shirley 347,
No, CO2 mixes too fast. Tropospheric convection.
RS 351: Ray, you still have not answered my question: “Have YOU ever ever published as a primary author, a paper on climate science?” If not, then do not criticise Motl for not having done so. We each have our specialities. Perhaps your search for evidence of Motl’s invesigations into climate science is deficient for I have seen evidence of it.
BPL: But I HAVE cracked climatology textbooks, worked the problems, and studied the field, for twelve years now. I taught myself to write radiative-convective models of planetary atmospheres. And I can tell you that Lubos Motl is a blathering fool when it comes to climate science.
SA 365,
Sorry, I decline to play that game any more.
Re: Adiabatic warming (e.g., Motl)
The adiabatic assumption is a useful one in meteorology — it works well when applied to individual air parcels if the rising or sinking of a parcel is sufficiently rapid that the flow of heat between the parcel and its environment is negligible when compared to the work done by or on the parcel. However, to apply the assumption to a planet’s entire atmosphere is clearly erroneous as the planet is both receiving energy from without (solar radiation)and emitting energy to space (longwave radiation).
Suppose that one were somehow able to adiabatically compress a planet’s entire atmosphere; the temperature of the planet and its atmosphere would rise rapidly at first, but then the heat generated would pour out into space, causing the temperature to fall. The drop in temperature would continue until the rate of radiation absorption was equal to rate of emission. Taking into account convection, the resulting vertical temperature profile would eventually approach something resembling the observed values — values that could have been obtained by simply assuming radiative-convective equilibrium from the outset and not going through the silly mental exercise of compressing the atmosphere.
361 Gavin said: “With no greenhouse substances the surface temperature would be the blackbody emitting temperature (assuming no change in albedo).”
THat was my immediate thought the first time this came up. I read a bunch of Motl’s crap which was largely incoherent, but there was one thing he said that was coherent and I didn’t have an answer for. I read other crap that various blogscientists wrote. Motl claimed that the partial pressure of the CO2 on Venus was 2^18 times it’s partial pressure on earth and that each doubling gives a couple of degrees of warming and that therefore CO2 can’t explain venusian temperature. I assume that he has no idea what he is talking about and that he took earth’s Temperature-CO2 relationship and applied it to venus outside its domain of applicability but it would be nice to hear that from someone who does know what they were talking about. I know. I know. I need to read a book on atmospheric physics. I keep waiting for Ray Pierrehumbert’s book to come out. Ray recommended one of Goody’s books to me a while back but it was $200 on Amazon which is more than I’m willing to spring for on a hobby that isn’t skiing.
Titus says, “Science used without those checks and balances looses its authority and therefore cannot be (and is not) trusted.”
Sorry, but that is quite simply horseshit. Science has a long record of producing trustworthy understanding of its subject. That does not guarantee that you will necessarily get the information you want. You may not have the right scientists. You may not be asking them the right questions. They may not be sufficiently goal driven to give you what you want.
None of this, however, invalidates the scientific method. A scientist who is publishing in a field regularly is doing work that other scientists active in the same field find worthy of consideration. If that scientist’s work is being cited, it means that other scientists are employing his ideas and methods. That is the best guide to who understands a particular field.
@376 GFW – An appeal to authority depends on whether you are a scientist in the field who can actually work things out for yourself, or if you are an average person just trying to figure things out. For a non-scientist, their own analysis just doesn’t cut it, and they’re more interested in the probability of the event in question than the absolute physical truth. I wrote a post on this topic here: http://climatesight.org/2009/06/17/when-authority-is-relevant/
@Ray Ladbury 341 – I agree with what you say about the necessity of both scientists and project managers/engineers. I’m not a scientist yet, but I’ve known for a long time that I have the mind of one – always striving towards understanding something better and making discoveries, rather than finding a solution to a particular problem. My mum says that her first clue as to my scientific tendencies was when, each Christmas, I would classify the contents of my stocking into a pseudo-taxonomic system.
However, I never would have begun sharing my understanding of climate science and doing my bit to dispel misconceptions in the form of my blog (link above) if it wasn’t for a friend who is exactly the opposite to me. Although he is good at math and science, he has known for years that he’s not interested in research. He wants to be an engineering project manager. I know nobody better than him at finding the most efficient solutions to problems of all kinds. We need both types of people in the world of science communication.
Ah, but Steckis, the argument I’m making is not:
Source A says that p is true.
Source A is authoritative.
Therefore, p is true.
The argument I am making isthat
Source A says Y about something in a field X.
Source A is actively publishing in field X.
Therefore what Source A says is a whole lot more likely to be true than what some idjit says who has never craced a book on field X.
Steckis also says, “A century of research can be toppled by one expirment.”
Very true, Steckis. So why aren’t denialists proposing any experiments. Hell, for the most part they seem interested in suppressing them–e.g. DISCOVR/Triana, no Surface Stations publication after 2 years…
I have an experiment for you, Steckis. Try calculating how long Venus would stay hot if its temperature were due to compression as you say. Make sure to report back to us.
#366 John P Reisman:
Something that I think a great deal of the public doesn’t understand is that the climatology community is ten steps ahead of them. Every objection that letters to the editor and so on come up with – it’s caused by the sun, Mauna Loa is a volcano, etc – scientists thought of those and tested them and ruled them out long before most people even knew what global warming was. I mean, really, could an entire multidisciplinary field stretching back over a century miss something so simple?!
It’s like a form of hubris – everyone thinks that they’re as good as any scientist out there, and their ideas are new and controversial.
Gavin says:
“Really? I suggest you read a textbook on planetary atmospheres, there are a few around. David grinspoon’s books have dealt with it as well. But this isn’t hard. The upward IR from the surface is thousands of W/m2, while at the top of the atmosphere the outgoing value is even smaller than on Earth. Thus thousands of W/m2 must be absorbed in the atmosphere – the very definition of an enormously strong GHE. With no greenhouse substances the surface temperature would be the blackbody emitting temperature (assuming no change in albedo). – gavin”
This is not what I asked for. I asked for the solved equations that show unequivocally that the greenhouse effect is responsible for the vast majority of the warming on venus. I suspect you cannot show it, particularly as there is no potential for water vapour feedback on Venus and the potential to trap IR is logarithmically related. Without some pretty major positive feedbacks, the greenhouse equation cannot produce the 400C temperature differential between the atmospheres of Earth and Venus.
[Response: So my inability to fit a line-by-line radiative transfer model in a comment on a blog is proof to you that no such calculation exists? Hmmm… (really, please look at a textbook on planetary atmospheres – nothing I can possibly put in a comment will satisfy you). -gavin]
The adiabatic lapse rate can be derived from gravity. Total molecular energy is the sum of kinetic energy and potential energy. Temperature is a measure of molecular kinetic energy. If the Earth’s surface at sea level is taken as the reference point, molecules at a higher elevation have higher potential energy. Therefore molecules with a lower temperature at higher elevations have equal total energy to those with a higher temperature at lower elevations.
How does the greenhouse effect explain why the daytime high temperature atop Mt. Everest never exceed -15°C?
[Response: Why should this have anything to do with the greenhouse effect? However, without the greenhouse effect the temperature would be more like -50°C. -gavin]
Re 361 Richard Steckis – https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/05/solar/comment-page-6/#comment-174105
IF there is no greenhouse effect, then 1. all radiation escaping to space must originate from the surface (or from below the layer that has no greenhouse effect) and 2. all of that emitted radiation escapes with no backscattering. Starting with Venus as it is and removing the greenhouse effect (but for sake of the argument, keep the albedo to solar radiation), the surface will continue emitting a large flux and, exposed to space, that flux will leave the system, and there will be no backradiation to the surface. Thus the whole system loses energy, and this occurs at the surface in particular. The lapse rate near the surface will turn negative, and this inversion will build upward, as heat from much of the atmopshere will flow to the surface, perhaps mainly by diffusion since convection will be relatively inhibited (though downward mixing of heat could be driven by energy sources elsewhere in the atmosphere or through latitudinal gradients, etc… I’m not quite sure). Anyway, in the end, the result is much cooler surface (with a larger diurnal and I’d guess latitudinal temperature range, and with a much smaller or perhaps negative lapse rate, depending on how much solar heating occurs in the atmosphere). Zero greenhouse effect tends to inhibit the formation of a troposphere, though differential heating producing horizontal temperature gradients could supply some energy that could force the mixing of some layer – this would heat the surface by cooling the top of such a layer – but note that if this occurs, the surface temperature will still be cold, as that heat would then be radiated away (and thus farther cooling the top of such a mixed or overturning layer). Some adjustment for spatial and temporal variation of surface temperature via the nonlinear relationship between emitted flux and temperature.
Re 357 John E. Pearson –
1. no expert on this, but assuming Venus and Earth started similarly, I wouldn’t expect a 90 bar N2 atmosphere would have ever occured. I think the reason for the large atmospheric mass is the large amount of CO2 – and back when it was happening, perhaps the large water vapor concentration – PS significant water loss by escape of H to space would start, as I understand it, at temperatures significantly below the boiling point (at least at 1 bar) and thus there needn’t have been a tremendous amount of water vapor in the atmosphere at any one time – but as the sun got brighter over geologic time, eventually, if the water were not lost beforehand, a point could have been reached where the oceans would boil into the atmopshere and, if I’m not mistaken, become a significant part of atmospheric mass – I wouldn’t know whether this happened or not). The CO2 built up from geologic emissions because the geological sinks were shut off by the loss of water (and maybe the higher temperatures? – true that a warmer wetter climate favors faster chemical weathering, but at some point the temperature is too high for carbonate minerals to form, though this depends on CO2 partial pressure and the cations involved, and I don’t know the numbers offhand ).
(PS Kasting is good source for information about that kind of thing in general)
But if there were a 90 bar N2 atmosphere – first, I’m not sure offhand but it may be an approximation that N2 (and O2, some others) is not a greenhouse gas – if so, that approximation might fail with 90 bars (???) – though I’d expect it would be weak compared to 90 bars of CO2.
But if there were a 90 bar atmosphere that were transparent to radiation at wavelengths emitted from the surface below, then the surface would tend towards the temperatures that allow emitted radiation to balance solar heating (solar heating of the surface and the atmosphere, because, without any greenhouse gases in the air, the heat in the atmosphere would have to escape the system through the surface).
It is true that approximations (such as the tropopause forcing proportional to log (amount) ) suitable for a range about Earthlike conditions will break down far enough outside that range. CO2 has additional absorption bands that don’t matter much at lower concentrations, and at much different temperatures in the lower atmosphere and at the surface, radiation will be emitted more at shorter wavelengths. Pressure and temperature themselves affect the optical properties for a given composition (via line broadenning and line strength effects) and the overall composition can also affect the line broadenning of any constituent. And the convective-maintained tropospheric lapse rate will be different because of the overall different atmopsheric composition, differences in latent heating in ‘moist’ convection (there isn’t much water – is there another condensing substance – sulfuric acid clouds?), and also the gravity is somewhat different (that affects the lapse rate). Presumbaly the clouds on Venus could contribute something to the greenhouse effect; I wouldn’t know how much (not all clouds are equal, and this applies to clouds of different substances).
BPL @354:
“The cold of the deep oceans is due to a circulation in which water sinks near the poles and rises near the equator. The cycle takes about a thousand years.”
Yes, I understand that. But my uncertainty is this: is that the *only* heat transfer mechanism at depth?
Kate : there are a lot of very high level scientists who work on still very uncertain topics. We still don’t really know how the 11-years solar cycle happens, how its corona is heated, or how to reproduce the physical parameters of the solar wind , although this seems to be a much simpler problem than Earth climate. We don’t know why supernovae explode, not to speak of still more energetic gamma-ray bursts. And this is only “normal” astrophysics, i don’t speak of particle physics, supersymmetry, and dark matter. Of course these scientists have studied a lot of possibilities and are many steps ahead the public. But reality is still too complicated to be understood. So I agree that it is unlikely to find a very simple explanation they wouldn’t have thought of. But having a critical look on the accuracy of the models and questioning the uncertainties seems to me fully relevant.
I have evacuated tubes for heating water. We boost less than two weeks a year.
In Canberra OZ, we only have mild frosts(-7C) in winter but even those days we get plenty of water heating. The evacuated tubes do not need draining and at that level of freezing, there is no need for draining.We worked on a payback of less than 7 years, but we have plenty of sunny days even if some of our winter ones have fogs that don’t lift till mid day.
There is an enormous take up of these tubes in China.
PS It amazes me that people rabbit on about how the arguments for AGW doesn’t convince them when they haven’t put effort into understanding the science. Recently we had the leader of the opposition telling school children that it was warmer in the times of Jesus and the leader of the opposition in the senate regards AGW as crap. I am a plant physiologist so well understand the increase in CO2 and the basic physics is pretty straightforward, but the enormous and painstaking work that has gone into building up a case is extraordinary
Thanks Stefan. I’ve read many of McEwan’s books but did give up on him after ‘Saturday’, which I didn’t enjoy much. I was intrigued when I heard that he would be tackling AGW, and having read your review I will definitely be buying a copy of ‘Solar’. I think McEwan’s is one of only a few authors I would trust to give a good account of the science.
“I read other crap that various blogscientists wrote. Motl claimed that the partial pressure of the CO2 on Venus was 2^18 times it’s partial pressure on earth and that each doubling gives a couple of degrees of warming”
PV=nRT is how pressure can be realised as temperature.
But that IS NOT partial pressure. It’s pressure of the whole pigging lot.
Therefore the 2^18 is bull. 90 atmospheres (IIRC) is the pressure of Venus. About 2^6. From Motl’s (probably completely spurious misattribution) that would give 12C warming from the over-pressure.
This doesn’t explain temperature that can melt lead.
Plus ask yourself, if the greenhouse effect has nothing to do with Venus’ temperature (as Motl and his flock of parrots state), why does CO2 have anything to do with it? It’s a gas like any other.
That he’s pointing this out shows how he’s creating a tapestry of lies from fragments of truth placed inappropriately.
JEP 385,
Yes, that’s exactly what he did. The 3K/warming applies to Earth’s Pleistocene/Holocene climate and that ONLY. To get the actual greenhouse warming of Venus you have to write a radiative-convective or general circulation model of the Venus atmosphere. The regime is not the same shape under all conditions.
“But I’d like to defend the “running amuck” by IT departments;”
I think you meant “running amok”.
Unless they’ve been *very* naughty..
:-)