That’s motion of particles from here to there in an electromagnetic field.
You’re now talking about the solar plasma.
That produces photons.
Photons are quantized.
In a solid, the particles are wiggling, but their interatomic bonds are stretching. That produces photons, also quantized.
Are you postulating a non-quantized photon in your theory, Rod?
Hank, photons per se are not quantized other than theoretically their energy has to progress in steps of one (1) Hz which has no affect on anything. The energy levels of certain things are distinctly quantized, and if changed might emit a photon, but that photon is not quantized. Or I misread what you are saying…
Ray Ladburysays
Sun, meet Mr. Rod B. Rod, Meet Mr. Sun. Mr. Sun is made of plasma. He is so dense that a photon takes years to make it to the surface and radiate away. So:
1)The electrons spend most of their time free, and so can interact with a photon of any wavelength.
2)There are lots of complicated interactions that broaden, split and otherwise distort the lines that are there.
OK, Rod, let’s take it even another step simpler: Does a single atom emit blackbody radiation in addition to its atomic spectrum? I’m really gonna hope you say no, because otherwise we’ve got to go back to quantum mechanics. Assuming you say no, how about two molecules? If so, why are two molecules different than one? If not, how about three molecules? And so on. What new radiative process comes in when you have a group of molecules that you don’t have with a single molecule?
As to my JPL colleagues, when they are full of a messy organic substance that is the product of normal metabolic processes, you can be assured that I do tell them. The tutorial you found was a very low-level attempt to lay the groundwork for understanding cosmic microwave background. It was not completely wrong, but it does not support your contention of a separate blackbody radiation mechanism. Read it again. No support.
Ray Ladburysays
Rod B.: “Hank, photons per se are not quantized other than theoretically their energy has to progress in steps of one (1) Hz which has no affect on anything.”
Rod, photons are quanta of electromagnetic radiation. That sounds pretty quantized to me. But hey, Rod, here’s a photon. Can you give me change in half photons?
Rod, translational energy levels are also quantized at least if the molecules or atoms in question are in a finite “box”, though in practice the spacing is so close that the translational energy levels can indeed be treated as continuous.
Also, what does the unit of Hz have to do with anything? In this context, Hz = 1/s is just an arbitrary unit, it doesn’t have anything to do with quantization of photons. Where are you getting this stuff from…? (Just think about it a little while: if mankind had happened to choose a different fundamental unit of time than the second – which is based on dividing the rotation period of one specific planet by the completely arbitrary number 24*60*60 – would the laws of the universe have been rewritten…? If we had been using “heleks” instead would you be claiming photon energies are quantized in units of 1/helek?)
“Collisions and interactions” (e.g. various types of clustering of gas molecules at different timescales) in a gas of non-zero pressure does indeed give rise to some new spectral lines, but that still doesn’t make the spectra of gas molecules a continuum – it’s still (at least for the gases and pressures and spectral ranges of interest in our atmosphere) lines, there are just a bit more of them (and they are more smeared out).
AICsays
Re #346:
Please keep the link for Stephen Schneider.
[Response: Without question.–Jim]
Rod Bsays
First off, how about we get out of the semantics rationalization. When I say something is “quantized” I mean with quantum steps that are clearly measurable and discrete, like the inner molecular energy levels of rotation, vibration and electron orbits. When I say “not quantized” I mean from a meaningful practical sense. I would say the momentum of a 767 is not quantized even though technically in a nitpick sense it most certainty is quantized. EVERYTHING with energy or momentum is quantized, but this is not a helpful thing to discuss. Theo Kurtén described molecular translation energy correctly. For simplicity I would say it is not quantized and lose absolutely nothing in meaning.
Ray, the energy level of a free electron is not quantized (reread the above) and can take on any momentum from zero to relativistic levels and everything in between. The orbital energies of electrons are quantized. I’m not sure: in answer to my question are you saying, yes, that nice smooth insolation curve does come from spectral lines but with a bunch of slicing and dicing??
Ray, whether a single atom or molecule can emit Planck radiation is a big debate — though as much philosophical as physics. Most physicists (by far) say it can not, though Einstein among others said it can. One of the problems is, even if it can, how could anyone tell?? Since the radiation requires an accelerating charge which in turn most likely requires a collision, one atom has nothing to bump into. Even if there were two a collision the next billion years seems remote. (It’s a little bit like our old debate over a molecule having temperature — this is just an analogy in passing, not a resurrection!) BTW this would apply to solids, liquids, plasma and gases. So there clearly must be a very large number density of molecules to produce blackbody radiation. The denser the better. While I’m convinced gas like our atmosphere can emit planck radiation, square meter for square meter it is significantly less than solids or liquids because of its very low number density among other things.
Photons are quanta, but aren’t quantized other than (as in the semantics above) one photon must be 6.626×10^ -34 joules different from its nearest neighbor. That’s almost immeasurable let alone observable. That means he has to be wiggling one cycle per second more or less than his neighbor. Compared to freq of 20 TeraHz, that ain’t much. Saying photons are quantized is almost like saying one joule is quantized. Energy levels in something can be separated by one joule and are therefore quantized — meaning the molecular energy levels, not the joule itself.
Ray, the direct quote from NASA/JPL (which you must have glossed over) is “….. any object that contains any heat energy at all emits radiation…. ….and then emits the energy at all frequencies… All the matter in the known universe behaves this way.” That was one of my assertions. Why do you say the article had “no support” for me???? Do you happen to know the cutoff for NASA/JPL publishing accurate science versus made-up false lying stuff? I wonder what their practices call for. (Maybe Gavin by chance knows.) Evidently if they are writing for advanced high school level their rules say that they can just make stuff up and write anything they damn well please. I just wonder how high up it goes….
#121 Enhanced Carbonate Dissolution as a Means of Capturing and Sequestering Carbon Dioxide, Greg H. Rau1,2, Ken Caldeira2, Kevin G. Knauss2, Bill Downs3, and Hamid Sarv3
Comment by Brian Dodge — 6 Feb 2011 @ 10:33 PM
How about we just switch over to nice, gentle natural no-till, heavy mulch, green manures-type (regenerative) agriculture? Add in a billion or so home gardens and we could suck up 50% of current carbon emissions, I’d guess (40% for farmland farmed this way). Then, we need to reduce consumption of a fair list of things – water, oil, etc., – anyway, so why not reduce consumption by 50%, too? Or more. Then add in rebuilding forests, adding a bunch of food forests for more reliable, very efficien food supply, localize, walkable neighborhoods, “renewable” energy production…
[Response: Sane, humane and addresses multiple problems. Which is why we don’t have it now.–Jim]
Rod, you’re contending that every object emits energy at all levels. You’re misreading something perhaps poorly written for high schoolers. That would include, say, hard x-rays — doesn’t happen.
Are you saying if you wait long enough you’ll be able to detect an X-ray emission from anything above absolute zero?
Well, your repeated returns to your theory are a proven way to distract people whenever they start to get focused in a climate topic.
Works real well for that. We fell for it again.
wilisays
Sorry to interrupt other conversations, but a question came up in a conversation on another blog that I thought someone here might be able to help me understand:
How rapidly does methane disperse into the global atmosphere?
I see that concentrations are much higher in the northern hemisphere, and especially in the Arctic. Should we take that to mean that there is a continual large emission going on there. If it had stopped, say, a decade ago, would the methane levels have evened out between the two hemispheres (north and south, that is) by now? A year ago?
And if there were a large, sudden burst of methane from a particular point, how long would it take to spread, say, 1000 miles. (I assume prevailing winds would have a lot to do with it, but I’m speaking on average.)
Thanks a head of time.
[Response: about 10 years. – gavin]
Ray Ladburysays
Rod, you are talking out an alternative orifice. They can trap single atoms now and keep them for weeks. They’ve even NAMED them like pets! I absolutely defy you to produce evidence that Einstein thought a single atom emitted continuum radiation. IT CAN NOT! If it could, the electronic orbits would be unstable and you would not have an atom.
Rod, THINK. The energy of a photon is h times its frequency. Do you think the frequency must be integral? How do you think photons are produced?
Free electrons–yes, their energy is not quantized. However, they also don’t emit radiation unless accelerated. And I don’t see many free electrons in a neutral gas.
As to your reference, read again for comprenension. It says that an “object” will emit radiation. It does not say that radiation will be in a continuum. You are taking a short, nontechnical briefing for a lay audience with limited science education and reading into it what you want to see. Look again. It ain’t there. I agree it could be phrased more clearly, but the author chose to be vague so she wouldn’t have to go into more sophisticated concepts that were not central to her theme.
Rod, I can assure you that physicists understand this. It’s not new. Some of us have done the math. Try it.
Theo Kurténsays
Rod,
again: are you really, seriously claiming that the quantization of photon energies follows our (entirely arbitrary) choice of the second as the fundamental unit of time? Which was incidentally chosen quite a few centuries before anybody even knew about photons? I respectfully suggest you have entirely misunderstood the whole E=h*f thing…
Your point about blackbody radiation (correct me if I’m wrong) seems to be that given a collection of > 1 atoms or molecules at non-zero pressure, it is theoretically possible that they might interact in such a way that emission (or absorption) of radiation at any arbitrary frequency becomes allowed. This may or may not be true, but the probability of absorption or emission far from the “allowed” lines (defined primarily by the energy levels of a single molecule, and secondarily by the most common collision complexes or other transient clusters) is vanishingly small for any conditions relevant to our atmosphere. I guess this is what you mean when you say “quare meter for square meter it is significantly less than solids or liquids because of its very low number density among other things”. (Though “significantly” here might involve quite a lot more powers of ten than you might think.)
wayne jobsays
Climate science at this point in time is a baby. We are living in the open chaotic plumbing system of a water modulated heat pump. The sun is the primary source of heat, water is the refrigerant and the atmosphere is our unbounded plumbing system. We are like gold fish in a bowl surrounded by weather that is created by non linear events. This on a decadal scale is very difficult to comprehend as complexities of chaos maths require real starting point information and the correct equations. This will not happen any time soon.
The starting point to understanding our climate is the big picture. Firstly we must find and totally understand the causes of the ice ages, which are plainly re-occuring at set intervals, secondly the interglacials are also highly regular in their appearances. The causes for both of these must be celestial because of their periodity.
The nit picking and statistical analysis of mainly imaginary numbers to try and evoke a warming or cooling caused by trace elements of gas in the atmosphere is not science.
The real science is yet to be done, when a full understanding of the reasons for glacial and interglacial periods is understood, then and only then can we even begin to unravel the causes of the smaller ups and downs in our climate. It is time to stop and have a good slow look around at reality. The drivers of our climate are the sun the ocean and celestial mechanics.
This is not a good time for our world, we are by all accounts at the end of an inter glacial, those recorded drivers of decadal warmth have all in unison turned negative. This is not usually a bad thing as droughts break but many suffer bad winters. This usually also is not a problem, but this cycle has a sun that refuses to awaken and is tracking at less than SC5 the LIA trigger, NASA are bewildered by the behaviour.
A warming future is looking further from the truth by every day that passes that old Sol stays asleep.
It is imperative that we investigate and understand the real cause of our climate changes, such that we can really prepare for what is to come, Warm is good cold would kill billions of people.
Joe Cushleysays
Wayne Job burbled at 365
“A warming future is looking further from the truth by every day that passes that old Sol stays asleep…”
You write with conviction, but unfortunately I must respectfully tell you that your convictions are for the most part not factual.
I’m sure others will have comments on specific points that you raise. I’m most familiar with the historical aspects, though, so that’s what I will respond to.
Climate science is NOT “a baby.” Its roots predate relativity, quantum theory, electronics, and even (somewhat ironically) modern chemistry.
Here’s a summary (and far from complete) of the early history:
1824: Joseph Fourier calculates first heat budget for the Earth, and mathematically demonstrates the existence of what we now call the “greenhouse effect.”
1838: Claude Pouillet studies insolation and atmospheric absorptivity, arriving at the first estimate of the “solar constant.” His data provides valuable constraints on Fourier’s model.
1861: John Tyndall discovers the physical basis for Fourier’s greenhouse effect: CO2 (which he called “carbonic acid gas,” or simply “carbonic acid”) and other gases, transparent to light, were nonetheless largely opaque to radiant heat (infrared radiation.) He is able to measure this effect accurately in the laboratory, and suggests that this effect may offer the basis of an explanation of the Ice Ages.
1896: Svante Arrhenius hand-calculates the first global model of CO2-induced global warming. Note that his primary research question was to “find and totally understand the causes of the ice ages!” This is your research program, Wayne, and in fact it was the impetus for most of the early research on CO2 and climate change.
1901: Nils Ekholm summarizes the then-current understanding of the interplay of CO2 sinks and sources to the atmosphere. Notable is his verbal description of the effect of CO2 on effective radiating altitude–a perspective on the effects of CO2 that could have averted much time spent in the blind alley of the notion of “CO2 saturation.”
1938: Guy Callendar synthesizes up-to-date information to show not only that the CO2 saturation argument is incorrect from an empirical point of view, but that CO2 concentrations are rising much more rapidly than previously thought, and that climate was warming quite rapidly.
With Callendar, CO2 theory was brought into the 20th century, and the stage was set for the development of the modern theory. You’ll notice that that was over 70 years ago!
More detailed summaries of these and subsequent ‘classic’ climate science papers can be found here:
[Response: And of course you can read more about the long history of development of the physics behind global warming in “The Warming Papers,” put together by Dave Archer and myself. –raypierre]
Miscellaneous points, suitable, I suppose, for “Unforced Variations”:
1) I’m glad to see the O’Donnellgate thread close. It was getting tedious, and IMHO, eric’s comment to one fellow about “looking foolish” were both more widely applicable and charitable.
2) I’ve taken a whack at the current cold weather and the recurrent “stopping” of global warming in a new web article. Its contents won’t surprise many here, but I hope it’s a useful resource for those dealing with folks overly impressed with the first, and too little aware of the history of the second. I titled it somewhat provocatively, which seems to be having the desired effect so far.
1) Climate science is old (older than any field that started in the last century).
2) We have a much better understanding of ice ages these days.
3) We already have a remarkably good understanding of climate.
Just because you do not understand these facts or any of the science does not mean that the science does not exist.
There will always be things we don’t know. But that doesn’t take away from the vast amount that we do know. Now, before you post another collection of denier talking-points, please try to approach them sceptically.
Ray Ladburysays
Wayne Job,
Others have pointed out the misconceptions in your post. I’ll just ask where you got these misconceptions and why you consider it to be a reliable source of information.
JCHsays
Where did wayne job get his misconceptions? Possibly here: Tomas Milanovic.
Didactylossays
Now I look again at wayne job’s burblings, it’s like he copy and pasted something from 2008 or 2009, without thinking about what has changed since. Solar cycle 24 is now well underway – all those people saying “it’s another Maunder Minimum” are looking like the premature idiots they are. NASA aren’t even slightly “bewildered”. It is well documented that solar cycle prediction is difficult during a minimum, and more reliable once the cycle is a few years old. Yes, current predictions say cycle 24 will be quieter than recent cycles. But what of it? Solar energy delta is a small climate forcing, and simply no longer dominant.
Also, he seems to be confusing the Maunder Minimum with the Dalton Minimum.
Talking about global cooling is just silly after a record warm year. Doubly ludicrous when the proposed mechanism isn’t feasible.
Triply daft when it involves sweeping away all that inconvenient science about “trace elements of gas in the atmosphere”!
Don’t live in the past, Wayne. Try to learn from it instead.
JCHsays
But Didactylos, the climate is savaged by unpredictable tipping points that spring up out of thin air from the deep ocean. Like when the 30-year cold phase started in December, 2010. Less than 1% of climate scientists understood they could not see that one coming!
Hank, I haven’t taken Planck’s equation out to x-ray and beyond but I’m positive one gets an intensity from it at those frequencies. Anyway you’re scraping the barrel for fly specs to try to disprove my (and NASA/JPL’s) assertion . And if you think gaseous radiation emission and absorption has nothing to do with climate change you need to spend more time on RC!
Rod Bsays
Ray, your gyrations and contortions to make apple pie out of a NASA article is quite impressive. Explaining that radiation is in a few frequencies or bands rather than “all” frequencies is way too sophisticated for an advanced high schooler to get, is it? Ya think?
IIRC Einstein hedged his planck radiation from a single atom a bit when it got to a continuum. He couldn’t quite figure that one out. It’s not worth my time to search archives for Einstein’s assertion. You’ll just say he was dumbing it down for dummies.
Ray and Theo, O.K. if the quanta break is not one cps, what is it? Or is it non-existent, in which case you just destroyed ALL quantization. You are aware that quantum numbers are almost always integers (or integers + ½) aren’t you?
Rod, are you still responding to Raypierre’s question?
(“A more productive discourse would be on the origins of Kirchoff’s law. I mean the microscopic origins ….”)
You claim NASA, JPL, and RC support these statements?
“… translation energy is not quantized ala vibration and rotation energy.”
“… photons per se are not quantized other than theoretically their energy has to progress in steps of one (1) Hz which has no affect on anything.”
Wow. I missed a long, great conversation about molecular physics. Bummer. I didn’t even know it was going on (too distracted by Eric’s problems, as well as the need to earn a living)…
Rod, I can’t believe you’re sticking to such a warped POV. I started this whole thing by asking a question because I’d run into people who simply could not distinguish between black bodies (artificial construct), massive bodies (like the sun, which approximate a black body) and a homogeneous gas of limited (i.e. not diverse) content, or an individual molecule.
If I may, however, you keep bolstering your document by calling it a NASA/JPL assertion.
It was written in 1998, clearly is an introductory text on astronomy (not quantum mechanics or physics), can (and obviously does) contain errors, and most importantly… you are misinterpreting an ambiguous sentence.
Constantly referencing it as NASA/JPL, as if that gives it weight because “NASA said it,” is just silly.
Can you please find anything that is (1) less vague and (2) a little more advanced (and specific) to support your (untenable) position?
You should note that that “Introduction to Radio Astronomy” guide (from 1998) is all over the Internet… on amateur astronomy sites. Claiming this as a position held by NASA is just way, way over the top.
FYI, the document has nothing to do with NASA.
In the author’s words on how it was written:
We had to assume afew things about the background of our audience. We geared our material to high school graduates who had taken chemistry, physics, and basic algebra. We avoided math almost entirely, instead seeking to impart a basic grasp of broad concepts, as well as to generate some enthusiasm for the subject.
Next we had to choose our topics. Most of the materials we found that dealt specifically with radio astronomy were intermediate graduate or post-graduate astronomers,with most pages containing more equations than words! We used these materials to glean our choice of broad topics, but then sought simpler, more concept-oriented explanations of topics in general astronomy and physics texts.
On the author herself:
Diane Fisher Miller is a science and technology writer and web site developer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English and has been at JPL 15 years.
So you’re basing your knowledge of physics on the 13 year old writings (aimed at high school students, about radio astronomy) of a technology writer and web site developer with a degree in English.
But you’re quoting it as if it’s the Gospel position of all of NASA.
Come on, get serious. Find some evidence that a physicist agrees with your position (not a 13 year old pamphlet written as an introduction to Radio Astronomy).
JPL also worked with the Lewis Center to establish protocols and procedures,et up meaningful research projects, and train its community volunteers, teachers, and, ultimately, students to operate the telescope and interpret its data. The first item on the radio telescope training agenda was to introduce the whole idea of radio astronomy. We assumed that most of our intended trainees barely understood what part of the electromagnetic spectrum radio astronomy dealt with, much less where this energy came from and what it could tell us. So we set out to develop a brief, self-administered workbook that would introduce the basic concepts at level appropriate to our audience.
t_p_hamiltonsays
RodB says: “Ray and Theo, O.K. if the quanta break is not one cps, what is it? Or is it non-existent, in which case you just destroyed ALL quantization. You are aware that quantum numbers are almost always integers (or integers + ½) aren’t you?”
This statement shows that you have not even mastered the basics of radiation absorption and emission. The quantization condition for light is its ENERGY, not its frequency. Energy = integer * Planck’s constant * frequency, where the integer is the number of photons.
Theo Kurténsays
Rod: very simple: photons are quantized (as Ray said, you can’t have half a photon). Photon *energies* are not quantized in the sense that you seem to think (i.e. that “f” in E = H*f must have an integer value in the *totally arbitrary* system of units we happen to be using). Many processes can only produce photons with a certain value (or a certain range) of f, but there is no absolute universal law forbidding all photons, everywhere, from having any arbitrary value for f (and thus E). Where on Earth have you got the idea that only integer value frequencies (in units of inverse seconds) are allowed?
But this is rather a side issue. Did I interpret your central argument correctly in my post above? (I.e. that due to interactions between molecules even in a gas, in principle any emission or absorption could – briefly and very improbably, but still – become allowed.) If so, this could be a case of “right in very abstract principle, wrong in practice” (by so many orders of magnitude you wouldn’t even believe it).
By the way, have you considered that “any object” in your source might just mean “any macroscopic object”? (That would be sloppy writing, yes, but not a particularly serious error given the purpose of the text.) Look, I work with modeling of molecules and molecular clusters for a living, and I *still* would not even have thought of interpreting the “any object” as literally meaning “anything at all you can come up with, up to and including single molecules and atoms, and presumably even elementary particles”.
Actually, how about emailing the author of the text in question and asking her about what she meant with this sentence? Since your interpretation of it contrasts with pretty much *every other source* out there, then it would certainly make sense to check whether or not this is just an issue of sloppy wording?
Theo Kurténsays
Rod,
this is a sidetrack but I couldn’t resist: if electromagnetic radiation were truly restricted to integer frequencies in units of 1/s, don’t you think e.g. this page would have a teeny-weeny bit of information on that:
For example: “The fundamental mode of the Earth-ionosphere cavity has the wavelength equal to the circumference of the Earth, which gives a resonance frequency of 7.8 Hz.” Now, that’s a non-integer number of Herz. Is this a measurement error? (With some more googling we can probably find nice examples of radio waves with frequencies well below 1 Hz, which your theory says are impossible.)
Ray Ladburysays
Rod,
1)A presentation to an amateur astronomy group is not an authoritative source.
2)A graduate text in stat mech is–particularly when the authors are Landau and Lifshitz
3)I’ve been doing physics for 30 years. You?
4)Your source doesn’t even support you–nowhere does it say that all matter must emit in the continuum. Prove me wrong with a quote.
5)A single neutral atom cannot emit in the continuum. If it could, the electron would do so as it accelerates around the nucleus and the atom would not be stable.
6)How is a collection of atoms qualitatively different from a single atom?
He demonstrates a lack of understanding of basic atmospheric processes –
“It is also important to understand that the thermal gradient in the troposphere is set by the lapse rate. This may be calculated thermodynamically from the surface air temperature and humidity, but the uniformity assumptions generally used may not always be valid. However, in all cases the lapse rate is not changed by 100 ppm variations in the concentration of the permanent greenhouse gases such as CO2.” The first part is oversimplified, the second part False. The dry adiabatic lapse rate is a theoretical model of the change in temperature that an isolated parcel of air would experience as it was moved from one altitude/pressure to a different altitude/pressure. The moist adiabatic lapse rate is the temperature change when the air contains enough moisture to change state from gas to liquid/solid, giving up latent heat that compensates for the cooling caused by expansion. With CO2, the gas can absorb IR, and transfer the energy to the other molecules; the CO2 can also absorb energy from the other molecules, and radiate it. To the extent that CO2 is transferring radiant energy into and out of the system, the process is no longer adiabatic. (an adiabatic process or an isocaloric process is a thermodynamic process in which no heat is transferred to or from the working fluid.) Because the energetics of the adiabatic processes are large and dominant, the environmental, or normal, or observed lapse rate in Earth’s atmosphere is usually between the moist and dry adiabatic lapse rates. But since the atmosphere isn’t adiabatic – there’s radiative transfer, and turbulent mixing, and layers with different humidities. and rainfall – there is no “set” thermal gradient.
see http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/330402/lapse-rate and http://www.uwsp.edu/geO/faculty/ritter/geog101/textbook/atmospheric_moisture/lapse_rates_1.html
He’s internally inconsistent – “The air parcel will also absorb LWIR radiation from the air layers above and below. Usually the downward emitted flux and the upward absorbed flux are similar, whereas the absorbed downward flux from the cooler air layers above will be less than the upward emitted flux. The net effect is therefore a cooling of the atmosphere.” Therefore 100 ppmv more CO2 will cause more cooling of the upper atmosphere, increasing the lapse rate. This has been observed, and is confirmation of increased CO2 effect on atmospheric energy balance.
See http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/20c.html – “increases in carbon dioxide lead to highest cooling at altitudes between 40 and 50 km.” Their Fig 4, reprinted from Ramaswamy et al., Reviews of Geophysics, Feb. 2001, shows the greatest observed cooling from ’80-’94 at 47 km.
He conflates difficult or impossible to observe with “not happening”
“Small increases in LWIR emission from the atmosphere are converted into increases in ocean surface evaporation that are too small to detect in the wind driven fluctuations observed in surface evaporation….(therefore)…It is simply impossible for a 100 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration to have any effect on ocean temperatures.”
Imagine you have the following:
1. A 12 gallon water tank with 10 gallons of water in it,
2. a pump whose rate randomly varies from 5-15 gallons per minute, taking water from the bottom of the tank and pumping it
3. through meter 1 into
4. a 20 foot standpipe with
5. an orofice on the bottom that allows a flow of 20 GPM when the pipe is full, that empties into
6. a drain line back to the tank that has
7. a valve to a water supply to allow filling of the tank, and
8. meter 2 that measures the flow back into the tank.
You come in Monday morning to start it up, and notice the tank is a little low. You open the fill valve, and meter 2 registers ~1 GPM. when the tank is filled to the ten gallon mark, you close the valve, and turn on the pump. Meter 1 starts indicating flow that varies from 5-15 GPM, the stand pipe fills about half way, and starts draining back to the tank, and meter 2 starts indicating about the same flow as meter 1, but with a lag in changes; this is because when the pump rate increases and is reflected in meter 1, it takes some time for the standpipe to fill to a level where the inflow and outflow through meter 2 are balanced, and vice versa for decreases in pump rate. You decide to add a little extra to the tank to account for the volume in the standpipe, so you open the valve and ring the level up some, then close the valve. You don’t notice anything in the meters, cause the changes from the variable pump rate and the lags between the readings mask the effect of opening the valve. What you don’t see is that the fill valve is now leaking 0.1 GPM into the return flow from the standpipe. When you come back in 24 hours, how much water will have spilled on the floor? Does it make any difference what the meters read, or how much water got pumped?
He’s doesn’t really know how climate models work, and is unfamiliar with important work in the field –
“Any atmospheric energy transfer analysis must explicitly consider these linewidth effects and any approximations made to simplify the lineshape calculations have to be properly validated using high resolution results. These linewidth effects invalidate all of the flux equilibrium assumptions used in radiative forcing calculations.” False – the effects have been considered, and the radiative flux calculations in Global Climate are known to be valid approximations. Radiative transfer for inhomogeneous atmospheres: RRTM, a validated correlated-k model for the longwave
EJ Mlawer, SJ Taubman, PD Brown… – Journal of Geophysical …, 1997 – agu.org
“… A rapid and accurate radiative transfer model (RRTM) for climate applications has been developed
and the results extensively … The radiative transfer in RRTM is performed using the correlated-k
method: the k distributions are attained directly from the LBLRTM line-by-line …”
He, like Gerlich & Tscheuschner, doesn’t really understand radiative transfer and the Second Law –
“The temperatures in the upper troposphere are near 220 K. The assumption that small changes in LWIR flux in the upper troposphere or stratosphere can influence surface temperatures of 288 K requires a flagrant violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Heat does not flow from a cooler to a warmer body. The calculated ‘equilibrium surface temperature’ produced by radiative forcing calculations is not even a physically measurable climate variable.”
In fact, it’s pretty clear he is channeling G&T, with a little bit of “its the sun, or water vapor” thrown in.
see – http://rabett.blogspot.com/2009/03/burrow-project-gerlich-and-t-have.html
“here are G&Ts conclusions and our targets
…..
(2) There are no calculations to determinate an average surface temperature of a planet
….
(6) Re-emission is not reflection and can, in no way, heat up the ground-level air against the actual heat flow without mechanical work.”
Brian, I’d also add that “Usually the downward emitted flux and the upward absorbed flux are similar” seems completely unjustified–does the lapse rate (about which he makes such a fuss) take effect only at the altitude he considers for his ‘parcel of air?’
David B. Bensonsays
For the Pliocene epoch’s climate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliocene_climate
is ok but for the mistake about the emergence of the long glacials; the paragraph in the introduction is wrong. The long glacials began but about one million years ago; the are more details in Tamino’s two threads I linked earlier.
It’s a funny thing really. Thermodynamics doesn’t speak about time. The notion of thermodynamic equilibrium is profoundly useful but true thermodynamic equilibrium states don’t exist; they take forever to prepare. How long would we have to wait for a google Hz photon to be radiated by the chair I’m sitting in ?How many times would the chair have to radiate and absorb google Hz photons before it could be said that the google Hz modes had equilibrated? The Planck distribution suggests 10^(10^85) seconds (far far far longer than the age of the universe) give or take a few factors of a google. I think it’s fair to say that the chair will never equilibrate with the google Hz radiation because google Hz radiation doesn’t happen. I suppose one could argue that since there is no google Hz radiation that my chair is in fact equilibrated with it. But we can back the frequency down to whatever frequency the Planck distribution suggests is emitted once a year. Or once a decade. Then I would suggest that the notion of thermodynamic equilibrium ought to be in terms of flux balance. I think the distance that a given mode is from equilibrium can be defined as the time integral of the flux difference (flux difference = energy absorbed per unit time per unit area per unit frequency – energy radiated per unit time … ) over the time integrated radiated flux. Call that ratio epsilon. epsilon is a dimensionless function of both the integration time, T, and the frequency, nu. THen one could say that on time scales of T (the integration limit) the fluxes for frequency nu are balanced to within epsilon(T, nu). You’d find that if you fix epsilon that T would be an increasing function of nu since the high frequency events are rare. If you choose both T and epsilon there will always be frequencies that can’t equilibrate to within epsilon within time T. I’m not sure I’ve said anything that isn’t entirely trivial about detailed balance or Kirchoff’s law.
Shirley J. Pulawskisays
@365 Wayne Job
“Climate science at this point in time is a baby.”
“We are living in the open chaotic plumbing system of a water modulated heat pump.”
Open system, yes. Heat pump, yes, this is an analogy I often use. Chaotic? Not really. Chaos means “no order” and there is much order to the climate system. Some simple examples: we know how much moisture air can hold at any given temperature, we know that when air rises, it begins to lose its ability to hold moisture, water freezes, under most circumstances, at 0 degrees Celsius, etc., etc. On a bigger scale, we understand regular phenomena like El Nino, La Nina, the Indian monsoon cycle, PDO, etc., etc., etc. Under chaos, none of these things would exist as known conditions: the system would react differently to the same conditions each time. Thus, there is a great deal of order to our climate system.
“Firstly we must find and totally understand the causes of the ice ages, which are plainly re-occuring at set intervals, secondly the interglacials are also highly regular in their appearances. The causes for both of these must be celestial because of their periodicity.”
Milankovitch cycles have a great deal of influence over ice ages, but the periodicity isn’t as neatly bounded as you claim. There are lots of climate amplifiers. GHGs are a big one, albedo another, sun spot activity, volcanism (which is short term unless persistent), ocean circulation patterns (back to the heat pump), moisture in the atmosphere, cloud cover, and lots of other things. Some of these things we understand well, and some have more questions marks around them, but lots of people are working on these things, and our understanding continually increases. The reality is that we don’t have to know every single detail to have a comprehensive understanding about the big picture once the most fundamental basics are known. I think it’s safe to say at this point that the most fundamental basics are known and have been tested repeatedly at this point.
“The nit picking and statistical analysis of mainly imaginary numbers to try and evoke a warming or cooling caused by trace elements of gas in the atmosphere is not science.”
Now you’re just making stuff up. The numbers are not imaginary – it’s pretty easy to quantify the amount of any given element in the atmosphere. It’s pretty easy to quantify what is produced when materials are burned (university chemistry 101-201 easy). Go back to the link I posted above – the insulative properties of GHGs in the atmosphere has been tested and documented and it’s pretty well understood how it works in the troposphere and higher. We’ve got new satellites that will help us refine that understanding to a much more granular point. Just because you don’t understand it or you don’t think other people understand it, doesn’t mean that the knowledge isn’t out there.
It’s time for you to start asking questions of scientists instead of pretending to know something. The next time you think we collectively don’t know something – try asking instead of telling. You might learn something.
“It is imperative that we investigate and understand the real cause of our climate changes, such that we can really prepare for what is to come, Warm is good cold would kill billions of people.”
As noted, those investigations are ongoing and have been for a very long time. There isn’t some little handful of scientists dictating this and that, there are 1000s of us, each investigating little and big parts, and when we figure things out, we put it out there. And saying that warm is good and cold is bad is an outrageous oversimplification. Humans did pretty well in the Pleistocene – we wouldn’t be here if not. Diseases thrive in warm weather, not cold. The same with molds – when I lived in FL, I had long lasting respiratory infections all the time, almost none since I’ve been back up north. My brother in GA ha a longer growing season, but the buds on his second round of tomatoes dried up and fell off, then he got hit with blight and mold. Yes, those are anecdotal reports, not scientific, but think about. When the air is warmer and can hold more water, that means water evaporates more easily. Think about it. Use logic instead of sound bites and think it through.
“Warm is good” also ignores the problem that rapid changes, whatever the result, are historically harbingers of disaster and extinction. Evolution favors slow environmental changes, no matter the species. On that note, ocean acidification from CO2 absorption means that shelled organisms, the base of the oceanic food chain, will have a hard time surviving. The rock record holds evidence of this, as well as simple chemistry. How “good” is it if the life in the oceans is dying off? How “good” is it if diseases and pestilence can more easily spread? Up north, we’re being invaded by several previously southern species of tree-killing insects. This is your idea of good?
“In other words, researchers have yet to find evidence of more-extreme weather patterns over the period, contrary to what the models predict. “There’s no data-driven answer yet to the question of how human activity has affected extreme weather,’ adds Roger Pielke Jr., another University of Colorado climate researcher.”
Kudos to Mapleleaf over at CP in compiling a list of post AR4 studies that highlights Roger’s ignorance (at least I hope it is merely that and not something else).
Ray Ladburysays
John Pearson,
Stat Mech addresses the issue you are referring to in terms of the Ergodic hypothesis and the stosszahlansatz–that given enough time, a system will approach any point in phase space arbitrarily closely and that energy/momentum of nearby particles is uncorrelated. It is the only way to get from a phase space probability to a probability in time and so to explain irreversibility and entropy increase. It has actually been one of the most problematic aspects of the statistical mechanical explanation of thermodynamics, and it’s gone through many different incarnations since Boltzmann first articulated it (I think in the 1870s). None of the incarnations have been entirely satisfactory, but they are powerful and it’s tempting to think they are at least on the right track.
Patrick 027says
Re 393 Shirley J. Pulawski – actually the system is chaotic, at least in some ways, for example in the butterfly-effect-limited time horizon for weather prediction. But the chaos is bounded (boundary conditions force the climate) – and the chaotic behavior has a predictable ‘texture’ (that being an aspect of climate), if not exactly repeatable pattern.
Rod Bsays
Hank, yes I’m still responding to raypierre’s question (#152, main answer at #202) though not explicitly to his secondary suggestion about delving into Kirchoff’s laws, and though it got sidetracked with a couple of sidebars along the way.
The NASA/JPL article (RC’s not involved at all) would indirectly support the translation energy non-quantization bit, but neither said nor implied anything about the quantization of a photon. The latter is mostly semantics it seems.
Rod Bsays
Bob (Sphaerica), referencing a NASA/JPL article as a NASA/JPL article is silly why again?? Actually it’s a JPL article posted on a NASA site, so NASA probably shouldn’t be referenced… and everybody knows what a schlock outfit JPL is! Oh! Wait. It was written back in 1998 before JPL had time to catch up on the latest of Planck equation stuff. Plus I see you join Ray L in that since it was written for less than PhDs they clearly had license and the desire to just make stuff up. Right! Actually, it seems it could help some PhDs.
from Wikipedia: “Thermal radiation is a byproduct of the collisions arising from atoms’ various vibrational motions. These collisions cause the atoms’ electrons to emit thermal photons (known as black-body radiation). Photons are emitted anytime an electric charge is accelerated (as happens when two atoms’ electron clouds collide).” from Michael Fowler of University of Virginia: “…At sufficiently high temperatures, all bodies become good radiators…. Any body at any temperature above absolute zero will radiate to some extent, but the intensity and frequency distribution of the radiation depends on the detailed structure of the body…” A primer from The National Radio Astronomy Observatory: “…Any object or particle that has a temperature above absolute zero emits thermal radiation. The temperature of the object causes the atoms and molecules within the object to move around. For example, the molecules of a gas, as in a planet’s atmosphere, spin around and bump into one another. When the molecules bump into each other, they change direction. A change in direction is equivalent to acceleration. As stated above, when charged particles accelerate, they emit electromagnetic radiation. So each time a molecule changes direction, it emits radiation across the spectrum, just not equally….” So says roughly a site rfcafe.com.
I’m certain there is a pile of rationalizations why the above sources don’t count in your-all’s minds, but I thought I’d throw them out. Feel free to attack them for the record, but I won’t be defending them — wastes everybody’s (especially mine) time.
Is it the quote, “… any object that contains any heat energy at all emits radiation…. and then emits the energy at all frequencies…” that you find ambiguous?? Maybe if you read it slower or somethin’.
Ray Ladburysays
Rod, from your own quotation: “Any body at any temperature above absolute zero will radiate to some extent, but the intensity and frequency distribution of the radiation depends on the detailed structure of the body”
First, is a gas a body? How about a single atom? Second, what about the latter part about the intensity and frequency distribution depending on the detailed structure of the body? Whence arises that dependence? How does it depend?
Now, did I say NASA or JPL was not a usually reliable source. Does that mean that everything you find there is 100% accurate or phrased in the best way possible? No. Again, your source contradicts you. You just don’t realize it.
Rod asks: “Is it the quote, “… any object that contains any heat energy at all emits radiation…. and then emits the energy at all frequencies…” that you find ambiguous?? ”
OK, Rod, a single atom isolated in a magneto-optic trap at 2 Kelvins: Does it radiate in a continuum or not? It’s a simple question. Answer it.
> translation energy
That’s motion of particles from here to there in an electromagnetic field.
You’re now talking about the solar plasma.
That produces photons.
Photons are quantized.
In a solid, the particles are wiggling, but their interatomic bonds are stretching. That produces photons, also quantized.
Are you postulating a non-quantized photon in your theory, Rod?
“… the amount of airborne dust doubled in the 20th century, according to a recent scientific paper in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/garden/10dust.html?ref=science
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/title_and_author_search.html?x=0&y=0&author=Mahowald
Hank, photons per se are not quantized other than theoretically their energy has to progress in steps of one (1) Hz which has no affect on anything. The energy levels of certain things are distinctly quantized, and if changed might emit a photon, but that photon is not quantized. Or I misread what you are saying…
Sun, meet Mr. Rod B. Rod, Meet Mr. Sun. Mr. Sun is made of plasma. He is so dense that a photon takes years to make it to the surface and radiate away. So:
1)The electrons spend most of their time free, and so can interact with a photon of any wavelength.
2)There are lots of complicated interactions that broaden, split and otherwise distort the lines that are there.
OK, Rod, let’s take it even another step simpler: Does a single atom emit blackbody radiation in addition to its atomic spectrum? I’m really gonna hope you say no, because otherwise we’ve got to go back to quantum mechanics. Assuming you say no, how about two molecules? If so, why are two molecules different than one? If not, how about three molecules? And so on. What new radiative process comes in when you have a group of molecules that you don’t have with a single molecule?
As to my JPL colleagues, when they are full of a messy organic substance that is the product of normal metabolic processes, you can be assured that I do tell them. The tutorial you found was a very low-level attempt to lay the groundwork for understanding cosmic microwave background. It was not completely wrong, but it does not support your contention of a separate blackbody radiation mechanism. Read it again. No support.
Rod B.: “Hank, photons per se are not quantized other than theoretically their energy has to progress in steps of one (1) Hz which has no affect on anything.”
Rod, photons are quanta of electromagnetic radiation. That sounds pretty quantized to me. But hey, Rod, here’s a photon. Can you give me change in half photons?
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/quantumzone/photoelectric2.html
Rod, translational energy levels are also quantized at least if the molecules or atoms in question are in a finite “box”, though in practice the spacing is so close that the translational energy levels can indeed be treated as continuous.
Also, what does the unit of Hz have to do with anything? In this context, Hz = 1/s is just an arbitrary unit, it doesn’t have anything to do with quantization of photons. Where are you getting this stuff from…? (Just think about it a little while: if mankind had happened to choose a different fundamental unit of time than the second – which is based on dividing the rotation period of one specific planet by the completely arbitrary number 24*60*60 – would the laws of the universe have been rewritten…? If we had been using “heleks” instead would you be claiming photon energies are quantized in units of 1/helek?)
“Collisions and interactions” (e.g. various types of clustering of gas molecules at different timescales) in a gas of non-zero pressure does indeed give rise to some new spectral lines, but that still doesn’t make the spectra of gas molecules a continuum – it’s still (at least for the gases and pressures and spectral ranges of interest in our atmosphere) lines, there are just a bit more of them (and they are more smeared out).
Re #346:
Please keep the link for Stephen Schneider.
[Response: Without question.–Jim]
First off, how about we get out of the semantics rationalization. When I say something is “quantized” I mean with quantum steps that are clearly measurable and discrete, like the inner molecular energy levels of rotation, vibration and electron orbits. When I say “not quantized” I mean from a meaningful practical sense. I would say the momentum of a 767 is not quantized even though technically in a nitpick sense it most certainty is quantized. EVERYTHING with energy or momentum is quantized, but this is not a helpful thing to discuss. Theo Kurtén described molecular translation energy correctly. For simplicity I would say it is not quantized and lose absolutely nothing in meaning.
Ray, the energy level of a free electron is not quantized (reread the above) and can take on any momentum from zero to relativistic levels and everything in between. The orbital energies of electrons are quantized. I’m not sure: in answer to my question are you saying, yes, that nice smooth insolation curve does come from spectral lines but with a bunch of slicing and dicing??
Ray, whether a single atom or molecule can emit Planck radiation is a big debate — though as much philosophical as physics. Most physicists (by far) say it can not, though Einstein among others said it can. One of the problems is, even if it can, how could anyone tell?? Since the radiation requires an accelerating charge which in turn most likely requires a collision, one atom has nothing to bump into. Even if there were two a collision the next billion years seems remote. (It’s a little bit like our old debate over a molecule having temperature — this is just an analogy in passing, not a resurrection!) BTW this would apply to solids, liquids, plasma and gases. So there clearly must be a very large number density of molecules to produce blackbody radiation. The denser the better. While I’m convinced gas like our atmosphere can emit planck radiation, square meter for square meter it is significantly less than solids or liquids because of its very low number density among other things.
Photons are quanta, but aren’t quantized other than (as in the semantics above) one photon must be 6.626×10^ -34 joules different from its nearest neighbor. That’s almost immeasurable let alone observable. That means he has to be wiggling one cycle per second more or less than his neighbor. Compared to freq of 20 TeraHz, that ain’t much. Saying photons are quantized is almost like saying one joule is quantized. Energy levels in something can be separated by one joule and are therefore quantized — meaning the molecular energy levels, not the joule itself.
Ray, the direct quote from NASA/JPL (which you must have glossed over) is “….. any object that contains any heat energy at all emits radiation…. ….and then emits the energy at all frequencies… All the matter in the known universe behaves this way.” That was one of my assertions. Why do you say the article had “no support” for me???? Do you happen to know the cutoff for NASA/JPL publishing accurate science versus made-up false lying stuff? I wonder what their practices call for. (Maybe Gavin by chance knows.) Evidently if they are writing for advanced high school level their rules say that they can just make stuff up and write anything they damn well please. I just wonder how high up it goes….
“Since Milankovitch cycles create 50-80 W/m^2 irradiance swings between the Hemisphere’s, it is not easy to validate that CO2′s forcings swings (presumably in the range of 2-4 W/^2) could have much of any influence.”Rob — 10 Feb 2011 @ 8:57 PM in the Starship vs. Spaceship Earth thread.
The 50-80 W swings are redistribution from one place to another on the planet, and changes in the seasonal amplitude. The effect on total forcing is much smaller – see http://www.climatedata.info/Forcing/Forcing/milankovitchcycles_files/BIGw01-milankovitch—cycles.gif.gif – the almost flat line in the center of the graph. It can be seen with an expanded vertical scale at http://www.climatedata.info/Forcing/Forcing/milankovitchcycles_files/BIG01a-milankovitch—cycles—global.gif.gif
#121 Enhanced Carbonate Dissolution as a Means of Capturing and Sequestering Carbon Dioxide, Greg H. Rau1,2, Ken Caldeira2, Kevin G. Knauss2, Bill Downs3, and Hamid Sarv3
Comment by Brian Dodge — 6 Feb 2011 @ 10:33 PM
How about we just switch over to nice, gentle natural no-till, heavy mulch, green manures-type (regenerative) agriculture? Add in a billion or so home gardens and we could suck up 50% of current carbon emissions, I’d guess (40% for farmland farmed this way). Then, we need to reduce consumption of a fair list of things – water, oil, etc., – anyway, so why not reduce consumption by 50%, too? Or more. Then add in rebuilding forests, adding a bunch of food forests for more reliable, very efficien food supply, localize, walkable neighborhoods, “renewable” energy production…
[Response: Sane, humane and addresses multiple problems. Which is why we don’t have it now.–Jim]
This is so very, very doable.
Come take a class and redesign a city.
Rod, you’re contending that every object emits energy at all levels. You’re misreading something perhaps poorly written for high schoolers. That would include, say, hard x-rays — doesn’t happen.
Are you saying if you wait long enough you’ll be able to detect an X-ray emission from anything above absolute zero?
Well, your repeated returns to your theory are a proven way to distract people whenever they start to get focused in a climate topic.
Works real well for that. We fell for it again.
Sorry to interrupt other conversations, but a question came up in a conversation on another blog that I thought someone here might be able to help me understand:
How rapidly does methane disperse into the global atmosphere?
I see that concentrations are much higher in the northern hemisphere, and especially in the Arctic. Should we take that to mean that there is a continual large emission going on there. If it had stopped, say, a decade ago, would the methane levels have evened out between the two hemispheres (north and south, that is) by now? A year ago?
And if there were a large, sudden burst of methane from a particular point, how long would it take to spread, say, 1000 miles. (I assume prevailing winds would have a lot to do with it, but I’m speaking on average.)
Thanks a head of time.
[Response: about 10 years. – gavin]
Rod, you are talking out an alternative orifice. They can trap single atoms now and keep them for weeks. They’ve even NAMED them like pets! I absolutely defy you to produce evidence that Einstein thought a single atom emitted continuum radiation. IT CAN NOT! If it could, the electronic orbits would be unstable and you would not have an atom.
Rod, THINK. The energy of a photon is h times its frequency. Do you think the frequency must be integral? How do you think photons are produced?
Free electrons–yes, their energy is not quantized. However, they also don’t emit radiation unless accelerated. And I don’t see many free electrons in a neutral gas.
As to your reference, read again for comprenension. It says that an “object” will emit radiation. It does not say that radiation will be in a continuum. You are taking a short, nontechnical briefing for a lay audience with limited science education and reading into it what you want to see. Look again. It ain’t there. I agree it could be phrased more clearly, but the author chose to be vague so she wouldn’t have to go into more sophisticated concepts that were not central to her theme.
Rod, I can assure you that physicists understand this. It’s not new. Some of us have done the math. Try it.
Rod,
again: are you really, seriously claiming that the quantization of photon energies follows our (entirely arbitrary) choice of the second as the fundamental unit of time? Which was incidentally chosen quite a few centuries before anybody even knew about photons? I respectfully suggest you have entirely misunderstood the whole E=h*f thing…
Your point about blackbody radiation (correct me if I’m wrong) seems to be that given a collection of > 1 atoms or molecules at non-zero pressure, it is theoretically possible that they might interact in such a way that emission (or absorption) of radiation at any arbitrary frequency becomes allowed. This may or may not be true, but the probability of absorption or emission far from the “allowed” lines (defined primarily by the energy levels of a single molecule, and secondarily by the most common collision complexes or other transient clusters) is vanishingly small for any conditions relevant to our atmosphere. I guess this is what you mean when you say “quare meter for square meter it is significantly less than solids or liquids because of its very low number density among other things”. (Though “significantly” here might involve quite a lot more powers of ten than you might think.)
Climate science at this point in time is a baby. We are living in the open chaotic plumbing system of a water modulated heat pump. The sun is the primary source of heat, water is the refrigerant and the atmosphere is our unbounded plumbing system. We are like gold fish in a bowl surrounded by weather that is created by non linear events. This on a decadal scale is very difficult to comprehend as complexities of chaos maths require real starting point information and the correct equations. This will not happen any time soon.
The starting point to understanding our climate is the big picture. Firstly we must find and totally understand the causes of the ice ages, which are plainly re-occuring at set intervals, secondly the interglacials are also highly regular in their appearances. The causes for both of these must be celestial because of their periodity.
The nit picking and statistical analysis of mainly imaginary numbers to try and evoke a warming or cooling caused by trace elements of gas in the atmosphere is not science.
The real science is yet to be done, when a full understanding of the reasons for glacial and interglacial periods is understood, then and only then can we even begin to unravel the causes of the smaller ups and downs in our climate. It is time to stop and have a good slow look around at reality. The drivers of our climate are the sun the ocean and celestial mechanics.
This is not a good time for our world, we are by all accounts at the end of an inter glacial, those recorded drivers of decadal warmth have all in unison turned negative. This is not usually a bad thing as droughts break but many suffer bad winters. This usually also is not a problem, but this cycle has a sun that refuses to awaken and is tracking at less than SC5 the LIA trigger, NASA are bewildered by the behaviour.
A warming future is looking further from the truth by every day that passes that old Sol stays asleep.
It is imperative that we investigate and understand the real cause of our climate changes, such that we can really prepare for what is to come, Warm is good cold would kill billions of people.
Wayne Job burbled at 365
“A warming future is looking further from the truth by every day that passes that old Sol stays asleep…”
So do tell us why it’s still warming, Wayne…
Wayne (#365)–
You write with conviction, but unfortunately I must respectfully tell you that your convictions are for the most part not factual.
I’m sure others will have comments on specific points that you raise. I’m most familiar with the historical aspects, though, so that’s what I will respond to.
Climate science is NOT “a baby.” Its roots predate relativity, quantum theory, electronics, and even (somewhat ironically) modern chemistry.
Here’s a summary (and far from complete) of the early history:
1824: Joseph Fourier calculates first heat budget for the Earth, and mathematically demonstrates the existence of what we now call the “greenhouse effect.”
http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Science-Of-Global-Warming-In-The-Age-Of-Napoleon
1838: Claude Pouillet studies insolation and atmospheric absorptivity, arriving at the first estimate of the “solar constant.” His data provides valuable constraints on Fourier’s model.
http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Science-of-Global-Warming-in-the-age-of-Napoleon-III
1861: John Tyndall discovers the physical basis for Fourier’s greenhouse effect: CO2 (which he called “carbonic acid gas,” or simply “carbonic acid”) and other gases, transparent to light, were nonetheless largely opaque to radiant heat (infrared radiation.) He is able to measure this effect accurately in the laboratory, and suggests that this effect may offer the basis of an explanation of the Ice Ages.
http://hubpages.com/hub/Global-Warming-Science-In-The-Age-Of-Queen-Victoria
1896: Svante Arrhenius hand-calculates the first global model of CO2-induced global warming. Note that his primary research question was to “find and totally understand the causes of the ice ages!” This is your research program, Wayne, and in fact it was the impetus for most of the early research on CO2 and climate change.
http://hubpages.com/hub/Global-Warming-Science-And-The-Dawn-Of-Flight
1901: Nils Ekholm summarizes the then-current understanding of the interplay of CO2 sinks and sources to the atmosphere. Notable is his verbal description of the effect of CO2 on effective radiating altitude–a perspective on the effects of CO2 that could have averted much time spent in the blind alley of the notion of “CO2 saturation.”
http://hubpages.com/hub/Global-warming-science-press-and-storms
1938: Guy Callendar synthesizes up-to-date information to show not only that the CO2 saturation argument is incorrect from an empirical point of view, but that CO2 concentrations are rising much more rapidly than previously thought, and that climate was warming quite rapidly.
http://hubpages.com/hub/Global-Warming-Science-And-The-Wars
With Callendar, CO2 theory was brought into the 20th century, and the stage was set for the development of the modern theory. You’ll notice that that was over 70 years ago!
More detailed summaries of these and subsequent ‘classic’ climate science papers can be found here:
http://wiki.nsdl.org/index.php/PALE:ClassicArticles/GlobalWarming
[Response: And of course you can read more about the long history of development of the physics behind global warming in “The Warming Papers,” put together by Dave Archer and myself. –raypierre]
Miscellaneous points, suitable, I suppose, for “Unforced Variations”:
1) I’m glad to see the O’Donnellgate thread close. It was getting tedious, and IMHO, eric’s comment to one fellow about “looking foolish” were both more widely applicable and charitable.
2) I’ve taken a whack at the current cold weather and the recurrent “stopping” of global warming in a new web article. Its contents won’t surprise many here, but I hope it’s a useful resource for those dealing with folks overly impressed with the first, and too little aware of the history of the second. I titled it somewhat provocatively, which seems to be having the desired effect so far.
http://hubpages.com/hub/When-Did-Global-Warming-Stop
wayne job:
1) Climate science is old (older than any field that started in the last century).
2) We have a much better understanding of ice ages these days.
3) We already have a remarkably good understanding of climate.
Just because you do not understand these facts or any of the science does not mean that the science does not exist.
There will always be things we don’t know. But that doesn’t take away from the vast amount that we do know. Now, before you post another collection of denier talking-points, please try to approach them sceptically.
Wayne Job,
Others have pointed out the misconceptions in your post. I’ll just ask where you got these misconceptions and why you consider it to be a reliable source of information.
Where did wayne job get his misconceptions? Possibly here: Tomas Milanovic.
Now I look again at wayne job’s burblings, it’s like he copy and pasted something from 2008 or 2009, without thinking about what has changed since. Solar cycle 24 is now well underway – all those people saying “it’s another Maunder Minimum” are looking like the premature idiots they are. NASA aren’t even slightly “bewildered”. It is well documented that solar cycle prediction is difficult during a minimum, and more reliable once the cycle is a few years old. Yes, current predictions say cycle 24 will be quieter than recent cycles. But what of it? Solar energy delta is a small climate forcing, and simply no longer dominant.
Also, he seems to be confusing the Maunder Minimum with the Dalton Minimum.
Talking about global cooling is just silly after a record warm year. Doubly ludicrous when the proposed mechanism isn’t feasible.
Triply daft when it involves sweeping away all that inconvenient science about “trace elements of gas in the atmosphere”!
Don’t live in the past, Wayne. Try to learn from it instead.
But Didactylos, the climate is savaged by unpredictable tipping points that spring up out of thin air from the deep ocean. Like when the 30-year cold phase started in December, 2010. Less than 1% of climate scientists understood they could not see that one coming!
“if history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten. I’m absolutely certain that the same is true of science.”
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2011/02/academy-draws-scientists-artists-to-hollywood-for-summit-on-science-education/
> wayne job says: 11 Feb 2011 at 7:00 AM
Bingo!
Hank, I haven’t taken Planck’s equation out to x-ray and beyond but I’m positive one gets an intensity from it at those frequencies. Anyway you’re scraping the barrel for fly specs to try to disprove my (and NASA/JPL’s) assertion . And if you think gaseous radiation emission and absorption has nothing to do with climate change you need to spend more time on RC!
Ray, your gyrations and contortions to make apple pie out of a NASA article is quite impressive. Explaining that radiation is in a few frequencies or bands rather than “all” frequencies is way too sophisticated for an advanced high schooler to get, is it? Ya think?
IIRC Einstein hedged his planck radiation from a single atom a bit when it got to a continuum. He couldn’t quite figure that one out. It’s not worth my time to search archives for Einstein’s assertion. You’ll just say he was dumbing it down for dummies.
Ray and Theo, O.K. if the quanta break is not one cps, what is it? Or is it non-existent, in which case you just destroyed ALL quantization. You are aware that quantum numbers are almost always integers (or integers + ½) aren’t you?
Rod, are you still responding to Raypierre’s question?
(“A more productive discourse would be on the origins of Kirchoff’s law. I mean the microscopic origins ….”)
You claim NASA, JPL, and RC support these statements?
“… translation energy is not quantized ala vibration and rotation energy.”
“… photons per se are not quantized other than theoretically their energy has to progress in steps of one (1) Hz which has no affect on anything.”
#374–Ed,
Nice!
IMO, that is a great example of what can be done to communicate the science.
376, Rod B,
Wow. I missed a long, great conversation about molecular physics. Bummer. I didn’t even know it was going on (too distracted by Eric’s problems, as well as the need to earn a living)…
Rod, I can’t believe you’re sticking to such a warped POV. I started this whole thing by asking a question because I’d run into people who simply could not distinguish between black bodies (artificial construct), massive bodies (like the sun, which approximate a black body) and a homogeneous gas of limited (i.e. not diverse) content, or an individual molecule.
If I may, however, you keep bolstering your document by calling it a NASA/JPL assertion.
It was written in 1998, clearly is an introductory text on astronomy (not quantum mechanics or physics), can (and obviously does) contain errors, and most importantly… you are misinterpreting an ambiguous sentence.
Constantly referencing it as NASA/JPL, as if that gives it weight because “NASA said it,” is just silly.
Can you please find anything that is (1) less vague and (2) a little more advanced (and specific) to support your (untenable) position?
Rod B,
You should note that that “Introduction to Radio Astronomy” guide (from 1998) is all over the Internet… on amateur astronomy sites. Claiming this as a position held by NASA is just way, way over the top.
FYI, the document has nothing to do with NASA.
In the author’s words on how it was written:
On the author herself:
So you’re basing your knowledge of physics on the 13 year old writings (aimed at high school students, about radio astronomy) of a technology writer and web site developer with a degree in English.
But you’re quoting it as if it’s the Gospel position of all of NASA.
Come on, get serious. Find some evidence that a physicist agrees with your position (not a 13 year old pamphlet written as an introduction to Radio Astronomy).
Rod B,
Just to clarify a little further:
RodB says: “Ray and Theo, O.K. if the quanta break is not one cps, what is it? Or is it non-existent, in which case you just destroyed ALL quantization. You are aware that quantum numbers are almost always integers (or integers + ½) aren’t you?”
This statement shows that you have not even mastered the basics of radiation absorption and emission. The quantization condition for light is its ENERGY, not its frequency. Energy = integer * Planck’s constant * frequency, where the integer is the number of photons.
Rod: very simple: photons are quantized (as Ray said, you can’t have half a photon). Photon *energies* are not quantized in the sense that you seem to think (i.e. that “f” in E = H*f must have an integer value in the *totally arbitrary* system of units we happen to be using). Many processes can only produce photons with a certain value (or a certain range) of f, but there is no absolute universal law forbidding all photons, everywhere, from having any arbitrary value for f (and thus E). Where on Earth have you got the idea that only integer value frequencies (in units of inverse seconds) are allowed?
But this is rather a side issue. Did I interpret your central argument correctly in my post above? (I.e. that due to interactions between molecules even in a gas, in principle any emission or absorption could – briefly and very improbably, but still – become allowed.) If so, this could be a case of “right in very abstract principle, wrong in practice” (by so many orders of magnitude you wouldn’t even believe it).
By the way, have you considered that “any object” in your source might just mean “any macroscopic object”? (That would be sloppy writing, yes, but not a particularly serious error given the purpose of the text.) Look, I work with modeling of molecules and molecular clusters for a living, and I *still* would not even have thought of interpreting the “any object” as literally meaning “anything at all you can come up with, up to and including single molecules and atoms, and presumably even elementary particles”.
Actually, how about emailing the author of the text in question and asking her about what she meant with this sentence? Since your interpretation of it contrasts with pretty much *every other source* out there, then it would certainly make sense to check whether or not this is just an issue of sloppy wording?
Rod,
this is a sidetrack but I couldn’t resist: if electromagnetic radiation were truly restricted to integer frequencies in units of 1/s, don’t you think e.g. this page would have a teeny-weeny bit of information on that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_low_frequency
For example: “The fundamental mode of the Earth-ionosphere cavity has the wavelength equal to the circumference of the Earth, which gives a resonance frequency of 7.8 Hz.” Now, that’s a non-integer number of Herz. Is this a measurement error? (With some more googling we can probably find nice examples of radio waves with frequencies well below 1 Hz, which your theory says are impossible.)
Rod,
1)A presentation to an amateur astronomy group is not an authoritative source.
2)A graduate text in stat mech is–particularly when the authors are Landau and Lifshitz
3)I’ve been doing physics for 30 years. You?
4)Your source doesn’t even support you–nowhere does it say that all matter must emit in the continuum. Prove me wrong with a quote.
5)A single neutral atom cannot emit in the continuum. If it could, the electron would do so as it accelerates around the nucleus and the atom would not be stable.
6)How is a collection of atoms qualitatively different from a single atom?
Let’s start there. Which of these do you dispute?
@ AIC — 10 Feb 2011 @ 3:33 AM re http://www.venturaphotonics.com/GlobalWarming.html
“It Is Impossible For A 100 ppm Increase In Atmospheric CO2 Concentration To Cause GlobalWarming”
He demonstrates a lack of understanding of basic atmospheric processes –
“It is also important to understand that the thermal gradient in the troposphere is set by the lapse rate. This may be calculated thermodynamically from the surface air temperature and humidity, but the uniformity assumptions generally used may not always be valid. However, in all cases the lapse rate is not changed by 100 ppm variations in the concentration of the permanent greenhouse gases such as CO2.” The first part is oversimplified, the second part False. The dry adiabatic lapse rate is a theoretical model of the change in temperature that an isolated parcel of air would experience as it was moved from one altitude/pressure to a different altitude/pressure. The moist adiabatic lapse rate is the temperature change when the air contains enough moisture to change state from gas to liquid/solid, giving up latent heat that compensates for the cooling caused by expansion. With CO2, the gas can absorb IR, and transfer the energy to the other molecules; the CO2 can also absorb energy from the other molecules, and radiate it. To the extent that CO2 is transferring radiant energy into and out of the system, the process is no longer adiabatic. (an adiabatic process or an isocaloric process is a thermodynamic process in which no heat is transferred to or from the working fluid.) Because the energetics of the adiabatic processes are large and dominant, the environmental, or normal, or observed lapse rate in Earth’s atmosphere is usually between the moist and dry adiabatic lapse rates. But since the atmosphere isn’t adiabatic – there’s radiative transfer, and turbulent mixing, and layers with different humidities. and rainfall – there is no “set” thermal gradient.
see http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/330402/lapse-rate and http://www.uwsp.edu/geO/faculty/ritter/geog101/textbook/atmospheric_moisture/lapse_rates_1.html
He’s internally inconsistent – “The air parcel will also absorb LWIR radiation from the air layers above and below. Usually the downward emitted flux and the upward absorbed flux are similar, whereas the absorbed downward flux from the cooler air layers above will be less than the upward emitted flux. The net effect is therefore a cooling of the atmosphere.” Therefore 100 ppmv more CO2 will cause more cooling of the upper atmosphere, increasing the lapse rate. This has been observed, and is confirmation of increased CO2 effect on atmospheric energy balance.
See http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/20c.html – “increases in carbon dioxide lead to highest cooling at altitudes between 40 and 50 km.” Their Fig 4, reprinted from Ramaswamy et al., Reviews of Geophysics, Feb. 2001, shows the greatest observed cooling from ’80-’94 at 47 km.
He conflates difficult or impossible to observe with “not happening”
“Small increases in LWIR emission from the atmosphere are converted into increases in ocean surface evaporation that are too small to detect in the wind driven fluctuations observed in surface evaporation….(therefore)…It is simply impossible for a 100 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration to have any effect on ocean temperatures.”
Imagine you have the following:
1. A 12 gallon water tank with 10 gallons of water in it,
2. a pump whose rate randomly varies from 5-15 gallons per minute, taking water from the bottom of the tank and pumping it
3. through meter 1 into
4. a 20 foot standpipe with
5. an orofice on the bottom that allows a flow of 20 GPM when the pipe is full, that empties into
6. a drain line back to the tank that has
7. a valve to a water supply to allow filling of the tank, and
8. meter 2 that measures the flow back into the tank.
You come in Monday morning to start it up, and notice the tank is a little low. You open the fill valve, and meter 2 registers ~1 GPM. when the tank is filled to the ten gallon mark, you close the valve, and turn on the pump. Meter 1 starts indicating flow that varies from 5-15 GPM, the stand pipe fills about half way, and starts draining back to the tank, and meter 2 starts indicating about the same flow as meter 1, but with a lag in changes; this is because when the pump rate increases and is reflected in meter 1, it takes some time for the standpipe to fill to a level where the inflow and outflow through meter 2 are balanced, and vice versa for decreases in pump rate. You decide to add a little extra to the tank to account for the volume in the standpipe, so you open the valve and ring the level up some, then close the valve. You don’t notice anything in the meters, cause the changes from the variable pump rate and the lags between the readings mask the effect of opening the valve. What you don’t see is that the fill valve is now leaking 0.1 GPM into the return flow from the standpipe. When you come back in 24 hours, how much water will have spilled on the floor? Does it make any difference what the meters read, or how much water got pumped?
He’s doesn’t really know how climate models work, and is unfamiliar with important work in the field –
“Any atmospheric energy transfer analysis must explicitly consider these linewidth effects and any approximations made to simplify the lineshape calculations have to be properly validated using high resolution results. These linewidth effects invalidate all of the flux equilibrium assumptions used in radiative forcing calculations.” False – the effects have been considered, and the radiative flux calculations in Global Climate are known to be valid approximations.
Radiative transfer for inhomogeneous atmospheres: RRTM, a validated correlated-k model for the longwave
EJ Mlawer, SJ Taubman, PD Brown… – Journal of Geophysical …, 1997 – agu.org
“… A rapid and accurate radiative transfer model (RRTM) for climate applications has been developed
and the results extensively … The radiative transfer in RRTM is performed using the correlated-k
method: the k distributions are attained directly from the LBLRTM line-by-line …”
He, like Gerlich & Tscheuschner, doesn’t really understand radiative transfer and the Second Law –
“The temperatures in the upper troposphere are near 220 K. The assumption that small changes in LWIR flux in the upper troposphere or stratosphere can influence surface temperatures of 288 K requires a flagrant violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Heat does not flow from a cooler to a warmer body. The calculated ‘equilibrium surface temperature’ produced by radiative forcing calculations is not even a physically measurable climate variable.”
In fact, it’s pretty clear he is channeling G&T, with a little bit of “its the sun, or water vapor” thrown in.
see –
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2009/03/burrow-project-gerlich-and-t-have.html
“here are G&Ts conclusions and our targets
…..
(2) There are no calculations to determinate an average surface temperature of a planet
….
(6) Re-emission is not reflection and can, in no way, heat up the ground-level air against the actual heat flow without mechanical work.”
and
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2009/03/second-law-and-its-criminal-misuse-as.html
Brian, I’d also add that “Usually the downward emitted flux and the upward absorbed flux are similar” seems completely unjustified–does the lapse rate (about which he makes such a fuss) take effect only at the altitude he considers for his ‘parcel of air?’
For the Pliocene epoch’s climate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliocene_climate
is ok but for the mistake about the emergence of the long glacials; the paragraph in the introduction is wrong. The long glacials began but about one million years ago; the are more details in Tamino’s two threads I linked earlier.
Also, more recent evidence pointss to the closure of the Isthmus of Panama, about 4 +- 1 million years ago:
http://www.geologytimes.com/Research/Isthmus_of_Panama_formed_as_result_of_plate_tectonics.asp
http://www.physorg.com/news136614198.html
Neither appears to affect the conclusions of Lund et al. (2010).
Re my #389 — Oops, wrong thread.
For those following OHC.
347 Ray said about what Raypierre meant.
It’s a funny thing really. Thermodynamics doesn’t speak about time. The notion of thermodynamic equilibrium is profoundly useful but true thermodynamic equilibrium states don’t exist; they take forever to prepare. How long would we have to wait for a google Hz photon to be radiated by the chair I’m sitting in ?How many times would the chair have to radiate and absorb google Hz photons before it could be said that the google Hz modes had equilibrated? The Planck distribution suggests 10^(10^85) seconds (far far far longer than the age of the universe) give or take a few factors of a google. I think it’s fair to say that the chair will never equilibrate with the google Hz radiation because google Hz radiation doesn’t happen. I suppose one could argue that since there is no google Hz radiation that my chair is in fact equilibrated with it. But we can back the frequency down to whatever frequency the Planck distribution suggests is emitted once a year. Or once a decade. Then I would suggest that the notion of thermodynamic equilibrium ought to be in terms of flux balance. I think the distance that a given mode is from equilibrium can be defined as the time integral of the flux difference (flux difference = energy absorbed per unit time per unit area per unit frequency – energy radiated per unit time … ) over the time integrated radiated flux. Call that ratio epsilon. epsilon is a dimensionless function of both the integration time, T, and the frequency, nu. THen one could say that on time scales of T (the integration limit) the fluxes for frequency nu are balanced to within epsilon(T, nu). You’d find that if you fix epsilon that T would be an increasing function of nu since the high frequency events are rare. If you choose both T and epsilon there will always be frequencies that can’t equilibrate to within epsilon within time T. I’m not sure I’ve said anything that isn’t entirely trivial about detailed balance or Kirchoff’s law.
@365 Wayne Job
“Climate science at this point in time is a baby.”
If that’s the case, then all science is infantile at this point. Others have posted enough evidence for this. It also started to get very serious in the 1950s. A good discussion arose right here https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/the-carbon-dioxide-theory-of-gilbert-plass/
“We are living in the open chaotic plumbing system of a water modulated heat pump.”
Open system, yes. Heat pump, yes, this is an analogy I often use. Chaotic? Not really. Chaos means “no order” and there is much order to the climate system. Some simple examples: we know how much moisture air can hold at any given temperature, we know that when air rises, it begins to lose its ability to hold moisture, water freezes, under most circumstances, at 0 degrees Celsius, etc., etc. On a bigger scale, we understand regular phenomena like El Nino, La Nina, the Indian monsoon cycle, PDO, etc., etc., etc. Under chaos, none of these things would exist as known conditions: the system would react differently to the same conditions each time. Thus, there is a great deal of order to our climate system.
“Firstly we must find and totally understand the causes of the ice ages, which are plainly re-occuring at set intervals, secondly the interglacials are also highly regular in their appearances. The causes for both of these must be celestial because of their periodicity.”
Milankovitch cycles have a great deal of influence over ice ages, but the periodicity isn’t as neatly bounded as you claim. There are lots of climate amplifiers. GHGs are a big one, albedo another, sun spot activity, volcanism (which is short term unless persistent), ocean circulation patterns (back to the heat pump), moisture in the atmosphere, cloud cover, and lots of other things. Some of these things we understand well, and some have more questions marks around them, but lots of people are working on these things, and our understanding continually increases. The reality is that we don’t have to know every single detail to have a comprehensive understanding about the big picture once the most fundamental basics are known. I think it’s safe to say at this point that the most fundamental basics are known and have been tested repeatedly at this point.
“The nit picking and statistical analysis of mainly imaginary numbers to try and evoke a warming or cooling caused by trace elements of gas in the atmosphere is not science.”
Now you’re just making stuff up. The numbers are not imaginary – it’s pretty easy to quantify the amount of any given element in the atmosphere. It’s pretty easy to quantify what is produced when materials are burned (university chemistry 101-201 easy). Go back to the link I posted above – the insulative properties of GHGs in the atmosphere has been tested and documented and it’s pretty well understood how it works in the troposphere and higher. We’ve got new satellites that will help us refine that understanding to a much more granular point. Just because you don’t understand it or you don’t think other people understand it, doesn’t mean that the knowledge isn’t out there.
It’s time for you to start asking questions of scientists instead of pretending to know something. The next time you think we collectively don’t know something – try asking instead of telling. You might learn something.
“It is imperative that we investigate and understand the real cause of our climate changes, such that we can really prepare for what is to come, Warm is good cold would kill billions of people.”
As noted, those investigations are ongoing and have been for a very long time. There isn’t some little handful of scientists dictating this and that, there are 1000s of us, each investigating little and big parts, and when we figure things out, we put it out there. And saying that warm is good and cold is bad is an outrageous oversimplification. Humans did pretty well in the Pleistocene – we wouldn’t be here if not. Diseases thrive in warm weather, not cold. The same with molds – when I lived in FL, I had long lasting respiratory infections all the time, almost none since I’ve been back up north. My brother in GA ha a longer growing season, but the buds on his second round of tomatoes dried up and fell off, then he got hit with blight and mold. Yes, those are anecdotal reports, not scientific, but think about. When the air is warmer and can hold more water, that means water evaporates more easily. Think about it. Use logic instead of sound bites and think it through.
“Warm is good” also ignores the problem that rapid changes, whatever the result, are historically harbingers of disaster and extinction. Evolution favors slow environmental changes, no matter the species. On that note, ocean acidification from CO2 absorption means that shelled organisms, the base of the oceanic food chain, will have a hard time surviving. The rock record holds evidence of this, as well as simple chemistry. How “good” is it if the life in the oceans is dying off? How “good” is it if diseases and pestilence can more easily spread? Up north, we’re being invaded by several previously southern species of tree-killing insects. This is your idea of good?
In other news, RPJr. has been a naughty boy again:
“In other words, researchers have yet to find evidence of more-extreme weather patterns over the period, contrary to what the models predict. “There’s no data-driven answer yet to the question of how human activity has affected extreme weather,’ adds Roger Pielke Jr., another University of Colorado climate researcher.”
Kudos to Mapleleaf over at CP in compiling a list of post AR4 studies that highlights Roger’s ignorance (at least I hope it is merely that and not something else).
John Pearson,
Stat Mech addresses the issue you are referring to in terms of the Ergodic hypothesis and the stosszahlansatz–that given enough time, a system will approach any point in phase space arbitrarily closely and that energy/momentum of nearby particles is uncorrelated. It is the only way to get from a phase space probability to a probability in time and so to explain irreversibility and entropy increase. It has actually been one of the most problematic aspects of the statistical mechanical explanation of thermodynamics, and it’s gone through many different incarnations since Boltzmann first articulated it (I think in the 1870s). None of the incarnations have been entirely satisfactory, but they are powerful and it’s tempting to think they are at least on the right track.
Re 393 Shirley J. Pulawski – actually the system is chaotic, at least in some ways, for example in the butterfly-effect-limited time horizon for weather prediction. But the chaos is bounded (boundary conditions force the climate) – and the chaotic behavior has a predictable ‘texture’ (that being an aspect of climate), if not exactly repeatable pattern.
Hank, yes I’m still responding to raypierre’s question (#152, main answer at #202) though not explicitly to his secondary suggestion about delving into Kirchoff’s laws, and though it got sidetracked with a couple of sidebars along the way.
The NASA/JPL article (RC’s not involved at all) would indirectly support the translation energy non-quantization bit, but neither said nor implied anything about the quantization of a photon. The latter is mostly semantics it seems.
Bob (Sphaerica), referencing a NASA/JPL article as a NASA/JPL article is silly why again?? Actually it’s a JPL article posted on a NASA site, so NASA probably shouldn’t be referenced… and everybody knows what a schlock outfit JPL is! Oh! Wait. It was written back in 1998 before JPL had time to catch up on the latest of Planck equation stuff. Plus I see you join Ray L in that since it was written for less than PhDs they clearly had license and the desire to just make stuff up. Right! Actually, it seems it could help some PhDs.
from Wikipedia: “Thermal radiation is a byproduct of the collisions arising from atoms’ various vibrational motions. These collisions cause the atoms’ electrons to emit thermal photons (known as black-body radiation). Photons are emitted anytime an electric charge is accelerated (as happens when two atoms’ electron clouds collide).” from Michael Fowler of University of Virginia: “…At sufficiently high temperatures, all bodies become good radiators…. Any body at any temperature above absolute zero will radiate to some extent, but the intensity and frequency distribution of the radiation depends on the detailed structure of the body…” A primer from The National Radio Astronomy Observatory: “…Any object or particle that has a temperature above absolute zero emits thermal radiation. The temperature of the object causes the atoms and molecules within the object to move around. For example, the molecules of a gas, as in a planet’s atmosphere, spin around and bump into one another. When the molecules bump into each other, they change direction. A change in direction is equivalent to acceleration. As stated above, when charged particles accelerate, they emit electromagnetic radiation. So each time a molecule changes direction, it emits radiation across the spectrum, just not equally….” So says roughly a site rfcafe.com.
I’m certain there is a pile of rationalizations why the above sources don’t count in your-all’s minds, but I thought I’d throw them out. Feel free to attack them for the record, but I won’t be defending them — wastes everybody’s (especially mine) time.
Is it the quote, “… any object that contains any heat energy at all emits radiation…. and then emits the energy at all frequencies…” that you find ambiguous?? Maybe if you read it slower or somethin’.
Rod, from your own quotation: “Any body at any temperature above absolute zero will radiate to some extent, but the intensity and frequency distribution of the radiation depends on the detailed structure of the body”
First, is a gas a body? How about a single atom? Second, what about the latter part about the intensity and frequency distribution depending on the detailed structure of the body? Whence arises that dependence? How does it depend?
Now, did I say NASA or JPL was not a usually reliable source. Does that mean that everything you find there is 100% accurate or phrased in the best way possible? No. Again, your source contradicts you. You just don’t realize it.
Rod asks: “Is it the quote, “… any object that contains any heat energy at all emits radiation…. and then emits the energy at all frequencies…” that you find ambiguous?? ”
OK, Rod, a single atom isolated in a magneto-optic trap at 2 Kelvins: Does it radiate in a continuum or not? It’s a simple question. Answer it.