Tim Curtin's incompetence with basic statistics is the stuff of legend. Curtin has now demonstrated incompetence at a fairly new journal called The Scientific World Journal. Consider his very first "result" (emphasis mine):
I first regress the global mean temperature (GMT) anomalies against the global annual values of the main climate variable evaluated by the IPCC Hegerl et al. [17] and Forster et al. [28] based on Myhre et al. [29], namely, the total radiative forcing of all the noncondensing greenhouse gases [RF]
Annual(Tmean) = a + b[RF] + u(x)
The results appear to confirm the findings of Hegerl et al. [17] with a fairly high R^2
and an excellent t-statistic (>2.0) and P-value (<0.01) but do not pass the Durbin-Watson test (>2.0) for spurious correlation (i.e., serial autocorrelation), see Table 1. **This result validates the null hypothesis** of no statistically significant influence of radiative forcing by noncondensing GHGs on global mean temperatures.
Any first year stats student or competent peer reviewer should be able to tell you that you a statistical test cannot prove the null hypothesis. But it's far worse than that as Tamino explains:
The DW statistic for his first regression is d = 1.749. For his sample size with one regressor, the critical values at 95% confidence are dL = 1.363 and dU = 1.496. Since d is greater than dU, we do not reject the null hypothesis of uncorrelated errors.
This test gives no evidence of autocorrelation for the residuals. But Tim Curtin concluded that it does. He further concluded that such a result means no statistically significant influence of greenhouse gas climate forcing (other than water vapor) on global temperature. Even if his DW test result were correct (which it isn't), that just doesn't follow. ...
In other words, the regression which Curtin said fails the DW test actually passes, while the regression which he said passes, actually fails.
And -- the presence of autocorrelation doesn't invalidate regression anyway.
I have to wonder what kind of "peer-reviewed" scientific journal would publish this. Who were the referees for this paper?
And do check out Curtin's responses in comments where he insists that he didn't get it wrong. Curtin's understanding of statistics is so poor that he can't recognize his own mistakes.
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Hi Timmy Curtin,
What is it like for you to be a complete idiot and asshole at the same time? I nominate Timmy Curtin for Dunning-Kruger Syndrome post child of the year.
Tim Curtin.
You're still using those square brackets in the clumsy manner of a non-scientist who doesn't really understand their meaning.
>Tyndall..., and Arrhenius likewise... dealt only with the [H2O] that is always present in the atmosphere despite the precipitation at different times and places...
reads as:
>Tyndall..., and Arrhenius likewise... dealt only with the concentration of H2O that is always present in the atmosphere despite the precipitation at different times and places...
"...the concentration of H2O that is always present..."? There's a particular concentration that "is always present"? There's a particular concentration that Tyndall and Arrhenius were fixated on? I think what thought you were saying was:
>Tyndall..., and Arrhenius likewise... dealt only with the H2O that is always present in the atmosphere despite the precipitation at different times and places...
FFS, you even misdefine it thus in the abstract of your 'paper':
>...atmospheric water vapour (i.e., [H2O])...
No, no, a thousand times no! "[H2O]" means "the concentration of water". There's no "atmosphere" inherent in the definition - one could quite validly speak of the concentration of water in ethanol.
And it's not that you haven't been told this [more](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/windschuttle_hoaxed.php#comment…) than [once](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/03/tim_curtin_thread.php#comment-1…).
@41 Jeff H.
It is I, who should apologize to you. Perhaps, I should have made my point more clearer, I meant no disrespect to you.
The point of the story, is that in peer reviewed literature , data falsification, logic flaws and truly crap work like that of TC, AW, [Sally Baliunas](http://www.desmogblog.com/sallie-baliunas) and [Willie Soon](http://www.desmogblog.com/willie-soon), occasionally slip through the cracks, even in the best of journals. Lest we forget the [Chris DeFreitas scandal](http://www.desmogblog.com/chris-de-freitas), of crap editing, with a hidden agenda, as well.
Investigative science, when down properly, will find all these inherent flaws and correct these errors. Open access journals, should increase the rate of error trapping, by an order of magnitude or better. For example [Pons & Fleischman](http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Science-Short-Weird-Fusion/dp/product-descrip…), where the corporate mass media totally screwed up, and real science saved their bacon.
As for TC, it is quite clear, when reading his travesty, from start to finish and including, a very thorough checking of his cited references. His mathematics of misinformation, is full of very contradictory fatal logic bomb flaws.
As for TC, he has been debunked at least twice by [Tamino](http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/tc-and-dw/).
[James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change](http://www.ted.com/talks/james_hansen_why_i_must_speak_out_about_climat…), he truly is talking real common sense in a debate overheated by party politics of denial. Unlike the very tiny minority of [ersatz skeptics](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Institute_of_Public_Affairs) in denial of global warming and the unfortunate few, suffering from mental illness problems, that deny them the ability to face the reality of the real world.
In other better news, the pragmatic Germans, are moving forward with a new long term project in [Tunisia](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TqJPreSAFOM), to produce clean energy. It is true the materials used in this project will have a carbon footprint in the production and installation phase. However once energy production begins, the carbon footprint thereafter, will be significantly less then that of an equivalent fossil fueled unit over it's full working lifetime, even if said power plant has carbon capture technology. This is, just one small step in the right direction, to eliminate our addiction of burning fossil fuels to create energy.
Cheers, JeffH., no harm, no foul :)
Does Tim Curtin understand the [Dunning-Kruger effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DunningâKruger_effect)?
Perhaps not.
Why is it that economists think they are statisticians and climate scientists?
Here is the answer to your questions.
This is a vanity publication.
Come on Philip, surely you must know by now that libertarian-inspired science only requires a general education, internet access and the ability to think for yourself. Everybody knows traditional journals primarily exist to stifle innovation and free-thinkyness, which is obviously why science hasn't advanced for decades. PhD, Schmee-HD.
I'm told this all the time in one form or another, so it must be true.
I don't think Tamino impresses them any more than Eli Rabett does. Just saying. I worry invocation of Dunning and Kruger's results is becoming a mindless and reflexive trope that I wish to avoid. That stipulated, there are some real barriers to understanding why something is wrong, and what the significance is. If you really don't understand curve fitting, or time series, or the nuances of inference, or have a feel for noise and signal - well, you're going to think the details are just obfuscation.
I'm reminded of Eli Rabett's really, really detailed explanation of every single ramification of the issue of saturating absorbed frequencies with atmospheric molecules. Especially when he dealt with pressure broadening, and a commenter pointed out the importance of changes in what altitude energy is reemitted at, etc. it was pretty clear the explanation was too specialized for there to be anything learned by the simplifiers, in that case, the denialists.
Ah, the good old technique of "retreat to the derivative". A great way to remove noise and inconventient linear signals.
The day the paper was released I emailed the Editor of TSWJ and told him that the paper was crap, utter nonsense, bullshit and that he was an incompetent bastard for printing this horseshit, He didn't even have the decency to reply!
.
I think Curtin's source for his statistical interpretation should have raised some red flags with the reviewers. Endnote 13 from the paper reads:
"13. If the Durbin-Watson statistic is substantially less than 2, there is an evidence of positive serial correlation, âDurbin-Watson statistic,â Wikipedia, accessed 26th October 2010."
"Why is it that economists think they are statisticians and climate scientists?"
Actually, the first (or in some places, second) year of an economics degree normally includes a pretty thorough grounding in statistics/econometrics, in which regression analysis is the central focus. A competent (and honest) economist ought to get things right. The fact that economists are prominent among those who got things wrong can't be explained by straying outside the sphere of expertise.
Mind you, Curtin's MSc in Econ was a long time ago, when econometrics was probably not on the curriculum, and even multiple regression was exotic.
It should be noted that Tim Curtin, over at Tamino's, claimed he was *asked* to submit a paper.
@2 Dave
While I don't really know that much about the Scientific World Journal (and it may well be a vanity publication), $1000 publication fee is fairly standard for open-access Journals. I certainly wouldn't denigrate Conflict and Health ($1075), or PLoS Medicine ($2900) on these grounds.
Open access is a worthy academic goal, despite the D-K implications. It means researchers in the developing world also gain access to academic literature they would otherwise never see.
Open-access scientific publications aren't all bad; [Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics](http://www.atmospheric-chemistry-and-physics.net/) is an example of it being done right and it has the impact factor to match. That said, there is a lot of rubbish out there, catering for the people that have the money to publish but can't get anywhere reputable to accept their work.
I (along with most academics, I'm sure) get a continuous barrage of solicitations to publish in such places. My acid test is whether it appears on the [Thomson ISI master journal list](http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/mjl/). Journals can only get on there if they can demonstrate the works have been peer-reviewed and quality controlled to a certain standard. Pretty much all of the solicitations I get fail that test.
"Tim Curtin's incompetence with basic statistics"
I'm sure he fucked it up, as Tim is a master of doing so. However it's only those among us that are clean of screw ups, Dr. Lambert in position to criticize Curtin. How about your complete and utter devotion to the Lancet extra death survey even past the bitter bitter end?
You Dr. Lambert, are in no position to judge anyone, let alone that clown, Tim Curtin.
Devis,
Since when have the Lancet studies been discredited? They never have been! The only reason for the wrath vented at the Lancet and the articles by Roberts et al. is because they suggest that the illegal invasion of Iraq led to the deaths of between half and a million Iraqis. This shreds the myth that the United States, Britain and proxies promote freedom, democracy and human rights in their foreign agendas (of course this myth has been shown to be bogus many times over the past 200 years but our corporate/state MSM still peddle the same garbage).
It seems like you, Devis, ought to take your vacuous assertions elsewhere.
So another adventure in FAIL by good old polynomial=exponential Timmy.
Who could have know that he would mess up the math?
After all, with a track record like his, you would have thought that the law of averages would have come to his rescue.
Maybe God just hates Timmy?
@Devis
What an immensely stupid ad hominem argument. Since you are clearly not perfect, then by your stupid idiotic moronic imbecilic and oh so so dishonest logic, you have business criticizing TL.
Er, "no business".
@13 Jeff H.
Beware, in 1998 Andrew Wakefield published this very selective and flawed methodology study " Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children.", in Lancet, [now retracted(pdf).](http://download.thelancet.com/flatcontentassets/pdfs/S0140673610601754…)
[Extract from article.](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/lancet-retracts-wakefield…)
"Such a title would hardly grab a science journalistâs attention, but the small study sparked widespread hysteria about a possible connection between the mumps-measles-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
The study itself has not stood the test of time. The results could not be replicated by other labs. A decade of subsequent research has sufficiently cleared the MMR vaccine of any connection to ASD. The lab used to search for measles virus in the guts of the study subjects has been shown to have used flawed techniques, resulting in false positives (from the Autism Omnibus testimony, and here is a quick summary). There does not appear to be any association between autism and a GI disorder."
But itâs OK to be wrong in science. There is no expectation that every potential finding will turn out to be true â in fact it is expected that most new finding will eventually be found to be false. Thatâs the nature of investigating the unknown."
[Lancet retraction(pdf).](http://download.thelancet.com/flatcontentassets/pdfs/S0140673610601754…)
[General Medical Council Ruling on Andrew Wakefield](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/andrew-wakefield-the-pane…)
A recent publication in "Nature" highlights the problem of failures in [Drug development: Raise standards for preclinical cancer research](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/full/483531a.html).
From time to time, in peer reviewed science literature complete frauds in methodology, such as the one perpetrated by scoundrels like Andrew Wakefield, do slip through the net, and these evil weeds are subsequently removed through counter studies, all of whom are unable to replicate the results.
Thus peer reviewed science literature does have long term checks and balances, unlike the incoherent "Alchemy Nonscience of the ['Ersatz Skeptics'](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartland_Institute) and 'Denialati' ". Sadly, living in their artificial world that denies reality, the 'denialati' repeat the same debunked lies often, as though they are the gospel truth. A classic example of spreading complete fiction around is "Rog TallBloke".
Reality has a liberal bias.
Should I have made any errors, I shall revise my view, based on the new additional information.
The thing that characterises Tim Curtin's 'analyses' is that no matter how much they are deconstructed before his eyes, and shown to be nonsense, he still clutches his initial premises to his chest like a child with a manky teddy.
Some people are [impervious to learning, and to empirical truth](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8IBnfkcrsM).
Holy cow. This thread has lead me all the way back to the "5th order polynomial" stuff, which I concede I totally missed (maybe I was having one of my now-regular extended sanity breaks from engaging the climate denialati).
WTF? I mean, even someone who briefly brushed over stats & polynomial equations in their last year of High School would probably know how ridiculous that whole proposition was from the very start! Makes it very hard to take any of Tim C's "research" seriously (as if I needed another reason).
For those who haven't been reading Deltoid for too long, it might also be instructive to direct attention to two other threads that feature the pseudoscience and mathemagics of one of the world's under-appreciated minds:
[http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/03/tim_curtin_thread.php](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/03/tim_curtin_thread.p)
[http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/04/tim_curtin_thread_now_a_live_s…](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/04/tim_curtin_thread_now_a_live_s…)
Crap.
Tim Curtin Thread.
Tim Curtin Thread Now a Live Show.
Very flattering I must say to find myself featured at Tamino's "Open (sic)Mind" and Schmidt's "Real (sic) Climate", and now here.
Here is my last response to Tamino, which he has refused to post, what an open mind he has!
"First of all, I must express my appreciation to Tamino both for his valuable lesson on D-W and for his publicizing of my TSWJ paper. There are some matters arising which I feel are not without interest":
1.The RF variable in my Table 1 was aggregate RF (CO2 and non-CO2) in W/sq.m. so was not raw data, unlike the [CO2] data in ppm that I used in my ACE2011 paper, which unequivocally failed the D-W test.
2.The IPCCâs RF data that I used has itself been tuned to the temperature data (by Myhre et al 1998).
3.Regressing the Gistemp anomalies I used in my Table 1 on separated RF variables, namely [CO2] and [non-CO2], including [CH4] and [NO2] etc, we obtain:
CoefficientsStandard Errort StatP-value
Intercept0#N/A#N/A#N/A
RF CO2150.585935224.23235046.2142521368.8638E-07
RF Non-CO2-186.480961437.6985092-4.9466402072.94219E-05
D-W: 1.859.
Note the negative coefficient on the non-CO2.
4.Evidently the aggregation of the RF from both [CO2] and [non-CO2] in my Table 1 did much to eliminate autoregression and secure an acceptable D-W.
5.Allowing for an intercept, the coefficient on the [non-CO2] remains negative but ceases to be statistically significant. The D-W is fine at 2.06.
6.Regressing the sum of [non-CO2] on [CO2] produces R2 of 0.7, and t=15.64, but the D-W at 0.053 now shows strong autocorrelation.
7.However, unlike regressions of Gistemp anomalies on [CO2] in ppm from Mauna Loa since 1958, the regression using data only from 1979-2009 yields statistically significant results that satisfy D-W. That suggests something happened around 1978, known as a climate shift to some, which appears to have ended around 2000. What gives?
8. Then analysis of the GISS E-model data on RF (Hansen et al)shows that regressing Gistemp from 1958 to 2010 on their GHG RF really does fail the D-W test, at 1.425, as the dL test is 1.503. That is to be expected from its grossly inflated t-statistic of 13.6.
I appreciate that none of Lambert and his fellow hate mailers here has ever made a mistake, I have admitted to mine here and at Tamino's. What I also note is that none here or there has ever published any let alone immaculate LSR analysis of their claimed AGW against ALL the relevant causative agents, which since Tyndall (1861) and Arrhenius have shown [H2O] to be much more potent than [CO2], as my paper showed repeatedly.
To advance your cause show that the rest of my paper apart from the incorrect statement at Table 1 is also wrong. Tamino has not even tried, and none of you can.
I think Twain explained statistics adequately: There are Liars, and then there are Damned Liars, and then there are Statisticians...must be a cult topic, I don't even know what sort of stuff Mr. Curtin pontificates about...
>...must be a cult topic, I don't even know what sort of stuff Mr. Curtin pontificates about...
[?](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2012/05/tim_curtins_incompetence_with.p…)
Bernard J (and Tim L): when are you going to favour us with your LSR of AGW with respect to changes in BOTH [CO2] and [H2O]?
I know that I don't understand statistics .. btthen at leat Iknow that I don't understand statistics!
(With apologies to Socrates.)
D'oh! Turns out I also don't know how to type & preview properly, oops.
That's :
Natch.
> What I also note is that none here or there has ever published any let alone immaculate LSR analysis of their claimed AGW against ALL the relevant causative agents, which since Tyndall (1861) and Arrhenius have shown [H2O] to be much more potent than [CO2], as my paper showed repeatedly.
For water to be the 'cause' of global warming, something must be putting it in the atmosphere. Not only that, but because of its short atmospheric lifetime, something must have to be putting the extra in there on a continuous basis. What could this be I wonder? Enhanced evaporation because of systematic warming caused by something else maybe? Perhaps CO2 from fossil fuel burning, like how Arrhenius predicted all those years ago?
CO2 is a forcing, water is a feedback. I suggest you figure out what the difference is (along with other very basic concepts in climate science) before you continue to make an even bigger fool out of yourself.
PS Just like to point out that I don't have anything against statistics, far from it. Used right, they are invaluable in many situations. But they are not the be all and end all. When a robust observation (like global warming) can be explained by basic physics but not by statistics, that just tells me that the statistics aren't up to the task.
TC writes:
Hum, we don't need any fooling around with statistical methods to tell us that your whole argument is based on a false premise.
Adding CO2 (or any other GHG) to the atmosphere causes a positive forcing. Changes in atmospheric water vapour content is a feedback as the result of the warming caused by additional CO2 etc. This is basic physics. If you are confused about this then I would steer clear of statistics if I were you.
Some people might be interested to learn that Tim Curtin has made a poorly veiled threat at Tamino, telling him he might contact a lawyer about supposed defamation.
A denier threatening legal action because someone found a problem with their argument? Say it isn't so!
DarlD writes,
*Reality has a liberal bias*
Ah. Another one of THEM. A right wing-nut who without hesitation supports the right of the United States and its proxies to torture, maim, commit mass murder, suppress democracy, loot, plunder etc. if it is in their national (i.e. corporate/elite) interests to do so.
Recall that Colin Powell, speaking in 2000, cited work by the same team of researchers (Roberts et al) using the same methodology to highlight the mass death of civilians in the ongoing civil war in the Congo, where there was no national interest at stake. But then suddenly the methodology becomes highly flawed when it purports to show mass death of civilians caused as a result of our own policies. Pure and utter hypocrisy.
All this shows is that if the killing is carried out by officially designated enemies, it is focused on like a laser beam, whereas if the killing is done by us it is downplayed or ignored. DarlD:Don't waste my time with your profound ignorance. Take it to the far right blogs and keep it there.
Please don't let the troll derail the thread ... Tim Curtin's such a juicy target, it's a pity to see the thread diluted.
Please, please, please Mr. Curtin, Sir. Please take the action for defaming your reputation - such as it is - that you threaten [here.](http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/tc-and-dw/#comment-61863)
I know it's selfish of me, but the vision of an Appian Way lined by legally crucified deniers is just so enticing, what with you and Tim Ball being in the vanguard, so to speak. And it surely can't be too long until another overexcitable cretin oversteps the mark in their misinformed zeal with Mike Mann to join you.
It's only human to make mistakes. But making really fundamental ones in an area that one is attempting to profess some sort of expertise in makes it time for some self-reflection.
Then to make these fundamental ones when you're trying to prove an expert consensus wrong, without double, triple, and quadruple checking your methodology, is just asking for trouble.
Then to repeatedly ramble, obfuscate, and attempt to defend your conclusions after these mistakes are pointed out takes it all to another level of "dear oh dear". Up to that point, there is a remote chance people might forgive you for them. After that point, you're history.
@DarlD
That was in regard to Lancet studies about deaths in Iraq, not Lancet articles in general; your post is a non sequitur.
Um, Jeff, you have misread DarlD far worse than he misread you. That phrase is famed from its use on the Stephen Colbert show and is a pet phrase of liberals, not right wingers ... it's an amusing way of saying that liberal views tend to be aligned with the facts and right wing views tend not to be, and that's how DarlD used it.
Jeez, Jeff, DarlD said nothing at all to support that charge whatsoever.
There are certain phrases that are dead giveaways of severely emotionally retarded personalities.
I highly approve and recommend Tamino's treatment of Tim Curtin:
User-Illusion,
You are correct. I retract my post and take what DarlD said in its context (sorry DarlD). I guess I was a little sensitive after Devis posted that stuff earlier criticizing Tim Lambert for his support of the Lancet studies.
And this thread is to corner our old friend, Tim Curtin, who IMO thinks that an offer to publish in some third rate Open Access journal constitutes an honor. Like JamesA, I get offers from new Open Access journals to submit articles on a weekly basis. I hit the delete button every time. These journals are popping up by the dozen in my opinion because there is profit in open access. Don't get me wrong, I am all in favor of open access provided it does not compromise scientific integrity and peer-review. However, its very easy to cross this line and many OA journals IMO appear to be doing this.
As an aside, I checked the various editorial boards of the journal in which Curtin published his piece and in the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology I must admit that I had never heard of any of the people in there. Given I have published all of my work in these fields and have been a researcher for more than 20 years, that started ringing alarm bells right away.
Anyway, keep up the excellent work!
TC might apply to become a Heartland Expert. There have been openings on the roster.
Or maybe the rooster, as Heartland has them also, although turkey may be more apt.
In reply to LionelA and to JamesA (May 20, 2012), the latter said âFor water to be the 'cause' of global warming, something must be putting it in the atmosphere. Not only that, but because of its short atmospheric lifetime, something must have to be putting the extra in there on a continuous basis. What could this be I wonder?â
Why not read my paper, rather than Grant Fosterâs travesty? Most atmospheric [H2O] derives from solar-induced evaporation, as shown in detail by The Lim and Roderick Atlas of the Global Water Cycle, available free from the ANUâs Epress. Its first data set BCCR-BCM2.0_Set1 shows evaporation and precipitation by land and sea globally and by latitude for 1970-1999. For the globe as a whole E is modelled as equal to P over that period, but by latitude there are very large divergences both in the oceans and on land. The 36 or so models are then used to project E and P in 2070-2099, and in this first set the global increase from 1970-1999 is only 4% over 100 years, rather small if rising temperatures are to blame relative to the E derived continuously in daylight hours from the sun.
BTW, Tyndall did not consider atmospheric water vapour resulting from any supposed change in temperature, and Arrhenius likewise (1896: 239) dealt only with the [H2O] that is always present in the atmosphere despite the precipitation at different times and places (see the data at NOAA-ESRL etc). That [H2O] is what my paper analyses in some depth.
> Most atmospheric [H2O] derives from solar-induced evaporation, as shown in detail by The Lim and Roderick Atlas of the Global Water Cycle, available free from the ANUâs Epress.
Gosh, another blinding flash of obvious.
So, if the water is the primare adjacent cause and the water is there because MOSTLY of the Sun, then since the Sun is cooler than it's been for decades, it can't be the sun causing the current warmth greater than any for decades.
Right?
Interestingly, John M, if you click the 'climate change expert' (stop giggling at the back, there!) check box on HI's 'expert search' page you still get a rather surprising 128 people, but it's worth noting that when I did it only the other day it was 140.
Landsea's gone, of course, but Owen Mcshane is still there despite dying in March, and Idso is still just so good he's in there twice... so there appears to have been a few other less heralded departures, and to still be some more room for apparent trimming...
@Tim Curtin: Nope, you're still not making sense. Nothing you've said changes the fact that atmospheric water is too short-lived to ever be considered a forcing. If you're saying that a long-term shift in the behaviour of the sun is to blame for the extra evaporation, then that's your 'cause' right there so I suggest you try to unpick some of that with your statistics. That is unless you're saying the water magically decides to evaporate of its own accord or something.
LOL @ 44.
The sun causes water to evaporate!
When will TC be collecting his Nobel?
This seems at least 33% supportive of my position:
On the time-varying trend in global-mean surface temperature
Zhaohua Wu1, Norden E. Huang2 , John M. Wallace3, Brian V. Smoliak3 and Xianyao Chen4
(1) Department of Meteorology and Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA
(2) Research Center for Adaptive Data Analysis Center, National Central University, Chungli, 32001, Taiwan
(3) Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
(4) The First Institute of Oceanography, State Oceanic Administration, Qingdao, China
Norden E. Huang
Email: norden@ncu.edu.tw
Received: 19 January 2010 Accepted: 17 June 2011 Published online: 7 July 2011
Abstract
The Earth has warmed at an unprecedented pace in the decades of the 1980s and 1990s (IPCC in Climate change 2007: the scientific basis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007). In Wu et al. (Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104:14889â14894, 2007) we showed that the rapidity of the warming in the late twentieth century was a result of concurrence of a secular warming trend and the warming phase of a multidecadal (~65-year period) oscillatory variation and we estimated the contribution of the former to be about 0.08°C per decade since ~1980. Here we demonstrate the robustness of those results and discuss their physical links, considering in particular the shape of the secular trend and the spatial patterns associated with the secular trend and the multidecadal variability. The shape of the secular trend and rather globally-uniform spatial pattern associated with it are both suggestive of a response to the buildup of well-mixed greenhouse gases. In contrast, the multidecadal variability tends to be concentrated over the extratropical Northern Hemisphere and particularly over the North Atlantic, suggestive of a possible link to low frequency variations in the strength of the thermohaline circulation. Depending upon the assumed importance of the contributions of ocean dynamics and the time-varying aerosol emissions to the observed trends in global-mean surface temperature, we estimate that up to one third of the late twentieth century warming could have been a consequence of natural variability.
James A "Nothing changes the fact that atmospheric water is too short-lived to ever be considered a forcing." So evaporation is a kind of once off effect rather than continuing every day the sun shines?
Tim Curtin.
You're still using those square brackets in the clumsy manner of a non-scientist who doesn't really understand their meaning.
>Tyndall..., and Arrhenius likewise... dealt only with the [H2O] that is always present in the atmosphere despite the precipitation at different times and places...
reads as:
>Tyndall..., and Arrhenius likewise... dealt only with the concentration of H2O that is always present in the atmosphere despite the precipitation at different times and places...
"...the concentration of H2O that is always present..."? There's a particular concentration that "is always present"? There's a particular concentration that Tyndall and Arrhenius were fixated on? I think what thought you were saying was:
>Tyndall..., and Arrhenius likewise... dealt only with the H2O that is always present in the atmosphere despite the precipitation at different times and places...
FFS, you even misdefine it thus in the abstract of your 'paper':
>...atmospheric water vapour (i.e., [H2O])...
and proceed to misapply the definition a number of times in the subsequent text, for example:
and so on.
No, no, a thousand times NO!
"[CO2]" means "the concentration of carbon dioxide", and "[H2O]" means "the concentration of water". There's no "atmospheric" inherent in the square-brackets definition - one could quite validly speak of the concentration of water in ethanol, say, or of carbon dioxide in aqueous solution.
I'll repeat this again, so take note...
[x] means "the concentration of x", and not "atmospheric x".
And it's not that you haven't been told this [more](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/windschuttle_hoaxed.php#comment…) than [once](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/03/tim_curtin_thread.php#comment-1…).
TC
Yes I wonder what that is? Couldn't be that persisting imbalance between the total heat energy absorbed from the sun over time to the total heat energy emitted to space at the top of the atmosphere over the same period of time now could it?
CO2 (and other GHGs) are proven inhibiter's of that heat transfer process. Experimental and theoretical physics explain why this is so. You would do well to pay more attention to these aspects and also the dire effects already rolling as the result of global warming and changing climates as any number of stressed ecosystems are telling us, not to mention the increasing rate of ice loss in the cryoshpere.
But of course all this, and more, has been pointed out to you before here and here .
It would seem that whilst you are misusing statistical technique you are ignoring the huge gaps in your knowledge of the Earth's systems, geological, fluid and biological and how they all interact. The merely ignorant can be enlightened but it would seem that wilful ignorance has a self inoculating property that prevents any such enlightenment. It is not as if Bernard J and Jeff Harvey have not tried to get through this barrier. You really should pay more attention to the messages that Jeff has WRT ecosystems.
No matter the sophistication of the statistical techniques, and it looks like sophistication here has its own pitfalls which you have fallen into, if they are used on data arranged under a bad, or false, premise it is the old garbage out as the end result.
As for you paper, tried it, found ambiguity with hints of ideological themes (as in that Quadrant article , so lost interest as you seem to be yet another 'it is anything but CO2' believer with undertones of Michaels and Lindzen.
Curtin thus, @ 48: "This seems at least 33% supportive of my position:"
Is that another way of saying that it's about 66% UNsupportive of your position?
If so, why cite it?
By the way, I observe that the abstract says "The Earth has warmed at an unprecedented pace in the decades of the 1980s and 1990s (IPCC in Climate change 2007: the scientific basis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007)."
Is that part of the 33% you agree with, or part of the 66% you'd rather we didn't talk about?
john byatt said:"The day the paper was released I emailed the Editor of TSWJ and told him that the paper was crap, utter nonsense, bullshit and that he was an incompetent bastard for printing this horseshit, He didn't even have the decency to reply!"
If you had sent a check for $1000 with the email, he would have published your "contribution".
re: 45
BigCityLib summarizes the Heartland departures so far. These include Benny Peiser, well-known to long-time Deltoid readers. Again, as I said, TC might apply.
The following post of mine last night seems to have gone AWOL. Until it appears I shall not respond to Bernard et al.
"Posted by: JamesA | May 22, 2012 5:58 AM
"Because of its short lifetime, any perturbation to the amount of water in the troposphere (such as because of more sunshine, to take your example) would not be felt in the long term if, hypthetically, the perturbation was to suddenly go away. Hence the warming effect of water is entirely dependent on something else to drive it, so therefore it is a feedback rather than a forcing."
That comment achieves a superb non sequitur. Evaporation via the sun is not a constant, if it were our climate would be in permanent stasis or equilibrium. It is not. The Clausius-Clayperon eqúation as my paper notes in no way produces observable changes in evaporation (see Pierrehumbert et al 2007):
For example:
As my paper notes, "The Clausius-Clapeyron relation provides a powerful constraint on the behavior of water vapor, but it is not at all straightforward to tease out the implications of this constraint for climate, for the reason that it only gives an upper bound on the water vapor content for any given temperature, and tells us nothing about how closely that bound might be approached."
"The second key aspect of water vapor is that it is a potent greenhouse gas"[but one that is expunged by the IPCC's AR4 WG1].
"The idea that small quantities of water vapor can have a lot of leverage in climate change has a fairly long history, and is now widely recognized" [except by AR4 WG1].
However even Pierrehumbert can make mistakes,as here when he adds: "Water vapor feedback was included in the very first quantitative calculations of CO2-induced warming by Arrhenius". That is not true, as Arrhenius NEVER described what he called called "aqueous vapour" as a feedback rather than a primary forcing. For example, check his Table III and following.
But Ray redeems himself when he (et al. 2007) adds:
"Since OLR is proportional to −log q, fluctuations in water vapor increase the OLR and have a cooling effect."
My paper provides empirical support for Ray's assertion, and that is what Grant Closed Mind Foster & all contributors here cannot stomach"... or refute.
Curtin, you are an incompetent hack once again. AR4 WG1 does recognize water vapor as a greenhouse gas. It's just treated (and appropriately so) as a feedback.
And to quote Arrhenius from his seminal 1896 paper:
"In consequence of the variation (t) in the temperature, W must also undergo a variation."
W refers to water vapour, and it is thus clear to anyone with even the most basic skills that he refers here to water vapour as a feedback. He took this variation into account by assuming constant relative humidity.
Lovely example of clown-trolling.
Hint: I've heard a rumour that more than one factor affects climate. But worse still, the same goes for evaporation levels - as the very same comment points out.
Do you not realise you're posting a self-refuting comment, or are you seeking out intellectually masochistic experiences?
@Tim Curry:
> That comment achieves a superb non sequitur.
If you're referring to the response it solicited from you then I agree entirely. I can only assume that your yammering about equilibrium is just the usual denier strawman trope but it has nothing whatsoever to do with what I said.
No one is denying that tropospheric water vapour has a strong greenhouse effect and its concentration is variable. My problem is your obsession with it being the 'cause' of global warming as if it somehow has a mind of its own or something. Even if your work wasn't riddled with errors, that conclusion would be similar in scientific usefulness as someone investigating a disease outbreak concluding that the most common cause of death is that peoples' hearts are ceasing to beat.
Lionel A: you are the one who is confused, albeit in the company of the 97% of those who believe in the IPCC’s twaddle, when you say “CO2 (and other GHGs) are proven inhibiters of that heat transfer process. Experimental and theoretical physics explain why this is so”.
They do not, just read Tyndall and Arrhenius more carefully. Both show, experimentally and mathematically, respectively, that it is atmospheric CO2 and water vapour which alone FIRST absorb and only THEN radiate heat emitted from the earth’s surface through the spectra.
Ironically, you and the 97% are like all Galileo’s antagonists who are incapable of understanding that non-GHGs like NOx etc do NOT ever absorb and thereby CANNOT ever radiate heat emanating from the globe’s surface, while so-called GHGs including H2O which both absorb and radiate.
Bernard J: I may have to admit some typos in my shorthanding but my terms [CO2] and [H2O] are ALWAYS meant to refer to the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and H2O.
I know I risk being banned here yet again, but really this site should be renamed Blockheads because of the inability of its proprietor and his most favoured commenters to grasp that non-GHGs like oxygen and NOx which neither absorb nor radiate heat are the real GHGs while atmospheric CO2 and water vapour are what save the planet from being barbecued because they both absorb AND radiate, as my regressions show. Tyndall and Arrhenius knew that, Tamino and TL never will.
Tim Curtin writes:
Tim Curtin then goes on to explain in different words a basic aspect of the underlying mechanism that inhibits the heat transfer process from earth to the top of atmosphere and beyond by slowing down the outgoing energy rate through various impacts that TC didn't describe. I'm fairly sure he doesn't even realise he's arguing with himself.
Tim Curtin then goes on to assert that "the 97%" don't believe that non-GHGs "don't absorb" (presumably referring to absorption of radiation via the greenhouse gas effect, rather than other well-known mechanisms of heat energy transfer). This isn't even mediocre clown-trolling - not even with the addition of the ironic post-modern self-identification with Galileo. The very definition of GHG refutes TC's claim - so once again when TC argues with TC, which TC wins?
> Lionel A: you are the one who is confused, albeit in the company of the 97% of those who believe in the IPCC’s twaddle, when you say “CO2 (and other GHGs) are proven inhibiters of that heat transfer process. Experimental and theoretical physics explain why this is so”.
> They do not, just read Tyndall and Arrhenius more carefully. Both show, experimentally and mathematically, respectively, that it is atmospheric CO2 and water vapour which alone FIRST absorb and only THEN radiate heat emitted from the earth’s surface through the spectra.
...and because the radiated heat is in all directions, which includes the opposite direction that the heat originally came from, this is effectively inhibiting the heat transfer.
Don't know about you, but if 97% of people out there disagreed with me, part of me would start to wonder if they had a point.
> The very definition of GHG refutes TC’s claim – so once again when TC argues with TC, which TC wins?
I'd say the TC that seems to agree with Arrhenius and his prediction that an increase in atmospheric CO2 from fossil fuel combustion will cause global warming.
The other TC seems to be struggling to pass a Turing test right now.
I see TC has marginally lifted his clowning game:
Because it takes real chutzpah - or perhaps cognitive deficiencies - to not understand simple well-known definitions like "greenhouse gas", and then castigate everyone else for operating with the accepted definitions. That, or determined clowning. Either way it's good enough for a mild snigger :-)
Slightly better is his implication that an atmosphere with NOx and O2 but no greenhouse gases would keep a planet as warm as - or even much warmer than - it would be with the addition of the greenhouse gases...
I suspect he doesn't realise that he seems to be operating from the Jo Nova school of atmospheric physics - which dimly understands that in a GHG-laden atmosphere, GHGs are the source of the final leg of radiation to space, but fallaciously skips from that point to imputing some sort of cooling effect by GHGs or warming effect by non-GHGs. And all the while adherents of that school completely (and determinedly) fail to grok the larger point that sans GHGs, the earth's surface would be the source of that final leg, and (after doing the physics one finds that) the surface would end up quite a lot colder than it is with the GHGs around.
And of course, he can't let himself understand that - it would refute his claim that only GHGs are saving the planet from cooking itself and if there's one thing we've learned from long experience, it is that TC never admits an error that would cause him to withdraw his major claims, so we joyously anticipate the frenzied digging deeper in TC's upcoming response ;-)
FTW!
Oh dear, Curtin continues his own destruction by claiming NOx does not absorb nor emit IR radiation. Dude, get some basic chemistry classes. I know that has been suggested to you numerous times, but the stupidity you show is getting worse by the day!
I call bullshit.
Take:
Now compare:
to:
Take:
Compare:
to:
Take:
Now compare:
to:
Take:
Now compare:
to:
Take:
Now compare:
to:
Take:
Now compare:
to:
Take:
Now compare:
to:
Take:
Now compare:
to:
Take:
Argh! Damn this cross over!
I've obviously left out a '/' in the last few of the quotes. I actually wanted to 'preview' that post, too...
And the subscripts and italics don't work within quotes either.
This sucks. Scienceblogs is obviously trying to rid itself of whatever remaining support it has following the last debacle.
Hnnnph.
should have been:
which I see has since been poked at several times by people who understand far better than Curtin does...
Tim Curtin said:
“The second key aspect of water vapor is that it is a potent greenhouse gas”[but one that is expunged by the IPCC's AR4 WG1]."
You apparently have not read the report.
From AR4 WG1:
"The two most abundant gases in the atmosphere, nitrogen (comprising 78% of the dry atmosphere) and oxygen (comprising 21%), exert almost no greenhouse effect. Instead, the greenhouse effect comes from molecules that are more complex and much less common. Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas, and carbon dioxide (CO2) is the second-most important one. Methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and several other gases present in the atmosphere in small amounts also contribute to the greenhouse effect."
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-1-3.html
Also,
"Water vapour is a key climate variable. In the lower troposphere, condensation of water vapour into precipitation provides latent heating which dominates the structure of tropospheric diabatic heating (Trenberth and Stepaniak, 2003a,b). Water vapour is also the most important gaseous source of infrared opacity in the atmosphere, accounting for about 60% of the natural greenhouse effect for clear skies (Kiehl and Trenberth, 1997), and provides the largest positive feedback in model projections of climate change (Held and Soden, 2000)"
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3s3-4-2.html
Why someone continues to make such easily refuted claims is beyond me.
I see some comments haven't made the transition... and no preview! Yuk!
I'm tempted to hit the "Report Abuse" links on all TC's posts. Is that what they're for?! To report the abuse of science by a master abuser;-)
"abuse of science by a master abuser;-)"
I think he is more of a bater than abuser.
What I find mildly amusing is that TC not only makes false claims about the report - but (presumably) believes that he'll get away with it on Deltoid.
Either his mental model is that Deltoid readers know as little about the report as readers of (say) a particular well-known award-winning "science" blog, or he wants to be called out for making false claims. (The same observation applies to his false statistical claims made at Tamino's place.)
Given that he's been endlessly corrected here (and at Tamino's) in the past, my money is on the latter.
See the entry for [Tim Curtin](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Persecution_complex) at Rational Wiki.
Robert Murphy: But the truth is that in the sections of AR4 WG1 which grapped the SPM and the media was the claim in Chapter 9 (Hegerl & Zwiers et al) that "most" (sic) of "observed" (sic) was due not to atmospheric water vapour but to rising non-condensing GHG, even though from your quote the former ("Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas") should have won the AR4 gold medal. Ch.9 was supposed to "attribute" AGW either to natural (eg H2O) or anthropogenic GHG, and concluded that the latter won, despite your claim.
Curtin tries to move the goalposts. After claiming AR4 "expunged" water vapour as a potent greenhouse gas and being shown disastrously wrong using two simple quotes from AR4, he now complains about a statement in chapter 9, which attributes AGW to increases in CO2 and its associated feedback due to amongst others increases in atmospheric water vapour. As Arrhenius already mentioned in 1896, as I showed using a quote, again refuting one of Curtin's false claims.
Is Curtin into SM or something? He keeps on getting slapped, but then just comes back with more misdirection!
Tim also seems to be a very (sic) person in other ways.
Sic transit gloria Timmy!
Well, Timski, I searched Ch9 for "due not to atmospheric water vapour" anywhere in it.
Not found. No occurrences. Not there.
Heck, tried "due not to". That wasn't there either.
So, Timski, where does Ch9 say what you say it says?
Tim Curtin.
I'm sure that you've noticed, but just in case you haven't, Tamino has shown how your 'analysis' appears when interpretted correctly.
Bottom line - as with just about anything you touch in the realm of science, it really doesn't mean what you think it means
.
"Robert Murphy: But the truth is that in the sections of AR4 WG1 which grapped the SPM and the media was the claim in Chapter 9 (Hegerl & Zwiers et al) that “most” (sic) of “observed” (sic) was due not to atmospheric water vapour but to rising non-condensing GHG"
And that is true. There is no contradiction between saying that water vapor provides most of the observed greenhouse effect and that the main cause of AGW is rising CO2. None. AGW wasn't caused by rising atmospheric water vapor; rising atmospheric water vapor is being caused by rising CO2 which is raising global temps.
"Ch.9 was supposed to “attribute” AGW either to natural (eg H2O) or anthropogenic GHG, and concluded that the latter won, despite your claim."
Again, there is no contradiction. Since global atmospheric water vapor content only changes because of changing temperatures (since it is the only GHG that readily precipitates out of the atmosphere at normally observed temps) , it is not possible for water vapor to be a forcing that initiates temperature change. It does however provide a great feedback for changing temps, as the IPCC states very clearly. It's the largest feedback in fact.
As was pointed out above, BTW, you have changed the goalposts by ignoring your earlier claim that the IPCC “expunged” water vapour as a potent greenhouse gas. The IPCC clearly and unambiguously stated that in fact water vapor was the most important greenhouse gas in terms of its contribution to the greenhouse effect. Your problem is you can't seem to understand the difference between a forcing and a feedback - which is forgivable - and the fact you can't admit you are wrong, which is far worse.
TC
Now it is clearly you that is confused. It is not an either or scenario wrt the total temperature increase once equilibrium has been achieved. It is that both GHG forcing and water vapour feedback contribute with an increase in GHGs causing a rise in temperature which in turn produces more water vapour.
AR4 wg1 chapter 9 p712
ar4 wg1 chapter 9
ar4 wg1 chapter 9 p.713
Now with that latter, ake your head out of the sand, look around, and then try to tell us this isn't what we are already seeing. Whilst you papa-hotel-alpha-romeo-tango > alpha-romeo-sierra-echo around with numbers reality is striking home every day - but not at your home clearly.
Never mind the IPCC 'twaddle', as you try to demean it only serving to demean yourself in the process, how about this:
Principles of Planetary Climate, Raymond T. (ISBN 978-0-521-86556-2) Pierrehumbert. p.65.
Please try to grasp the difference between a forcing.
In addition to RM's up-page pointers to AR4 mentioning water vapour and discerning between forcing and feedback is this from AR4 WG1, Section 2.3:
Oh, and LA's up-page contributions of course!
"Ch.9 was supposed to “attribute” AGW either to natural (eg H2O) or anthropogenic GHG, and concluded that the latter won, despite your claim."
Returning to this point again, as Lionel stated above it isn't an either/or issue. In fact, the purpose of the chapter was clearly stated in the chapter introduction:
"The objective of this chapter is to assess scientific understanding about the extent to which the observed climate changes that are reported in Chapters 3 to 6 are expressions of natural internal climate variability and/or externally forced climate change."
Also:
"Some external influences, such as changes in solar radiation and volcanism, occur naturally and contribute to the total natural variability of the climate system. Other external changes, such as the change in composition of the atmosphere that began with the industrial revolution, are the result of human activity. A key objective of this chapter is to understand climate changes that result from anthropogenic and natural external forcings, and how they may be distinguished from changes and variability that result from internal climate system processes. "
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-1.html
Again, since water vapor follows temperature, and not the other way around, it is not considered in the list of either natural or anthropogenic forcings. It is, however, an important feedback of any forcing that changes global temps, of whatever cause, and the IPCC treats it as such.
Don't know what happened there but my final line was this:
'Please try to grasp the difference between a forcing and a feedback'.
I keep a copy open in a WP until I am satisfied that the reply has been sent OK. So where the last three words went I don't know. Maybe TC can help there.
To Robert Murphy, Marco, Wow, P. Lewis, Lionel A:
Dear all, do read my paper.
It is all about atmospheric water vapour, for which as shorthand I use [H2O]. In my paper [H2O] is a primary radiative forcing, rather than merely a secondary feedback. AR4 WG1 and its Chapter 9 have indeed expunged [H2O] as a primary forcing, as stated in my paper. My paper also shows the absurdity in the Trenberth claim (quoted verbatim at its endnote 17) adopted by AR4 that natural [H2O] cannot be a primary forcing, as it is not a “long-lived” GHG because it precipitates down within 10 days or less, whereas [H2O] arising from the claimed global warming is a long-lived and powerful GHG because apparently it NEVER precipitates, presumably through some magical property of Clausius-Clapeyron that is not actually stated therein.
My paper also notes that although solar-induced evaporation does indeed precipitate, but since the evaporation is continuous, there always is natural [H2O] up there, as Tyndall and Arrhenius knew well.
This can be seen at the NCEP Reanalysis Produced at NOAA/ESRL PSD at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/timeseries/ Date submitted: 10/27/2011 at 03:25,
which I used in my paper, and have just revisited. While you all believe everything you read in your climate Koran, the facts are different. The NCEP data sets provide no evidence that what it calls “Precipitable Water” (i.e. [H2O]) has increased because of global warming between 1948 and 2011 (its start and end dates) (one has to set lat. and long., I used 90 to -90 and 180 to 0 respectively, but you can set your own). For PW, contrary to your Trenberth-Foster-Lambert hadiths, the linear and levels 3 and 6 polynomial trends are ALL negative (R2=0.2 for #6).
IOW, and to repeat, there is NO evidence that rising GMT has produced rising atmospheric water vapour. No wonder AR4 ignores the NCEP data.
For Specific Humidity at 300 mb, the same results are found, albeit with better fits (r2 = .58 for #6 poly).
For the Surface Gauss Precipitation Rate (Kg/m^2/s), the linear and poly #6 trends are both negative (R2 = 0.52 for the latter), and the #3 poly is just positive (R2=0.36).
So what evidence do you and Lambert have for rebutting the thesis in my paper?
Hi Tim. I am sorry you feel you have to make laughable legal threats to try and force people to publish your off-topic comments. Tamino was right to ban you, especially in light of your failed attempt to bully him. You are a truly disturbed individual and I hope you get some help.
There, fixed it for you.
Assuming that you could manage even that basic level of application, so what?
Really, so what?
What does a third order polynomial have to do with it, let alone a sixth order polynomial?!
John: if anybody was bullying it was Grant Foster with his strong personal attack on me, followed by his refusal to post my perfectly reasonable reply which Tim Lambert has kindly allowed to appear here (near the top).
Grant has continued with his bullying by a second thread attacking me and my earlier paper given at the Australian Conference of Economists (ACE2011) last year, to which he again denies me a right of reply (so far). Ironically, the error he correctly but over loudly trumpets about in his first attack is not in fact present in Table 1 of my ACE2011 paper, as he claims, since the D-W I reported there is in fact below the lower limit of the D-W test applicable to that data.
I realise I was silly to threaten seeking legal advice, since of course (to judge from Google when I last looked) Grant Foster appears to have little if any substance, which means I would be unlikely even to recover my costs.
Thanks all the same John for your solicitude, but I think the very strong ad hominem attacks Foster levels at me are over the top, not least because apart from the D-W error the rest of my paper is true and in the public interest, unlike his wholesale character assassination.
That is a lie. The worst he called you was "ignorant" and "arrogant". Neither descriptor, in my view, is incorrect. In response you likened him to Goebbels, thus linking him to an evil regieme responsible for the murder of millions of innocent people.
You threatened Tamino with a defamation action if he didn't publish your comment. That, my dear, deluded child, is as solid a case of bullying as one can find.
Nothing to do there with the fact you were not defamed. You are a thin-skinned, paranoid, simpering little coward (before you accuse me of ad hom, those descriptors can happily be matched to your actions), and your descent into irrelevant personal attacks and empty threats is indicative of how invalid your arguments have become.
It's quite telling that you equate criticism of your work with criticism of your person, and it certainly helps explain why you can't admit you are wrong. But would someone who was right behave like you?
There's your problem!!!
As far as I can see, nothing you have written on this thread or at Tamino's demonstrates a good reason to treat atmospheric H2O as a forcing, let alone overcome the arguments already given as to why it is a feedback.
(Oh, and if you're seeking global coverage, do at least check whether "180 to 0" covers what you think it does. Globes are tricky things to grok, right?
And if you got something that basic wrong...again...then you are either masochistic or deeply self-deluded about your competence outside of your field. But hey, what's new about that?)
Speaking of not-new, I'm barely going to laugh out loud at your references to fitting polynomials of various degrees with no physical basis. You need some new comedic material.
Well, he has to use ^3 because that's what is frequently shown on top of Spencer's UAH series, and he has to exceed his previous heights of stupidity where he used ^5 for atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and (IIRC) continued to defend them even after I produced some graphs to show the physical absurdity implied by his fit, because you can't tell the same joke twice with the same effect.
As TC helpfully points out, Tamino has another post on TC's claims.
Thanks Lotharsson, but you omit to mention Foster's refusal so far to admit his error re the D-W in my ACE2011 paper. I am fully aware that 0-180 covers only half the globe, I leave it to you to do the other half and prove me wrong.
Fitting trends, it seems worth seeking the best fit, and that's why Excel etc facilitate it. A linear fit on PW with R2=0.0002 hardly supports you guys’ belief in PW as a powerful feedback. The polynomials fit ENSO and PDO amazingly well.
Was Tyndall wrong to consider [H2O] as a forcing not a feedback? His physical experiments proved it is a forcing because by heating his cylinder with pre-inserted H2O he found the absorption and radiation by the H2O was more than 6 times larger than from CO2:
“Air direct from the laboratory, containing therefore its carbonic acid and aqueous
vapour, produced an absorption of 15.Deducting the effect of the gaseous acids, it was found that the quantity of aqueous vapour diffused through the atmosphere on the day in question, produced an absorption at least equal to thirteen times that of the atmosphere itself.” Thus removing the CO2 reduced absorption by both H2O and CO2 by only 2.
.
I have now done bivariate LSR of ESRL surface air temperature on PW and [CO2] from 1959 to 2011, and using Foster’s D-W tables, it is clear there is autoregression, with D-W=1.325 while the lower D-W limit is 1.49 (n=53, 2 variables, 5%), unless the intercept is through the origin, in which case D-W at 1.415 is in the uncertain zone (lower 1.382, upper 1.424).
Differencing, as recommended by Granger (won real Nobel prize in 2003) and Newbold (1974) if not by Foster, raises the D-W to 2.65 but eliminates any statistical significance for effects of changes in [CO2] on temperature change (intercept through origin).
"In my paper [H2O] is a primary radiative forcing, rather than merely a secondary feedback. "
In the real world, however, it can't be.
"My paper also shows the absurdity in the Trenberth claim (quoted verbatim at its endnote 17) adopted by AR4 that natural [H2O] cannot be a primary forcing, as it is not a “long-lived” GHG because it precipitates down within 10 days or less, whereas [H2O] arising from the claimed global warming is a long-lived and powerful GHG because apparently it NEVER precipitates, presumably through some magical property of Clausius-Clapeyron that is not actually stated therein."
Never is it claimed that H20 is anything but a feedback. Nowhere is it claimed it can't precipitate out of the atmosphere if the water vapor increase is the result of global warming - you made that claim up by pulling it out of your posterior. You are full of shit Tim. You are a lying moron.
"whereas [H2O] arising from the claimed global warming is a long-lived and powerful GHG because apparently it NEVER precipitates"
Rereading your last post,Mr. Curtin, it appears you meant to say CO2 there (one would hope, anyway). Of course it is true that CO2 doesn't precipitate out of the atmosphere. The only GHG that does is water vapor. What you have completely confused is the difference between the residence time of an individual CO2 molecule (which is short- about 5 years) and the time it takes for added CO2 to be removed from the atmosphere (which takes decades or longer). Add it to the long and ever growing list of things that confuse you. Natural carbon sinks simply take a very long time to work. Water vapor, on the other hand, changes essentially instantaneously.
"the NCEP data sets provide no evidence that what it calls “Precipitable Water” (i.e. [H2O]) has increased because of global warming between 1948 and 2011..."
That specific humidity has increased because of warming is a well documented observation. It's expected from basic physics, and it happens. That you are willing to accept the early NCEP upper atmosphere data that is known to have serious problems is very in keeping with your general propensity to incompetency. You don't know stats, you don't know physics, and you don't know jack. I have no more inclination to waste my time on a dishonest hack like you. Have a nice life of willful ignorance. :)
Lotharsson, did you just compare Bernard to TC? ;-)
Ouch!
Robert Murphy said above: You are full of shit Tim. You are a lying moron.
If that is not abuse, what would be?
Calling people 'Goebbelistic'?
Reply to Murphy 25 May:
Murphy: “That specific humidity has increased because of warming is a well documented observation. It’s expected from basic physics, and it happens”. Really?
Yes, with a pathetic linear trend fit at R2 of 0.26 (at 1000 mb), whilst at poly #6 the prediction for 2012 is negative (R2=0.57).
Get real.
Tim
So you're admitting making deliberate and uncorrected mistakes now?
That's a tiny bit of progress.
But still making the same idiotic fundamental mistakes, I see. I won't bother to explain why this is a mistake, since it's been dealt with several times on this thread alone and you are clearly either intellectually unable or determinedly unwilling to grok it - or you're simply lying about it. None of the options makes you look good.
To demonstrate that it's abuse, you'd have to show that it's not a reasonable inference from the evidence provided (e.g. on this blog, and perhaps others).
Allowing for the colloquial form of expression used, I'm not at all convinced you will be able to plausibly achieve that. Your best shot appears to be to vigorously dispute one of either "lying" or "moron" by enthusiastically embracing the other, given that "Full of shit" has been beyond all reasonable dispute for quite some time.
I nominate this for Best Clown-Trolling One-Liner in May!
In just two words the guy touting the completely unphysical implications of a 6th order polynomial fit ironically undermines his entire faux thesis by bringing the audience crashing back to the ground and bounds of physical reality - and most remarkably of all plays the entire thing completely deadpan, inviting the audience to speculate as to whether he's actually in on the joke, or not.
Sunspot at his best rarely approached such compact brilliance.
> Was Tyndall wrong to consider [H2O] as a forcing not a feedback? His physical experiments proved it is a forcing because by heating his cylinder with pre-inserted H2O he found the absorption and radiation by the H2O was more than 6 times larger than from CO2:
TC, you blatantly still haven't bothered to learn the difference between a forcing and a feedback like I suggested right back at the top of the thread. Contrary to what you seem to think, just because something acts as a GHG, it does not make it a forcing. This is something I teach to second-year undergraduates and I can't be bothered trying to explain it to you any further. There are very concise definitions of both terms in the IPCC report and I suggest you try reading it. You won't catch cooties, I promise.
TC
You seem to have overlooked the part in a previous post of mine where I stated that I had, but then you overlook much.
As it was, I found your paper turgid and often ambiguous. It would appear that the same clarity of thought that you have displayed here and at Tamino’s is a hallmark of yours.
Another hallmark is the ideological basis of much of your production, so much so that it nearly always comes across as a rant. Here is a brief selection to illustrate, although we have to imagine the ‘redacted’ parts:
A href=”http://www.skepticalscience.com/search.php?Search=Curtin&x=0&y=0”>Curtin’s Capers
Little wonder that you are non too popular because of your habit of calling malfeasance where there is none. It seems typical that those who are quick to denigrate the thoughts and words of others are so thin skinned when it comes to getting some of their own back. Also, such people nearly always blur the difference between personal attack (Ad hominem) and a disagreement with thoughts and ideas.
In short, any discussion with those who have failed to develop rational and reasonable mores in debate is likely to be non-productive.
"If that is not abuse"
If it is, it is well deserved.
Grant Foster at his “Open Mind” (joke?) along with TL here has aggressively and rudely criticised my paper “Applying Econometrics to the Carbon Dioxide Control Knob” in The Scientific World Journal 2012.
What really puzzles GF is the way I rejected regression with the un-differenced variables. My first regression was temperature (GISStemp) against greenhouse-gas climate forcing.
My paper stated (inaccurately as GF rightly points out) “The results appear to confirm the findings of Hegerl et al. [17] with a fairly high R2 and an excellent t-statistic (>2.0) and P-value (2.0) for spurious correlation (i.e., serial autocorrelation), see Table 1. This result validates the null hypothesis of no statistically significant influence of radiative forcing by noncondensing GHGs on global mean temperatures”.
GF helpfully provided Tables that I was unaware of that set out the critical values of the DW or d statistic, which for one independent variable and n=31 observations, are dL = 1.36 and dU = 1.5, but my Table 1 reported DW at 1.75, so although well below 2, it was still above the dU critical value below which there is a possibility of autocorrelation, but also well above dL which unequivocally spells autocorrelation.
However there are various statistics textbooks for which DW around 2 is treated as a rule of thumb for detecting autocorrelation. For example, Feinstein & Thomas (2002: 315): “If there is no autocorrelation, the value of d will be approximately 2”.
More directly applicable is Statistical Analysis in Climate Research (von Storch and Zwiers 1999). At p.14 they state “meteorological time series are generally auto-correlated”, a fact evidently unknown to TL, and at p.254: “Samples taken from white noise processes will have values of d (i.e. DW) near 2.” Plainly my Table showed d=1.75.
There are ways of dealing with auto-regression, and one is the first differencing I employed in the rest of my paper (see von S & Z: 204, equation 10.6).
But in his second attack on me (“Big Difference” 23 May) GF derided me for using first differences: “Curtin claimed that the absence of autocorrelation is required for valid regression, which is also wrong. Nonetheless he uses that claim to justify requiring regression be performed on differenced variables. Curtin isn’t the first (and won’t be the last) to claim that regression of climate variables like global temperature should be done using differenced variables.” Actually real Nobel Economics prize winner Clive Granger (with Newbold 1974) recommended that, so can we expect TL and GF to be nominated for Nobels soon for reversing that?
Then von S and Z have this to say about DW and differencing: “Since first differencing filters out low-frequency variability and ENHANCES high-frequency variability (cf.11.4.4 and Figure 11.9) time series from processes more persistent than white noise will tend to have values of d less than 2… Samples from processes that have relatively more high-frequency variability than white noise will tend to have values greater than 2” (1999:254) (my caps).
That is what my paper confirms, as the DW in its differenced regressions are all >2. However von S and Z state in fn1 on p.254 that “a time series that has been differenced to remove [auto-regressive] trend will also show excessive high-frequency variability” – but is that not what we observe in the climate of the real world?
But as I have noted before, while the von S and Zwiers textbook is examplary, Zwiers as co-lead author of WG1 Chapter 9 NEVER deploys ANY of the techniques he expounds in his co-authored textbook. To me that suggests he knows that if he had, the whole edifice of his Chapter 9 (the SOLE source of the AR4 claim that “most” of observed global warming since 1950 is due to rising [CO2]) would crumble into dust, as my paper shows, despite the meretricious attacks on it here, and not least because at no point do Hegerl and Zwiers as leads of that chapter even mention Tyndall’s demonstration of the primary radiative forcing from non-anthropogenic atmospheric water vapour.
And so to Windmills
" aggressively and rudely criticised my paper "
Ooh! Ooh!
You are so pathetic, Tim Curtin; one cannot help but feel sorry for you.
BTW:
Pot. Kettle. Black.
I've entered "corrigendum" and "corrigenda" as search items in SWJ's search field, and the results were "Your search returned no results" both times. I entered "econometrics" just to check things were working and it returned Timmy's paper as the only result. There doesn't appear to be any information from SWJ's home page about Corrigenda and Errata policies, which seems unusual.
Is this journal just too young to have any corrigenda perhaps, or have all their authors to date just published perfect papers/results?
Lewis: I do not think corrections are necessary:
1. Re D-W, as I have noted above D-W around 2 has been an acceptable benchmark even to von Storch and Zwiers of AR4 WG1 Ch.9. Moreover pace Foster's false allegation, the D-W in my ACE2011 paper that he also attacks is well below the lower DW (dL).
2. As for my 1st differencing , criticised by Foster, but recommended in dozens of texts including Granger & Newbold 1974 and even by Enders 2010. Foster is entitled to his opinion like you but has either of you published anything of value and honesty?
I've seen comments strongly suggesting it's pretty much a vanity publication journal, in which case perhaps a section for corrections would merely deliver negative ;-)
Loathsome Lotharssome: have you ever made a peer reviewed PUBLISHED comment here or anywhere which is a useful contribution to knowledge? Do tell us.
Despite the risk of being off thread, may I make the point here, as I have in my paper which is a follow-up to my TSWJ paper, but this time under peer review in a mainstream Australian academic journal, that John Tyndall (1861) actually showed by his physical experiments that it is the non-GHG gases, namely Oxygen and Nitrogen (+ derivatives other than CO2 and H2O), which have what climate scientists (all of whom are flat earthers) believe is the alleged heat trapping effect of atmospheric H2O and CO2.
Tyndall’s experiments showed that heating a cylinder at one end which had only N and O produced no measurable change in T at the other end, whilst if both CO2 and H2O were present there was a strong absorbing and radiative effect.
With only H2O and CO2 in the cylinder, the heating emerging at the far end was 15 times that when only N and O were present. Eliminating the CO2, the heating was 13 times larger.
If any of you can read, Tyndall's experiments show that N and O are the real GHGs, as they neither absorb nor radiate heat, while it is the aqueous water vapour and carbonic acid (as JT called them) that both absorb and radiate the heat diffused from the earth's surface, thereby creating a cooling equilibrium, unlike the N and O, which in the absence of the [H2O] and [CO2] really would cook us.
Tim Curtin#1:
“The second key aspect of water vapor is that it is a potent greenhouse gas"
Tim Curtin#2:
"...it is the non-GHG gases, namely Oxygen and Nitrogen (+ derivatives other than CO2 and H2O), which have what climate scientists (all of whom are flat earthers) believe is the alleged heat trapping effect of atmospheric H2O and CO2. "
Tim (as in Lambert, not Curtin) in light of T.C.'s comment @ 2.26 p.m. 27 May 2012 may I suggest correcting the thread title from "Tim Curtin’s incompetence with basic statistics" to "Tim Curtin's Topsy-Turvy Incompetent and Most Sublimely Fcukwitted Non Comprehension Of Basic Science In The World Like, Ever". The corollary to Tim C's headsplitting scientific "logic" of course being that moreatmospheric CO2 can only be a good thing. Quelle surprise.
It's beyond parody and deserves to be forwarded to the editors of every currently publishing science journal so they know what to expect when a Curtin paper lands on their collective if virtual doormats. Heartland might have bought it, but they're broke and in a high-G death spiral from which little can escape before impact.
This is the most amazing display of cluelessness I've seen in a long time, and I've seen plenty of cluelessness from the Denialati.
The only other wingnut pseudoscience that I could possibly compare it to is Grima Wormtongue's bizarre abuse of statistics and graphs - and in keeping with the latter Dunningly-Krugered individual I suspect that there is not a single person on the planet who could explain to Curtin why he is so painfully wrong.
It's been a good laugh, but the fact that there are hundreds of folk who will be completely suckered by this mumbo-jumbo makes it merely sad, and concerning.
If this nonsensical affectation of science is where the world is at, we're FUBARed.
That's where the evidence points.
Bernard @ 5:10 pm
Have a mung through the comments here and and here for some more Curtin's capers..
As for being FUBARed, yes you could call it 'curtins' I suppose as the world would have been 'Curtined'..
So Tim Curtin, expects me to believe his denialati horse hockey incoherent alchemy econometrics mathematical nonsensical high pass filter, purely designed to amplify the noise and eliminate the basic signal, actually overturns two hundred years of modern peer reviewed science since the days of Joseph Fourier. As, if that would happen in the real world, where global warming is a reality.
TC's new econometrics illogical paper, fails "Occam's Razor Test", at every level possible.
The definition of "Econometrics" is..............................................
It ignores the latest paper, in the long line of many, published in a real peer reviewed journal under the title "Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium".
link: - http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00649.1?journalCo…
Personally, on a grading of "0 to 100", I would grade TC's paper of econometric mathematical nonsense, zero out of possible score of one hundred. I suspect a consensus opinion from a 97% plus of all real mathematicians among us, would concur on the same grading as well. I.E. a complete waste of bytes in digital cyberspace.
Reality has a liberal bias and an "open mind".
The irony here in this thread, is that every time Tim posts a reply, the bigger the hole he digs and the larger the volume of horse hockey he buries himself in, by his own hand.
Tim Curtin, infestation to be removed in 10, 9.8..................
I won on the lottery this weekend. The winnings are almost enough to meet the costs of publishing in TSWJ, so I've decided I'm going to submit a paper there. The $1000 question, of course, is what subject area I should write about.
Now, I've been following the discussions on a couple of right- and left-wing economics blogs over the past week or three and feel I now have a good handle on where everyone has been going wrong with regard to economics theory(ies) these last 150 years or so. None of the bona fide economists [sic] writing on those blogs have had a good word to say about my ideas. Leftists and rightists have been ganging up on me. What do they know? All they seem to do is berate me for my "silly" uneducated views and point me here! They are blind to the fact that my 43-degree polynomial describes Burkina Faso's GDP better than any of their under-parameterised models. And I've pointed out to them that by using my theory and a 74-degree polynomial that a way out of the Greek/euro-zone crisis exists where everyone is a winner: yes, low inflation, wiping out of national debts, full employment, ... and there is no need for any austerity programmes.
When I'm published they'll all have to bow down to my superior knowledge then, won't they!?
Oh sh... TSWJ doesn't publish economics papers (well, that seems to be true anyway). What to do now?
> If any of you can read, Tyndall’s experiments show that N and O are the real GHGs, as they neither absorb nor radiate heat, while it is the aqueous water vapour and carbonic acid (as JT called them) that both absorb and radiate the heat diffused from the earth’s surface, thereby creating a cooling equilibrium, unlike the N and O, which in the absence of the [H2O] and [CO2] really would cook us.
Good grief. Read Tyndall yourself (or any textbook on the subject) and you'll see you have it all completely back to front. It's the IR absorbing gases that act as GHGs and keep the planet warm.
This has been somewhat entertaining but by now I am genuinely hoping you are just engaging in some kind of masochistic form of trolling or this is some elaborate form of character assassination, I really do.
Folks, remember, there are youngsters reading this who don't have a clue about the statistical claims being made. Surely one of you can take up where Tamino dropped TC off and clarify the revised claims TC is making.
Not "This result validates the null hypothesis of no statistically significant influence" -- that's done already.
This stuff:
"white noise processes will have values of d (i.e. DW) near 2.” Plainly my Table showed d=1.75"
or
Citation for
"regression of climate variables like global temperature should be done using differenced variables. ... Nobel Economics prize winner Clive Granger (with Newbold 1974) recommended that"
or
"the critical values of the DW or d statistic, ... for one independent variable and n=31 observations, are dL = 1.36 and dU = 1.5, but my Table 1 reported DW at 1.75, ... l above the dU critical value below which there is a possibility of autocorrelation, but also well above dL which unequivocally spells autocorrelation. ..."
or
"excessive high-frequency variability” – but is that not what we observe in the climate of the real world?"
Don't chase after the Gish Gallop, ignore the nitrogen and oxygen, the blatant errors get thrown out to distract from the claims that actually take some expertise to make sense of.
I knew it - none of you can understand what Tyndall really showed, least of all JamesA.
In the absence of CO2 and H2O Tyndall's cylinder did not absorb or radiate the heat he applied to its oxygen and nitrogen (which constitute 95-99% of the atmosphere), with barely a flicker of his temperature dial at the far end of the cylinder. Thus eliminating CO2 and H2O as Hansen, the IPCC, and Gillard desire, the heat absorbed by the globe's surface would remain in situ (but for convective winds stirring it up a bit).
Adding CO2 caused his dial to register some heat reaching the far end, and adding H2O as well brought the increase up to 15 times that in the absence of the CO2 and H2O. That heat radiated and radiates above the surface in all directions but eventually mostly upwards and outwards to space.
That is why the CO2 and H2O are not GHGs, as they are what enable the incoming solar heat to be radiated and reach space - recall that a real greenhouse is designed to keep heat in and not allow it to escape. Just as Hank cannot do sums, 97% of climate scientists by their own admission are illiterate.
Tim C, you're just making a fool of yourself.
Further to my last, I just saw this from “jaymam” at Bishop Hill 27 May:
“Dr Myles Allen, you say ‘the solution is perfectly simple. Anyone who extracts fossil carbon out of the ground should be obliged to put a fraction of that carbon back underground in the form of ‘sequestered’ (buried) CO2. Oxford’s Physics department says ‘Estimated cumulative emissions from fossil fuel use, cement production and land-use change since industrialization began are 557,768,000,000 tonnes of carbon’".
According to jaymam’s calculations, “if you manage to sequester that amount of carbon as CO2, you will be sequestering 1,486,000,000,000 tonnes of oxygen as well. That sounds very bad.”
That’s because as I showed in my ACE2011 paper, using a typical hydrocarbon to generate electricity produces H2O as well as CO2 as by-products:
C3H8 + 5O2 → Energy + 3CO2 + 4H2O …(1)
The volume of H2O is large at well over 50% of the CO2, at least 18GtH2O, but with 6 times the radiative effect as per Tyndall, so reducing hydrocarbon usage by 50-80% from the 2000 level could make for some very cold winters by 2050.
It is not surprising that just as climate scientists never divulge equation (1) they also never mention (2), the formula whereby a large proportion of the emissions of CO2 and H2O are absorbed by photosynthesis both on land and in the oceans:
2CO2 + 2 H2O + photons → 2CH2O + 2O2 ...(2)
Or, in words, carbon dioxide + water + light energy → carbohydrate + oxygen.
That means falling wheat yields in addition to that from the cooling, see the CSIRO study commissioned by Ross Garnaut (2008) which showed the rise in CO2 and warmth would produce significant gains in wheat yields across Australia, with bigger gains at 550 ppm than at 450 ppm (Table 6.5), by as much as 18.9% cumulative by 2100 at Katanning WA, and 14.1% at Moree NSW. By the same token, reducing [CO2] and warmth would send yields in the opposite direction, suggesting a hungry as well as chilly future for all of us.
Oh, for fuck's sake Curtin.
Do you understand what you're saying?!
Using your bizarre interpretation of Tyndall's work, that 'greenhouse' gases cool an atmosphere and thus a planet ("...eliminating CO2 and H2O as Hansen, the IPCC, and Gillard desire, the heat absorbed by the globe’s surface would remain in situ..."), a planet with no atmosphere (or with no atmosphere containing greenhouse gases) would, given insolation, continue to heat until it evaporated away.
Do you not see this?!
> I knew it – none of you can understand what Tyndall really showed, least of all JamesA.
Do you honestly think that the more likely reason the overwhelming majority of scientists disagree with you is because they misunderstood one of the core fundamental physical principles that forms the foundations of climate science, or because you have?
The earth's surface does not rely on gases to remove its heat, contrary to what you seem to think. It is perfectly capable of radiating heat itself as a black body (give or take), the majority going out in the form of IR. Gases like water and CO2 absorb part of this outgoing radiation and keep it in the atmosphere, thereby creating a warming effect.
To illustrate how much of a compete tit you are currently making of yourself, I pose you this: The moon is (on average) the same distance to the sun as the earth but has no atmosphere to speak of. By your logic, this means it should cook itself and yet it is (on average) much colder than the earth. How can this be?
One Tim Curtin says:
"That is why the CO2 and H2O are not GHGs"
The other Tim Curtin disagrees:
“The second key aspect of water vapor is that it is a potent greenhouse gas”
Not only that, RM, but from his "ground-breaking paper at TSWJ we have:
Major corrigenda required at TSWJ in light of his recent pronouncements here!?
Bernard: what helps to cool is absorption and then radiation, whilst what warms is retention via N and O.
JamesA:
You said: "Gases like water and CO2 absorb part of this outgoing radiation and keep it in the atmosphere, thereby creating a warming effect". But the warming effect is less than it would be if only N and O were in the atmosphere.
JamesA: read Arrhenius and you will see wnat garbage you have parroted here re the Moon.
Lewis: you are thicker than a miilion planks.
Which is nowhere near as thick as you, Tim Cretin!
Svante Arrhenius
On the Influence of Carbon Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground.
Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, Series 5, Volume 41, April 1896, pp.237-276
http://www.geocities.jp/nomonomoglobalwarming/Papers/Arrhenius/Arrheniu…
A collection including that Arrhenius paper:
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Special:GoogleSearch?cx=0050799729…
Bernard J - if I see anyone else at all repeat any of this dimwittering anywhere else at all, I think you're right.
We;re FUBARed.
So TC,
Is 1,486,000,000,000 tonnes of oxygen a large number? Relative to the total mass of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere?
Nope. It's only 0.13% (by mass) or ~0.09% (by adjusted volume).
Is 18GtH2O a large number?
Relative to the total mass of H2O in Earth's atmosphere?
Nope. It's only 0.14% (by mass).
So even if we were to magically sequester ALL the cumulative 557,768,000,000 tonnes of carbon TODAY (in zero time even), your "large numbers" don't even amount to a hill of beans.
But wait, how about atmospheric CO2? Now that would drop by ~20% (by mass) or get us back to about ~320 ppmv.
So O2 and H2O don't change for squat, while CO2 drops significantly.
But of course, at only 320 ppmv we'll all freeze to death or all die of hunger first, using your own math impaired logic.
I note that Curtin is still pushing the notion that there's a CO2 crisis:
It seems to escape the guy that the planet's biosphere is adapted to a cycle of atmospheric CO2 concentration that fluctuates between 180 and 280 ppm.
For those who prefer a dynamic illustration, with voicing-over, Richard Alley's comments here, at around the two minute mark are, (indirectly) demonstrate the same thing.
> You said: “Gases like water and CO2 absorb part of this outgoing radiation and keep it in the atmosphere, thereby creating a warming effect”. But the warming effect is less than it would be if only N and O were in the atmosphere.
No it isn't. CO2 and water vapour absorb infra red. Nitrogen and oxygen don't. The peak in the earth's thermal emission spectrum is in the infra red. It's not complicated.
> JamesA: read Arrhenius and you will see wnat garbage you have parroted here re the Moon.
Ooh, your standard brush-off. Do I sense a bit of cognitive dissonance there?
That's like saying that a rock is just making a rock of itself.
With a moniker like "ianam" (he is not called "Ian". Readers may wish to try to figure out this acronym: he'is denying being... something), methinks the gentleman doth protest too much. Oyyaam.
Ah, Tim Curtin, you mentioned Bishop Hill's blog, the author of this complete anti-science horse hockey delusional fiction, called "The Hockey Stick Illusion : Climategate and the Corruption of Science". It is a goldmine of pure " BS" and gish gallop of failed furphies, from the first page until the last. Andrew is a parrot and he is not an original thinker. He is well known for his almost daily head in the sand denial of reality gish gallop garbage. Neither he, nor a majority of his parrot readers, have a clue about how real science works, such is their level of pure ignorance of the real world.
Mean while, back in the real world of reality, down in Antarctica, both the "Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf" and the "Pine Island Glacier", are cracking up rapidly, in the middle of a Southern Hemisphere winter of 2012, as we speak.
Up north, in the Arctic Circle, the usual rapid summer thaw, is underway and is allowing the release of an even more potent highly reactive greenhouse gas called "Methane".
As I said before, Tim, every time you open your mouth, an incoherent gish gallop flows forth and you bury yourself deeper in your own Mount Everest size pile of horse hockey.
Epic face palm. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RA06Z5e1ZFc
For a guy who complains that attacks on his claims are abusive personal attacks, you sure do engage in a lot of personal attacks that appear to be "abusive" by your standards.
As I've pointed out in the past (and in response to you, IIRC), yes I have. I have a Ph.D., a couple of peer-reviewed papers from that time period (and I guess one could also count 15+ issued patents).
And yet, the validity of my comments here is entirely unchanged by providing those facts, and your attempted ad hominem on this point, if anything, appears to reinforce the impression that you can't defend your claims. Furthermore I suspect you would look even worse if I didn't have peer-reviewed publications to my name yet still see gaping flaws in your argument, so perhaps that wasn't a very smart attack to attempt...
TC, would you listen to Spencer? He speaks to your confusion: "The SECOND misconception is that because greenhouse gases allow the atmosphere to cool to outer space, adding more GHGs can’t cause warming."
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/02/more-musings-from-the-greenhouse/
...and even more determined doubling down on that claim demonstrate that you can "prove" anything you like as long as you get to arbitrarily redefine the meaning of key words, and have no particular commitment to logical coherence or aversion to looking incredibly foolish.
For TC's sake I rather hope that he is attempting to gain a place in the dictionary under "Poe" or launch an entertainment career based on idiosyncratic faux-scientific comedic stylings, rather than seriously attempting to out-TC himself. On the latter I fear that he has succeeded, apparently even topping "sea water is potable if enough CO2 is added".
Epic face palm indeed.
Curtin is one of those stunningly Dunningly-Krugered folk who are completely convinced of their brilliance in spite of overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary and who, in the process of espousing their theories on perpetual motion, free energy, vaccine/HIV conspiracies, alian-lizard British royals, and climate "fraud", manage to generate more humour than could a determined and talented comedian.
At the top of page two of this thread Curtin promotes his ACE2011 'paper'. I came across it recently for entirely different reasons, when I was involved in the review and audit of hundreds of 2011 publications for my institution, across many disciplines. Government funding procedure specifies that scholarly articles and conference papers must be demonstrably peer-reviewed, and finding that Curtin had put a paper in ACE2011 flagged all the other ACE2011 papers from our university for particular scrutiny - guilt by association. Given that Curtin's nonsense was permitted, we are concerned that the whole review process for the conference is inadequate, and that passing such papers could have consequences if it turns out that they were inappropriately claimed...
Seriously, you couldn't make this stuff up. This is his introduction - see how many logical fallacies and outright errors and misrepresentations of fact can be found in this alone:
If the Australian conference of economists passes this level of intellectual incompetence, it says a lot about the state of economics as a respectable (or otherwise) discipline. It also makes me somewhat relieved that we have people other than just economists making economic decisions for the country...
Yeah Bernerd we've got politicians....
Aaahahahahahahahaha
Sunspot's off his medication again.
And notice that he has nothing substantive to say about the subject of Curtin's extraordinary scientific incompetence. Although having said that, I guess that Sunspot just doesn't have the intellectual capacity to understand that Curtin's blowing it from out of his arse.
Watch it spotty, or Tim Lambert might pull in the slack and do unto you as he has done to that other bent tresspasser.
You don't have to worry any more Bernerd. I've said all I have to say at Tim's place. Just read Nasif Nahle over at Jennifer Marohasy's place.
Cheers
Mack.
"read Nasif Nahle" = look at sciency-looking, densely worded pictograms filed under alt.science.crank.
Could we have a rule that every time a troll says this they really can't return?
Dear Hank Roberts
Many thanks for your link to Spencer who like me shows how "because greenhouse gases allow the atmosphere to cool to outer space, adding more GHGs can’t cause warming.”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/02/more-musings-from-the-greenhouse/
Spencer (plus 9 out of 10 posters there in just a week) provides massive support for my contention that it is N and O that are the real greenhouse gases, as [CO2] and [H2O] are what absorb and then radiate heat, ultimately all to space.
I missed that Spencer post as I was busy writing my now under peer-review paper at a mainstream journal here showing exactly what he demonstrates.
Tim Curtin, given that N and O are transparent to IR wavelengths, and you yourself have stated previously "Tyndall’s experiments show that N and O are the real GHGs, as they neither absorb nor radiate heat then by what magical, or even transdimensional and hitherto unknown mechanism do they manage to achieve the properties of a GHG that you assert?
Dear Bernard J; Many thanks for the publicity you accord me.
But you are in error when you imply my ACE2011 paper was not peer reviewed by saying "At the top of page two of this thread Curtin promotes his ACE2011 ‘paper’. I came across it recently for entirely different reasons, when I was involved in the review and audit of hundreds of 2011 publications for my institution, across many disciplines. Government funding procedure specifies that scholarly articles and conference papers must be demonstrably peer-reviewed",#
My paper was so reviewed, and this year for ACE2012 I was asked to review no fewer than 3 papers, of which only 2 on climate issues.
You claim to have academic credentials, but never disclose them. I do, and I doubt you can rival my publication record ( at www.timcurtin.com), despite me not having been a paid academic since 1970.
What [Dr Spencer wrote is (emphasis added):
Spencer (plus 9 out of 10 posters there in just a week) provides massive support for my contention that it is N and O that are the real greenhouse gases, as [CO2] and [H2O] are what absorb and then radiate heat, ultimately all to space.
Seeing as you are under the delusional impression that the work of Tyndall and Arrhenius (of all people) support that laughable notion when they clearly said the opposite, it's understandable that you would think that. Roy Spencer may employ some pretty twisted logic from time to time, but at least he knows some basic physics.
I missed that Spencer post as I was busy writing my now under peer-review paper at a mainstream journal here showing exactly what he demonstrates.
I venture that you need to spend less time writing and more time reading. I suggest you start with an undergraduate physics textbook and work your way up.
TC @12.00 (ATTLG time - Dodgson)
Those 9 out of 10 are being as absurd as you, something I would have expected from WUWT or CardinalPuff but Spencer should know better, but then given the rich crop in 'Spencer Slip Ups' elsewhere maybe we should not be too surprised.
Reality is rather different:
Principles of Planetary Climate by Raymond T. Pierrehumbert page 5.
Now you should ask yourself what is the difference between the form of the molecules N2 and O2 to that of the H2O and CO2 molecules which make one set unresponsive to the IR band of the electromagnetic spectrum whilst the other absorbs and re-emits energy in those wavelengths.
I would suggest a good book on Physical Chemistry - P.W. Atkins would go a long way to help you out.
For now a hint:
Archer & Pierrehumbert, The Warming Papers page 23.
Look that latter up to discover what it is about those molecules that make it so.
What Tim Curtin choose to excerpt:
"Many thanks for your link to Spencer who like me shows how “because greenhouse gases allow the atmosphere to cool to outer space, adding more GHGs can’t cause warming.”
What Spencer actually wrote, along with what Curtin excluded (in bold):
"The SECOND misconception is that because greenhouse gases allow the atmosphere to cool to outer space, adding more GHGs can’t cause warming. While it is true that GHGs do lead to an overall decrease in the mass-weighted average temperature of the atmosphere, their altering of the energy budget of individual layers leads to net warming of the lowest layers of the atmosphere."
Yet again Curtain dishonestly twists the sources he uses in an attempt to make them say the opposite of what they actually said. That's the type of deceit one grows to expect from his ramblings. That's the type of thing that would count as academic fraud if he were still in academia.
Good grief, based on the evidence on Deltoid alone he's got far more fundamental things to learn about physics than that...
That should be Curtin, not Curtain.
You have a profound comprehension difficulty.
First I said:
which is true. I then said:
which is also demonstrably the case, as your incompetent work was permitted to be presented at what is supposed to be a high quality professional conference of national/international significance.
Those two statements of mine are not inconsistent. You may well have been 'reviewed', and my own previous corroboration of the ACE2011 process confirmed that "referreeing" occurred, but this does not mean that you were reviewed by people expert, or even competent, in the matters that you tried to address in your 'paper'. The resulting publication proves indeed that you were not adequately reviewed.
The fact that ACE2012 asked you to review other climate change-related presentations further demonstrates that they are likely to have lax reviewing procedures, at least in some corners, which would not be surprising as they have to clear a lot of material in a short time. Proper review for large conferences has always been a fraught endeavour.
In fact the whole issue of ACE reviewing is sufficiently concerning to me that I will be making it a point of discussion at an academic audit committee meeting: for ACE conferences we may require supplementary evidence of professional peer-review as required by the HERDC specification, if the current standard is as lax as it appears.
On the matter of publications I have a more than a few, and they are in credible journals with good impact factors - not remotely like the vanity presses and under-the-radar missings of slip-shod pseudoscience that you squeeze out. But my publications are irrelevant to this discussion - the subject is you and the nonsense that you promulgate, and the tricks that you employ to have it printed.
Look back over the thread, Curtin. You've been unequivocably demonstrated to have both basic statistical analysis and fundamental scientific principles completely wrong - something that you have been consistently doing for years. You're a climate astrologer with a severe cognitive scotoma. You might not be able to perceive this reality, but the rational world does, and your silliness will be remembered long after the last of those desperate to hear your snakeoil message have given up the ghost.
I reckon that Lotharsson's on the money!
I had Atkins for undergrad physchem, and it's far too dense for Curtin's own brand of density. Even an old high school edition of that favourite, Messel, would be a labour for one as challenged in basic physics as Curtin shows himself to be.
It's worse than that. That bolding in the quote from Spencer was present in the original comment that told TC to go look at Spencer. TC clearly read the comment which contained the quote...and then proceeded to claim the quote said the very opposite of what it said. In front of people who had just read the quote complete with the emphasis.
Either TC is cognitively challenged, or he's highly dishonest. And if the latter, he's also deeply delusional about his ability to slip plainly false claims past the readers here.
Robert @2:20 pm
Yes.I have just visited Spencer's place and would have pointed out those omissions of Curtin's which kinda hangs him out to dry as either dishonest or lacking comprehension skills. Spencer does not back up Curtin's position vis-a-vis molecules with differing dipole characteristic's.
Of course playing fast and lose with the statements of others is a key tactic of those such as Ian Plimer and Bob Carter (see recent Skeptical Science post) and so Tim Curtin has now joined what could be called 'The Three Stooges', or the 'Ian, Bob and Tim Show' or from their initials 'Not the I PCC show'.
Welcome back Dr. Lambert and I hope this means you are feeling well.
Wow.
Just ... wow.
TC, you didn't read what Spencer wrote, and misquoted what you saw on his site.
Question for Tim Lambert -- can you make the permalinks to the individual posts visible to the readers? It would be useful to point directly to the individual post, as we used to dol
Isn't there a quote in the Deltoid archives where TC earned a rebuke from Hans Erren by reading into the latter's comment something about there not being a greenhouse effect. Hans told Tim that he was thick and Tim's response started off with "I know I'm thick".
So you can't accuse the man of a complete lack of self-awareness. Though clearly there are lapses.
On the plus side, Tim's ignorance of statistics is not nearly as impressive as his ignorance of economics. So he does have that going for him. Which is nice.
Here is the full quote from Spencer
"The SECOND misconception is that because greenhouse gases allow the atmosphere to cool to outer space, adding more GHGs can’t cause warming. While it is true that GHGs do lead to an overall decrease in the mass-weighted average temperature of the atmosphere, their altering of the energy budget of individual layers leads to net warming of the lowest layers of the atmosphere."
Note the statement "...GHGs DO LEAD TO AN OVERALL DECREASE IN THE MASS WEIGHTED AVERAGE TEMPERATURE OF THE [TOTAL] ATMOSPHERE..."
Yes, he takes 'knowing a lot about very little' to a whole new, inverted level. That he can do so and made a living from it (albeit partly as an 'economist' in Africa and New Guinea...) says a lot about some brands of economics.
> MASS WEIGHTED AVERAGE TEMPERATURE
> OF THE [TOTAL] ATMOSPHERE
TC, you did not use that temperature measurement in your paper.
You used surface temperatures.
Spencer says "adding more GHGs .... leads to net warming of the lowest layers of the atmosphere.”
Few can, TC, if you're talking about anything related to science. Few can.
Hank, you are referring to my TSWJ paper, which indeed does not address Spencer's point; my new paper that does is still under peer review.
My new paper quotes Tyndall thus:
In examining the separate effects of the air, carbonic acid, and aqueous vapour of the atmosphere …the following results were obtained:-
Air sent through the system of drying tubes and through the caustic potash tube produced an absorption of about 1.
Air direct from the laboratory, containing therefore its carbonic acid [i.e.CO2] and aqueous
vapour, produced an absorption of 15.
Deducting the effect of the gaseous acids [e.g. CO2], it was found that the quantity of aqueous vapour diffused through the atmosphere on the day in question, produced an absorption at least equal to thirteen times that of the atmosphere itself” (Tyndall, 1861: 276).
Clearly his physical experiment showed that an atmosphere without CO2 and H2O absorbed only 1/15 of that when those gases were added. They are the ones that allow heat to be radiated via IR eventually to space, the N and O do not, and that is what I take Spencer to be saying. Even Hansen et al 1981 describe the IR wavelengths through which CO2 escapes as a "window", i.e. not a trap:
"Carbon dioxide absorbs in the atmospheric
"window" from 7 to 14 micrometers
which transmits thermal radiation
emitted by the earth's surface and lower
atmosphere".
Unfortunately Hansen added without any observational evidence that "Increased atmospheric CO2
tends to close this window and cause
outgoing radiation to emerge from higher,
colder levels, thus [sic] warming the surface
and lower atmosphere by the socalled
greenhouse mechanism".
My new paper notes how Hansen then also overlooks the very limited infrared bandwidth for infrared radiation of atmospheric CO2, only 5-7μm in total, relative to that of atmospheric water vapour [H2O] at nearly 80μm (Hoyle 1981).
It is these IR windows that offset the closed doors of the N and O.
I'm still chuckling at this:
The mental picture this conveys of CO2 escaping into space, taking its IR with it just tickles my funny bone.
That's what we want: more CO2, not less, to take away that pesky IR where it can't do any harm.
More please!
I honestly didn't realize until now that Tim Curtin could be that stupid.
Me neither:
He hasn't the first clue about the effects of various gasses on outgoing longwave radiation, even after several people have explicitly pointed out his errors. It's as if he has a write-once-read-many memory system.
Curtin says:
"Here is the full quote from Spencer..."
You are either incredibly stupid or incredibly dishonest, though it certainly is possible for both to true. As was pointed out above, Spencer said that lower atmospheric temps increase with increased GHG's, which is the claim that climate scientists make. Again you feel it necessary to distort:
Note the statement “…GHGs DO LEAD TO AN OVERALL DECREASE IN THE MASS WEIGHTED AVERAGE TEMPERATURE OF THE [TOTAL] ATMOSPHERE…”
The entire sentence shows you to be a liar:
While it is true that GHGs do lead to an overall decrease in the mass-weighted average temperature of the atmosphere, their altering of the energy budget of individual layers leads to net warming of the lowest layers of the atmosphere.”
Have you no shame? How many times do you have to be caught lying in plain sight? Did you show the same lack of integrity when you did your economics work?
I have found a supporter at Spencer's:
Ken Coffman says:
March 14, 2012 at 11:01 AM
I think Dr. Spencer is a national resource and is certainly entitled to his opinion. He’s right about many things, but not everything. The real greenhouse gases are Nitrogen, Oxygen and Argon. These atmospheric gases (let’s call them 1,000,000 PPM, close enough, right?) which have a temperature, don’t radiate much at IR wavelengths. However, they couple their energy to water vapor and CO2, which resonate and radiate at certain IR wavelengths.
Up to a certain altitude, convection dominates the energy flow. Would an added CO2 molecule enhance convection or retard it? And, guess what? At the altitudes where radiation dominates energy flow over convection, then who cares? The air is cold and thin and can’t do much…except in the mind of an academic climatologist who thinks radiation from cold thin substances can work warming miracles at the Earth’s surface.
Radiation can be a tough thing to grasp, but the operation is easy to visualize. Conduction, convection and radiation always work in the same direction. If you’re puzzled by an overall effect, then imagine a thermally conductive channel between point A and point B. Whatever conduction does, that’s what radiation will do. Much more weakly and more slowly, sure, but always in the same direction. Don’t believe it? That’s fine with me.
It’s fun to think about the 33C average that “greenhouse” gases supposedly contribute to the Earth’s surface temperature. Since its an average, then it must have a range and a distribution. What is the range? Plus or minus 10%, 20% or 100%? What is the distribution? Is it Gaussian? Does it depend on latitude? Is it the same at the poles and the equator?
To simplify this, I have a policy: if a thing can’t be measured, then it does not exist."
How very true!
AS for Lotharsson and Bernard et al continuing to insult me at Foster's Cliose Mind, when they know I have no right of reply there, that is all you need to know about the integrity of that kind of person.
"I have found a supporter at Spencer’s..."
But it's not Spencer, as you falsely claimed. Did you think nobody would notice the difference? I' on the other hand have found a supporter for the claim that water vapor is a in fact a strong GHG:
“The second key aspect of water vapor is that it is a potent greenhouse gas”
Do you agree? You should, since you're the person who said it, above. Remember that? That was when you you were lying about what the IPCC said about water vapor, when you claimed the IPCC didn't count water vapor as a GHG. Now you say of course it isn't! What a clown, Mr. Curtin.
Tim Curtin.
If you hadn't repeatedly insulted Tamino, and the competence of thousands of professional scientists who understand their own disciplines much better than you, you'd very liekly still have right-of-reply at Open Mind.
And if you don't want to be insulted yourself, stop engaging in such profoundly wrong-headed mangling of basic physics and statistics, long after more knowledgable people have tried to set you straight. That would be the simple solution.
Robert & Bernard: just try to submit a rebuttal of my TSWJ paper to them. Until you get to be published there, no more from me to you here.
Hilarious! Tim Curtin cites "Dragon Slayer" Ken Coffman!
Tim Curtin is an idiot.
"Robert & Bernard: just try to submit a rebuttal of my TSWJ paper to them..."
How is that in any way responsive to my post? "Them"? What does your being banned at Tamino's blog have to do with your distortions here of what other people have said? Why does your being banned at Tamino's leave you unable to explain your claims here that water vapor is both "a potent greenhouse gas" and not a GHG at all?
How pathetic. Caught lying so now you run away. Was your economics work this dishonest too? Maybe someone should do some checking...
> Up to a certain altitude, convection dominates the
> energy flow.... an added CO2 molecule ...... At
> the altitudes where radiation dominates energy
> flow over convection....
In the upper atmosphere -- high, thin, and dry air -- an emitted photon has a higher likelihood of escaping into space than of being recaptured by another molecule in the atmosphere. "Mean free path" between collisions is the term.
Water vapor, CO2, methane, etc. -- in the lower, wetter, denser atmosphere -- share the heat with nitrogen and oxygen. Heat is equally shared out among all the molecules -- in the denser wetter lower atmosphere -- by collisions, which are far more frequent there.
Some of those collisions "wind up" the greenhouse gases putting energy into their vibrations.
If they don't collide with some other molecule and lose that energy by sharing it, they can get "wound up" eventually to the point the bond energy will go "sproing" and emit an infrared photon.
The photons are emitted in purely random directions, anywhere in a sphere. Depending on what's between the emitting molecule and space or the ground, some of those infrared photons interact with other greenhouse gases, winding those up a bit.
In the lower, wetter, thicker atmosphere, all of those molecules are whacking and banging at each other. Most of the energy is just shared around among them all.
The upper atmosphere is extremely low in water vapor.
The upper atmosphere is very thin, lots of room between molecules, far fewer collisions to steal energy away from the greenhouse gases, which can continue to be "wound up" by infrared photons that reach them.
In the upper atmosphere, the greenhouse gases emit infrared photons that have more than half a chance of escaping into space before they hit anything else.
Sorry to get all technical here but this is basic stuff.
Readers can judge for themselves whether TC is willing and able to distinguish disdain for fallacious claims from personal insult.
They will also have noted that he engages in frequent personal insults here, which makes his complaints doubly pathetic.
I doubt that Hank could get ' basic' enough to deal with the conceptual confabulations we're dealing with here.
I dread to think what kind or level of science education *would* meet the ' basic enough' criteria.
adelady, it's always worth trying to be clear about this difficult stuff -- try to write for the audience, remembering the US average reading comprehension for general (not scientific) topics is around the 8th grade level. For radiation physics, this is a real challenge.
Likely lots of economists don't understand it.
He didn't just insult Tamino - he threatened defamation action if his irrelevent misdirections weren't published, all while calling Tamino "Goebbelistic".
And Curtin, you do not have an automatic "right of reply". It is Tamino's blog and he can run it how he wishes.
If you want to post there again perhaps you should publicly apologise for your attempted bullying and, most importantly, stay on topic and not continually repeat the errors you've been shown are wrong. Why should Tamino waste his time refuting the same arguments ad nauseum? Because you have some entitled idea about "right of reply" that allows you to troll with impunity?
Tim Curtin
There is light available to help you with your blundering around in the dark here and I would suggest starting at Lecture 2.
And here are here some absorption (and some transmittance) data in IR (UV and visible) for various atmospheric gases.
Put all this together with Prof Archer's lectures linked by Lionel A, Timmykins, and you should come to a conclusion very similar to the mainstream view, rather than the crackpottery you're famed for!
Just in case Tim cannot get past the superfluous, and unintended quote at the tail try this instead , the lack of preview here is a stumbler at times.
Perhaps he could learn from this site. Even some of the comments are illuminating ... although from what I've seen of Tim, he's likely to ignore
and instead seize on
TC says: "Robert & Bernard: just try to submit a rebuttal of my TSWJ paper to them. Until you get to be published there, no more from me to you here."
Awww, I think he's finally spat the dummy out. Shame, it was fun listening to him babble in his determination to misinterpret some very basic science.
In fairness, it should be pointed out that TSWJ isn't a complete joke of a journal, like most denier stomping grounds; its impact factor of 1.524 is approaching respectable and for it to be listed by ISI at all is an achievement by open access standards. Still, it's hardly what anyone would call mainstream and their peer-review process obviously screwed up in this case if they let this paper in. I can't say I would be bothered to put in a reply because if TSWJ want to let their standards slip, that's their perogative and I'm not paying their page charges to point out their own mistakes. If TC somehow manages to sneak his nonsense into somewhere more noticable, then that would be the time to push back, but I'd like to think that the more mainstream places would have better standards than that.
I await his under review paper where he overturns basic physics with bated breath. Should be good for a laugh, if nothing else.
JamesA,
I checked ISI recently on TSWJ and it wasn't listed. I would also add the the publisher looks pretty damn sketchy to me. But paying $1K to rebut TC? You've got to be kidding.
My thoughts exactly.
However, if they offer to print a rebuttal gratis then I'd consider it. TSWJ would be cutting their own throats though, because a refutation of Curtin would necessarily draw attention to the extremely poor reviewing (cough, cough) that permitted the 'paper' to be published in the first place.
Rattus: I know they look sketchy, but they are in there, just listed under the pretty stupid name "TheScientificWorldJOURNAL", with the appreviation "THESCIENTIFICWORLDJO". You can find it if you search for the ISSN 1537-744X. Interestingly, the publisher's details are different in the journal citation reports to the master journal list, but they could have moved at some point.
> ISSN 1537-744X
Oh, that's a lovely search result. The ScienceBloggers could have a field day dedicated to this particular journal.
E.g.
Research Article
TheScientificWorldJOURNAL (2011) 11, 1667–1678 ISSN 1537-744X; doi:10.1100/2011/462736
Seasonal Variation of the Effect of Extremely Diluted Agitated Gibberellic Acid (10e-30) on Wheat Stalk Growth: A Multiresearcher Study
Peter Christian Endler, Wolfgang Matzer, Christian Reich,
Thomas Reischl, Anna Maria Hartmann, Karin Thieves, Andrea Pfleger, ürgen Hoföcker, Harald Lothaller, and Waltraud Scherer-Pongratz
Division Complementary Health Sciences, Interuniversity College for Health and Development Graz, Castle of Seggau, 8042 Graz, Austria
Received 21 March 2011; Revised 9 August 2011; Accepted 9 August 2011
Academic Editor: Joav Merrick
The influence of a homeopathic high dilution of gibberellic acid on wheat growth was studied at different seasons of the year. Seedlings were allowed to develop under standardized conditions for 7 days; plants were harvested and stalk lengths were measured. The data obtained confirm previous findings, that ultrahigh diluted potentized gibberellic acid affects stalk growth. Furthermore, the outcome of the study suggests that experiments utilizing the bioassay presented should best be performed in autumn season. In winter and spring, respectively, no reliable effects were found.
KEYWORDS: homeopathy, ultra high dilution, bio-assay, gibberellic acid, wheat
Correspondence should be addressed to Christian Reich, college@inter-uni.net
Copyright © 2011 Peter Christian Endler et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Published by TheScientificWorldJOURNAL; http://www.tswj.com/
Hank, I am at a loss, what's wrong with this article?
BTW, I suggest that TWSJ would accept comments on my paper without demanding their $1000 fee for initial submissions. Hank, James & co, who have never so far as I know ever published any paper anywhere, do try!
Homeopathically grown wheat, Tim Curtin's non-GHG GHG's - perhaps the title of 'journal' confers altogether too much gravitas.
How about the quackerazzi?
"Hank, I am at a loss, what’s wrong with this article?"
It's homeopathic nonsense. The Scientific World Journal has a propensity for publishing such twaddle:
http://www.tswj.com/search.aspx?startindex=1&field0=9&q0=homeopathic
You need to ask? Why am I not surprised?
The "active" ingredient has been diluted 10^30 times! At around 10^24 or 10^26 times dilution with pure water (though how a homeopath can guarantee their water source is uncontaminated I know not -- and care less) there won't be a single molecule of the active ingredient present.
I hear the sound of quacking!
FWIW, do a G&T
a. crowd source the rebutal
b. put it up on arXiv. The net will find it.
Robert @ 2:31pm
Indeed. Now I wonder if absorbing too much 'gibberellic acid' in ones 'crispies' helps in the production of these impressive papers. The name of that hormone could not be more inspired.
I've just had a thought...
Curtin, if we homeopathically dilute CO2 in, say, rainwater, then surely its amazing benefits would be magnified, a la the gibberellin paper that you seem to find so plausible.
Less is more. If CO2 promotes plant growth, we should be diluting it in the atmosphere, rather than concentrating it. That's the inference from the homeopathy that you are apparently happy to accept.
Surely.
Of course, using this logic we could collect just twenty dollars in tax from the whole of the nation's annual productivity, and with this single redback we could build all of the infrastructure and fund all of the human services that the country needs. And get change. Homeopathy meets economics. Econopathy.
In many quarters that'd be the same old same old, really...
And I like Eli's idea. Let Arvix smack the arse of scientific Stupid.
TC: "Hank, James & co, who have never so far as I know ever published any paper anywhere, do try!"
For your info, I've contributed to 69 papers since 2003 (8 as first author), notching up an average of 47 cites per paper and an h-index of 29. I don't care to count how many I've reviewed over the years but I wouldn't consider the fact I have two to do this week to be unusual. I've never submitted anything to any journal with an impact factor as low as 1.5 and I'm not about to start on your account.
What does concern me more is that Thomson ISI are listing a journal that lets in such nonsense (Scopus as well, for that matter). Between TC's paper and that one on homeopathy, I am seriously thinking about bringing that to their attention.
Tim doesn't know how much 10e-30 is.
Tim, you're a moron, a crank, an ignoramus, and a buffoon. Congratulations on finding someone inept enough to publish your droolings.
Tim, that paper is about dilutions in excess of parts per billion.
Parts per billion.
A great find Hank, a journal that has a trending tendency to publish horse hockey bunkum, instead of real science!
For even organic seeds for cultivation, are allowed the option to have organic based seed coatings to enhance growth and germination etc.
For TC's education , debunking "Homeopathy" James Randi.
Youtube link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWE1tH93G9U&feature=related
Epic face palm indeed : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RA06Z5e1ZFc
Cheers. ;)
Never were truer words spoken.
Seriously, you don't know what the problem with Homeopathy is? And concentrations of hundred-parts per million (CO2) have no effect, while concentrations of single parts per billion (or less!), on the other hand...?
Here's my favourite primer on the subject.
PS. David Bellamy is a patron of the British Homeopathic Association.
> that one on homeopathy
Oh, way way more than one.
More than dozens, in fact.
With extensively detailed statistical treatment in the papers.
You might ought to look into this stuff a bit more.
Whatever it is, there's a vast amount of it being published.
This seems typical of the publisher/journal
Full text: http://downloads.tswj.com/2010/378193.pdf
TheScientificWorldJOURNAL
Volume 10 (2010), Pages 2330-2347, doi:10.1100/tsw.2010.224
Review Article
A Review of Three Simple Plant Models and Corresponding Statistical Tools for Basic Research in Homeopathy
Lucietta Betti, Grazia Trebbi, Michela Zurla,1
Daniele Nani,2
Maurizio Peruzzi,3 and
Maurizio Brizzi4
1 Department of Agroenvironmental Sciences and Technologies, University of Bologna, Italy
2 Italian Society of Anthroposophical Medicine, Milan, Italy
3 Association for Sensitive Crystallization, Sondrio, Italy
4 Department of Statistical Sciences, University of Bologna, Italy
Received 23 July 2010; Revised 4 November 2010; Accepted 5 November 2010
Academic Editor: Joav Merrick Copyright © 2010 Lucietta Betti et al.
ABSTRACT In this paper, we review three simple plant models ... to study the effects of homeopathic treatments. We will also describe the set of statistical tools applied in the different models. ...
... the most significant results were achieved with the 45th decimal potency, both for As2O3 (As 45x) and water (W 45x) ....
The statistical analysis was performed by using parametric and nonparametric tests, and Poisson distribution had an essential role when dealing with germination experiments.
Finally, we will describe some results related to the changes in variability, which seems to be one of the targets of homeopathic treatment effect.
[full details of their statistical methods are in the PDF.]
----- There ya go. That's the level TC needs to match, to get published by TSWJ
I think we can assume the Homeopaths are making use of these 'soft-approach' journals to gain 'publishing' credibility.
Now, why does that sound familiar?
And another economist shoots his mouth off and gets it all wrong:
Yes, climate change is a problem and yes, we do have to do something: but in Britain, we've done it already
Say, Lionel A. , an interesting 'gish gallop' of complete nonsense "Tim Worstall" writes, just like Tim Curtin, like peas in a pod.
Such gems or howlers as "the vilenesses that are Greenpeace, FoE and the rest of the forward-to-the-Middle-Ages crowd over there" and the list just continues from the first paragraph until the last.
Epic face palm.
Yup! Sometimes I'm half tempted to feel a bit guilty about the piling on when deniers are making fools of themselves.
And then Tim Worstall turns up and proves, yet again, that they really are as blinkered, silly and nasty as they always were.
What an egregious, pontifical wally. Classic 'I looked into this for 2 days last week, and, based on my rigid political outlook, here's the reality of the situation.' He's trying to place himself between Delingpole and 'the hippies' but, let's face it, he's Delingpole.
Well, he is from the Adam Smith Institute. Like Marx, I doubt that he really deserves many of his followers...
PS I'll also point out that it's the 'Flipper side' that's going to favour the very tax plan he's supposedly supporting, whereas the Delingpoles will be the ones 'howling at the Moon' because this is precisely the kind of 'violating the sacred principles of the economy (i.e. pure selfishness)' measure they've beaten themselves into an onanistic, apocalyptic frenzy over. This coward simply hasn't the guts to call out the real idiots here...
Worstofall this ignoramus, as Bill points out, writes, 'Nasa’s James Hansen' not having appreciated that NASA is an acronym and not a name and so he should have written, 'NASA's Jim Hansen', what a tool.
I'll bet that shortly some pedant will try to point out that Nasa's OK in this instance.
Then Worstofall writes this bunkum:
Strewth, 'uncertainty is an economic problem' . FFS, this man is a tool of the first magnitude. But then over the year the Telegraph has seen plenty of those as columnists.
Do many economists go to a brain transplant centre that swaps out for monkey brains I wonder. No, that would leave them with more intelligence than shown by Worstofall, Axolotl I would go for - an organism that never grew up.
Economics - the political struggle overseen by accountants. And one of the few 'sciences' where being consistently wrong will most-likely make very little difference to your career, and may even enhance it if you're wrong in the right (Right) way. Alan Greenspan, for instance.
Hang on, though; are we seeing a bit of a trend here? Peter Sinclair describes Arthur Laffer pulling the same routine, complete with the tired canards.
But they're apparently accepting that the reality of the situation is that Denial is an untenable position, and so they're suddenly throwing out the solutions with minimal economic impact.
The very solutions they were telling us up to only last week would cause civilization to grind to a halt, much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and, all-in-all, oceans of tears before bedtime.
You know, all you Deniers reading this - that's a Carbon Tax. Because that's actually the most rational and cost-effective strategy - and you've just bleated and complained about it, and put off its implementation for years, and you're still making hysterical pledges of blood to wind it back and pronouncing your ridiculous Jeremiads.
And we've been telling you for ages it was actually your policy.
Well, whaddyaknow - the Australian Government's very strategy!
Make the Polluters Pay, people! If they want to pay less they can pollute less - that's the point.
If you ignore the hare-brained disinformation, and, particularly in Worstall's case, the insults (this wally's condescending to Jim Hansen!?!) this is actually encouraging. And don't forget, the reactionary shibboleths are a way of saying 'look, I'm one of you, it's safe to listen to me.'
Heartland's tanked. BEST and 'we never said it wasn't warming'. The excommunication of the SkyDragons. The hard-core nutters are losing, folks.
> uncertainty is an economic problem to be
> solved through economic methods.
For sale: fresh-water ice, in form of large ice shelf, variable thickness*, approximate area the size of France, available in convenient coastal West Antarctic location. Suitable for hauling to any desert country. You provide tow vehicles.
_________________
*decreasing, price will rise as amount of ice decreases. When there's almost none left, it will be immensely valuable. Trust us, we're economists.
----
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1468.html
Hi fans
Apologies for my silence here over the last few days, Roland Gaross is more compelling than you lot, not least because of your belief that when Rafa serves at 200 kmh and there’s nobody who actually lays a racket on it, nevertheless the ball comes back to him at 300 kmh.
For that is the message of the infamous Kiehl-Trenberth (K-T) cartoon (1997) that is the total intellectual underpinning of both TAR and AR4.
My papers unjustly lampooned here provide the econometric support for Claes Johnson’s compelling physics showing that CO2-based AGW is garbage.
I deeply regret not knowing his work until very recently (but do now thanks to one of you-lot citing Slaying The Sky Dragon).
What CJ does is to show that K-T’s “back radiation” at 324 W/sq.m despite only 168 of incoming solar radiation of 342 W/sq.mt. reaching the surface is what causes AGW. What does the back radiation? K-T do not say, it can hardly be the sun, given the laws of thermodynamics (am I right that the sun is a little bit hotter than the earth?). Please tell, perhaps it’s the ballboys.
What Claes has shown is that there is NO basis in physics for the K-T and IPCC claim that back radiation is what causes global warming, and my econometrics provides massive empirical support to Claes.
Grant Foster of Closed Mind in rightly pointing out that I had just once is dozens of regressions wrongly interpreted the Durbin-Watson statistic (albeit not without authority from none other than Zwiers of AR4 WG4 Chap. 9).
Characteristically, Foster did not notice that my Table 1 in my TSWJ paper (2012) reported a regression of Temperature against increases in ALL so-called greenhouse gases. I was wrong to do that, because the rates of increase in CH4 and CFC etc all have different growth profiles from that of atmospheric CO2, and that is why the D-W test for auto-regression was inapplicable, unbeknown to both Lambert and Foster. I admit my errors, but they will never admit it. The rest of my TWSJ paper reported only the results of regressions using the first-differencing method recommended by Nobel-winner Granger (cited in my paper) and many others
In his second attack on me, Foster, having suppressed my above comments, turned his attention to my ACE2011 (peer reviewed) paper, available also from my website (www.timcurtin.com).
Again he disallowed my comment that in fact my Table 1 in my ACE2011 paper regressed only temperature change against the rising atmospheric concentration of CO2, with a Durbin-Watson test that unequivocally revealed autocorrelation using Foster’s own Tables. Foster’s impeccable accuracy meant that he did not notice the difference between correlations where the independent variable was ALL GHGs, which in fact have different time series and stationarity, and atmospheric CO2 on its own.
Interestingly, none of Foster, Lambert and their commentators has challenged any of my differenced results in either of my ACE2011 and my TSWJ2012 papers. Those results provide strong support for Claes Johnson’s contention that
“Global climate can be described as a thermodynamic system with gravitation subject to radiative forcing by blackbody radiation… Understanding climate thus requires understanding blackbody radiation. “..`backradiation’' is unphysical because it is unstable and serves no role, and thus should be removed from climate science. Since climate alarmism feeds on a ``greenhouse effect'' based on ``backradiation'', removing backradiation removes the main energy source of climate alarmism.
Hank: Thanks for your comments, the only intelligent ones here! But I note that at Real Climate you seem to be unaware that solar-induced evaporation is the main determinant of sea-level changes. I can cite the evidence, email me at tcurtin bigblue.net.au,
Shorter TC:
You guys are wrong! You didn’t point out that I wasn’t checking my rear view mirrors with sufficient rigour due to your unseemly haste to point out that I hadn’t removed the handbrake!
ROFL!
You refuse to admit high-school level errors if they impact your ideological claims - those errors must be clung to at all costs. Do you still think CO2 will make seawater potable, amongst several other doozies?
How amusement! You’re unsurprisingly signing up for that bunch of arrant error. You should really go the whole hog – why don’t you spend some time with Girma and Nasif Nahle and the Time Cube guy (and heck, why not throw in the Xenu clan) to create the unholy grand unified theory of why anything-but-climate-science explains climate observations? Nobel Prizes await, I assure you!
The very diagram you disparage pretty much shows you what does the back radiation, and clearly shows that it is not the sun. Heck, if you operated at a sufficient level of intellect you could look beyond the pictures and actually read the damn words (say, the text describing the diagram in the IPCC report that you claim to be demolishing, if the actual paper is beyond you).
But at least you are providing a masterclass in clown-trolling so you haven’t entirely wasted your typing effort!
Well Doh-de-doh-de-doh-doh-frackin’-doh!
What on earth do you think you encounter in the first chapter or two of a basic climate science textbook?
Clearly neither you nor your quotee have ever actually comprehended one (but in your case that was self-evident already), or these clueless statements wouldn’t appear in public. (And understanding climate takes a lot more than simply understanding black body radiation or doing simple regressions, which apparently neither you nor your quotee have figured out yet.)
But then this, which you endorse, is even more priceless:
It’s not even wrong due to reliance on some particularly stupid category errors (never mind what appear to be self-contradictions, unbeknownst to the author and to you). And this is endorsed by the serial promoter of fallacies who touts actually unphysical 5th (and now 6th) order polynomials when it suits him!
But hey, willingness to engage in that kind of post-modern scientificking is what’s needed if you’re going for a unified Curtin-Girma-Nahle-TimeCube theory.
(You couldn’t make this stuff up – but TC can!)
Tim Curtin says:
"I admit my errors..."
OK, which statement of yours below is the erroneous one?
1) “That is why the CO2 and H2O are not GHGs”
or
2) “The second key aspect of water vapor is that it is a potent greenhouse gas”
And while you're at it, when you claimed that the IPCC "expunged" the fact water vapor is a key GHG, but you were shown that they actually did consider water vapor not only a potent GHG but the GHG responsible for 60% of the GHE, where did you admit your error? Nowhere.
When you later said Many thanks for your link to Spencer who like me shows how “because greenhouse gases allow the atmosphere to cool to outer space, adding more GHGs can’t cause warming.” and it was shown that you had dishonestly edited his statement to make it look completely opposite of what he actually said (he was arguing that adding GHG's will warm the surface), where did you admit your error and your deliberate distortion? Nowhere.
Admitting your errors would require a level of intellectual honesty you are constitutionally incapable of. If you were still working in academia, your actions would be grounds for dismissal.
Funny, isn't it, that independent groups' pyrgeometer observations match closely with modelling results of downwelling longwave radiation over many, many years in many, many publications?
Well no, it isn't really! Only the terminally idiotic could persist in thinking all those observations and modelling results are wrong/some cog in a mega-conspiracy.
Ah, but you have to understand that Claes believes in intelligent photons carrying thermometers.
It is arrant nonsense.
Uh, no.
I guess the words "Greenhouse Gases" just above the back radiation arrow are whited out on your copy.
That's like a stopped clock admitting that it was wrong a couple of times but blaming the rest of its errors on everyone else.
Like how tennis balls coming back into the server's court because of faulting into the net are "unphysical" and should be removed from the descriptions of tennis games, alleviating the need for bad tennis players to be alarmed.
'Hi fans'. Some people sure do love the attention, don't they?
Fixed it.
It "helps" that he is genuinely too stupid to understand simple concepts, like that the magnitude of energy flows within a system is not limited by the magnitude of the energy flowing into the system. It's tragically funny that Curtin writes "What does the back radiation? It can hardly be the sun ..., perhaps it’s the ballboys" ... that he is so stupid and inept that he can't even model his own simple analogy. During a tennis "game", a tennis player may serve five balls, yet a ball can hit the player's racket far more than five times during that game ... what does that? Where oh where are all those extra balls coming from?
Thanks indeed Lotharsson (June 4, 2:56 pm).
I now understand from whence Curtin's lunacy originates - he is a Climate Cubist.
This explain's his and Spencer's preoccupation with third order polynomials...
I'm sure that they have a cuby-house in a tree where they meet.
From this revelation we can infer that the IPCC is in fact the Intergovernmental Panel against Climate Cubism.
It demonstrates how three* Climate Cubists can hold to notions that are mutually orthogonal, but are still each correct.
The possibilities for explanation-by-cubism are manifold...
[*It also permits the coining of a collective noun - a joke of climate cubists.]
ianam. I think you might have 'hit' on a useful analogy there - for some audiences. Worth keeping in the back of the mind for suitable occasions.
I like it:
And one might go on:
If only TC would begin to apply basic accounting principles that one presumes were even taught to economists back in the day (including not certain ignoring inflows or outflows that are deemed inconvenient), then he might begin to eliminate some of the more laughable errors he makes.
The funny/ironic/tragic thing is that it's Curtin's analogy. The first time I glanced at his comment, "perhaps it’s the ballboys" whizzed right past me and out through the window.
This* is why climate cubist Tim Curtin struggles with his tennis metaphors, and it also explains why he has no effective grasp of statistics.
[*Given the very existence of Curtin's illogical approach to science, it comes as no surprise is that there is in the world someone who just as bizarrely thought to patent the above idea.]
This is even true for a robot that is able to intercept tennis balls and send them in random directions. There's an atmospheric analogy, but it seems to be beyond TC's grasp.
It's strange how TC gets so close ... he mentions two tennis players, yet somehow one of them becomes "nobody", just as "Greenhouse Gases" is mysteriously missing from his copy of the K-T diagram. This odd behavior suggests that there may be an invisible force acting on TC ...
This explain’s his and Spencer’s preoccupation with third order polynomials
He's up to fourth order now.
My dear fans, your comments have become ever more bizarre.
The Kiehl-Trenberth cartoon (1997 and TAR + AR4) shows incoming solar radiation of 341 W/sq.m of which apparently only 166 are absorbed by the surface. Yet the surface magically is able to radiate out no less than 396 W/sq.m, more than double it received. Sounds like Gillard-Swan budgeting to me.
It gets better, of the 396 radiated out by the surface from the only 166 W/sq.m absorbed by the surface, as much as 323 W/sq.m is radiated back to the surface, perhaps by clouds (not known for anything much other than albedo) or by the ballboys and girls at the French Open.
My son sent me today Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow; he won a Nobel in 2002. He explains the psychology of why you lot including Foster and Lambert are incapable of understanding statistics.
Re polynomials, it is undeniable that in climate time series the best fits are always achieved by higher polynomials, and they are usually also the best stat significant.
My experience so far is that polynomials anticipate ENSO switches from El Nino to La Nino better than any other statistical procedure. Watch this space - and prove me wrong!
lol
Tim
Ah, Tim C dwells in a Happy Land of Magical Ponies...
Since TC is so determinedly clueless, I've embedded a clue:
(This won't help - as shown by the rest of his comment, which determinedly misinterprets the situation despite pointed comments correcting his misconceptions.)
Don't let him anywhere near your wallet - Magical Pony Accounting procedures are a massive risk to your personal wealth.
Well, doh! The same applies to practically any time series because you're giving yourself more degrees of freedom to approximate the underlying series (noise and all). This is well understood basic mathematics - and you're wimping out at 5th and 6th order - go much much higher and you'll generally be able to find even better fits.
Doesn't imply they are physically meaningful or even provide any insight into the physical system though, no matter how much you protest.
That may or may not be so - but it has practically nothing to do with AGW or warming trends.
Oh, for Pete's sake Curtin, are you really this stupid?!
The reason that higher order polynomials fit better is that anything can be fitted when using additional parametres.
And you need to understand the difference between statistical significance and physical significance - and when to use or not use statistical significance.
<
Fine.
Pick your polynomial of most-preferred order, and predict the temporal limits of the next five El Niño and La Niña.
Come on, your experience - self-vaunted as it is - should be able to slap a prediction down on the table without skipping a heart-beat.
Climate cubism, indeed...
Sorry for doubling up on your comments Lotharsson. For some strange reason I was repeatedly told to stop posting so soon after previously posting, even though I hadn't posted for hours. It took about two hours just to get past that post-guard...
No worries. Pile on as you see fit...
TC 04062012 1:22 pm ATTLGT writes.
Seriously Curtin, so you cannot understand a 'cartoon'. Little wonder so many concepts escape your stunning intelligence.
What is wrong with your attribution WRT that 168? Go on look carefully, maybe you will need to 'phone a friend. Or you could just wake up Bart and ask him.
Clearly you do have problems with comprehension.
For those wondering why Curtin is so coy about where to find 'the cartoon' in AR4 - IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007. : Contribution of Working Group I [Physical Science Base] to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007 and in Chapter 1 on page 96.
See here for the 11 Chapters and other sections of that part of the AR4
"Everyone lies: it’s just a question of how, when and why. From the relationship saving “yes, you do look thin in those pants” to the improbable “your table will be ready in 5 minutes”, manipulating the truth is part of the human condition. Accept it now."
Take Tim, every time he puts pen to paper, he is telling a gish gallop of lies, in order to hide his complete lack of understanding of the real world of science and mathematics, from first principles.
He corrupted one artificial branch of mathematics, from it's true purpose in life and then completely ignored the reality of the properties matter, to create his artificial world of pure nonsense that defies reality.
Sadly, Tim C., in his deluded state of mind, writes complete "BS" about absolutely nothing. He thinks himself as a major player in the world of denialati ersatz skeptics. Back in the real world, he is and will always remain, one very minor mediocre player. For he is one, that is lacking a complete understanding from first principles, of that which he talks about.
If Tim, wishes to overcome his fear of the inconvenient truth and complete ignorance, on the complex study of mathematics, logic, the properties of matter, all the laws of physics and global warming. He should drop back his gish gallop, into low, low first gear and go back to basic first principles, in both science and mathematics, as is taught in Year 7, in all High Schools or Secondary Colleges across Australia.
They might seem less bizarre if you were to actually read them for comprehension.
Magic like Rafa's racket hitting more balls than handed to him by the ballboys. Where do all those other balls come from?
You left off "from the sun".
Or, you know, "Greenhouse Gases", like it says just above that back radiation arrow.
Yeah, those are the only possibilities ... one tennis player and a bunch of ballboys and girls; no other source of balls coming into one's court.
That's an even better formulation.
Top tip - if you get the ''you're posting too often - slow down', message clear your History (Shift+Ctrl+Del in FireFox), and do a forced/shift refresh of the page.
I've also seen "You're posting too often" on the first comment I've made in a day. I think they're probably triggering on IP addresses and not handling situations where posters are behind proxies very well. Or something.
Some more help for poor confused Tim C
There is a more recent paper containing an updated version of the schematic (add that one to your vocabulary TimC continued use of 'cartoon' will demean you)) diagram under discussion which can be accessed here EARTH’S GLOBAL
ENERGY BUDGET.
Note in particular this statement
and consider where blackbody temperatures fit in there.
Now Tim C should be able to catch up.
Tim Curtin and the Skydragon Slayers - crank magnetism at work.
Unified theory of the crank.
Tim Curtin's article appears in "The Scientific World Journal" (tswj.com) whose website is registered to “Hindawi Publishing Corporation” which is on Beall’s watchlist of predatory open-access publishers.
Hindawi spams thousands with invitations to write articles for their journals. I still have records of receiving such invitations on 3/2/2012, 15/12/2011, 28/9/2011, 5/9/2011, 8/7/2011, 19/4/2011, 4/42011, 10/2/2011 and 11/1/2011 (and many other invitations probably ended up in the trash).
The entry on Hindawi from Beall’s list follows;
Based in Cairo, Egypt, this publisher is now on its own after its collaboration with the publisher Sage ended in 2011. This publisher has way too many journals than can be properly handled by one publisher, I think, yet supporters like ITHAKA boast that the prevailing low wages in Egypt, as well as the country’s large college-educated, underemployed workforce, allow the company to hire sufficient staff to get the job done. Still, this publisher continues to release new fleet startups of journals, each group having titles with phrases in common: Advances in … (31 titles) and Case Reports in … (32 titles). It appears that Hindawi wants to strategically dominate the open-access market by having the largest open-access journal portfolio.
Were Trenberth and various co-workers' values for surface upward/downward longwave energy fluxes reasonable values in their various publications?
Let's look at some observations.
Oops! No bl**dy preview!
Let's try again:
Let’s look at some observations.
Lionel: Thanks for the link to the still absurd 2009 update to the KT1997 cartoon by Trenberth, Fasullo, and Kiehl (TFK).
It remains a cartoon because while the LHS does balance incoming solar of 341 W/sq.m with surface absorption of 161 + 23 reflected by the surface, 79 reflected by clouds and atmosphere, plus 78 absorbed by the Atmosphere, the RHS produces 396 W/sq.m. surface radiation of which 356 goes nowhere, and 353 is “back (sic) radiation” “absorbed by surface”. What a load of bs!
How can 2.63 W/sq.m. from GHG (AR4, WG1, page 141) produce more “radiative forcing” than the TFK 341 from their solar 161 W/sq.m. actually reaching the surface?
TFK remind me of the lawyer I occasionally played golf with in PNG who manifestly had wandered all over the course while playing the 5th hole and proudly claimed he had parred it!
Claes Johnson has exposed the back radiation in the RHS as garbage, without refutation so far, and it is such patent rubbish that Ray Pierrehumbert could not bring himself even to mention the TFK “back radiation” in his “Infrared radiation and planetary temperature” (Physics Today 2011).
When the climate science is settled, how come Pierrehumbert (associate of Hansen & Schmidt) ignores Trenberth et al. ?
Could it be because he knows KT et al believe in pixies?
But he is no better himself, with his new belief that RF from CO2 (et al. at max 2.63 W/sq.m. as of 2005) raises T enough to produce more atmospheric water vapour than evaporation induced by the amount of energy per second averaged over the entire planet per sq. metre per second which is 342 W/sq.metre (AR4, WG1, p.96)?
P. Lewis:
Another believer in pixies! Whence those “downward fluxes”?
P. Lewis:
Another believer in pixies! Whence those “downward fluxes”?
Pyrgeometers, you absolute fcuking retard!
Sorry folks. That was what I thought, not what I should have written.
What I meant to write was:
Pyrgeometers, Tim(ewaster) Curtin. Pyrgeometers!
C'mon ScienceBlogs, sort out the "kill" option.
Curtin, you really are determined to prove that your intellectual abilities are sorely lacking with regard to basic climate science, aren’t you? All of your bluster merely reconfirms your own miscomprehension.
ROFLMAO!
Claes Johnson’s claims were pre-refuted by evidence he (and you) pretend doesn’t exist by dubbing it “unphysical” on ludicrous grounds – when we actually measure the frackin’ back radiation with frackin’ scientific instruments, as has been pointed out to you already. You’re the one who asserts pixies here by dismissing the counter-evidence out of hand!
Er, dude, what is this I see before me when I load the PDF? What are all those downward directed squiggly arrows in Figure 1, especially the squiggly arrow from layer 1 towards the ground? Would this be … radiation, emitted from greenhouse gas molecules, and directed towards the ground? And if so, would it not be accurate to call it “back radiation” as the term is commonly defined, even if Pierrehumbert doesn’t feel the need to explicitly use the term?
I mean, did you not read the reference you cited and hope (against all previous evidence) that no-one else here would bother? Or did you simply fail to understand the paper? Or are you trying to increase the amount of clownery in your clown-trolling?
If you were operating with any basic intellectual competence in the field, you would presumably stop and ask yourself why the satellite observations cited in that paper and elsewhere are entirely consistent with KTR, if Curtin & Johnson are correct that KTR is massively erroneous - especially since the radiative transfer equations used for the theoretical predictions from fairly fundamental principles generate the phenomenon of “back radiation”, as illustrated by Figure 1. How the heck do you think massively wrong equations came up with the right answers? Even worse – how the heck do you think GHG molecules direct ALL of their emitted radiation away from the planetary surface? Do they have some sort of gravitational field sensitive orientation mechanism coupled to a cute little system of lenses, or are they “intelligently emitting”, or what? There are so many gaping holes in your claims that it is staggering that you can’t come up with even one before you hit “Submit” – especially after all the free coaching you get! At what point will you begin to consider that you may not actually be competent in this particular field, and refrain from accusations until you actually achieve competence?
(Oh, and you might want to revisit your paragraph at the end mentioning water vapour. The claim appears to be so incoherent it “isn’t even wrong”. Start by noting that TOA radiative power doesn’t “induce evaporation”...)
Er, lack of preview bites again - replace KTR with TFK in my last comment!
What a wonderful picture: heliotropic (aided by negative geotropism) GHG molecules.
So Curtin, you still cannot understand what you derogatorily term a 'cartoon':
'356' goes nowhere'! Have another closer look and THINK how the OSR reacts with that stuff indicated and that other stuff nearby and how that may be a factor in the origin of that Back Radiation.
You do need leading by the hand don't you.
If I can get what is going on here, when I am neither a statistician (although have had some exposure to that discipline) or a climate scientist (very nearly but chose another path after many years as a aviation engineer where concepts such as the gas laws and much else were par for the job) then you seem to be the Barney Rubble here.
BTW there is one small balancing error when one does the sums but only a minor one of the magnitude that the likes of Steve McIntyre would trumpet around the world. The error is probably due to backlash in the system through getting bored by being slagged off as a 'cartoon'.
This is getting real tedious too.
Claes Johnson, the physics crank in a discussion with blogger Science of Doom.
Those who can, account. Those who can't, economise.
> heliotropic (aided by negative geotropism) GHG molecules.
IR goes out randomly no matter what the molecule's orientation -- but, if we could make each self-aligning molecule incorporate a small laser, the kind that occur naturally in planetary atmospheres anyhow, and still something that would remain near the top of the atmosphere, that'd be an effective Maxwell's Demon for cooling the planet:
http://laserstars.org/history/mars.html
But tack it onto a self-orienting molecule so it only fires when pointed at the coldest part of the sky.
Yeah, that'd work.
There's a good supply of cranks who are pathologically incapable of understanding Trenberth's diagram. Doug Cotton and John Nicol come to mind. The latter is particularly stunning considering he supposedly has a PhD in, and lectured, Physics.
Confused he is, and evidence, he outright ignores. No wonder TC latched on to his claims.
Chris et al: when will you ever grasp the 2nd Law of thermodynamics, with your pixieland acceptance of the Trenberth-Pierrehumbert denial of it? For your information, Claes Johnson is one of the world's top applied mathematicians by any measure, and he applies his maths to the physics of climate change. Anyone who denies the 2nd Law is an ass, and that includes Grant Closed Mind, with his inane response to Marvell here:
Marvell said (like me): "If one regresses one non-stationary variable on another, one gets a spurious regression (the standard errors are much too small). In that case, one must difference the variables [as I did], unless the two variables are cointegrated. The latter means that the residual in the regression is stationary - i.e., that the two variables tend not to move too far apart over the long term. In the example in the post, the two variables would probably be cointegrated, although one would have to do a cointegration test to determine whether that is the case. Neither correlations nor cointegraton establish the causal direction, and one cannot assume that temperature changes do not cause changes in greenhouse gas levels. On all these points, see Kaufmann, Kauppi, and Stock, Emissions, Concentrations & Temperature: a Time Series Analysis. Climate Change (2006) 77: 249-278."
Here is Closed Mind's fatuous response "Neither temperature nor CO2 is a stochastic process, and the evidence I see is pretty strong that the stochastic component is stationary."
But temperature is basically stochastic.
CM goes on: "But you (and your reference) are among those who think they can get to the heart of the matter by completely ignoring the most relevant scientific discipline. It's called 'physics'", a subject of which CM knows nothing because he too denies the Second Law.
He claims to be a statistician, but where are the stats showing that heat can indeed transfer from a hot body to a hotter, pace Flanders and Swan?
Unfortunately, like you, evidence strongly suggests that he's one of the world's bottom climate scientists. It's no good applying maths or statistics to a massive lack of the prerequisite scientific understanding and/or outright denial of evidence that refutes your thesis.
"where are the stats showing that heat can indeed transfer from a hot body to a hotter"
Oh, my giddy aunt.
Try Roger Pielke Snr http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/07/yes-virginia-cooler-objects-can-mak… .
For those free of preemptive baggage which might deny them use of ordinary reading skills, there are also good scientific explanations at Skeptical Science, Science of Doom, RealClimate and a dozen others. I know I'm wasting electrons on TC here, but casual visitors might like some guidance.
When I wear a parka in -30C weather, it keeps me warmer even though the parka is cooler than I am. TC - if you can explain why this does not violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, then you should have an inkling of why global warming does not violate the 2nd Law.
And so to Windmills again.
TC, Have you tried homoeopathy.
Print out a page from this Deltoid thread. Dissolve in 10 litres of water stir and shake well. Take one tenth of the resultant pap and shake well in 10 litres of water. Now dilute again in another 10 litres of water and shake. Repeat another 10^28 times.
Put a drop of the resultant on your tongue and run around the room clockwise, no anti-clockwise seeing as you are south of the equinox, ten times trying not to swallow. Now spit out that drop into the nearest eye. You should feel a bit better after a short rest.
Mr. Curtin, atmospheric physicists don't deny the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics when they accept the fact that greenhouse gases warm the surface of a planetary body. Unlike you, they actually understand it, however. . Hell, even this asshat (who posted on this very thread) at one time accepted the validity of the greenhouse effect:
“The second key aspect of water vapor is that it is a potent greenhouse gas” (Tim Curtin)
Of course you ruined it right afterward by saying this:
“…it is the non-GHG gases, namely Oxygen and Nitrogen (+ derivatives other than CO2 and H2O), which have what climate scientists (all of whom are flat earthers) believe is the alleged heat trapping effect of atmospheric H2O and CO2. “(Tim Curtin)
When are you going to explain your two contradictory statements? They can't both be true.
Come now, let us be reasonable!
TC is engaged in quantum relativistic logic (QRL), which is far more advanced than your regular logics! Under QRL it is perfectly acceptable, nay, it is entirely routine for both proposition A and proposition not-A to be true. In fact, under QRL one's inferences are fixed and one's axioms are variables that collapse into existence from the superposition of all possible axioms at the very moment at which they are needed to rebut a challenge to an inference. Furthermore, axiom collapse produces virtual axioms that wink into and out of existence in a mysterious and non-deterministic fashion unbound by the constrictions of linear time-like dimensions or a requirement to conserve consistency- or coherency-like metrics; their definition and applicability are related by a Heisenberg-like principle, and their observed profile depends significantly on the speed at which the related scientific concepts zoom above the claimaint's head - all of which goes some way to explaining why A and not-A are not in fact contradictory when viewed from the correct reference frame, even though you might claim to observe that they are from yours.
Heck, quantum logic is so advanced there might only be three people in the world who understand it - and I'm trying to think who the other two might be.
> ... Pielke Snr http://www.drroyspencer ...
Oops.
But we know who you meant.
I suggested TW read Spencer
a while back in the thread.
He tried, but didn't succeed.
> TW
TC
Since TC is in awe of Claes Johnson perhaps he could explain the following from his guru.
This is just woo - an infantile misunderstanding of the second law combined with a crank attempt to justify the misunderstanding with a mythical electromagnetic contact between receiver and emitter. How does that work with the background radiation from the big bang? Talk about "intelligent" photons - these can see into the future as well.
The debate over the Slayer's crankdom is well and truly over with even the hardcore deniers running a mile from it. Trust TC to be late to the party.
Thx Hank.
I noticed that - eventually - and figured referring back/apologising /explaining wouldn't save me from well-deserved ridicule. I doubt preview could have saved me so I can't even blame the technology, just my own failure to delete the correct portions of a stream of names.
Not only that, but:
is patently and stupidly incorrect. Apparently he thinks the photons emitted by earth in the general direction of the sun are ... what? Overawed by the mighty counter flux, so they stop, have a little think about their future prospects and decide to turn around and go the other way?!
The guy is making up fairy tales that wouldn't pass muster with a middle of the pack high school physics student, whilst TC applauds from the sidelines.
Dear fans, here is what Eddington said in 1915: "if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics, I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation" (h/t Claes Johnson).
None of you let alone Trenberth and Pierrehumbert has ever understood that Law. And it is that Law which explains why my LSR analysis of changes in temperature vis a vis changes in [CO2] yields no statistically significant relationship between those variables.
Unlike Joelle Gergis' Kahnt do stats., all my data are in the public domain. Get off your b*** and prove me wrong.
Kind regards
Tim
But Tim, the GHE does not go against the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, so your point is moot. Even an idiot like this guy agrees:
“The second key aspect of water vapor is that it is a potent greenhouse gas” (Tim Curtin)
On entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, is it not interesting that the quote TC has just produced above is so beloved of those who are conceptually challenged as in this example from a Creationist and probable acquaintance of TC.
What is there about the model of global energy flows, as described by Trenberth and many others that urges you to invoke the Eddington quote?
Nobody is eschewing the second law. Consider:
Atkins, Physical Chemistry, Fourth Edition, p.84.
As for
when Pierrehumbert certainly mentions back radiation in his 'Principles of Planetary Climate'.Of course what probably confused you was that you were looking under 'B' in the index when you should have been looking under 'I' for Infra-red (Back Radiation).
It does seem also, with your references to CO2 band saturation and comments WRT water vapour, that you have fallen for Knut Angström's much debunked and no longer cited for validity 1900 paper. You should look out pages 53-55 of 'The Warming Papers' edited and commented by David Archer and Ray Pierrehumbert as well as <a href="http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy…;
...as well as this article.
Not sure what happened to that URL, text got truncated causing failure somehow. Odd. Has happened before.
Hn.
Parsimony - and the small matter of several hundred years of scientific endeavour by tens of thousands of professionals - indicate that the simplest (d.f. = 0) alternative, that "no statistically significant relationship" was found because you misapply statistical analysis, is actually the case.
And when are you going to learn that regressions are not the sole extent of statistical treatment? Sheesh, you could have saved my first year undergrads a lot of grind by advising Dytham to ditch his pages and pages of dichotomous key with the simple sentence "do a regression". That would shorten chapter three to a single line that could then be moved to the contents, and allow the expunging of a dozen or so superfluous chapters so that the entire book becomes a nice, thin, single chapter.
What particuarly flummoxes me though is that you haven't even batted an eyelid at Claes Johnson's:
besides the fact that the phrase "photon particle" is an oxymoron, Johnson is essentially stating that the entire (non-stellar?) universe is black with respect to the perspective of the sun. This has some major implications for the nature of whatever windy solar mechanism mediates this remarkable blacking-out, and it also suggests that there is a spherical, incoming-ER horizon surrounding stars.
Imagine it... the closer an object moves to the sun, the dimmer the night side of the object becomes, until the incoming-photonic horizon is crossed, and the only night illumination remaining is that resulting from refraction and/or reflection of out-going solar radiation.
I think that someone might have been overlooked for a Nobel prize...
Yes, I was going to have some fun with that. I wonder how all those astronauts managed to see and photograph the Earth from space? That is but one question of many forming.
Alas, the clueless "Slaying the Sky Dragon" supporter Tim Curtin, is now busy spreading his gish gallop of nonsense over at "The Conversation" .
Link : http://theconversation.edu.au/can-australian-farmers-take-on-the-challe…
It seems, he is not faring very well in the popularity stakes over there either. :)
I do believe this Monty Python sketch "Hy-Brazil is Sinking" sums up Tim's total denial of reality in the face of over whelming evidence nicely : - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8IBnfkcrsM
When you can't answer reasoned critiques of your claims, you simply assert that those making the critiques "don't understand" what they're talking about.
Funny how you can never seem to accurately explain how they got it wrong...whereas your critics patiently (and impatiently) explain in quite some detail...
While much gets made of the initials DK in this context, have you considered something more along the lines of AB?
More on:
another implication is that it the sun were surrounded by Earths at the current stronomical radius a la Ringworld, but in three dimensions rather than two and minus the scrith, then to all intents and purposes it would be completely enclosed, but it would never heat beyond its current temperature.
Now there is some nifty thermodynamics...
Tim and Claes believe in some serious action at a distance.
About all you can really say is they are ignorant
Actually Tim Curtin's conclusion about the Null Hypothesis is correct if Trenberth is any guide:
"Given that global warming is “unequivocal”, to quote the 2007 IPCC report, the null hypothesis should now be reversed, thereby placing the burden of proof on showing that there is no human influence [on the climate]."
TC>> None of you let alone Trenberth and Pierrehumbert
TC>> has ever understood that Law.
C> Tim Curtin’s conclusion about the Null Hypothesis
C> is correct if Trenberth is any guide
!
You're a crackup, Anthony. Or maybe "up" isn't quite the right word.
Seriously Cox, you might as well hitch your star to a tombstone as to Curtin's wagon.
That you and he have insufficient combined scientific understanding to comprehend why, only adds to the sad humour of it all.
As introduced by DarylD in his June 9, 10:48 pm, Tim Curtin is continuing to cover himself with glory over at The Conversation where he continues to insult Trenberth and just about everybody else as demonstrated by this reply by Curtin to Mark Harrigan:
If we break the AR4 WG1 quote down into components it should be easier for Tim to see where his comprehension is lacking:
Note that '...energy...EACH SECOND...is about 1370 Watts...' does not flout the principles of physics. Read it carefully and slowly and parse it according to rules of grammar with your thinking head on Tim. Will that big bulb atop your head light up?
As for your continued misunderstanding of what goes on in the atmosphere WRT surface radiation and back radiation do you not realise that given the number of explanations that you have been given it is you that is in the wrong and guilty of the invincible ignorance that you accuse another (Richard Ekard in his 'Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture ‐ reduction options'.) of.
Oops. What is it with this new format that causes links to fail? Maybe it is including the full link with mark up in text imported from a WP. Stranfe. Didn't happen before the change.
As introduced by DarylD in his June 9, 10:48 pm, Tim Curtin is continuing to cover himself with glory over at The Conversation where he continues to insult Trenberth and just about everybody else as demonstrated by this reply by Curtin to Mark Harrigan:
For whatever reason, Tim(ewaster) Curtin seems unlikely to change his mind about anything in regard to AGW. He hasn't in the last (what?) 5 or 6 years I've been visiting this blog, and I see little to suggest in this latest episode that his mind is about to change either.
The same old ground has been covered over and over again. And I see the same points are put to him over at The Conversation linked above. So, there seems little point pursuing the various points with him here (not when we get to page 4 and beyond anyway).
Poe or vested interest seems unlikely. So it must be D-K syndrome; and given the undoubted hard work he's put in with his various papers, it's nice to know he excels at something.
I don't know about the first adjective in the name here, but the second seems appropriate. [YouTube clip, with initial ad]
... please!
Oops! Preview!
That should have read
<killfile> ... please!
Yeah, we definitely need preview, and internal links.
One hint - I (sometimes) use a Skeptical Science tab to preview... although not often enough!
Thanks for the tip BJ.
I actually went searching for a basic, no frills HTML viewer after yesterday's HTML tag faux pas and came across this real-time HTML editor/viewer.
Hard returns don't equate to paras, so I have to enter <p> tags. Small price.
I've bookmarked it. All I have to do now is remember to use it!
Interesting! The <p> tags didn't work like I expected.
I shall have to experiment over the next few posts I make, round and about.
From my spam folder, for those looking for such an opportunity:
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Gavin Schmidt said at his RC thread on the Gergis-Karoly paper (now withdrawn) "despite personally feeling bad after making a mistake, fixing errors is a big part of making progress"; well said indeed. But Lotharsson linked at that thread (#149) to the recent attacks on me by Tim Lambert at Deltoid, which picked up on Tamino's pointing out an error in my recent paper in TSWJ but did not mention that I (1) admitted the error and then (2) explained why I was in error, because I overlooked that the independent variable in my Table 1 (radiative forcing by the aggregate of all GHGs) was unlikely to be autocorrelated, as for example CH4 and CO2 are not correlated, see Table 2.1 in AR4 WG1). Neither Tim Lambert nor Tamino found I repeated my error in the many other regressions I reported in my paper and its SI.
More generally, why is it that expert econometricians at RC and at Lambert’s and Tamino’s never themselves undertake and report regressions rejecting the nul that increases in GHGs since 1958 do NOT explain temperature anomalies?
Also, AFAIK, nobody at RC commented on what seems to me the basic problem with the Gergis et al paper, given its sweeping title,
"Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium".
That is its total absence of any proxy records for mainland Australia, as shown in its Fig.1. A more modest title would have been appropriate and would have attracted less attention.
Tim, have you already retracted your paper? Remember, you *admitted* it contains an error!
Another little question to Tim: why does the nul have to be that GHGs do NOT explain the temperature anomalies? Even worse, why *only* GHGs, and not *all* radiative forcings?
I have avoided tis entire discussion so far for the simple reason that IMHO TCs paper ain't gonna make the tiniest ripple in the ocean. Like Hank et al, I get dozens of emails weekly asking me to submit papers to Open Access journals that are popping up everywhere like a rash. IMO TC appears to think that he was singled out for his expertise to write his little ditty. Given TCs h-factor is (1?) or 0 (correct me TC if I am wrong), then we hate to burst your bubble but this is not the case at all.
Yesterday I had an article provisionally accepted in a journal with an IF of 3.6, and this year I have 10 other articles in peer-reviewed journals including 5 with IFs over 2, so its no great feat to get a paper published in a journal with an IF of about 1.5. MY h-factor is 30, in case you were wondering, and all of these Open Access requests get immediately deleted.
Following on from my last post, I checked Tim's two E & E papers (2009): in one of them he made a fuss about atmospheric C02 and food production.
Times cited on the WoS in other journals by other scientists since then for both?
0.
I rest my case. Storm in a teacup.
'other scientists'?
Bill: By other scientists I mean articles written by other scientists that have since 2009 been published in a scientific journal that appears on the WoS. This determines the impact factor of a journal. Jounrals with higher IFs generally publish articles that get cited more than in journalsd with low IFs. Both of Tim's papers ahve not been cited once. Citations are generally a mesure of how scientists view the work of others in their fields. When a paper is rarely (or never) cited, it means that other scientists do not think that it contributes to the empirical or theoretical knowledge base. When I was an editor at Nature, a paper I oversaw on Biodiversity Hotspots (Myers et al., 2000) was published, and it now has several thousand citations, amongst the highest in ecology since then. I have just over 2,500 citations of my research since 1993 (197 so far this year).
Jeff, I think Bill was having a bit of fun with the word "other" in connection with the word "scientist". The present combination may suggest you consider Tim a scientist...
AAAAHHHHHH.... my bad!
TC
Have you consider that sources of data suitable for the aims of the study do not occur on continental Australia given that most, if not all of that territory pre-dates the earliest part of the delineated period?
Indeed much of continental Australia is very old indeed with some formations dating back to around the Hadean-Archean boundary.
The clue is in this opening title:
Also the nature of the any particular data source restricts the choice of site, would it be sensible to look for coral samples at Ayres Rock or the Hamersley Formation. As for dendrochronology - this is based on samples from very ecologically restricted sites as you should know if you have followed the Hockey Stick debate with other than cardinal puff.
As for finding ice core sample on continental Australia - good luck with that.
Well, a 'dismal scientist', perhaps...
Ah, ever reliable, TC misses the point. I did not link to this thread to claim TC doesn't admit his errors, as anyone reading my comment, which TC conveniently failed to link to, would see.
I linked here to demonstrate the follies that are likely to occur when one ignores the underlying physics in one's mathematical and statistical adventuring. 6th order polynomials anyone?
(But if I had linked to it to illustrate that TC doesn't admit his errors, there are plenty of unadmitted errors of far more consequence than the admitted one to point at!)
Sheesh, what was I just saying about the folly of ignoring the underlying physics?
"... there are two independent stochastic trends in the data.... Radiative forcing due to greenhouse gases and solar irradiance can largely explain the common trend.The second trend, which represents the non-scalar non-stationary differences between the hemispheres, reflects radiative forcing due to tropospheric sulfate aerosols...."
http://www.springerlink.com/content/q4050354235k32l6/
Lotharsson: My paper currently under review goes into the physics in detail, but uses Tyndal's real physical expermients which whowed that it nitrogen and oxygen at around 99% of the atmosphere that are transparent to incoming solar insolation but opaque to longwave outgoing, so they neither absorb nor radiate in the infrared, whereas what he called carbonic acid and aqueous vapour are not only transparent to incoming but also do absorb and radiate outgoing LW in the infrared. Thus in my opinion the real greenhouse gases are the O and N, becuase they do block in the infrared, while [CO2] and [H2O] do not block release of the infrared LW radiation, which thereby makes it to space. See Turner et al just out in GRL (h/t WUWT on 15 June 2012).
Tim Curtin, your latest comment merely reiterates my point. You ignore the physics by creating your own deeply loony interpretation that is thoroughly refuted by century of well-established counter-evidence - and the original experiment you cite! And then you layer on top your statistics which are now unconstrained by the actual physical understanding.
(And you still haven't acknowledged that you have made mutually inconsistent claims about greenhouse gas physics on this very thread, at least one of which must be an error of far greater consequence than the statistical error you acknowledged.)
N2 and O2 opaque to longwave radiation? Since when?
If that were the case, no one could ever do IR spectroscopy!
"N2 and O2 opaque to longwave radiation? Since when?"
Hang on a minute. How does a heat seeking missile work in such an environment?
(Here I should acknowledge that my physics is pretty limited, so be kind if I need correction.)
For Tim Curtin's next trick, he will show that because oil is liquid and 'wet', just as is water, it isipso facto water-soluble, and that because ice floats on water in the Artic, it is not water-soluble. Further, because ice floats on water as does oil, ice must be as oil is, and therefore ice is oil...
Tim Curtin.
Tearing myself (reluctantly) away from your paradigm-shifting understanding of radiation physics, I note that you don't appear to have addressed my question to you about the alchemy of seawater transmutation, repeated often and most recently on Open Mind. I'm sure that many here would appreciate the illumination that your extraordinary mind might cast on this arcane magickery - please detail how your chemistry trumps that of a whole discipline and of several centuries of scientific scrutiny.
Do I detect a pattern here? He's failed to detail how his physics trumps that of a whole discipline and oodles of scientific scrutiny either. And then there's biology...
But I'm sure that when he does, his revolutionary advances in understanding where zillions of other ordinary scientists went wrong for so long will lead to him being immediately recognised in all three fields as the next Nobel Prize winner. Can't be long now! Just need the solid details, maybe a couple of published papers in each field that don't provoke raucous laughter from practitioners and cause desks in research labs all over the world to be cracked by the impact of formerly-leading scientists heads.
First there was this!
"Is that going to be it?" many of us asked. It was soon apparent that no, that wasn't the end of it. Then there was this!
But even that didn't take the biscuit. No! We then got to this stage!
Was it going to stop there? I always doubted it. And I think others did, too.
I think we may now have reached this stage with Tim(ewaster) Curtin... and I fear we're not too far from heading into this territory!!
adelady
Your point WRT heat-seeking missiles constitutes a brick wall for Curtin's nonsense.
I was once involved with combat aircraft (UK's FAA) which carried such. We used to test missile target acquisition using hand held battery powered torches of the common NATO pattern.
Of course we had to don spacesuits so as to work in a hangar where all the oxygen and nitrogen had been sucked out! ;-)
Ballcocks!
Just realised that last link went awry somewhat.
The last bit should have been "and I fear we’re not too far from heading into this territory!!"
FTW!
(Although I fear the irony may escape TC.)
wait, what's this??
http://www.akama.com/company/Tim_Curtins_Cyber_a8d163097489.html
but, still, nothing has topped this one:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/06/the_gods_are_laughing_at_tom_h…
Odin on a stick, Curtin, you're one slow nimrod. The physics itself aside for the moment, even a Turing test would incorporate what you've been told repeatedly - the square brackets refer simply to the concentration of something; they do not refer to things in an atmospheric state.
If you're going to pretend to be scientific, you should at least learn the language and the basic concepts of science. To do otherwise would be akin to doing economics without using numbers...
Bernard J: you just don't get it do you! I choose to use square brackets as a form of shorthand, and am not the first to use that convention.
What is much more to the point, as spelt out in your quote from you me which you choose not to address because you are unwilling to acknowledge its truth, as that the really grotesque misuse of language is by the IPCC and the 97% of climate scientists who wilfully refuse to admit their GHGs are not GHGs at all, as they do not trap or otherwise block outgoing LWR through the infrared, whereas the oxygen and nitrogen do.
The paper by Turner at al in GRL (May) (actual paper is linked at WUWT 15th June 2012) provides major support to my papers' contention that it is atmospheric water vapour which is what matters.
But to get published thye perforce have to use the false term of GHGs when referring to carbon dioxide etc.
Be that as it may, here is what they say at [4]: "...evaluation of water vapor ABSORPTION [my caps] ... is very difficult to make in strongly absorbing water vapor bands due to the OPACITY of the atmosphere".
Even so Tyndall managed that!
The Turner et al Figures show inter alia the temperature and water vapour mixing ratio profiles (Fig.1) and the "water vapor pure rotation band in far-infrared" (Fig.3), etc. and confirm the role of the latter which I demonstrated in my ACE2011 and TSWJ papers with their in situ regressions at places as different as Barrow and Mauna Loa.
Well, Tim C is clearly getting the attention he craves.
Anybody else think they're achieving anything like satisfaction? Or are likely to?
As has been pointed out, in putting and then defending an actual argument this is close to the best that Denial can offer.
Doesn't amount to much, does it?
TC wouldn't change his opinion that the midday sky was purple if he bought a colorimeter and pointed it at the sky himself. So in that sense, no.
And there's also the surprisingly compelling phenomenon of watching the guy deliberately orchestrate an intellectual train wreck and in response to rescuers decide to dig himself even deeper (and wondering how deep he will dig this time compared to the others). But I wouldn't exactly call that satisfaction.
But as you say, if TC is the best denialism has to offer...
It's really a shame Curtin isn't deliberately clown-trolling, otherwise he could execute some truly world-class moves starting from this particular position. I'm particularly looking forward to his explanation as to how allegedly heat-seeking missiles really work.
"I’m particularly looking forward to his explanation as to how allegedly heat-seeking missiles really work."
My heart sinks.
Curtin, in science one does not get to arbitrarily reassign 'shorthand' conventions, especially when the particular convention has a very long and widespread use in another chemical context. It would be like deciding that '-' means 'divided by' and using it thusly, just because you think that it looks like a vinculum. Seriously, if you were going to specifically mention chemical concentration as well in any discussion where you already use square brackets for your own definition, you'd be forced to deviate from accepted scientific notation.
All you are doing by using your own "shorthand" is demonstrating to everyone who actually have science under their belts, that you are not operationally familiar with how science works. If you were going to apply a "shorthand" in the context relevant to your usage, you would more appropriately do so with a (likely italicised) subscript, as in 'H2O2' or, because you're referring to chemicals that are already prone to subscription indicating proportionality, you might use superscripts or prefixes such as aH2O.
You certainly don't get to "choose" to mess around with a notation that is already agreed by professional practitioners to mean something completely different. Not if you're expecting to be taken seriously: all that you're showing the scientific world is that you didn't understand the sybolism the first time you saw it, and that you've propagated your misunderstanding throughout your subsequent writings.
Your subsequent dancing around like a cat on a hot tin roof simply makes you look silly.
Now, since you seem too scared to address the mess you made of the apparent chemical transmutation of seawater when it's acidified with CO2, perhaps you would care to explain how LionelA's and Adelady's heat-seeking missiles are able to function.
Oo, and if you have a theory about diameter of the incoming-ER horizon around our sun, as I posited on this thread on June 9 at 4:40 pm, I'd love to hear about it.
Damn.
This new blog format screwed up my attempt to put a subscripted and italicised 'a' after H2O.
You'll just have to imagine that this useless blog format actually knows how to translate tags.
Screw it. Impatience is not a virtue.
...an italicised...
Turner et al claim the atmosphere is opaque to water vapor (in certain absorption bands), Tim earlier claimed it is opaque to N2 and O2. And then Tim claims Turner et al agrees with him?
This isn't even Dunning-Kruger anymore!
It could be a Dunning-Kruger Mobius effect.
http://ink-blot-mazes.deviantart.com/art/Mobius-Maze-204759330
Far more D-K dead ends than the single, science based way out.
Bernard J: you still don’t get it do you! If I am wrong to use my square brackets in the carefully defined context that I do, why is it not wrong to call atmospheric water vapour and CO2 GHGs when plainly they are not, because they in fact absorb and radiate heat, unlike greenhouses.
As for heatseeking, Tyndall showed heat in his cylinder when filled with carbonic acid and aqueous vapour, but not when they contained only nitrogen and oxygen.
Marco: read the end of #19 in Turner et al.
1) You being wrong in one thing does not mean that someone else's science is also incorrect. You're cooking a veritable fruitcake of logical fallacies in confabulating independent events.
2) The point here is not about how 'greenhouse' gases operate compared with a greenhouse proper, but whether 'greenhouse' gases have 'greenhouse' gas properties, as understood by physicists the world over and for the last several hundred years. Your introduction of the ambiguity of the semantics of the term 'greenhouse' is yet another logical fallacy (I counted about four at first blush).
Understand this:
Point 1: Your use of square brackets is in a context not used, accepted, or recognised by scientists. Your use clearly stems from an original misapprehension of the conventional use.
Point 2: 'Greenhouse' gases absorb and re-radiate electromagnetic radiation. Nitrogen and oxygen do not. Carbon dioxide and methane are 'greenhouse' gases; nitrogen and oxygen are not. As you are having difficulty in understanding this, and how it relates to reality, you might ponder the demonstrations by Iain Stewart and Peiter Trans.
Come on, TC. Even you must not believe that's a remotely plausible answer to the problems of heat-seeking missiles in an infrared-opaque atmosphere. And you have to be particularly obtuse to have not yet figured out where you assertion based on Tyndall is wrong, given that you have been practically handed the answers on a plate. But let's ignore that aspect and concentrate on opacity.
1) Since you're prone to private definitions of terms, please define "opaque".
3) Then please specify what you believe happens when infrared radiation is incident upon an infrared-opaque substance, all other factors being equal. Please deal specifically with changes in various forms of energy, and observability of the infrared radiation sources on the opposite side of the substance.
3) For good measure, please specify at a very high level how heat-seeking missiles ... well, seek remote heat sources given that convection and conduction appear eminently unsuited for the task. For bonus points, please specify how this process works in an atmosphere that is opaque to infrared.
I think the bottom line here is that TC is not only completely out on an invisible limb with respect to arguing that C02 is not a greenhouse gas (this is so hilarious as to define a proper epithet), but that the only attention he is ever going to get will be on a few blogs like Deltoid and Tamino that try (without success, of course) and set him straight. Like Tim's other 'academic' works, will the scientific community pay even a scintilla's worth of attention to his latest silly musings? Of course not. Expect the latest article, like its predecessors in E & E and elsewhere, to embed themselves in the intellectual benthos and for the citations to add up to a massive NIL over time.
That is why this is a storm in a teacup. Tim's articles don't even create a tiny ripple where it matters. This should say something about what academia thinks of them. Heck, even the deniers who us journals like E & E as there depositories don't cite them.
Let me try one other analogy to see if the TC lightbulb will go on.
A) You have a laser light source in a windowless room, and an observing device in another windowless room connected to the first by an empty closed windowless corridor. The rooms and corridors are under vacuum conditions. You check that the observer can see the light source and measure its brightness, and you thereby establish a baseline for the source's brightness as observed from the observer's room.
B) You then place a device in the corridor that consists of a shield that is completely transparent to the frequency of the light source. How bright would the light source appear to the observer?
C) You then place a device in the corridor consisting of a shield that is opaque to the frequency of the light source. How bright would the light source appear to the observer?
D) You replace the device with a coupled detector-emitter that detects incoming photons at the frequency of the light on one side, and emits precisely the same amount of outgoing photons at the same frequency on the other side. How bright would the light source appear to the observer?
1) In which of these scenarios has the device in the corridor increased the brightness of the source as seen by the observer? In which of these scenarios has it decreased?
2) Does the hypothesis that a transparent device reduces the observed brightness of the source hold up?
3) Does the hypothesis that complete absorption and re-emission increases the observed brightness hold up?
4) Does the hypothesis that a device that absorbs and re-emits is responsible for the observer being able to see the light source hold up?
E) You replace the coupled detector-emitter with a more fancy one. This version detects incoming photons at the frequency of the light on one side, and emits half the amount of outgoing photons at the same frequency on the incoming side and the same amount (and frequency) on the other side. How bright would the light source appear to the observer and why?
5) Does the hypothesis that a device that absorbs and re-emits in different directions will increase the observed brightness hold up?
6) Do your answers to any of these questions change if the light source is a heat source emitting infrared radiation, the observer is a heat-seeking missile sensitive to said infrared radiation, and the device is an atmosphere gas that is opaque to said infrared radiation? Why or why not?
7) Do your answers to any of these questions change if the source room is a planetary surface, the light source is longwave infrared radiation from the surface, the observer is in space looking at the planet, and the device in the corridor is an atmospheric gas? Why or why not?
Timmie-boy, why don't you just admit that you AGAIN contradict your own claims with the sources you cite?
You see, with your description of Tyndall's experiment, you contradicted your claim that N2 and O2 are "opaque" to infrared radiation.
Before we go on to look at Turner et al's point 19, I think we should first establish what you really think is correct, and why you cite papers in support of statements that directly contradict those sources.
I look forward to seeing Lotharsson's answers to his questions before I respond!
Marco, I rely on Tyndall, and until you guys refute what he showed, namely that N and O do not absorb or radiate, I rest my case.
ROFL! That's a pathetic failure of an avoidance ploy.
You're the one claiming to overturn established science in a way that a plethora of professionals should have spotted a hundred years ago. And yet you can't answer some relatively simple questions.
So man up and provide answers, and show how they are consistent with your claims. Because I assert that you can not.
Don't be a feckin' idiot!
Your case does NOT in ANY way rest on the claim that "N and O do not absorb or radiate", because (barring rounding errors) that's what scientists already accept.
Are you so intransigent that you really still do not get that?
Or are you merely logically deficient, unable to comprehend and communicate that your case must rest on at least one point of disagreement with established science?
Inquiring minds wish to know.
TC @ June 16, 2:55 am
Along with square brackets, TC is obviously using either 'opaque' or 'absorb' in an idiosyncratic way.
Crikey, what the hell do you think everyone's been telling you?!
And do you even know what your "case" is?! Permit me to remind you:
You said that nitrogen and oxygen "block in the infrared", and the rest of us told you that they didn't. You said that carbon dioxide and water "do not block release of the infrared", and we told you that they do.
At what point did you decide to turn everything arse-up and agree with the original science concerning nitrogen and oxygen, and claim that the rest of us now have it all wrong? We don't need to "refute" Tyndall, because we don't dispute his work. You did.
And are you know claiming that carbon dioxide and water do "block release of the infrared LW radiation", in converse to the actions of nitrogen and oxygen? If that's the case, you're at the threshold of admitting that CO2 and H2O warm the planet - something that you seem to have had a pathological fear of conceding for a long time now.
Curtin, I suspect that you don't even care what you're saying, beyond that it simply must not permit (in your fevered mind) the science of global warming be be real, or that our refutations of your nonsense are correct. Sorry, but you are not Tim Ur-cnut, and the laws of the universe will not halt at your feet just because you will that they should.
Notice, Curtin, how more than one of us caught you in your latest complete about-face. Do you really think that we're not going to notice these backflips and goal-movings? Do you really think that we're not going to remember that you haven't responded to years of correction on innumerable mistakes on your part, beyond little more than one concession by you about one small part of Tamino's devastating demolition of your silliness in TSWJ?
Have you no shame? Do your children know what a fool their father is making of himself? Is it really so difficult for you to turn your gaze on to yourself and wonder why it is that you disagree with just about every scientific professional in a broad range of scientific disciplines?
Strewth Curtin! 'N and O do not absorb or radiate', now you are saying what we have been trying to get you to see for the last week or so. You have just contradicted yourself again. So which is it to be?
Amazed!
I am only late with this comment because my broadband went out for a few hours (thankfully I had logs of my route through the system so could not be fobbed off with 'a problem with your computer sir' stories). Probably all that nasty O and N about blocking my internet.
Are there perhaps two Tim Curtins? One how claims N2 and O2 block IR (and are thus opaque to IR), and one who claims N2 and O2 are completely transparent to IR (and thus are not opaque to IR)?
If so, only the latter is right. If the two are one and the same person, he is kindly asked to explain why he holds two contradictory views on one and the same subject.
Yes, and they both reside in the same cranium!
This is too silly for words.
[And come on scienceblogs, sort out our sups/subs, turn off italic in block quotes, and bring back preview and hide/kill]
'I rest my case'. Well, that should not be difficult, since there's no inertia to contend with, anyway, what with the whole thing being weightless and all...
Is anyone surprised his previous 'papers' have no citations?
Marco
You disappoint me, I used to think you were reasonably bright and honest: "Are there perhaps two Tim Curtins?" Like Tyndall I have always said N2 and O2 are transparent like the atmospheric CO2 and H2O to incoming solar radiation and, unlike the CO2 and H2O, opaque to outgoing infrared absorption and radiation. Do you know the difference?
Evidently not. Read Tyndall.
Mummmeeeeee! I wanna get oooffff.
This roller-coaster's making me dizzy.
Yes, Tim, I know the difference. You clearly do not. Anyone who has ever done any IR experiments knows that IR radiation is not absorbed by N2 and O2. That is, they are *transparent* to IR radiation. This is also exactly what Tyndall showed in his experiments.
You, sir, are an idiot.
TC, please explain how a capnograph works.
Marco, first, did you notice Tyndall’s title? - ABSORPTION AND RADIATION OF HEAT BY GASES AND VAPOURS
Next, Marco claims N2 and O2 “are *transparent* to IR radiation. This is also exactly what Tyndall showed in his experiments.”
Not true in the least.
Here is what Tyndall actually shows and reports:
“The results of the experiments are given in the following Table, [p.31] the figure appended to the name of each gas marking the number of degrees through which the radiation from the latter urged the needle of the galvanometer :-
Oxygen ... 0
Nitrogen. .... 0
Hydrogen ..... 0
Carbonic oxide . . . 12
Carbonic acid .. 18
Nitrous oxide . . . . 29
Olefiant gas ... 53
…Their radiative powers follow precisely the same order as their powers of absorption”
So contrary to Marco, absent absorption, absent also radiation, and as Tyndall said: “The absorptive power of the vapour referred to is very great, and its radiative power is equally so … From the existence of absorption, we may on theoretic grounds infallibly infer a capacity for radiation; from the existence of radiation, we may with equal certainty infer a capacity for absorption; and each of them must be regarded as the measure of the other. Great differences have been shown to exist among gases as to their powers of absorption, and precisely similar differences as regards their powers of radiation.”
But for Marco radiation is independent of absorption. Oh brave new science!
Tyndall was the first to grasp the reason for the difference between the absorption and radiation properties of the many gases he analysed, namely that “the elementary gases hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and the mixture atmospheric air, possess absorptive and radiative powers beyond comparison less than those of the compound gases”.
Thus “… So also with oxygen and nitrogen, which, when mixed, as in our atmosphere, both absorb and radiate feebly, when united to form oscillating systems, as in nitrous oxide, have their powers vastly augmented. Pure atmospheric air, of 5 inches tension, does not effect an absorption equivalent to more than the one-fifth of a degree, while nitrous oxide of the same tension effects an absorption equivalent to fifty-one such degrees.”
Unlike Marco, Tyndall also understood that “All the gases and vapours, whose deportment we have examined, are transparent to light; that is to say, the waves of the visible spectrum pass among them without sensible absorption. Hence it is plain that their absorptive power depends on the periodicity of the undulations [i.e. wavelengths of the infrared] which strike them”.
Tim Curtin said on 18 June, 2:47 am:
Just so that we're clear, here is the nub of the matter:
Shit, if this was the case, we'd have a climate akin to the Venusian one!
Fortunately, as Tyndall himself knew, nitrogen and oxygen are not opaque to outgoing infrared absorption and radiation.
Crackers Curtin, you never cease to amaze me...
TC quoting Tyndall:
Precisely, so what should that be telling you? Look at that list again and think about it, it is really not that difficult to arrive at the correct conclusion? Unless of course your brain is scrambled such as to prevent comprehension and we have seen plenty of evidence here that this could well be the case.
TC again:
That is a rather messy way of describing things and indicates why the logic of arguments escapes you.
Whatever, if the above is the case WRT N2 and O2 please explain how heat seeking missiles manage to function in air satisfactorily enough for their target acquisition to be tested using a small hand held battery powered torch? Not to mention their ability to pick up the heat generated by the leading edges of the structures of sonic aircraft.
This thread has amply demonstrated how dangerous it can be for economists to be involved in climate science any science.
Still shaking head in disbelief!
Let's see, Tyndall shows N2 and O2 are not affected by IR radiation (as per the table Tim the Idiot provides). That is, they do not absorb IR radiation, or otherwise they would emit IR radiation, which would fall on the detector Tyndall devised. Which means, to anyone with even a basic grasp of English, that N2 and O2 are TRANSPARENT, and not opaque, towards IR radiation.
You, Tim, are an idiot times two.
Good grief, just in case anyone was in danger of being mistaken, Curtin hammers home the point that he has a completely miscomprehension of basic science with his trademark subtlety. He clearly doesn't even understand what Tyndall was measuring, let alone what the measurements imply.
And I'm betting he never seriously answers the questions in my little thought experiment or the heat-seeking missile questions. (I'm tempted to ask about temperature differences between cloudy vs cloudless nights, but that would only further confuse the poor guy.)
TC, I strongly urge you to seriously attempt to answer my thought experiment questions. If you can get those right, I dare say you'll finally understand where your major blunders in interpreting both Tyndall and atmospheric physics lie.
Or at a minimum, begin by pondering this:
If I shine infrared through a tube filled with IR-transparent material, does the IR affect the temperature of the tube? Why or why not? Explain the mechanism(s) behind your answer. You might wish to compare the intensity of the IR entering and exiting the tube.
By the way, TC, what galvanometer reading did Tyndall get when he performed a calibration procedure by placing a highly polished reflecting disc in the tube so that no radiant heat could pass through?
Or to put it another way, what does a reading of "0" signify and why?
If you need assistance, perhaps this description will help.
Your are all clowns.
Just send your comments here to the Journal of Philosophical Transactions that published Tyndall. Good luck, and get back to me when you get to be published.
As for the ineffable Bernard J, what are the differences of the Earth and Venus with respect to the sun, given their respective atmospheres and distances from the sun?
Lotharsson: "Or at a minimum, begin by pondering this:
If I shine infrared through a tube filled with IR-transparent material, does the IR affect the temperature of the tube?"
Tyndall just sent heat through cylinders with or without carbonic acid and aqueous vapour.
You have to show by your own physical experiments that he was wrong to find that the N2 and O2 are the real GHGs.
Noooooooooh. No, no, no, NO!
I didn't mean I wanted to go on the loop-the-loop.
You Dunning-Kruger Effect archetype, not a single one of us are disputing anything that Tyndall discovered.
But you are - apparently not realising that's what you're doing! Let us know how your submission to that journal goes, eh?
Since your miscomprehension is at legendary levels, why don't you skip that unanswered question as too difficult, and try the questions in my following comment about what a "0"
reading meant, and what kind of reading was seen when the tube was completely blocked to infrared. They're even easier.
So feel free to man up and answer simple scientific questions. You apparently are incapable of or unwilling to doing so - which does not surprise me in the slightest.
It takes real hubris and a deep lack of commitment to accuracy to persist in putting false words in another person's mouth. But you are almost reliably up for it.
Let's see...
What passes for a brain is buried in its body.
Can hold two views of the world simultaneously.
Runs away when challenged, or falls into a coma state.
Highly conservative, and wants to control the universe to ensure its own safety.
Continuing my earlier reference to Ringworld, if it wasn't for the glaring absence of honesty and high intelligence I'd swear that Curtin was a Pierson's Puppeteer.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2606/3903805117_8d85a8bcfd.jpg
TC
I kept screwing up the tags there before realising I was using blockhead instead of blockquote. ;-)
But Tyndall did not find that N2 and O2 are the real GHGs, that is the nub of the matter.
As for experiments, I once carried them out using a torch and a guided missile with N2 and O2 not having the slightest effect.
As for that olefiant gas you seem to have blanketed the whole thread with some. You having expelled all that gas could be reason that you seem about as bright as a TOC-H lamp.
TC - you're having us on, right? How could anyone be so dense as to quote data clearly showing that N2 and O2 do not emit (and therefore do not absorb) IR radiation while insisting that the opposite is true? The only reasonable explanation is that you're seeing how far you can go before we call you on it. Did you decide to up the ante after people took at face value your claim that acidifying seawater makes it potable?
Teh stupid is really strong in teh Curtin. Even Steve Goddard starts to sound like a genius!
Perhaps Tim Curtin can explain why everyone else who writes about Tyndall's experiments manages to deduce that his experiments showed N2 and O2 are TRANSPARENT to IR radiation. People like Ray Pierrehumbert, for example ("Principles of Planetary Climate" - it's on page 6).
But best of all, Tyndall himself. If Tim the Idiot wants to lose that label "idiot", he should read Tyndall's 1872 book, which can be found here:
http://archive.org/stream/contributionsto01tyndgoog#page/n8/mode/2up
I recommend in particular pages 421-424, in which Tyndall explains the greenhouse effect, mainly with focus on water vapour. The description that must be enormously surprising for Tim Curtin will be that Tyndall describes how water vapour is able to block (oh! gasp!), despite its tiny quantity, much more IR radiation going outwards than N2 and O2. And especially the last sentence, on page 424, makes it all clear: N2 and O2 provide an "open door" for heat loss of the earth. It is only because of water vapour (and as later shown by Arrhenius, CO2) that there is no such open door.
To Tim Curtin, open doors are "opaque" to anyone wanting to leave...
"Let’s see…
What passes for a brain is buried in its body."
I assumed you were going to say that TC is actually a stegosaur in human form.
Most of what he writes does seem to come from the brain in his arse.
If one of my chickens staggered around the yard the way that Curtin staggers through science and statistics, it'd be straight to the chopping block.
And then deeply buried - anything that crazy must surely be afflicted with some horrendous nasty...
Seriously, this isn't Dunning-Kruger, this is an intellectual instance of Anton-Babinski:
If this isn't just, as seems most likely, clowning for the attention it's actually quite disturbing...
Bernard, if one of your chickens stumbled about the yard the way that Timmy stumbles through science and statistics, he might be Mike the Headless Chicken (go on, click the link, you know you want to!).
Bill at 18 June, 11:24 pm.
It may actually be that Curtin really does have a form of anosognosia, perhaps originating from a small/mild stroke in a very particular part of the brain.
Tim Curtin, seriously, consider seeing your GP for a proper check-up. If not a poe, you're patently having extreme difficulty in perceiving that you're unable to grasp that you're mangling basic science and statistics. No, you're not a modern Galileo: you may in fact be exhibiting the initial stages of a dangerous train heading toward a cerebral accident.
That's my only nice warning to you - likely, if I'm close to the mark, you won't be able to accept it anyway.
More likely you're just an ideological mule, who deserves nothing more than the ridicule that he draws to himself.
Richard Simons: you are not being truthful - I have never said that N2 and O2 absorb and then radiate through the IR, all I did here was quote at length Tyndall's experimental results showing they do not, which is why they are the real GHGs.
As for the rest of you, I think you are the ones who need to visit your psychologists to find out why you think the constant streams of personal abuse and insults that you direct at me advance what ought to be a collegial debate and discussion of the important issues I have raised.
The extreme anger most of you exhibit is quite amazing. As Richard Betts (Hadley) said yesterady at Bishop Hill's re that appalling article in Nature Climate Change:
'This paper really makes me cringe.
Neither "Belief" nor "Denial" have any place in a subject that relies on scientific evidence, and continual testing and review of that evidence. It should be about being either convinced or not convinced by the evidence.
"Denier" is a highly-charged word, and even if the evidence is strong, using the word "denier" for someone who is not convinced is deeply unsettling.
"Believer" makes being convinced by the evidence for AGW sound like a religion, which it isn't.'
And as none of you are by your own assertions Dunning-Krugers, I still await your regressions refuting mine.
If you actually believe that, then I'm pretty confident that you are also having difficulty perceiving emotions of others.
Seriously, as Bernard says, go talk to your GP.
But if they do not absorb and then radiate in the IR, they cannot be greenhouse gases. If they are transparent to IR, how do they reduce the amount of IR radiation leaving Earth? After all, a transparent pane of glass in front of a lamp does not reduce the amount of light leaving it. Describe the situation as you see it in as small steps as possible, as though to a 10-year-old.
Except that you insist that they are GHGs, which by definition means that they absorb and then radiate through the IR.
You compound that foolishness, which one might argue is merely the folly of insisting on a private definition of scientifically accepted terminology that is entirely incompatible with that accepted definition, by insisting that substances that are transparent to IR keep the earth warmer than it otherwise would be by ... well, to be honest, I really don't know how you think that works. Why do you think I asked you questions about a simple thought experiment (and why do you think you've been entirely unable to answer them?)
Over at The Conversation Tim was arguing that the fact that solar panels do not generate electricity at night is evidence for no downwelling IR radiation.
Yes it was explained to him but Tim was having none of it.
TC is one of those people where the word "idiot" just seems somehow inadequate.
Tim, I'm not angry at you - though, like many of your tribe, your blind persistence can be annoying - if anything I'm sorry for you. You are making an absolute fool of yourself in a public forum. Seriously.
Even making silly claims - such as you're the victim of 'extreme anger' - is part of the Denier process. Face it, what's really happening is... you're wrong.
Tim, if I would be angry, I would not even react to you.
I am confused how someone can claim A, and moments later claims B which contradicts claim A, but completely unaware that it refutes A.
You just did that. First you claimed N2 and O2 are *opaque* to upwelling IR radiation, defended it to death by referring to Tyndall in support, and now after many back and forths, you refute that claim: "I have never said that N2 and O2 absorb and then radiate through the IR, all I did here was quote at length Tyndall’s experimental results showing they do not". Which, to anyone with a basic grasp of English, is an admission that N2 and O2 are NOT opaque to IR radiation!
Yes, you are all 10 year olds!
Richard Simons: Real greenhouses work by retaining heat. N2 and O2 do that, as they neither absorb nor radiate, unlike CO2 and H20 in their gaseous forms. They are not transparent to IR, that is why they are not visible in the IR or in the emanations from the IR. After all, a transparent pane of glass in front of a lamp does reduce the amount of heat leaving it into a real greenhouse.
Lotharsson: “Except that you insist that they are GHGs, which by definition means that they absorb and then radiate through the IR”. Go back to Lewis Carroll. The warmists like the Mad Hatter and the rest can define GHGs as they please and do, but a real greenhouse does trap heat, whereas gaseous CO2 and H2O do NOT, as Tyndall showed; instead they absorb and radiate out, from hot to cold as per the 2nd Law.
Mike H: The 2nd Law rules out the back radiation from cold atmosphere to warm planetary surface so beloved of Kiehl and Trenberth in defiance of all physics. Glenn Tamblyn at The C has yet to respond to my challenge to him to prove the 2nd Law does not apply.
Marco: Thanks to the link to Tyndall’s book, which is actually his collected papers. I will check, but in 1861 he says the air is opaque to N2 and O2.
Richard: my last sentence may be unclear:
It should read: "After all, a transparent pane of glass in front of a lamp does reduce the amount of heat a lamp puts in a real greenhouse that is able to leave the greenhouse."
Apologies.
Tim - have you ever considered donating your brain to industry. I suspect it could be used in quarries for breaking rocks.
I should not do this as poor old Science of Doom has had to explain thermo and the second Law to the only person I know who is thicker than TC, his fellow crank Doug Cotton.
But here is a link to the real second law.
http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/10/07/amazing-things-we-find-in-textbooks…
I notice that Doug Cotton has had an article on the Second Law of Thermodynamics posted up on Tall Bloke's silly contrarian weblog. Note that after his name Cotton has to try and give the impression of being an academic scholar by posting up his silly professional qualificiatiions which includes a Diploma in Business Administration (as if that is relevant). This remainds me of something Clint Eastwood once said. Eastwood, in his autobiography, said that he also studied Business Administration in the early 1950s because he didn't know 'what the hell he wanted to do in life'.He said that such a course fits people of that description!
As for poor old Curtin, he berates papers in outstanding journals like Nature Climate Change (and, recall from his own thread, Susan Solomon's outstanding paper in PNAS) whilst publishing his own stuff in bottom-feeding journals where they will never, ever be cited. IMHO the only reason he haunts the blogosphere is because this is where he will get some attention (although usually from those trashing his work). In the scientific community his papers are completely and utterly ignored. This one will be no exception.
"Neither “Belief” nor “Denial” have any place in a subject that relies on scientific evidence"
That's true, Tim.
Why, then, despite knowing this, you continue to display denial to the evidence your belief system does not want to accept?
Tim, nowhere in his 1861 paper does Tyndall say that N2 and O2 are opaque to IR radiation.
You're just replacing you claim B (N2 and O2 do not absorb or emit IR radiation) with your claim A again (N2 and O2 are opaque to IR radiation). You see, Tim, in the real world that we live in, "opaque" means "impenetrable to light". How on earth can you maintain your claim A, and at the same time hold claim B as true?!
I also want you to read Tyndall's book again, and especially pages 421-424. In it, Tyndall explains that without greenhouse gases, the IR radiation from the surface of the earth would have a completely open window to space. In other words, without greenhouse gases, you'd have a greenhouse without any glas in it (which does what, exactly, Tim?).
Oh, and since you mention greenhouses. Are you now telling us extra CO2 is added to greenhouses to make them cooler? After all, that is what should happen, if your claims are true...
Bingo!
Tailor made...
Translation:
Atmospheric air (with 280 ppm CO2, unless Tyndall had removed it and any atmospheric H2O -- haven't read the paper that closely, and it's an unimportant aspect anyway) and the individual gases O2, H2 and N2 absorb/emit IR (calorific rays) hardly at all, whereas compounds/vapours like C2H4, CS2, C5H10... absorb/emit IR in spades.
Does this conflict with conventional, modern scientific thinking? Not one iota!
Translation:
A physical mix of oxygen and nitrogen (i.e. not a chemical compound) interacts with IR very little (i.e. feebly). When you form the compound N2O, the situation changes markedly.
And similarly with physical mixtures of: hydrogen and nitrogen and their compound ammonia, NH3; oxygen and hydrogen and their compound water, H2O.
Does this conflict with conventional, modern scientific thinking? Not one iota!
And so to Tyndall's table of values:
O2 … 0; N2 … 0; H2 … 0; CO … 12; CO2 … 18; N2O … 29; C2H4 … 53
and
i.e. to C2H4, CS2, C5H10...
Does this conflict with conventional, modern scientific thinking? Only perhaps in minor adjustments to magnitudes (can't be bothered to look up actual 20th/21st-century measurements). So, not one iota!
TC, you are so muddled!
Just how does the planetary surface prevent atmospheric 'greenhouse' gas molecules from re-radiating in random directions their absorbed infrared?
Oh God.
Really - "Oh God"...
Curtin, if someone doesn't beat me to it, I'll consider the onerous task of cataloging your litany of contradictory statements on this thread. Buckle up.
TC
'Air is opaque to N2 and O2', what does that mean. Strewth, you cannot even make sense in a 13 element clause.
TC to Richard Simons:
No. No. No. No. They, N2 and O2, are not the real greenhouse gases - you are still confused. I suggest you go watch David Archer's lectures linked to up-thread.
Still A href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEhS9Y9HYjU"> Windmills .
So we are all '10 year old clowns' eh?
Hum, and you complain of being insulted. If to try to correct persistent wrong thinking is insulting then you must have experienced much of this of late, unless you 'see the joke' that is your assessment of Tyndall and revise your approach you will suffer much more. After all it is you who keeps throwing his toys out of the pram.
It is now not only your errors with statistics that has become legendary I do believe that this thread raises such legends to an all new level.
Oops.
'Air is opaque to N2 and O2', what does that mean?
and
Still on Windmills .
So, the air is now 'opaque' to the two gases that constitute a little over 99% of the air?
You know, I went to Art School, but, clearly, to truly know nothing about Science I needed to have been studying Economics...
"The 2nd Law rules out the back radiation from cold atmosphere to warm planetary surface so beloved of Kiehl and Trenberth in defiance of all physics."
Nope. The second law does not rule out backradiation.
The second law only pertains to net heat flow. Not net energy flow and not per-body energy flow.
I am beginning, almost, to feel sorry for the guy. He does not realise that my continuing in digging this hole all the spoil he removes and throws upwards comes straight back down on his head. He now outdoes all other 'hole diggers' by digging like fury but not getting any deeper but now his hole is starting to flood.
Just in case anyone is searching for "opaque" in Tyndall's paper, you need to search for "opake"... Not that it changes anything of course.
Teh stupid of teh Curtin
Wow said: "Nope. The second law does not rule out backradiation.The second law only pertains to net heat flow. Not net energy flow and not per-body energy flow."
Not so. The word "net" does not appear in the 2nd Law.
Glenn Tamblyn at The C has tried to claim the same by invoking photons, but even if a large cold body with lots of photons is confronted by a small hot body with very few, the flow of HEAT is unidirectional as per the 2nd Law.
Listen to Flanders and Swan.
BTW, I also find it disgusting that my esteemed host here has allowed himself to host totally fraudulent advertisements for sundry fictitious gizmos.
I want a share of his takings after more than 400 posts hare!
Scienceblogs is our host, Tim, and National Geographic, come to think of it. Take it up with them...
PS - Firefox, NoScript, and AdBlockPlus - I literally have no idea which ads you're talking about.
"Not so. The word “net” does not appear in the 2nd Law."
It doesn't. You're right.
It also doesn't mention back radiation.
That's because heat, like wealth, is implicitly a net quantity.
But not the flow of radiation, which is the subject.
To put it in terms that even you should be able to understand: The 2LOT is like a law against increased disparity of wealth. Under such a law, the rich would not be allowed to become richer at the expense f the poor, but the law pertains to balance sheets, not individual transactions. The poor are allowed to get change from the rich, even if it means temporarily handing their money over to the rich. The law doesn't say "net" because it's implicit in the meaning of "wealth". Wealth is a different sort of thing than currency -- the former is a net quantity, while the latter is a physical thing that changes hands. The same is true of heat (a net quantity) and radiation (something physical that is emitted and absorbed).
Tim, we still have this issue to resolve in your inability ot understand basic physics. So, before you start moving the goalposts, please tell us again how something that does not absorb IR radiation (as you state N2 and O2 do not do) can be opaque, as in impenetrable to radiation, to IR radiation.
After you finally show some ability to learn this basic physics, we can discuss radiation vs heat flows. Otherwise we'll just be going round in circles: you make a claim, we point out the flaws, you contradict your own claim in defense of your original claim, we point out this contradiction, and you make the first claim again, repeat ad infinitum.
Of course there is a major difference: such a law would be arbitrary, ad hoc, imposed externally rather than flowing from the very nature of wealth and money, whereas the 2LOT is a statistical law that flows from the underlying physics, something that TC seems not to grasp. He would do well to contemplate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat#Microscopic_origin_of_heat
Only someone who is completely unfamiliar with the nature of the second law of thermodynamics could come up with a non sequitur such as that.
Truly, I've never seen anyone mine through the known bottom of Stupid as forcefully as do you. If you demonstrate one thing, it's that there is no> Bottom to Stupid</a.
Only someone who is completely unfamiliar with the nature of the second law of thermodynamics could come up with a non sequitur such as that.
Truly, I've never seen anyone mine through the known bottom of Stupid as forcefully as do you. If you demonstrate one thing, it's that there is no Bottom to Stupid</a.
[Crap.
It worked in SkS's preview field - obviously it has better interpretive software. Fingers crossed...]
Only someone who is completely unfamiliar with the nature of the second law of thermodynamics could come up with a non sequitur such as that.
Truly, I've never seen anyone mine through the known bottom of Stupid as forcefully as do you. If you demonstrate one thing, it's that there is no Bottom to Stupid.
I give up. Fracking lack of previewing...
It takes a truly special form of idiocy to contradict oneself so utterly comprehensively in the next sentence. As others have pointed out, not absorbing (or reflecting) is pretty much the definition of "transparent to". Heck, most high schools physics students could tell you that.
But the real idiocy is continuing to dig on this issue, when others have pointed out your folly.
Teh Stupid - It Burns.
Tyndall showed precisely the opposite - which is why I asked you what a "0" reading on the galvanometer meant, and what a non-zero reading meant, and provided a thought experiment with a device that captured and re-radiated photons. You would do well to attempt to tackle the associated questions - but I bet you won't. Go on - surprise me.
And it is precisely this fact that drives the mechanism by which they trap heat in a planetary system that would otherwise be lost. (Again, my thought experiment has an analogue to this concept. Surprise me by trying it.)
Misapplying the 2nd Law - and doing so in the face of direct contradictory evidence - last refuge of a scientific scoundrel.
That would most likely be because the 2nd Law does apply, but doesn't lead to the conclusion you claim. No doubt you will fail to respond to the challenge to demonstrate that your conclusion is sound...
And clearly there's a really good reason you won't answer the questions in my earlier thought experiment...
Let me try rephrasing one of the simple questions about Tyndall for TC.
Tyndall first calibrated the galvanometer by setting it to "zero" when the tube was empty and both heat sources were active. He then tested the setup by placing an opaque disk in the tube ("opaque" meaning it didn't let any IR through). Was the resultant galvanometer reading positive or negative?
How do they retain heat if they neither absorb or radiate? That's like saying that a ballplayer who neither catches nor throws balls keeps the opponent from scoring. How? Does he just glare balefully, an action at a distance?
In other words, glass is not transparent to heat. But it is transparent to light, and it's the light that gets through, does work, producing heat, which is then blocked. How you think this supports your argument is difficult to discern.
Sheesh, where have I previously heard a description of a system where light gets in ... but IR doesn't get out as easily as the light gets in? I seem to recall something about gasses and the word "greenhouse"...
Did you write this with a straight face? We have a term for things that neither absorb nor radiate (nor reflect). It is 'transparent'.
How does 'absorb' differ from 'trap' in this context? BTW, a real greenhouse (mainly) operates on different physical principals than an atmosphere containing greenhouse gases.
How does the atmosphere know that it is not supposed to radiate in the direction of the ground?
It should not be too long before the OED produces a definition for '(a) curtin'. Maybe with references to Monckton Manoeuvre.
For that matter, how does the radiation from the sun know that it's allowed to travel through the cold vacuum of space as long as its final destination is, while warmer than space, still colder than the sun?
Quite magical, this version of the 2LOT that TC believes in.
And how does the heat get out from the sun when the corona is far hotter than the photosphere?
Intelligent Physics, eh? Shares some properties with "Intelligent Design".
This topic is "Tim Curtin's Incompetence with basic statistics".
However, it seems to be proven in the posts he's made here, that he's what the dark side opposite of a polymath is.
He's not just incompetent with statistics. NO human endeavour is beyond his incompetence!
From a moderator comment at RealClimate:
Heck, if we applied that here we'd instantly lose pretty much all of TC's comments!
On second thoughts, if we applied it site-wide, we'd lose pretty much all of the comments from all of the trolls too. Hmmmmm...
Lotharsson.
Cue moan from TC that the RealClimate moderator's comment that you linked to is not about him.
Lionel A. Thanks for that, the first honest response I have ever had here.
Marco:
Many thanks again for that link to Tyndall (1872), a fabulous book.
As so often, the pages you cite contain stuff for and against both of us. Tyndall does refer to the transparency of the atmosphere in both directions, and to the opacity induced by atmospheric CO2 and H2O, bút he also restates his 1861 discovery of the vastly greater absorptive and radiative capacity of those gases relative to N2 and O2.
Those pages 421-424 also provide considerable support for what I have said here and in my papers on the relative roles of atmospheric H2O and CO2:
On p.424 Tyndall states that “the absorption of a molecule of aqueous vapour is 16,000 times that of air. Now the power to absorb and the power to radiate are perfectly reciprocal and proportionate. The atom of aqueous vapour will therefore radiate with 16,000 times the energy of an atom of air….How are the vast stores of heat set free by the change from the vaporous to the liquid condition [i.e. rain] disposed of? Doubtless in great part they are wasted by dispersion into space”.
Repeat: “Doubtless in great part they are wasted by dispersion into space”.
Tyndall had previously noted that air consists of 99.5% oxygen and nitrogen, but despite that preponderance, clearly their absorption and radiation are negligible, and thus it can be argued they are the real GHGs, not least because they appear to play no role in the dissipation of heat to space through the IR.
Tyndall goes on to say “numberless other meteorological phenomena receive their solution, by reference to the radiant and absorbent properties of aqueous vapour”.
Notice the absence of any reference on p. 424 to “carbonic acid”, i.e. atmospheric CO2, which is by a factor of six less potent in terms of absorption and radiation than his atmospheric water vapour, as well as being a much smaller constituent of the atmosphere (still not 0.04%).
That is why my bivariate regressions - derided here but never refuted - always show statistically significant coefficients on changes in atmospheric H2O as determinant of changes in temperature anomalies, and insignificant coefficients for changes in atmospheric CO2.
However I do have some problems with Tyndall’s account on those pages. As quoted above he says on the one hand, “the power to absorb and the power to radiate are perfectly reciprocal and proportionate. The atom of aqueous vapour will therefore radiate with 16,000 times the energy of an atom of air…”, but on the other, on p.423, “it is perfectly certain that more than 10% of the terrestrial radiation from the soil of England is stopped within 10 feet of the surface of the soil”, i.e. by absorption. But what of the equal radiation from that absorption?
Then Tyndall becomes very politically incorrect when he says “This aqueous vapour is a blanket more necessary to the vegetable life of England than clothing is to man”.
No wonder the IPCC and our own lovely Australian Academy of Science, Department of Climate Change, and Climate Change Institute take care never to quote Tyndall, and have endorsed the so-called carbon tax (is there anybody in Australian science who knows the difference between carbon and CO2?) which is also a tax on atmospheric water vapour, as shown in this equation for combustion of hydrocarbons (banned from all work of the IPCC, AAS, DCC, etc., etc):
C3H8 + 5O2 → Energy + 3CO2 + 4H2O
Likewise you will never see this equation in any papers of the 97% of climate scientists who all believe in a flat earth:
2CO2 + 2 H2O + photons → 2CH2O + 2O2
That equation is the TOTAL basis for all life on this earth.
Yet again I rest my case. Prove me wrong!
"but he also restates his 1861 discovery of the vastly greater absorptive and radiative capacity of those gases relative to N2 and O2."
Why did you feel the need to put a "but" in there?
"Repeat: “Doubtless in great part they are wasted by dispersion into space”"
Repeat: why did you need to put that word in there?
"air consists of 99.5% oxygen and nitrogen, but despite that preponderance, clearly their absorption and radiation are negligible, and thus it can be argued they are the real GHGs,"
Only if you're willing to argue nonsense.
A GHG is active in the IR. Since N2 and O2 aren't, they are not GHGs.
"not least because they appear to play no role in the dissipation of heat to space through the IR."
Repeat: this means they are NOT GHGs.
"always show statistically significant coefficients on changes in atmospheric H2O as determinant of changes in temperature anomalies"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clausius%E2%80%93Clapeyron_relation
"and in(?)significant coefficients for changes in atmospheric CO2."
http://www.carbonify.com/carbon-dioxide-levels.htm
Did you mean "insignificant and not significant?
"But what of the equal radiation from that absorption?"
Absorbed by the next 10 feet above and the ground below.
"which is also a tax on atmospheric water vapour"
No it isn't.
"Likewise you will never see this equation in any papers of the 97% of climate scientists who all believe in a flat earth:"
Since no such entity exists, no wonder it doesn't appear in any papers which would require an existent entity to produce.
"Yet again I rest my case. Prove me wrong!"
You're doing a splendid job of proving yourself wrong all on your lonesome.
I.e. you can't "rest your case AGAIN". If you have rested your case, it cannot be rested AGAIN. Therefore it is a single action once performed.
TC
Is that a response to my remark in reply to Lotharsson's RealClimate reference?
If so then I guess that irony flies straight past you. Either that or you were being ironic.
If not then I am at a loss as you still confound Tyndall.
You are a most determined scientific ignoramus, and once again your own quote points to the disproof of your claim. Are you sure you're not trying to clown-troll?
Hint: what happens to the rest of the heat that is not "wasted by dispersion into space"? To a first order approximation, which direction could it possibly be radiated that does NOT point towards space? And what phenomenon that you insist is just not possible, despite being directly physically measured, which corresponds to that direction?
(If you weren't too cowardly or possibly too dense to answer my thought experiment questions, you'd have already figured this out and smeared a lot less egg over your own face.)
Indeed.
But you're still making fundamental high school level mistakes - and you're ignoring questions from multiple people designed to flush these out - so you'll only confuse yourself if you try to tackle the uni level stuff. Like what happens to the radiation due to the absorption in the first 10 feet. And layered models for the atmosphere, and radiative transfer equations and all that. And before you can go there, you have to admit to yourself that radiation from excited GHGs is omnidirectional. Which you deny, although you may not even realise it.
Good grief. Your "case" has been proven wrong a dozen times on this thread already. Saying otherwise does not make it so.
Shorter TC: "It's a conspiracy because you'll never see my face in newspapers published by unicorns!" ;-)
BTW, I'd like to thank TC for one of the most amusing threads I've had the privilege of witnessing since ... well, probably since his last one.
Ladies and Gentlemen, in tonight's performance of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the role of King Arthur will be played by Marco Bernard J Wowchek Lotharsson. As ever, Tim Curtin will play the part of the Black Knight. Enjoy the show...
....
Black Knight: Come here!
Arthur: What are you going to do, bleed on me?
Black Knight: I'm invincible!
Arthur: You're a looney...
OK, let's see if I can explain to you Tim why you are making such a fool of yourself.
Let's imagine for the sake of argument IR radiation travelling from the surface into space as a set of parellel rays. With nothing in the way that absorbs the radiation, 100% escapes to space. Lets now put something in the way that absorbs and re-radiates that radiation instantaneously. The re-radiation occurs in every direction, so now some of the radiation goes back towards the surface - i.e. it is not radiated into space. Of course, as Tyndall noted, some still goes into space. However, a substantial proportion does not - this radiation is retained in the atmospheric / Earth surface system, which must then warm.
Thus, a gas that absorbs and re-radiates the radiation acts to trap energy in the atmosphere - it is a greenhouse gas. Any gas that is transparent to radiation does not trap energy - it is not a greenhouse gas. And note that the process can be instantaneous - the energy is not trapped in the greenhouse gas itself (another denialist myth), it is re-radiated to be retained elsewhere in the atmosphere/surface system (mostly in the oceans of course as this is the dominant surface material, and water has a large heat capacity).
Not difficult, eh? And hence CO2 and water vapour are greenhouse gases, and nitrogen and oxygen are not.
Now please, please, please stop making yourself look so utterly stupid. I tested to see whether my seven year old daughter can undertstand this stuff - she can.
TC
There we are again you have matters confused still.
I find it hard to believe that after 436 posts you are still sticking to your mantra of nonsense and throwing insult at real scientists while doing so.
TC
Ah! I note that you have repeated your stupid WRT C3H8 + 5O2 etc over here .
Please find another record, one that isn't cracked. It is almost as if you believe that the burning of fuels puts all the water vapour into the atmosphere.
"Thanks for that, the first honest response I have ever had here."
Liar.
"please stop making yourself look so utterly stupid"
It's not just a look.
Say what?
Geez, Tim, I reckon I can see a career for you in marketing Homeopathic Doonas!
bill FTW!
Similarly, I'm sure Curtin's line of homeopathic prophylactics made out of thin air ("So thin you won't believe it's on!") would be a big hit in the marketplace. Thin air's absorption and radiation of ejaculatory material is negligible which means, of course, that thin air plays no role in the dissipation of said ejaculatory material. That means that it can be argued that thin air is the real prophylactic because it plays "no role" in the dissipation and therefore dissipation is rendered impossible. Besides, the 2nd Law Of Thermodynamics proves that ejaculatory material can't radiate from a body with higher concentration of said material to a body with a lower concentration of said material. I rest my case. Prove me wrong!
By TC's logic, a vacuum is the ultimate GHG.
It's the other way around, which provides an excellent defense against charges of rape ... sure it's my DNA, Your Honor, but blame entropy, not me.
Or, at least, TC's GHG logic is the ultimate vacuum...
Dear all my fans here,
After a night of your contributions I feel as though I have been waterboarded at Guantanamo Bay. If any of you need a new job, you will find ready acceptance there.
I consulted a couple of my geologist/physicist mates today, and they agree I conceded too much to Marco yesterday:
1.Atmospheric CO2 does not trap heat as insulation does. The so-called GHGs are NOT insulators or blankets.
2.But the atmosphere (99% N2 and O2) is a very good insulator, as those gases are very good at preventing the conduction of heat.
3.The back radiation in Kiehl and Trenberth (slavishly – uncritically – replicated in AR4 WG1 p.96) is of course a flagrant violation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, with its preposterous claim that although the earth’s surface receives only 168 W/sq. metre of solar radiation, it manages “back radiation” of 324 W/sq.metre. Newton in his later years would have loved that demonstration of getting more than was put in.
4.Rising temperatures increase evaporative cooling (Held & Soden 2006, E&E 2006).
5.That is why the wrongly named GHGs (atmospheric CO2 and H2O) cool us by radiating energy to space. N2 and O2 cannot and do not do that, as Tyndall showed repeatedly.
6.Thank heavens for the cooling of the so-called GHGs which saves us from being cooked by the insulation of N2 and O2.
Back to Guantanamo!
Curtins: I take it that your 'friends' are both well published scientists and agree with your nonsense? I also assume they have written lengthy tomes for Nature or Science in which they will, like you, completely re-write the scientific basis of what we know about the warming/cooling properties of atmospheric gases? And why not name these mates of yours? Let's see for themselves their 'bonafides'. What your are doing here to cover what most of us consider to be rank incompetence is to try and rehabilitate your message by suggesting you have nominally qualified friends who agree with it. Naughty, naughty! That's not the way to bolster the extraordinary claims you are making in your paper and here.
Essentially you are trying to cover yourself in suggesting that other scientists you know agree with your conclusions. But you don't tell us why these two buddies of yours and you are somehow more qualified than 99.99% of the scientific community- including real experts in the field - who will ignore your paper and who would think that your arguments are utterly preposterous (as Marco, Lotharsson, Bernard, Lionel et al. as well as Tamino have alone demonstrated). The only hope you would have is to submit your ideas, along with your mates as co-authors, to a strong journal (not comic books like E & E) and to submit it as a talk to a major conference or workshop where your arguments will be - shall
I say - heavily scrutinized. Why do you think your articles are not cited? Think about it. IMHO it ain't jealousy.
"I feel as though I have been waterboarded at Guantanamo Bay."
Until you've actually been waterboarded, save the hyperbole for when it's really warranted.
After all, if you'd stop posting complete bollocks, you wouldn't get lambasted for posting complete bollocks.
"1. Atmospheric CO2 does not trap heat as insulation does"
Yes it does.
"The so-called GHGs are NOT insulators or blankets."
A blanket statement?
"2. But the atmosphere (99% N2 and O2) is a very good insulator"
And you know this because you're lovely and warm at night when there are no clouds?
Nope.
You're wrong again.
"4. Rising temperatures increase evaporative cooling"
And increasing evaporation causes rising temperatures. I guess you were one of those morons in school who claimed that Newton's laws PROVED you couldn't push anything because when you push on an object, it pushes back on you!!!
"5. That is why the wrongly named GHGs (atmospheric CO2 and H2O) cool us by radiating energy to space."
No, that isn't why they cool us.
"which saves us from being cooked by the insulation of N2 and O2."
Truly your lack of thought is without bounds.
Jeff: I don't name them because I know that the Sallngers/Santers/Trenberths of this world would seek to have them them fired (they are academics here).
You and your mates have form in that regard.
Wow: until you reveal who you are, you are a total waste of space as far as I am concerned, and that is why I never respond to your inanities. I make an exception for Marco, as he does occasionally make a useful comment, you never have.
Idiotic claim, since we're discussing outgoing longwave infrared radiation. Heck, year 8 high school physics students could point this fallacy out to you. Are you not at all embarrassed to be making beginner-level blunders - and then sticking to them when your errors are pointed out?
So you're stupid enough to believe that reiterating a refuted claim turns it from unrefuted to true?
..., with its preposterous claim that although the earth’s surface receives only 168 W/sq. metre of solar radiation, it manages “back radiation” of 324 W/sq.metre.
For an alleged economist, you sure love yourself some fraudulent accounting. I'm rather glad that (as far as I know) you have never handled any matters that impact my finances.
Newton would have called you an idiot for making claims that blatantly and obviously rely on false accounting.
And sheesh - this (and your other) fallacies have been refuted several times on this thread alone. Do try to prove the refutation wrong instead of merely reiterating your claims.
Hint: answer the earlier question about the tennis. The server only serves one ball during a really, but hits a dozen before the rally ends. This is clearly a violation of the 2nd Law - how can he possibly hit more balls than he served to the opponent? Or is it merely that you've erroneously failed to account for a second source of balls?
You reiterate another fallacy without dealing with the refutations. Apparently you're stupid enough to believe that reiterating it enough will eventually change it from false to true.
And you're even more stupid because you refuse to modify your thinking when you indulge in fallacies that early high school students can easily point out.
Quick question: what would immediately happen to outgoing infrared radiation levels if the atmosphere suddenly lost all of the (actual) GHGs, just N2 and O2? Would the total outgoing radiation flux at top of atmosphere increase, decrease or stay the same? Why?
So, let me get this straight. You and these others have a paradigm-overturning revolutionary new understanding of atmospheric physics that would certainly lead to at least one Nobel Prize, and:
(a) you and they won't publish it in a reputable journal (despite the fact that they would all be fighting each other to get their hands on it!)
(b) none of the others will even attempt to attach their names to it at the moment for the purposes of establishing priority and posterity
That's eminently amusing. Not your claims - but the fact that you apparently offer them in the vain hope that someone, somewhere, will find them credible.
Now pull the other one.
"Newton in his later years would have loved that demonstration of getting more than was put in."
So when you put your wage (I would suppose something like $4 a week in any sane society for the value of your work) into a savings account, and don't withdraw $4 a week, you would be SHOCKED to see more than $4 in your bank account because "that's more than you put in"???
As Lotharson says, I hope you don't do your own accounts.
"until you reveal who you are, you are a total waste of space as far as I am concerned"
Until facts start taking up volume on a blog site, space cannot be wasted.
YOU, on the other hand, are a criminal waste of sperm. By your very existence, the intelligence quotient of the entire planet is reduced.
The reason why you don't respond is because you're completely unable to respond without digging even deeper into the stupid. A definitely infinite resource with you.
Timski,
Why do you insist that the earth is only radiating 168W/m2? It radiates 396W/m2.
Make sure to pass on to your 'geologist/physicist mates' that they're incompetent - it's doubtlessly a good thing that they're also almost-certainly imaginary...
Curtin said:
“5. That is why the wrongly named GHGs (atmospheric CO2 and H2O) cool us by radiating energy to space.”
When GHG's scatter photons, they do so in random directions. Some goes up, but some goes down. The LW radiation that GHG's scatter upward that makes it out into space was originally going in that direction already when it was radiated by the surface. If there were no GHG's, all of the LW radiation that the surface emits would reach space. Because there are GHG's, however, some of that radiation that was originally going up gets scattered downward and eventually reaches the surface again. Less goes into space than was originally radiated from the surface. If the atmosphere was all N2 and O2, all of the LW radiation coming from the surface would escape into space. That's what the "0"'s meant in Tyndall's experiment under nitrogen and oxygen. It would be considerably cooler with no GHG's.
That this very simple and basic concept is so lost to you to the point that you over and over again post Tyndall's results when you have no clue what his results mean (the nitrogen and oxygen "0"'s showing that they were not GHG's), should give you pause. It won't, of course. It's quite enlightening to anybody reading your twaddle though.
I just had an inspiration.
Timski cannot be very good at investment. After all, if you put in your investment, you cannot get more out than you put in!
Therefore all this "interest" and "dividend" is, to Timski, a great big con!
Tim: The why don't your buddies at the university write a paper and submit it to a scientific journal? Your are writing bollocks when you say that Trenberth et al. would seek to have them fired. Pure nonsense. What would happen is that their paper would be reviewed - rejected as garbage - and then life would go on.
If you don't want to reveal their identities, then perhaps you'd be willing to reveal how may papers they have each and their h-factors? My guess is that the are pseudos.
TC is even more confused than I had previously thought.
"Back radiation" does not mean "outgoing longwave radiation from the earth's surface". It means radiation from the atmosphere back to the earth's surface.
TC apparently can't even read a simple diagram or use commonly understood terminology correctly.
That sheds new (and even more befuddled) light on his claim that "back radiation violates the 2nd Law"!
Wow: I make an exception, when you say,
"Why do you insist that the earth is only radiating 168W/m2? It radiates 396W/m2."
But according to Kiehl & Trenberth as reprinted in AR4 WG1 FAQ1.1, Fig.1, the earth only absorbs 168 W/sq.metre, so how does it manage to radiate 396 W/sq.m.?
"But according to Kiehl & Trenberth as reprinted in AR4 WG1 FAQ1.1, Fig.1, the earth only absorbs 168 W/sq.metre"
OK, so you haven't read the picture, this is proof.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/abstracts/files/kevin1997_1.html
Earth absorbs:
168 from the sun
324 from the back radiation
492 Total
Earth emits:
24 in mechanical energy (thermals)
78 in potential energy (evapotranspiration)
390 by radiation (more recent figures than the one you used have 396 W/m2)
492 Total
So, Tim?
Was this a maths fail (addition is a fairly basic maths skill), reading skill (there aren't many words in a diagram, and despite this, reading is quite a basic English skill) or an intelligence fail (you thought everyone was dumb enough to fall for that transparent idiocy)?
If you were up on the climatological literature, you'd know that no-one is claiming that they are. The continual reference to back-radiation, and even my own quotation marks whenever I refer to 'greehouse' gases, should have clued you in years before now.
You're a bit slow...
As has been noted already, the issue of global warming is primarily mediated by changes in radiation dynamics, and not by changes in conduction (or convection).
You're a bit off the mark...
Erm, no, no, and no again.
It's similar to when your interim budget, for a project funded in an ongoing manner, doesn't tally, but when you add it all up at the end ot the project, it balances.
Your ability with basic accounting arithmetic is a bit underdeveloped...
Rising temperatures do not however result in net coolling of the planet.
Your logic is a bit fallacious...
The 'greenhouse' gases CO2 and H2O only radiate out what they absorb in. If they resulted in net cooling, as you seem to be repeatedly trying to imply, then the earth would be almost, if not actually, cold enough to freeze carbon dioxide, rendering the planet a permanent snowball - at least, until the sun goes all red giant.
Your understanding of radiative physics is a bit restricted.
Hn. Radiation versus conduction/convection again.
You're a bit scientifically illiterate.
Oh, and when I say "a bit", I actually mean "a stonking whole lot"...
So, I am gone for a while and note Tim Curtin claiming he "concedes" something, when in reality he still has not conceded that his claim that N2 and O2 are opaque to IR radiation is complete and utter tosh.
And why quote Tyndall, when significant progress has been made in the field? Arrhenius showed that CO2 is very important, in part because he realized Tyndall's error of the "saturation".
So far, Tim Curtin just keeps on showing he is an idiot. The sequel of this saga is that he's caught in failing basic math...
Bernard J: Curtin's cooling claim of greenhouse gases should be tested on the Venusian atmosphere. Could be fun...
Just so that you're clear on this Curtin, when I say "...no-one is claiming that they are", I am speaking about the mechanism of heat entrapment, and not of the fact of heat entrapment.
Your wont to distort even the most basic of facts requires that I specifically spell this out.
Marco at 2:35, 21 June.
But don't you know? That's why Mars is so cold!
TC wrote:
To which Lotharsson, unsurprisingly, replied:
Which is what I was pointing out way up thread when pulling TC up for banging on about Trenberth's Cartoon. The fact that Curtin persists in misinterpreting a 'cartoon' informs on his total ignorance of atmospheric physics and what causes the back radiation. This despite the fact that I have exhorted him to read Archer and Pierrehumbert on the subject. Heck there are even online lectures to help him out.
And he still persists in the nonsense in his 1:07pm. Amazing!
Instead of behaving sensibly he behaves like a foxtrot-uniform-charlie-kilo/kilo-november-uniform-charlie-kilo-lima-echo accusing everybody else, including the hundreds of scientists involved in the FAR, TAR, 1AR and all the myriad peer reviewed research papers in top flight journals are wrong and that he is right because some, probably invented, colleagues back him up. I suspect that 'thomas marvell' (with its connotations of 'The Ministry of Magic' was a sock.
I doubt that we have seen the like before. By now even TSWJ may be getting edgy about having published his paper.
" 1. Atmospheric CO2 does not trap heat as insulation does. The so-called GHGs are NOT insulators or blankets.
If you were up on the climatological literature, you’d know that no-one is claiming that they are. "
Depends.
Why I said "blanket statement?" was because blanket doesn't mean "a wool-based coverall used to insulate a sleeping individual" only.
"a flagrant violation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics"
Reminds me of creationists.
Curtin shows more ignorance of simple physics:
Ever heard of "latent heat" Curtin? Didn't think so. That latent heat of evaporation, your "evaporative cooling" does not mysteriously disappear. It returns when the water vapour condenses as in rain storms. Thus the temperature over land is increased. Since most of us and all our agricultural crops are grown on land this transfer of heat from the sea to the land is not a good thing.
Maybe Curtin thinks that adding CO2 to flood water will make it disappear. Such ignorance and dishonesty since I refuse to believe that any one can be so ignorant of science as Curtin pretends to be.
"Maybe Curtin thinks that adding CO2 to flood water will make it disappear"
He believes that adding CO2 to salt water makes it potable, though.
Yes, there is literally NO LIMIT to TC's incompetence!
You know, I frequently read the reams of free and factual information that we provide to Curtin, and wonder if ever there is a little gnawing niggle in the back of his mind somewhere suggesting that perhaps he has it wrong after all.
I guess not, or he'd have awoken several years ago. So now I am waiting for Ur-Cnut to tell us that Ian Forrester's pointing out of the swings and roundabouts of the fact of latent heats does in fact violate the second law of thermodynamics. Please, please Curtin, tell us that it does - I so want to see how ridiculous you're prepared to make yourself look in your efforts to claim that 'greenhouse' gases cool the planet.
Robert Murphy. Thanks. You said:.."If the atmosphere was all N2 and O2, all of the LW radiation coming from the surface would escape into space. That’s what the “0″‘s meant in Tyndall’s experiment under nitrogen and oxygen." This is a mistake, Tyndall clearly showed and stated that the "Os" indicated nil absorption and radiation by N2 and O2, and thereby no transfer of heat through the cylinder. Correct use of language would therefore describe the O2 and N2 as real GHGs, while the absorption and radiation by CO2 and H2O are what stop the planet being a pressure cooker.
To the rest of you, the Kiehl-Trenberth cartoon clearly shows more LW back radiation to the earth's surface at 324 W/sq.m. than incoming SW solar radiation reaching that surface (168 W/sq.m).
Whence this miraculous energy gain, all for free?
Moreover the back radiation does infringe the 2nd Law by implying heat transfer from the cooler atmosphere to the warmer surface.
And I see Forrester is opposed to precipitation over land: “It returns when the water vapour condenses as in rain storms. Thus the temperature over land is increased. Since most of us and all our agricultural crops are grown on land this transfer of heat from the sea to the land is not a good thing”. More brave new science!
"This is a mistake"
Nope, this is the truth.
"Tyndall clearly showed and stated that the “Os” indicated nil absorption and radiation by N2 and O2"
This is correct.
"Correct use of language would therefore describe the O2 and N2 as real GHGs"
This is incorrect.
"Whence this miraculous energy gain, all for free?"
There is no miraculous energy gain, any more than there's any miraculous energy gain when you turn the volume up on your radio.
"clearly shows more LW back radiation to the earth’s surface at 324 W/sq.m. than incoming SW solar radiation reaching that surface (168 W/sq.m)."
And it clearly shows that the earth is recieving more than the solar radiation reaching the surface.
It seems like the problem IS a reading one. See a brain surgeon, they may be able to find the bit that's left.
"Moreover the back radiation does infringe the 2nd Law by implying heat transfer from the cooler atmosphere to the warmer surface."
The 2nd Law of thermodynamics doesn't forbid radiation of energy.
Tim, final try from my side, and forget the Kiehl-Trenberth diagram, we don't need it:
Suppose we look at a celestial body A without any atmosphere. A star illuminates this celestial body A. The surface of A will absorb some of the SW radiation of the star, and emit this radiation as IR (LW) radiation. So far you are with me?
If so, we now become gods and miraculously add an atmosphere of solely N2 around that celestial body A; but let's now call it B to differentiate between the two.
You have already admitted that N2 is transparent to SW radiation, so I guess you will agree with me that this celestial body B receives as much SW radiation on its surface as A. Yes?
Now, there's no reason to assume that the presence of N2 on B changes how much SW radiation is converted to LW radiation compared to A. Do you agree?
If so, the next question to answer is: what happens to that LW radiation leaving the surface? You state that N2 does not absorb IR radiation (which is LW radiation), as per Tyndall. So, where does that radiation go? You get two options:
1. It goes straight out to space
2. Confused by that compound N2 that does not absorb, it goes straight back into the surface, and is afraid to come out again, thus warming the surface further and further
Inquiring minds like to know how far you can take your failure to understand Tyndall (who describes the answer on the pages I pointed out to you).
"This is a mistake, Tyndall clearly showed and stated that the “Os” indicated nil absorption and radiation by N2 and O2, and thereby no transfer of heat through the cylinder."
It meant they didn't scatter LW radiation, and therefore were transparent to LW radiation. They weren't GHG's. Water vapor and CO2 DO scatter LW radiation, and they do so in all directions. Some of that radiation winds up reaching the surface again instead of going out to space. This means that the surface is warmer than it would otherwise be. That you at this point are too thick to realize this shows you don't even known how to read.
You are truly one stupid-ass person, Timmie.
You know, I have no expertise in this area and I really appreciate the many comprehensive rebuttals of Tim's nonsense (well done, guys). Does he and he alone think that he - a retired economist for heaven's sake with absoutely zero expertise in any branch of science - can rewrite the science books and that the entire scientific community has not been correctly able to determine the differing properties of greenhouse and non-greenhouse gases for a century? If Tim's buddies are similarly endowed with this brave new wisdom, then why haven't they written this up and become world famous in the process?
This whole episode reeks or Dunning-Kruger. Of someone who has clearly stepped well outside of his area of expertise and who, in my honest opinion, is making a fool of himself in doing so. Mind you, since the paper will be completely ignored by the scientific community, this foolishness is restricted to a few weblogs where, to give credit where credit is due, he has waded in only to be comprehensively debunked. To his discredit, he won't listen to a word anybody else says with respect to the broader conclusions of his work. This episode, like the sad article on which it is based, will, I hope, fade into the dust of history. The sooner the better.
Jeff, I think the evidence is obvious: Tim Curtain doesn't think. Full stop.
TC:
The quantities I am about to quote below are from Trenberth et. al. 2009 but otherwise the details of the schematic remain the same as in earlier.
Note that 341 3 Wm-2, embracing all wavelengths, enter the upper atmosphere with 161 being absorbed by the surface. Another 78 Wm-2 of the original 341.3 is absorbed by the atmosphere – there is a part of the imbalance that you think you see (ghosts in your machine).
Now 396 Wm-2 returns to the atmosphere of which 40 Wm-2 goes through an absorption window leaving 356 Wm-2. Also 17 Wm-2 enters the atmosphere via thermals and another 80 Wm-2 from evapotranspiration. Now do the sums again.
To understand why the atmospheric GHGs of CO2, water vapour and others behave as they do you need to know about the physical properties of the molecules of these gases and how these differ the molecular properties of the non GHGs (at least at Earth's atmospheric pressures and temperatures).
Briefly, al molecules have an equilibrium configuration WRT the nuclei of the constituent atoms such that the electromagnetic forces of the nuclei and the electron cloud sum to zero.
Now there are two basic arrangements of molecules at the heart of this matter. On the one hand we have N2 and O2 with diatomic molecules with only simple stretch/shrink and rotate configuration changes. On the other hand are the CO2 and H2O molecules which are triatomic in arrangement – asymmetric about some planes. These latter molecules as they resonate with the electromagnetic field of the specific wavelengths to which they 'ring' emit photons.
It is these photon's, 'packets of energy' which radiate in all directions heating up the atmosphere and producing the back radiation.
Now that is a much simplified explanation, maybe creating a contention or two but you really need to take this on board and one place to find more is in Raymond T Pierrehumbert's 'Principles of Planetary Climate' section '4.4.2 The absorption spectrum of real gases' p.p 220-226
Well, at least we finally have an answer from TC as to what a "0" reading on the galvanometer meant - at least, in TC's fevered imagination.
Looks like we can add "comprehending written descriptions of experiments" to his list of legendary failings.
TC: go back and read up on Tyndall. Specifically look for the calibration step where the galvanometer reading was set to zero. Describe the state of the tube during that calibration step, and the corresponding rate of heat energy received at the thermopile on the other side of the tube from the heat source.
(Then issue a double facepalm.)
Now, TC, once you've executed your double facepalm, test your new understanding by comprehending Tyndall's other calibration step - the one where he blocked all radiation through the tube, thereby ensuring no heat energy was transferred through the tube to the thermopile which was coupled to the galvanometer.
Determine whether the galvanometer deflection under these conditions was positive - as it was for tubes full of actual GHGs - or zero, or negative.
Then enlist a friend and issue a quadruple facepalm.
Especially since these questions have been posed above for precisely these reasons, and plenty of other information has also been posted that would allow you to reach the correct conclusion even without those questions.
One has to be spectacularly stupid or obstinate to cling to this fallacy after having it explained to one a dozen times.
Then again, TC frequently claims proposition A leads to result B, and then later claims that proposition not-A leads to result B...
Hey, Tim, what do we see in the paleo record when CO2 levels have been lower than today? If they're all that's saving us from the O2/N2 pressure cooker?
Is this all actually an experiment to determine how absurd an argument might have to be before no-one responds to it anymore?
TC: In Tyndall's experiments, what would the results have been if he used a vacuum instead of N2 or O2? Answer: the same. It seems to me there are two options: either N2, O2 and a vacuum all cause a greenhouse effect or that none of N2, O2 and a vacuum cause a greenhouse effect. Which do you think is more likely? (Hint: there is no greenhouse effect on the moon.)
Your incompetence is beyond extraordinary. You don't seem to even understand the meaning of "back". The 168 and the 324 are both toward the surface. Since they have the same direction, they are summed, not subtracted. Thus the question of which one is more is irrelevant.
You have been told, over and over, you write-only imbecile. If I lend you a dollar and you pay me back and I lend it to you again and you pay me back again and we do this 100 times, I've lent you $100. Free money!
radiation, imbecile, radiation. The 2LOT does not say that a cold object cannot radiate energy to a hot object. If it did, it would violate sense and observation and thus not be a law of physics after all.
How does electromagnetic radiation manage to traverse outer space, Tim, without space being filled with molecules that absorb and radiate it? Or do you suppose that outer space is filled with CO2 and H2O?
Where does that "thereby" come from, Tim? Why do you think that, without molecular absorption and retransmission, thermal radiation cannot traverse a cylinder?
Or traverse the space between the sun and earth's atmosphere. I think this is the key question. TC reckons that:
It may be that he thinks that radiative heat transfer is in reality conductive heat transfer - although if so, I'd like to know how he thinks the earth ever conducts any significant amount of heat to space.
As TimC soars away from this quotidian realm on his mighty SkyDragon, let us remember what Rabelais very-nearly said -
Marco: You said I “state that N2 does not absorb IR radiation (which is LW radiation), as per Tyndall. So, where does that radiation go? You get two options:
1. It goes straight out to space; 2. Confused by that compound N2 that does not absorb, it goes straight back into the surface, and is afraid to come out again, thus warming the surface further and further”. Why?
In practice the incoming LW radiation comes in what are so to speak tranches, each one of which has only one instalment of light/heat, although each new tranche also contributes. Or as AR4 WG 1. FAQ1.1, p.96 puts it,
“The amount of energy reaching the top of Earth’s atmosphere each second on a surface area of one square metre facing the Sun during daytime is about 1,370 Watts, and the amount of energy per square metre per second averaged over the entire planet is one-quarter of this (see Figure 1). About 30% of the sunlight that reaches the top of the atmosphere is reflected back to space. Roughly two-thirds of this reflectivity is due to clouds and small particles in the atmosphere known as ‘aerosols’.”
As a result the radiation reaching the surface and absorbed by it is only 168 W/sq.m. as shown in that lovely cartoon.
Back to FAQ 1.1: “The energy that is not reflected back to space is absorbed by the Earth’s surface and atmosphere. This amount is approximately 240 Watts per square metre (W m–2). To balance the incoming energy, the Earth itself must radiate, on average, the same amount of energy back to space. The Earth does this by emitting outgoing longwave radiation.” True, but the next is statement is NOT true:
“Everything [sic] on Earth emits longwave radiation continuously.” Tyndall showed conclusively, and has never been refuted, that the N2 and O2 do NOT emit long wave radiation at all let alone continuously
FAQ again: “To emit 240 W m–2, a surface would have to have a temperature of around –19°C. This is much colder than the conditions that actually exist at the Earth’s surface (the global mean surface temperature is about 14°C). Instead, the necessary –19°C is found at an altitude about 5 km above the surface”. Nearly true – and it is the CO2 and H2O which do that at that altitude, e.g. Mauna Loa, but also lower down at all altitudes with temperatures less than those at the surface.
But now the FAQ’s authors fall flat on their faces (p.97): “The reason the Earth’s surface is this warm is the presence of greenhouse gases, which act as a partial BLANKET for the longwave radiation coming from the surface. This blanketing is known as the natural greenhouse effect. The most important greenhouse gases are water vapour and carbon dioxide. The two most abundant constituents of the atmosphere – nitrogen and oxygen – have no such effect.” (my caps).
As Tyndall proved, N2 and O2 do have a real blanket effect by neither absorbing nor radiating, while the CO2 and H2O not only absorb, but radiate from the warmer surface through the cool atmosphere up as far as 15 km, so they are NOT a partial blanket.
The authors of Chapter 1 and its fatuous FAQ 1.1 include the ludicrous Gabi Hegerl who thinks Edinburgh would be uninhabitable and a desert if its annual mean temperature rose from less than 10oC to 12oC, Ben “I’d like to beat the crap out of Michaels” and Kevin editor resignation enforcer Trenberth.
The reason they demonise the CO2 and H2O whilst exonerating the N2 and O2 is that even the idiot governments of the EU, USA, and Australia might just baulk at banning oxygen and would not fund Gabi, Ben and Kev in the style they have become accustomed to if that is what they advocated. CO2, on the other hand, which Australian bureaucrats and policy makers think of as carbon, is as much the basis for all life as oxygen, but the ideal target for all you lot because of its association with the rising standards of living which I can well believe you abhor (like your patron saints Tim Flannery, Ian Lowe and Dick Smith et all too many al in the Greens and ALP).
TC: It should have been obvious that Marco was asking about outgoing, not incoming, radiation.
In this regard, how do they differ from a vacuum? Would a vacuum provide an equally-effective blanket?
They are not at the surface, but in the atmosphere. And they also radiate back to the ground. However, as far as the IR radiation is concerned, the N2 and O2 might as well not be there, the IR radiation leaving Earth being unimpeded by them.
Richard Simons: Marco raised both issues.
Tyndall used a cylinder containing either just N2 and O2 or ordinary air including the H2O and CO2.
I simply cannot believe in your back radiation as it infringes basic physics' 2nd Law.
But as Tyndall showed, when N2 and O2 are there, they do block LW infrared absorption and radiation.
End of story unless you can disprove Tyndall by an appropriate physical lab experiment.
Lotharsson (June 22, 11:19 pm) asked me “Why do you think that, without molecular absorption and retransmission, thermal radiation cannot traverse a cylinder?”
Well, I could programme a GCM to show that they could, but Tyndall’s lab apparatus simply showed that in the case of N2 and O2, thermal radiation did not traverse his cylinder, so I repeat that “…the atmosphere (99% N2 and O2) is a very good insulator, as those gases are very good at preventing the conduction of heat”
.
Then L commented: “It may be that he thinks that radiative heat transfer is in reality conductive heat transfer – although if so, I’d like to know how he thinks the earth ever conducts any significant amount of heat to space”.
Why not read Tyndall? In both his 1861 paper and in the short note in his 1872 book he showed the enormous capacity of the H2O and CO2, in that order, to absorb and radiate heat to space.
Then Lotharsson said "TC: go back and read up on Tyndall. Specifically look for the calibration step where the galvanometer reading was set to zero. Describe the state of the tube during that calibration step, and the corresponding rate of heat energy received at the thermopile on the other side of the tube from the heat source."
L: you are the one who needs to read Tyndall, he said: “A perfect galvanometer is the result, The needle, when released from the action of a current, returns accurately to zero, and is perfectly free from all magnetic action on the part of the coil.”
The “0” reading indicates zero absorption and radiation – and it would absurd to calibrate in the presence of the gases to be analysed.
As Tyndall said: “The tube being mounted horizontally, a LESLIE'S cube containing hot water was placed close to one of its ends, while an excellent thermo-electric pile, connected with its galvanometer, was presented to the other. The tube being exhausted [NB], the calorific
rays sent through it fell upon the pile, a permanent deflection of 30° being the consequence. The temperature of the [EXTERNAL HOT ]water was in the first instance purposely so arranged as to produce this deflection.”
So for the nth time, Tyndall clearly showed and stated that the “Os” indicated nil absorption and radiation by N2 and O2, and thereby no transfer of heat through the cylinder when only they were present.
re Bernard June 21, 2:29 pm
I had said "Atmospheric CO2 does not trap heat as insulation does. The so-called GHGs are NOT insulators or blankets." Bernard's response was "If you were up on the climatological literature, you’d know that no-one is claiming that they are."
But earlier to day I placed here this direct quote from AR4 WG FAQ 1.1: "The reason the Earth’s surface is this warm is the presence of greenhouse gases, which act as a partial blanket for the longwave radiation coming from the surface. This blanketing is known as the natural greenhouse effect. The most important greenhouse gases are water vapour and carbon dioxide. The two most abundant constituents of the atmosphere – nitrogen and oxygen – have no such effect [garbage]".
1.To ianam (June 22, 7:32 pm)
I had said “… the Kiehl-Trenberth cartoon clearly shows more LW back radiation to the earth’s surface at 324 W/sq.m. than incoming SW solar radiation reaching that surface (168 W/sq.m).
ianam: the issue is how does this back radiation acquire so many more W/sq.m. (324) than the solar radiation reaching the earth’s surface (168)? Now the imbecilic Kiehl-Trenberth cartoon shows that their back radiation derives from outward radiation from the surface of no less than 390 W/sq.m., more than double the incoming solar!
So you must believe this planet really is the centre of the universe with its ability to radiate more heat (390 W/sq.m.) than it gets from the sun (168)
Then you question the 2nd Law, but that does indeed decree that a cold object cannot radiate energy to a hot object. Now Wiki is not infallible, but here’s your chance to edit its entry on the 2nd Law on the basis of your claim .
Wiki: “The first law of thermodynamics provides the basic definition of thermodynamic energy, also called internal energy, associated with all thermodynamic systems, but unknown in mechanics, and states the rule of conservation of energy in nature. However, the concept of energy in the first law does not account for the observation that natural processes have a preferred direction of progress. For example, spontaneously, heat always flows to regions of lower temperature, never to regions of higher temperature without external work being performed on the system.”
But for ianam: “The 2LOT does not say that a cold object cannot radiate energy to a hot object. If it did, it would violate sense and observation and thus not be a law of physics after all.”
More ianam: “How does electromagnetic radiation manage to traverse outer space, Tim, without space being filled with molecules that absorb and radiate it? Or do you suppose that outer space is filled with CO2 and H2O?”
No, but although only about 0.5% of the atmosphere (not space) on average, their absorptive and radiative capacity is thousands of times more potent than that of N2 and O2 – see my quotes above from Tyndall 1872.
Then you asked: “Why do you think that, without molecular absorption and retransmission, thermal radiation cannot traverse a cylinder?” Well, Tyndall 1861 showed that it does not if the cylinder contains only N2 and O2, check his galvanometer readings.
Ian, finally read and learn the following:
The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes [like Kiehl & Trenberth!]. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.
—Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927) (h/t Claes Johnson).
Sigh, we have stupid, stupider, stupidest, and now also teh curtin.
Tim, please explain why you are so certain Tyndall showed N2 and O2 block(!) LW radiation, while he then describes in the book I pointed out to you (again, page 424) that N2 and O2 do NOT stop the LW radiation coming from the earth's surface?
Are you now claiming Tyndall did not understand his own experiment?
Richard, teh curtin has no idea what he is talking about himself, so why expect he understands what others are saying?
There is a small change he deliberately misdirects, misrepresenting my question because he knows he's an idiot.