[ExI] The Climate Science Isn't Settled [was: Re: climategate again]

[Mirco Romanato]

Il 03/12/2009 18.07, Alfio Puglisi ha scritto:
>     http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf

>     Well, I suppose that the First and Second Law of Thermodynamics are some
>     inconvenient truths.

> Hello Mirco,
> I suggest that you apply a bit of skepticism to your sources: asserting
> that global warming is against laws of thermodynamics is, frankly,
> ridicolous. The Gerlich and Tscheuschner paper makes basic mistakes. A
> good place to start is the realclimate wiki page on the subject:
> http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=G._Gerlich_and_R._D._Tscheuschner

The paper I linked reply to the criticism (they update their paper to v4 
to do so), pointing out the errors done by the author of the paper 
linked (at least the English one, I don't understand German).

Also, the paper you linked don't show any error in the paper of G & T. 
It simply state that the greenhouse gas effect exist approximating the 
Sun and the  Earth as black bodies.

I'm surely not an expert but G & T claim that is an error to treat the 
Sun and the Earth as radiating black bodies is correct, as they are not 
black bodies as people can see.
Interesting the last sentence of the paper:
"The authors express their hope that in the schools around the world the 
fundamentals of physics will be taught correctly and not by using 
award-winning \Al Gore" movies shocking every straight physicist by 
confusing absorption/emission with reflection, by confusing the
tropopause with the ionosphere, and by confusing microwaves with 
shortwaves."




>         "Even a doubling of CO2 would only upset the original balance
>         between incoming and outgoing radiation by about 2%"

>     2% is significant when your planet has an average temperature of
>     290K. And he didn't include the feedbacks (but didn't he talk about
>     water vapor a few lines before? Why not now?)

>     I think the right number is 0.03%

> I'm not sure which units you are using.  0.03% of what? If it is in
> W/m^2, it seems way too small.

Citing from the paper

"It is obvious that a doubling of the concentration of the trace gas 
CO2, whose thermal conductivity is approximately one half than that of 
nitrogen and oxygen, does change the thermal conductivity at the most by 
0.03% and the isochoric thermal diffusivity at the most by 0.07 %. These 
numbers lie within the range of the measuring inaccuracy and other 
uncertainties such as rounding errors and therefore have no 
signi
ficance at all."


>     But, if the CO2 have a forcing effect, the two must compound.
>     Why didn't a "runaway effect" start in the past?
> Because evidently the positive feedbacks have limits, or other negative
> feedbacks kick in. For example, the ice-albedo feedback disappears after
> there is no or little ice during arctic summer. The ice age cores tell
> us that: 1) there are some positive feedbacks  2) they are not enough to
> trigger runaway effects under natural conditions.

The ice cores also say there was first an heating and after a CO2 
increase (some decades after).

> The opening sentence of the page you linked:

> "The forecasts of global warming are based on mathematical solutions for
> equations of weather models. But all of these solutions are inaccurate.
> Therefore, no valid scientific conclusions can be made concerning global
> warming."

> is nonsense. Just because your knowledge is not perfect, it doesn't mean
> that you can make valid conclusions. If that was the case, science would
> have made no progress since 1600.

We can differentiate the accuracy of conclusions in two groups:
"good enough" and "not good enough" to be used to predict the future.

Mirco

P.S.
Possible experiment:

To falsify the theory of G & T it is only needed to build a greenhouse 
that is filled with air with varying concentration of CO2, but with a 
"ground" surface where the "sunlight" shine that have is temperature 
kept stable (at or under the air temperature).
Varying the concentration of CO2, the temperature of the surface and his 
albedo, and the intensity of the light would produce results that prove 
or disprove their assumption.
If a greenhouse-gas effect exist, keeping the ground surface temperature 
under the temperature of the air would stop any convection (cold gas 
near the surface would not raise, hotter gas higher would not lower). 
But the higher air would continue to trap energy and raise its 
temperature anyway depending on the concentration of CO2.

Sound as something not to difficult to setup for physicists, engineers 
and tech savvy people. Reducing the measurement errors could be tricky.





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