Global Warming Thread

[Guest]

Global Warming Part I: Heat

The most basic discussion about heat must begin with two questions.

1. What is heat?  

Have you ever thought about it?  It’s what makes things, well, heat up, right?  In physics, heat is defined as energy that is in the process of transfer from one body to its environment.  The two primary words to keep in mind are “energy” and “transfer”.  This differs from mechanical energy or chemical energy, although both of these can create or absorb heat energy.  There really is no deeper science to explain heat than this rather vague definition.  And we run into redundant uses when we say that “heat energy can be transferred”.  Be that as it may, such redundancies are the vernacular even among thermodynamic professionals.

1. How is it transferred?

There are three methods of non-mechanical, non-chemical processes of heat transfer.

1. Conduction: energy moving through a solid or from one solid in contact with another solid.
2. Convection: energy moving via contact with fluid (liquid or gas).  The effectiveness is dependent on the motion and properties of the fluid.
3. Radiation: energy moving via electromagnetic activity.  This requires no medium, but can be affected by a medium through which it travels.

Understanding the differences makes it clear why a greenhouse is a poor analogy.  A greenhouse primarily prevents evaporation and convection from allowing heat to escape.  It really does very little for radiation (the Earth’s primary method of gaining and losing heat).

It’s all Greek to us:

With these methods, we introduce several properties or variables.  And many of the symbols aren’t even in Greek.

1. Thermal conductivity (k).  A measure of how conductive a solid is.  You can think of this as the inverse of the R-value you recognize in the insulation in a home or other building.
2. Specific heat (SH): This is the amount of energy it takes to heat up a certain amount of mass to a given temperature.  A gram of water absorbs a lot of heat just to rise one degree.  Oxygen (O₂) and Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) take only a small amount of energy to raise the same mass by one degree.  Water (H₂O) and ammonia (NH₃) have the greatest specific heats of any substances known to man.
3. Reflectivity (R_ν): Portion of energy that is reflected rather than absorbed off of a surface.
4. Absorbtivity (σ): Portion of energy that is absorbed rather than reflected off a surface.  (Absorbtivity and reflectivity are conjugate numbers for radiation.)
5. Emissivity (e): Portion of the energy leaving a surface (re-radiating) as opposed to being transmitted further into the material.

Edited December 9, 2016 by Guest

[Guest]

Global Warming Part II: The Earth’s Heat Sources

The Earth has a great geothermal heat source as well as radioactive decay which generate heat for us from the Earth’s core and mantle.  There are also other effects such as solar wind and other cosmic phenomena which provide small amounts of heat to the Earth.

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace.

Had to be done.

Radiation:  The Earth’s primary heat source is the sun via massive amounts of radiation.  Radiation does not mean the stuff that turned Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk.  That would be highly dangerous.  Besides the Hulk is a fictional character, duh.  Radiation simply means the propagation of electromagnetic waves.  This can be the dangerous ionizing radiation, or visible light, or infra-red or many other classifications of frequencies.

How does a blanket affect radiation?  Have you ever been by a campfire on a cold evening?  Whenever someone or something (like a blanket) came between you and the fire, did you feel warmer or colder?  A blanket therefore is the exact opposite of what Al Gore depicts in An Inconvenient Truth. 

Let’s follow the path.  To do this I’m going to introduce “ziff” (because it glows).  This will be a hypothetical greenhouse gas with the specific properties which I will outline as we go.  Think of this as the blanket material.

As the sun’s radiation arrives at the Earth’s atmosphere, it encounters some oxygen, nitrogen, & ziff.  It passes right through oxygen and nitrogen.  The ziff absorbs some light (this is what makes it a greenhouse gas).  So, immediately, we see that ziff is preventing some heat from entering the earth’s atmosphere.  If the blanket was too thick, we’d freeze.   Keep that in the back of your mind.

Some light, then, travels directly to the surface, warming it without interference from ziff.  The light that was caught by the ziff then gets re-radiated by each molecule.  In a flat, two surfaced model, half of that heat is re-radiated back into space and half re-radiated back to earth.  But it is worse than that.  Since Earth is a sphere, the ziff found in the atmosphere will radiate significantly more than half of its heat to outer space.  So, greenhouse gasses tend to have a cooling effect.  The remaining energy goes to the surface.

Once at the surface, the crust must either reflect or absorb the energy.  Once absorbed, it conducts, convects, and re-radiates back into that atmosphere.  Of the reflected and re-radiated energy hits the ziff again.  While it does keep some energy in, remember that it first prevented over 50% of the heat from entering in the first place.   So, how does it heat the earth even more than if it were not present?

It looks like it doesn’t.  But I’ll return to that.  I'm working on the next installment describing the differences in greenhouse gasses.

Edited December 9, 2016 by Guest

[jerome1232]

This theorizing is all well and sounds convincing but don't we have an actual planet full of greenhouse gasses which is hotter than the surface of the sun?

Carborendum meet Venus, Venus, Carborendum.

[unixknight]

This theorizing is all well and sounds convincing but don't we have an actual planet full of greenhouse gasses which is hotter than the surface of the sun?

Carborendum meet Venus, Venus, Carborendum.

 

Let the man finish.

[Vort]

This theorizing is all well and sounds convincing but don't we have an actual planet full of greenhouse gasses which is hotter than the surface of the sun?

Carborendum meet Venus, Venus, Carborendum.

 

To be more precise: The temperature on Venus is nowhere near the temperature on the sun's surface. Not even close. Venus is very hot, hot enough to melt low-melting-temperature metals such as lead, aluminum, or zinc. But it doesn't approach the temperature at the sun's surface, which is so hot it would vaporize (not merely melt) any known substance.

[Vort]

Lots of problems and inaccuracies so far, Carb. I will expound on them later, unless you are doing so in order to make some point.

[Guest]

Global Warming Part III: Greenhouse Gasses

The first question to be asked is what makes some gasses absorb radiation and others not?  I don’t expect the non-technical individual to understand the level of physics and math required to get all the science behind it.  I DO expect an average person to be able to get the difference between elements and compounds. 

Those gasses that are elements (made up wholly of one element from the periodic table) tend not to absorb radiation.  Gasses which are compounds (made up of multiple elements either covalently or ionically bonded) are able to absorb radiated energy.  Thus they are categorized as a greenhouse gas.  While there are exceptions to this rule, such exceptions are mostly not germane to the current discussion.

Not all greenhouse gasses are of equal strength.  There are absorption spectra, absorptivity coefficients, and emissivity coefficients.  For my imaginary gas, ziff, I’m assuming a 100% absorption of all spectra and a 100% emissivity to keep the math simple.  For all three categories, CO2 gets poor marks, making it a very poor greenhouse gas.  Yet it gets all the attention.

CO2 has a very narrow frequency range that it can absorb.  Its absorptivity is down in the 1% to 2% range.  And its emissivity is about the same as its absorptivity.  This means that it tends not to transfer any heat to neighboring molecules due to translation, and it tends to re-radiate all its absorbed energy almost immediately.

Methane on the other hand has a much wider range of frequencies which it can absorb.  And its absorptivity is much higher.  And several scholarly sources have stated how methane is the real culprit or at least equally to blame for global warming.  It is ignored for political reasons.

The frequencies are the actual answer to the question how solar radiation can enter but not leave the atmosphere.  As energy comes from the sun, it is spread out through all the known frequencies of radiation.  This is known as “full spectrum”.  Since CO2 only absorbs a narrow band of wavelengths, most of the energy goes right past CO2 and hits the earth’s surface.  Some is immediately reflected.  Some is transmitted (conducted) deeper into the earth.  The remainder is re-radiated back into the atmosphere. 

The energy that is reflected and re-radiated is a narrower band than the full spectrum.  Much is now in the frequency range of CO2 absorption spectrum.  Thus CO2 now acts as a blanket in the other direction.  This is how it can be a one-way blanket.  So, there is some truth in the way this works.  But then it becomes a question of the numbers.  That is for another installment.

Next: Water

Edited December 9, 2016 by Guest

[LeSellers]

This theorizing is all well and sounds convincing but don't we have an actual planet full of greenhouse gasses which is hotter than the surface of the sun?

"… don't we have an actual planet full of greenhouse gasses which is hotter than the surface of the sun?"

Eh, no, we don't:

Sun:

Center (modeled): 1.57×107K

Photosphere (effective): 5,778K

Corona: ≈ 5×106K

Venus:

mean surface temperature: 735K

Lehi

[Guest]

Global Warming Part IV: Water and Stabilization

WATER

Water is universally accepted as the most powerful greenhouse gas.  It is pretty close to ziff in some properties.  It absorbs almost all frequencies of radiation.  It has an extremely high specific heat.  It has a tremendous absorptivity.  So, the end result is that it is a major controlling mechanism of temperature on our little blue ball.

If you go to the deep African deserts, the temperatures have been known to change up to 70 deg F from day to night.  This is largely due to the lack of water in the atmosphere.  On the other hand the Amazon Jungle tends to stay within 10 deg F all year round all day and night.  There is a HIGH atmospheric water content there. 

The reason it is not a political issue is that the nature of atmospheric water makes it impossible to change.  To date the only known mechanism that can change global levels of water in the air is the average temperature of the air.  The hotter it is, the more water there is.  It is a direct correlation.  This in and of itself is a natural stabilizer of earth temperature.

STABILIZATION

The fact that water takes so much energy to rise in temperature is yet another nifty quality of water that makes me think it might (gasp) have been created that way on purpose!!!  But let’s ignore that for now.

Another major stabilizing mechanism is the nature of radiation.  It is to the fourth power of the absolute temperature.  Example:

If your floor is 100K and your ceiling is 50K, then the rate of radiation is based on (100^4-50^4) = 93750000 If you raise the 100 to 101, then it is (101^4-50^4) = 978101401.  So for a difference of only 1% in temperature, you get a greater than 4% difference in radiation released.

The hotter we are, the more quickly we release heat.  The colder we are, the less heat we release.  But the rate is not linear.  This is yet another reason to believe that the CO2 correlation to earth temperature is not causal.

****************

This may not be all the science.  But it is enough to begin an intelligent discussion.  This was not really an attempt to settle the argument.  But it is the beginnings of the science that at least many on both sides tend to agree are not really disputed.

I noticed Vort’s criticism of my inaccuracies.  I’m sure there are some.  There were many ideas there that I’ve picked up from years ago so I can’t find some of the websites now.  And I’m sure there have been some changes to “accepted” science.  So, I’ll open this up to discussion.

Edited December 9, 2016 by Guest

[Guest]

One major thing about how I know this is all political and not real science is methane.  Methane, if any gas can, has the potential to destroy the planet via climate change.  Yet, even though scientists discuss it, I see no legislation being proposed by anyone other than PETA.  At least they're consistent.

 

If you really were out to cut greenhouse gasses, you'd have to do away with the food supply.  It was previously thought that livestock were the primary contributors via both CO2 and CH4.  But it would be political suicide to legislate the banning of meat and meat products.  Now there was a recent find (in another thread and in the news) that lettuce has greater greenhouse byproducts than bacon.  Will wonders never cease?  All hail the magnificent bacon!  How low in greenhouse gasses.  How tasty in the tummy!  Ohmm. Hmm. Mmm.  Good.

[Guest]

ASIDE:

 

Radioactive decay is actually happening at an alarming rate.  But the heat we receive from it is necessary for life.  As the radioactive materials on the Earth have completed a large portion of decay the Earth will begin to cool to the point that only the areas near the equator can sustain life.  It is imperative that we start space exploration so we can mine near Earth asteroids for their abundant radioactive materials to help heat the Earth.   It will be an economic project of massive proportions, unparalleled in human history.  And it may cripple or destroy every Earth economy as we know it.  But it must be done, or we will all die.

 

Gotcha!  Such an effect would be millions of years into the future and not nearly so severe as to cause global calamity.  But do you see how easily a small and very long term issue can be made into a cataclysmic event that we must respond to TODAY!!!  And the quantity of uranium that we could bring back is so insignificant that it won’t affect anything.

 

That is exactly what global warming is.  All our concerted efforts would make such an insignificant impact, it is laughable to think it is a danger.  We cannot be expected to get into a tizzy fit just because Chicken Little says the sky is falling.

[LeSellers]

I will accept responsibility (on behalf of all mankind) for "Global Warming" when "scientists" can answer these questions:

1) Why is CO₂ (a minuscule fraction of the atmosphere) the culprit when H₂O (a much, much larger fraction of the air) and which has far higher specific heat not considered a (or the) problem?

2) Why have Mars and Venus also experienced "global warming" during the same period as Earth (and proportionally at about the same rates)?

3) If man has caused global warming, why have there been ice ages in the past, with subsequent periods of warming following each of them?

4) Why is global warming a problem in any case? Do plants not grow better with higher levels of CO₂. Would a warmer climate not make Russia and China, Canada, Chile, and Argentina more productive of grains and other food products?

5) Who's paying for all this "science" that tells us we're the guilty parties? Why are global warming alarmists to be believed any more than deniers when their funding comes from those who would benefit from the proposed governmental controls "required" to reduce "greenhouse" gas emissions?

6) Why do the countries who have the lowest per capita emissions have to pay for further lowering theirs while countries with the highest per capita emissions get to do nothing at all?

There are a couple more questions, but these will do to start.

Lehi

Edited December 22, 2015 by LeSellers

[Guest]

Back in the mid to late 90s, the IPCC report was issued that made a big splash in the news.  Newscasters from multiple networks, papers, and websites were all proclaiming: We know know that global warming is real and that man is the culprit.

 

So, at the time I had not yet made up my mind.  I thought,"Ok.  So what happened to make it so certain?"  I researched every site I could.  And here's what I found:

<<      >>

<<      >>

<<      >>

 

That's right.  NOTHING!  You'd think there would be some sort of explanation.  There was none.  I simply wanted to know how it came from something "so controversial" to a "certainty".  What was the new evidence?  What was the new argument? The new model?  The new discovery?  What?

 

Nothing.  All it showed was that politicians could gather together a bunch of scientists together, most of whom were already sold on the idea, and get paid to write a paper stating it was so.  That's it.  Since when has this been how science works?  How is that scientific consensus?

[LeSellers]

…there was a recent find (in another thread and in the news) that lettuce has greater greenhouse byproducts than bacon.  Will wonders never cease?  All hail the magnificent bacon!  How low in greenhouse gasses.  How tasty in the tummy!  Ohmm. Hmm. Mmm.  Good.

Technically, bacon does not taste good "in the tummy". It tastes good in the mouth, and smells good in the kitchen.

Lehi

[Guest]

Dad, you're going to go right on up there with Vort and TFP on the list of top nitpickers.

[Guest]

The primary reason CO2 is getting all the press is that it is the one thing that will allow governments to get into every aspect of our lives.

 

[Guest]

This theorizing is all well and sounds convincing but don't we have an actual planet full of greenhouse gasses which is hotter than the surface of the sun?

 

A geologist once told me the following:

 

All we can really do with Venus is theorize.  We can't see under that dense cloud to even know what is there.  What we can say is what we know what has happened on earth.

 

The earth should have a much greater level of geothermal heat than it has currently.  It was once tremendous. But the earth's surface had an inversion that expelled a lot of heat that was once locked up under the crust.  It was highly unusual for a planet this young to have such an inversion.  Models of the earth having such inversions say that it could happen.  But it shouldn't have even happened in 5 billion years, much less 4 billion.

 

If we had not had such an inversion, it is likely that we would have had a much higher surface temperature than we currently have.  And we would probably look a lot like Venus.

 

It made sense.  But I have not been able to independently verify this from another source.  I now have a very experienced geologist in my ward.  I'll have to ask him to verify this as well.

Edited December 23, 2015 by Guest

[LeSellers]

Dad, you're going to go right on up there with Vort and TFP on the list of top nitpickers.

Please don't forget that I spent decades as a technical writer: I got paid to pick this kind of nit.

To be on the list, not at the top of the list, is demoralizing.

Lehi

[Aussie Mongrel]

I don't know much about the science behind Global Warming but what I do know is one the reasons that we are all being duped on that science. In Australia it was called the Trading Emissions Scheme (Scam). This is where big companies would be charged for their emissions into the atmosphere and the more emissions the higher the fines / taxes.

 

This was part of the Global Elites agenda to put financial pressure on big companies so they would eventually close up shop here and set up shop in a third world country. They want this to happen so they can rid the world of 1st world countries and make every country more equal and more equally poor.

 

Australia's former Priminister Toney Abbott fought this scam and also fought long and hard to keep traditional marriage and not bring in Gay and Lesbian marriage. He soon got replaced.

 

I'm not sure if many people know that the Global Elite are Chemtrailing us? This is causing a lot of the weather problems (draughts, floods and famine)  that we are all facing through out the world. They are using these extreme weather conditions that they are actually causing / influencing and placing the blame on human activities.

[Guest]

On 12/22/2015 at 4:52 PM, Carborendum said:

A geologist once told me the following:

...

It made sense.  But I have not been able to independently verify this from another source.  I now have a very experienced geologist in my ward.  I'll have to ask him to verify this as well.

I finally got with the geologist in my ward.  He really is a world class guy in the world of geology.  He's written books and given lectures.  Big companies hire him to consult at a level where he can make an annual salary (for anyone else) in a couple weeks.

******************************

He told me that it isn't exactly as the other geologist was describing.  It wasn't a single event.  There is constant tectonic activity on the Earth that releases geothermal energy all the time.  It is a fairly constant process as geologic time goes.  

We have had probes sent to the surface of Venus.  And some people have theorized that the tectonic activity has stopped on Venus.  He had not seen the data to know how they determined that.  But as far as he knows it is just a theory.  But if it is true, then that could explain a small amount of the extra heat Venus has, but not all.  Most of it is due to the atmosphere.

I asked, "So, it is the greenhouse effect that is causing Venus to be so hot?"

"Yes, but that doesn't really extrapolate to the earth."

To make such comparisons would be like saying that a light fog will cause a person to drown.  Earth CO2: 400 ppm.  Venus CO2: greater than 90%.  

While any scientist worth his salt will say that some of the concepts in the alarmists ideas are true, it is the intensity that is ridiculous.  There are a combination of factors in Venus' atmosphere that makes it a powerful greenhouse.  One factor is that there is no water anywhere on the planet.  We have an abundance of it.

What I gathered from the rest of the conversation was that there is a turning point that causes it to be a real concern.  If we really are the cause, we'd die of atmospheric poisoning before we ever cross that line and the earth will heal and start over.  As far as the small changes we're witnessing over the course of 100 years -- it is nothing.  The earth has too many self-regulating mechanisms to be alarmed about any of that.

Edited December 8, 2016 by Guest

[JojoBag]

What's the difference between global warming and Santa Claus?

 

One is a jolly old fat guy who flies a sleigh powered by reindeer and delivers presents to children on Christmas Eve.

 

The other is a myth.

[Guest]

Interesting:

https://weather.com/news/climate/news/white-house-says-climate-change-urgent-public-health-risk

So, they can now predict with pinpoint accuracy what the weather will be like decades in advance, when they still can't predict the weather with 50% accuracy for the next week.

[NeuroTypical]

You can't make this stuff up.  Here's what some people believe:

* Global warming is a real thing that is currently happening.
* Except it isn't, well, currently happening.  
* Since we must believe both of those things are true, our only recourse is to come up with a theory to explain it.  How about a "Global Warming Hiatus"?

BBC: Global warming slowdown 'could last another decade'

[Blackmarch]

On 12/21/2015 at 0:15 PM, LeSellers said:

I will accept responsibility (on behalf of all mankind) for "Global Warming" when "scientists" can answer these questions:

1) Why is CO₂ (a minuscule fraction of the atmosphere) the culprit when H₂O (a much, much larger fraction of the air) and which has far higher specific heat not considered a (or the) problem?

2) Why have Mars and Venus also experienced "global warming" during the same period as Earth (and proportionally at about the same rates)?

3) If man has caused global warming, why have there been ice ages in the past, with subsequent periods of warming following each of them?

4) Why is global warming a problem in any case? Do plants not grow better with higher levels of CO₂. Would a warmer climate not make Russia and China, Canada, Chile, and Argentina more productive of grains and other food products?

5) Who's paying for all this "science" that tells us we're the guilty parties? Why are global warming alarmists to be believed any more than deniers when their funding comes from those who would benefit from the proposed governmental controls "required" to reduce "greenhouse" gas emissions?

6) Why do the countries who have the lowest per capita emissions have to pay for further lowering theirs while countries with the highest per capita emissions get to do nothing at all?

There are a couple more questions, but these will do to start.

Lehi

1) H2O gets broken up in the upper atmosphere, the hydrogen leaves earth more or less and the remaining oxygen forms the Ozone layer. CO2 bonds with the oxygen in the upper layers which prevents the formation of the ozone layer. at lower layers co2 not only traps heat but will also trap other chemicals. h20 recycles quicker, whereas c02 only gets recycled through plants.

2) we really don't have solid proof of that, but they are two extremes one of too much and one of too little- either which is theorised goes into self destructive cycle. altho with mars a contributor to its loss of atmosphere and heat is that it lacks a uniform magnetic field

3) it's proposed that man has assisted the most recent warming. but man isn't the only source. this is more of case of erring on the safe side.

4) only to a point. you still need water and and the right temperature. affecting one variable tends to have affects on the other variables.... but also we are removing more plants than replacing and chemical dumps can kill (green) algae which are the largest recycler of CO2 by far.  It's problem in that if average temperatures change enough for long enough you'll end up with different weather patterns which is bad for farming.

5) the science I've seen doesn't place as THE guilty party, just a contributing one... and since human behavior is modifiable that is what is tended to focused on; ie if we can eliminate our contribution supposedly things will get back into the natural swing of things. as for who pays- that depends on which organization. i don't doubt that taxes are involved tho.

6) because in the end we do not have any sovereignity over other nation/states and the only way to really make them follow the rules or guidelines for sure would be to conquer them.

[unixknight]

35 minutes ago, Blackmarch said:

3) it's proposed that man has assisted the most recent warming. but man isn't the only source. this is more of case of erring on the safe side.

This, right here, is where all the controversy is encapsulated.  The argument isn't about whether mankind has anything to do with it, but rather whether or not it's significant.

IMHO, Erring on the safe side isn't good enough when the debate is framed as such an absolute.  "The debate is over."  We're told, even though that's demonstrably untrue.  When I see climatologists faking and manipulating data, that's a huge red flag for me.  If mankind's damage to the planet were so significant and so obvious, then there should be no need at all to massage data sets.