Australian Politics Forum - The Soren Challenge

Maqqa Gold Member Offline 14% - that low?! Posts: 16000	Re: The Soren Challenge Reply #150 - Oct 17^th, 2011 at 5:11pm shrinkage have impacted the brains of left-wingers as well
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Emma Gold Member Offline Australian Politics Posts: 9853 OZ Gender:	Re: The Soren Challenge Reply #151 - Oct 17^th, 2011 at 8:25pm but not right-wingers??>? I must disagree. The lack of brain convolutions / 'smarts' - is nowhere more evident than on the right.! One only needs to watch the News ... and observe.!!!!
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Soren

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Re: The Soren Challenge
Reply #152 - Oct 17^th, 2011 at 8:32pm

Emma wrote on Oct 15^th, 2011 at 10:48pm:

to me means ..'you are nutso'. 'crazy in the coconut' . 'lost in the gloaming' . 'playing with the pixies at the bottom of your garden on Arcturus IV'.!!

I gave up husbands as bad for my health decades ago.

You mean they all gave up on you... They all musta been sleare-eyed right wingers, what?

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Soren

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Re: The Soren Challenge
Reply #153 - Oct 17^th, 2011 at 8:41pm

muso wrote on Oct 16^th, 2011 at 6:53am:

Soren wrote on Oct 15^th, 2011 at 8:18pm:

muso wrote on Oct 15^th, 2011 at 2:02pm:

Now I think I'm entitled to ask what you think the Greenhouse gases are in order of magnitude of their effect. Do you think that CO2 should come last?

Certainly not first.

Mars has an atmophere of 95% CO2. It's freezing. Not effective enough, evidently.

You're not thinking this through. It amazes me that you can be conned by that. As I said before, the warming effect of CO2 works in conjunction with water vapour. There is a comparatively huge quantity of water vapour in the atmosphere on Earth, but practically nil on Mars. If you dropped out all the water in the Martian atmosphere it would form a layer of ice just 100 microns thick planet-wide. In contrast, the Earth has an average of 0.8% water in its atmosphere.

In terms of partial pressure, that would equate to more than the total surface atmospheric pressure on Mars. The Martian atmosphere is also considerably shallower (fewer kilometers deep) that that of the Earth. Path length is important when it comes to the greenhouse effect.

There is actually a Greenhouse effect on Mars. It raises the temperature by about 5 degrees C. It's about the expected value taking into account the fact that it has a surface atmospheric pressure around 0.7 percent that of the Earth, and the fact that it's further from the Sun. The Earth receives about double (2.33) the Solar radiation received by Mars per unit area.

I like the KISS principle, but I prefer to take the approach, Keep It Simple Smart. The above explanation is about as simple as you can get without changing the "smart" to "stupid".

Stating that Mars has 95% CO2 in its atmosphere compared to Earth's 0.039% is simplifying a bit too much - in order to con the gullible.

Quote:

Certainly not first

- Good start. Try second. - On Mars of course, atmospheric dust has the greatest effect on warming.

What you are suggesting here is that CO2 works on water vapour, rather than directly on the temperature. This is the 'forcing' idea, yes?
Mars has no water vapout so even a large amount of CO2 has nothing to force. That is, CO2 in itself is less effective than in an atmophere that has water in it as well as one that is omposed largely or air -something also not present on other planets.

(noting that we haven't even touched on the contribution of air itself).

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Emma Gold Member Offline Australian Politics Posts: 9853 OZ Gender:	Re: The Soren Challenge Reply #154 - Oct 17^th, 2011 at 8:48pm why Soren !!!! (bats eye-lids) I didn't know you even cared.!!! 'They all musta been sleare-eyed right wingers, what? ' -- What? tfitstm? Que? and I take umbrage at the ..'they'. I am NOT stupid - once was more than enough !!
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Soren

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Re: The Soren Challenge
Reply #155 - Oct 17^th, 2011 at 8:51pm

muso wrote on Oct 17^th, 2011 at 11:34am:

Soren wrote on Oct 16^th, 2011 at 3:10pm:

muso wrote on Oct 16^th, 2011 at 2:43pm:

(you don't understand it, but it's complex)

Don't glide over that, it's a central point.

Soren's law is that IN THE CONTEXT of a complexity that is not well-understood, blaming or expecting catastrophy on the basis of 0.0275% increase in anything is a severe case of baseless overconfidence (a.k.a. stupidity).

OK, you are arguing that for complex systems we can't make any predictions. I disagree. Even for truly complex systems, we can make predictions, and those predictions can be accurate within certain limits.

I can talk about stochastic systems such as communications networks, financial markets etc, and explain how we can even provide some useful prediction tools for such systems.

The climate system is not stochastic, but is largely deterministic, especially when discussing broad rather than specific aspects.

I can explain that isolated components of the climate system are highly predictable, and that includes such things as global mean temperatures and ocean acidification, which is basic equilibrium calculations based on sound, tested physicochemical principles.

You also made the claim in an earlier post that the science is untestable. Well, I gave two examples of how the hypothesis can be tested on the last two posts in the sticky thread. These are satellite observations and reduced temperatures in the ionosphere. These are observable consequences that confirm the enhanced greenhouse effect that has occurred up to now.

Muso, I am arguing that we cannot make predictions for comlex systems that we do not understand and cannot experimntally test.
That is 3 variables, Muso, count them:
1 complexity and multitude of components,
2 lack of understanding of the interaction of the components
3 lack of testability

The analogy with the human body goes only as far as 1.
2 and 3 do not apply to oiur understanding of the human body tio the extent they apply to the climate. We have a better grasp of the human body and its working than of the climate as far as prediction are concerned because we have only one atmosphere whereas we have millions of bodies to meaure, contrast, compare, in short, experiment with.

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Emma

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Re: The Soren Challenge
Reply #156 - Oct 17^th, 2011 at 9:25pm

Do not agree! Soren, you are attempting to avoid the point.!

'1 complexity and multitude of components,
2 lack of understanding of the interaction of the components
3 lack of testability

The analogy with the human body goes only as far as 1.
2 and 3 do not apply to oiur understanding of the human body tio the extent they apply to the climate. We have a better grasp of the human body and its working than of the climate as far as prediction are concerned because we have only one atmosphere whereas we have millions of bodies to meaure, contrast, compare, in short, experiment with.' - Soren

We have less understanding of the human organism than we do about weather. Regardless of how many bodies there may be to experiment with. Complexity??
Humans are much more complex..
There are more unanswered questions about human physiology, pyschology, biology !! - than there could ever be about climate.
Perhaps we distract ourselves from realising our ignorance, by looking to external challenges.
Like Climate Change. Yet sadly - our knowledge -or lack thereof - of ourselves - already plays a huge role in our treatment of our home. Which is SHAMEFUL, ... and deny that if you can.!!

If we can succeed in the climate arena, perhaps we can look to more multiplex issues.
IF not .........? Tongue

You might think this is the cart before the horse, but if we cannot agree to save our only life source- the Earth, then we can never agree to live in peace and harmony.
One is proof of the other.

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muso Gold Member Offline Posts: 13151 Gladstone, Queensland Gender:	Re: The Soren Challenge Reply #157 - Oct 18^th, 2011 at 10:10am Maqqa wrote on Oct 17^th, 2011 at 5:11pm: shrinkage have impacted the brains of left-wingers as well Could be. Your comments don't apply to me. I'm not left wing or left anything. If anything I'm slightly right of centre.
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muso

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Re: The Soren Challenge
Reply #158 - Oct 18^th, 2011 at 10:34am

Soren wrote on Oct 17^th, 2011 at 8:51pm:

Muso, I am arguing that we cannot make predictions for comlex systems that we do not understand and cannot experimntally test.
That is 3 variables, Muso, count them:
1 complexity and multitude of components,
2 lack of understanding of the interaction of the components
3 lack of testability

The analogy with the human body goes only as far as
2 and 3 do not apply to oiur understanding of the human body tio the extent they apply to the climate. 1. We have a better grasp of the human body and its working than of the climate as far as prediction are concerned because we have only one atmosphere whereas we have millions of bodies to meaure, contrast, compare, in short, experiment with.

You have got to be kidding. We don't understand biological processes very well at all. Nobody has yet even gotten close to manufacturing a living cell. Even the basic processes of life are not understood, except empirically. For example we don't really have much of a clue how photosynthesis works. We are getting there. There has been some encouraging work of late, and there is a suggestion that we may be able to manufacture artificial photosynthesis units some time in the future, which would be great. Imagine a building that builds itself like a tree using CO2 from the atmosphere. As far as life is concerned there are far more gaps in our understanding than the Earth's climate, which is a function of some very basic properties most of which are very well understood.

There are many events that can be used to test the hypothesis as far as radiative forcing is concern. Stratospheric volcano eruptions and periods of low solar activity are a couple of examples. We can directly measure the greenhouse effect from space, and at various levels in the upper atmosphere by weather balloons and sondes.

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muso

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Re: The Soren Challenge
Reply #159 - Oct 18^th, 2011 at 10:57am

Soren wrote on Oct 17^th, 2011 at 8:41pm:

What you are suggesting here is that CO2 works on water vapour, rather than directly on the temperature. This is the 'forcing' idea, yes?
Mars has no water vapout so even a large amount of CO2 has nothing to force. That is, CO2 in itself is less effective than in an atmophere that has water in it as well as one that is omposed largely or air -something also not present on other planets.

(noting that we haven't even touched on the contribution of air itself).

Soren,

Not quite. It's both direct and indirect. You haven't been paying attention, have you? (Feedback is the word you want, not forcing)

This is not some new concept that I'm introducing. On Earth, water and CO2 are important Greenhouse gases by virtue of their atmospheric proportions.

Carbon dioxide works directly as a result of its properties to absorb Infrared radiation around 15 microns. That in itself causes some warming (forcing). The consequence of that warming in a world that has lots of water, is to evaporate just a bit more water which causes more warming. That's the indirect or feedback aspect.

Now strangely enough, the Martian atmosphere is close to saturated with water, whereas the Earth's is not (aha! you say) . I thought I'd bring up that little chestnut before you did. However as I said before, there is very little free water in the Martian atmosphere, compared to that of the Earth which is hardly surprising given its extremely low average temperature.

So the question is, what are the relative warming effects of CO2 and water vapour (feedback)? Well that's a term called the climate sensitivity. Most research puts that figure around 3. In other words for every doubling of CO2 (plus methane, nitrous oxide, HFC's etc expressed as CO2 - equivalent) concentration, you get about 3 degrees of global temperature rise due to forcing plus feedbacks, including water vapour. (for no extra price). The direct forcing component is a bit less than one degree.

Please tell me that you follow that.

As I've said before, the major components of the air - Nitrogen and oxygen are transparent to longwave IR radiation. They absorb elsewhere of course, but that has no relevance. (Do you want to see their spectra?) They are not greenhouse gases. End of story.

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Soren

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Re: The Soren Challenge
Reply #160 - Oct 18^th, 2011 at 12:18pm

muso wrote on Oct 18^th, 2011 at 10:57am:

Soren wrote on Oct 17^th, 2011 at 8:41pm:

What you are suggesting here is that CO2 works on water vapour, rather than directly on the temperature. This is the 'forcing' idea, yes?
Mars has no water vapout so even a large amount of CO2 has nothing to force. That is, CO2 in itself is less effective than in an atmophere that has water in it as well as one that is omposed largely or air -something also not present on other planets.

(noting that we haven't even touched on the contribution of air itself).

Soren,

Not quite. It's both direct and indirect. You haven't been paying attention, have you? (Feedback is the word you want, not forcing)

This is not some new concept that I'm introducing. On Earth, water and CO2 are important Greenhouse gases by virtue of their atmospheric proportions.

Carbon dioxide works directly as a result of its properties to absorb Infrared radiation around 15 microns. That in itself causes some warming (forcing). The consequence of that warming in a world that has lots of water, is to evaporate just a bit more water which causes more warming. That's the indirect or feedback aspect.

Now strangely enough, the Martian atmosphere is close to saturated with water, whereas the Earth's is not (aha! you say) . I thought I'd bring up that little chestnut before you did. However as I said before, there is very little free water in the Martian atmosphere, compared to that of the Earth which is hardly surprising given its extremely low average temperature.

So the question is, what are the relative warming effects of CO2 and water vapour (feedback)? Well that's a term called the climate sensitivity. Most research puts that figure around 3. In other words for every doubling of CO2 (plus methane, nitrous oxide, HFC's etc expressed as CO2 - equivalent) concentration, you get about 3 degrees of global temperature rise due to forcing plus feedbacks, including water vapour. (for no extra price). The direct forcing component is a bit less than one degree.

Please tell me that you follow that.

As I've said before, the major components of the air - Nitrogen and oxygen are transparent to longwave IR radiation. They absorb elsewhere of course, but that has no relevance. (Do you want to see their spectra?) They are not greenhouse gases. End of story.

I like that confidence.

The atmosphere is saturated with air but it's lil ol' CO2 that does all the work, or rather, its slave, water vapour. The air, being only where lil ol' CO2 lives, doesn't come into it because air can't be bossed around by 'im. So we ignore a large component of the atmosphere as it does nothing for our AGW thesis or because we do not understand its role.

On Mars, as there is neither air to live in nor vater vapour for Mr 96% CO2 to boss around, he's a powerless pussy who can't do nuffin'.

CO2 is a powerful greaanhouse gas only if it is not the dominant greenhouse gas and then only in an atmosphere that has air which is irrelevant for atmospheric temperature but is necessary for CO2 to be the non-dominant gas in.

Sure I follow.

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muso

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Re: The Soren Challenge
Reply #161 - Oct 18^th, 2011 at 1:40pm

Soren wrote on Oct 18^th, 2011 at 12:18pm:

I like that confidence.

The atmosphere is saturated with air but it's lil ol' CO2 that does all the work, or rather, its slave, water vapour. The air, being only where lil ol' CO2 lives, doesn't come into it because air can't be bossed around by 'im. So we ignore a large component of the atmosphere as it does nothing for our AGW thesis or because we do not understand its role.

On Mars, as there is neither air to live in nor vater vapour for Mr 96% CO2 to boss around, he's a powerless pussy who can't do nuffin'.

CO2 is a powerful greaanhouse gas only if it is not the dominant greenhouse gas and then only in an atmosphere that has air which is irrelevant for atmospheric temperature but is necessary for CO2 to be the non-dominant gas in.

Sure I follow.

Maybe you do, but what you just wrote is nothing like what I explained. In fact you got almost everything wrong.

I'll have to show you spectra to make my point, but of course I don't expect you to acknowledge any understanding. When we have stupid old men like Cardinal Pell telling everybody that Nitrogen is now a greenhouse gas, I guess it's the word of God against mine.

Maybe it's a miracle. The Nitrogen probably suddenly started vibrating around 15 microns as a result of divine intervention. Well there goes physics as we know it.

Look, here is a link where students can use a spreadsheet to calculate the Global Warming Potential of a gas based on its Infrared Spectrum.

http://journals2.scholarsportal.info/details.xqy?uri=/00219584/v76i0012/1702_gwp...

Quote:

The greenhouse warming potential is a relative measure of the capacity of a specific chemical species to trap infrared radiation as heat in the Earth's atmosphere, and is a scale that has been used to establish regulatory strategies for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. A model is described that allows a straightforward, spreadsheet-based determination of greenhouse warming potentials from the infrared spectra of atmospheric gases. On the basis of the numerical results of the model, students are able to investigate the molecular properties that are characteristic of greenhouse gases and thus are able to understand the rationale behind the recent agreement by the world's industrialized nations to reduce certain greenhouse gas emissions.

This is elementary stuff, Soren.

This graph shows how incident elecromagnetic radiation of different frequencies from the sun are absorbed by the atmosphere. What do you understand from that?

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« Last Edit: Oct 18^th, 2011 at 2:06pm by muso »

em_radiation_atmosph_depth_stsci.jpg (42 KB | 52 )

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barnaby joe Gold Member Offline Australian Politics Posts: 1992 euchareena	Re: The Soren Challenge Reply #162 - Oct 18^th, 2011 at 6:41pm the tropospheres gone absolutely TROPO
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Soren

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Re: The Soren Challenge
Reply #163 - Oct 18^th, 2011 at 8:16pm

muso wrote on Oct 18^th, 2011 at 1:40pm:

Soren wrote on Oct 18^th, 2011 at 12:18pm:

I like that confidence.

The atmosphere is saturated with air but it's lil ol' CO2 that does all the work, or rather, its slave, water vapour. The air, being only where lil ol' CO2 lives, doesn't come into it because air can't be bossed around by 'im. So we ignore a large component of the atmosphere as it does nothing for our AGW thesis or because we do not understand its role.

On Mars, as there is neither air to live in nor vater vapour for Mr 96% CO2 to boss around, he's a powerless pussy who can't do nuffin'.

CO2 is a powerful greaanhouse gas only if it is not the dominant greenhouse gas and then only in an atmosphere that has air which is irrelevant for atmospheric temperature but is necessary for CO2 to be the non-dominant gas in.

Sure I follow.

Maybe you do, but what you just wrote is nothing like what I explained. In fact you got almost everything wrong.

Good. What did I get right?

Look, Mr Musician, i appreciate your effort and civility but to me every answer you give sounds like a snow job. It's alwys some other new complexity or variant or special consideration.
Which may well be the proper scientific way.
But in a complex sytem (climate) that is not well or fully understood, that kind of endless technical refinement sounds to me like a covering up of the bits that are not understood. What I would want to hear from a climate expert is an honest list of all the knonw unknows and a genral direction of the unknown unknowns.

But you never hear that. All you ever hear is a confident pronouncement that even though we do not half understand how he climate works, the bit that requires a massive interntional finacial, political, social racket IS fully understood and is urgently required otherwise we are all doomed. That to me ounds like a load of crap.

Whatevr the science is, it has been, or has allowed itself to be, captured by political and socil interests that I find harmful and malvolent. Malvolent because lot of it is not even well-meaning social or political push.

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muso

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Re: The Soren Challenge
Reply #164 - Oct 19^th, 2011 at 7:06am

Well if you think that the actual facts are a snowjob, all I can say is that your BS detector is broken if you fall for some of the things that you parrot.

For what it's worth, I support what you say about the malevolent political part. This lightly disguised redistribution of wealth that would have huge payments to third world countries is an example of that. No wonder Copenhagen was not a success. Regardless of that there is a core atmospheric physics based issue which needs to be dealt with.

I'm not yet convinced that the current government's approach will have any effect on carbon emissions whatsoever. I am prepared to be pleasantly surprised but I'm not holding my breath.

What needs to happen is a focus on renewable energy. If Miners and farmers are so poor that we have to subsidise their purchases of fossil fuel, then we should at least be subsidising renewable alternatives such as biodiesel for them to use instead. That's one of the first things I'd do, and it's really not that difficult. The only red diesel that should be available should be biodiesel. All the rest should be taxed.

Tackle the low hanging fruit first before trying to convince people of the need for another tax, the proceeds of which would apparently ("trust me, I'm a politician") be used for renewables.

Notwithstanding all of the above, it doesn't change the fact that there is a sound basis to what you might hear as being shrill pronouncements.

It's frustrating for me trying to explain basic science from first principles when I'm not an educator, but it's also frustrating as hell when I hear idiots like Cardinal Pell talk about Nitrogen as a greenhouse gas when I know for absolute certain (and that is totally certain) that it isn't. To be a greenhouse gas, it has to absorb some of the emitted longwave infrared radiation that is emitted by the earth, and that occurs in a reasonably discrete band as predicted by Planck's Law, which is derived from basic first principles.

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« Last Edit: Oct 19^th, 2011 at 7:59am by muso »

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