As usual, even this is very silly, not going to change science that way. The bit you miss about is that in the latest global warming we humans are moving it along, and to places where it should not be.
The changes observed currently are not like the normal swing seen before.
Ice caps and glaciers are bad things, I’m glad they’re melting away … good ridden to rubbish. 335 kJ/kg is a small price to pay to see them GONE !!!
:rolleyes:
Besides contributing to the rise of the oceans the melting of the glaciers will not give us riches.
http://na.unep.net/geas/getuneppagewitharticleidscript.php?article_id=104
As pointed out to you in #103, your numbers are wrong, your assumptions are wrong, and none of it makes any sense. It’s not even clear if you’re trying to compute the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere or the annual emissions. Again, the total annual global CO2 emissions amount to around 33.6 gigatons per year. The significant factor is the net radiative forcing due to the present CO2 level of 400 ppm relative to the pre-industrial level of 285 ppm. This is about 1.68 W/m2 for CO2 and 2.29 W/m2 from all anthropogenic factors.
Yes, an excellent article, and I would urge you to read it again carefully until you understand it. I would urge our friend doorhinge to read it, too.
You appear to be perennially confused. The fact that “joule” has a mechanical definition doesn’t mean there has to be an associated mechanical action – the joule is a unit of energy, and energy comes in many forms – mechanical, thermal, electrical, chemical, etc. My electric meter which measures energy use in kilowatt-hours might just as well be measuring it in joules, but there is no visible force acting on a moving object when it causes a light bulb to emit heat and light!
The watt is a measure of energy consumption rate, or power, such as the power supplied by my electic company and consumed by my computer and light bulbs and electric stove. It is thus also the appropriate measure of solar power that is absorbed and re-emitted by greenhouse gases. Power over time equals energy, and radiative forcing, measured in watts, acting over time, represents the amount of energy being added to earth’s energy budget. Again, please read the article that you cited and try to understand it.
As I just explained, your use of the word “force” here is incorrect.
Daily and monthly weather fluctuations. And the fact that consecutive years are not monotonically increasing in temperature, but over the long term they are.
jshore does a good job of explaining these concepts in posts 106 and 108. Chaos theory is fundamental to weather, which is where the idea originated. It becomes less significant as it gets averaged over time. The use of model ensembles, as mentioned, is an important corroborative concept in climatology.
This graph of local climate is a good illustration of some of these concepts. We know that temperature can vary wildly from one day or week to another. Yet annual temperatures are remarkably consistent. At the same time, the graph shows that over a sufficiently long time period, the signature of systematic warming emerges.
Another point is that since there are substantial regional variations, not every region will show the same degree of warming, and some may show the opposite. The fact that the warming signature emerges in the global average is statistically very significant.
This is a ratio. I wish to know the ratio of our annual CO[sub]2[/sub] output compared the the total atmosphere. I divide 33.6 x10[sup]9[/sup] tons yr[sup]-1[/sup] by 5 x 10[sup]15[/sup] tons. This gives me the ratio of 6.7 x10[sup]-6[/sup] yr[sup]-1[/sup]. This gives us 6.7 ppm by mass. We have 2.1 ppm by volume observed. The difference from mass in a half dozen parts per million is negligible, but draw your own conclusions.
I’m just asking if you agree that these words have the same meaning in meteorology and climatology, and they’re used the same way. A Joule is a Joule, and if you’re changing it from electric energy to radiative energy, you’ll need a force. If you think that’s an incorrect use of the word, please state what is correct.
No, that’s not what you were doing. You weren’t even aware of the 33.6 Gt number until I mentioned it. Here are your own words about what you were doing: “I’ve got the Earth atmosphere at 5 x 10[sup]15[/sup] tonnes, so 2 ppmv is 10 x 10[sup]9[/sup] tonnes … perhaps the 500-1300 gigaton number is man’s CO[sub]2[/sub] output … only 10 gigatonnes remain in the atmosphere.”
Where the hell you got 10 Gt or what it’s supposed to mean is completely inexplicable and complete nonsense, but the only two numbers you mentioned are the mass of the atmosphere and the ppmv – the proportion by volume – of CO2. If you go back to the original discussion prior to that, your objective was to show that the other poster was wrong in referring to “hundreds of gigatons” of carbon having been added to the atmosphere, you claim it’s merely “tens of gigatons”. But the number you produced was meaningless gibberish.
And the difference between mass and volume of CO2 is anything but “negligible”. For CO2, the difference is substantial! In fact for CO2 at any given air pressure that assumption alone would be wrong by a factor of 1.519 (the ratio of the molar mass of CO2 vs the mean molar mass of air).
Here’s a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation I did which will hopefully put this nonsense to bed once and for all.
The present amount of CO2 at 400 ppmv (608 ppm/m) in the air when calculated correctly works out to be around 3.10x10[sup]12[/sup] tonnes, compared to 2.208x10[sup]12[/sup] tonnes before industrialization, where the level was about 285 ppmv (433 ppm/m).
The difference is about 892 Gt. According to these calculations that’s roughly how much CO2 has been added to the world’s atmosphere from anthropogenic sources in the post-industrial era. That’s consistent with the 500-1300 Gt number that marshmallow mentioned in post #91. Now let’s see if that makes sense.
The average emissions over the past 50 years were roughly about 22 Gt per year, obviously ramping up in recent years. This would be a total of about 1,100 Gt emitted in the past 50 years. If one posits that out of that 1,100, 40% (440 Gt) was retained in the atmosphere and the rest taken up by carbon sinks (550 Gt by the oceans and another 110 Gt by other carbon sinks), then that implies that about half of all the net anthropogenic CO2 now in the atmosphere was emitted in the past 50 years, and the rest was a combination of all anthropogenic emissions before that, reduced carbon uptake from deforestation, and other CO2 sources. So the number seems intuitively about right.
Now it’s possible that my back-of-the-envelope scratchings were a complete screw-up, but we can do a quick sanity check on the 892 Gt number. We can use this handy rule-of-thumb factoid: 1 ppmv of CO2 amounts to about 2.13 Gt of carbon. Using the conversion factor of 3.67, this means 1 ppmv equals 7.817 Gt of CO2. The above calculations were based on a 115 ppmv difference between the pre-industrial CO2 level and the present level, so 115 x 7.817 = 899 Gt – close enough! 
One can also sanity-check that rule of thumb. If we’re adding about 2 ppmv of CO2 to the air roughly every year, then the formula gives a figure of about 15.6 Gt of CO2 every year. Actual emissions are about twice that, but since about half gets re-absorbed by carbon sinks and the equation was derived from net remaining atmospheric CO2, it’s consistent with the facts. In fact the formula suggest that about 46% of current emissions remain in the atmosphere for a prolonged period, which for the result of a simple rule of thumb is remarkably accurate.
What “force” is involved when an electric current converts electrical energy into radiant energy in a light bulb? (Other than the force of my finger on the light switch, I mean. :D)
You’re trying to make some hopelessly obtuse point about weather and climate being the same thing based on some bizarre invocation of forces, acceleration, and the definition of a joule. Please read what I and several others have been very patiently trying to explain.
There is such a thing as the electromagnetic force.
Some 40% of Americans are creationists. Some 25% are birthers. The fact that a plurality of people with absolutely no formal training or expertise have not accepted a well-established fact or scientific theory says nothing about its validity, particularly when you have such a well-established propaganda mill (including one of the largest news networks in the country) constantly lying to them about it.
According to this Gallup poll, 46% of Americans – and 58% of Republicans – are creationists!
And this one provides Republican views on climate change.
To summarize:
[ul]
[li]58% of Republicans believe that “God created humans in present form within the last 10,000 years”.[/li][li]59% of self-identified conservative Republicans said they don’t believe that climate change is happening[/li][/ul]
It’s striking how close those percentages are. I’d be willing to bet that for the most part the same individuals hold both beliefs. And that these individuals never went to college. And gave up trying to understand science somewhere between elementary and middle school.
Yup, with only two natural forces at play here, any energy transfer has to be caused by one or the other. I’m generally surprised at how many otherwise intelligent people seem to forget that, if the effect isn’t caused by gravity, then it must be caused by the electromagnetic force.
I’m surprised at how many otherwise intelligent people seem to forget what the original question was. 
You informed us in post #97 – in the process of trying to explain that weather was somehow the same as climate – that:
… if we’re using “force” in the classical sense, then it is equal to mass times acceleration. I’m sure you’ve seen it expressed F = m (dv/dt). So it wouldn’t be a force that only acts in ten year intervals, it would have to be something else. A force is visible at dt time intervals.
You then doubled down on it in post #114:
In every other scientific field, “Watts” has a very specific meaning, that being Joules per second. The word “Joule” also has a very specific meaning, the energy transferred by a 1 Newton of force moving a 1 kilogram mass one meter. Force has the specific meaning of mass times acceleration.
Since using the word “force” in it’s classical meaning explains AGW theory so completely, why is it important to you that we use some other meaning?
So I’ll ask again. Since you tell us that the watt is defined in terms of the joule and the joule in terms of force and that “force has the specific meaning of mass times acceleration”, please tell us, in terms of classical physics, what force is applying what precise acceleration to what mass when I turn on a 100-watt light bulb. I explained over here that power and energy take many different forms even though they’re all measured in the same units, but clearly you have your own unique understanding of the physical world.
You might also want to explain how you concluded up there in post #97 that there was only 10 Gt of anthropogenic CO2 in the air when the numbers actually work out to 892 Gt.
Yes, I came to the same conclusion, half the CO[sub]2[/sub] human’s belch out is being removed from the atmosphere. I find that curious, and interesting what a little math will say. Anyone have any idea where 16 Gigatons of CO[sub]2[/sub] per year is going?
That would be whether meteorology and climatology are the same. I hold the position that meteorology is the basic science that climatology is built on. Force, Joules, flux … these are all meteorology concepts, not exclusive to climatology.
You’ve asked twice now … so here it is … there is an amount of water at the top of a penstock of a hydroelectric dam. This water contains one Joule of potential energy. As it falls down the penstock, the force of gravity changes this Joule of potential energy into kinetic energy. Our Joule of energy enters an alternator and is converted to one Joule of electric energy. That joule is then converted by the electromagnetic force to radiative energy by the light bulb. The light shines on the bottom of your car’s engine, which absorbs the Joule of radiative energy and converts it to kinetic energy … making the engine warmer and easier to start on a -40ºC morning. At least that’s what happens here.
It takes a force to transfer energy, forcing is just one way to measure the rate of energy transfer. So it’s pretty much dependent on the force behind it.
The theory of evolution is counter Church doctrine, and the Catholic Church is a mighty enemy. The good news is that Pope Francis is on-board with AGW theory, and the Catholic Church is a mighty friend too.
I’m up-beat about the progress we’re making, we’ve got God on our side !!!
Counter to the doctrine of which church? The Roman Catholic Church has accepted evolution for a long time now. The only proviso the Church has with the theory is that at some point in the process, God added souls to creatures, but since souls are entirely outside the purview of science, this is no conflict.
The Catholic Church has largely sat out the cultural battle over the teaching of evolution, Pope Francis shows that there is no big conflict with Darwin.
This level of demonstrable ignorance is appalling.
The Catholic Church has never opposed the Theory of Natural Selection/Evolution.
In the late 19th century, when Huxley and associated pundits were proclaiming that evolution “proved” that there was no god, (something that Darwin never said, regardless of his personal beliefs or lack), the church challenged the expression that that particular science “proved” the “truth” of atheism.
By the early 20th century, (even before Dobzhansky’s synthesis of Darwin and Mendel set evolution beyond early challenges), the RCC had already acknowledged the basic evidence and logic of Darwin’s theory, holding only that it occurred within God’s plan, but making no claims of specific divine interference. (You can look this up on the on-line Catholic Encyclopedia written between 1908 and 1919.)
By 1950, Pope Pius XII had already noted that nothing in Scripture or Tradition contradicted the Theory of Evolution.
Pope John Paul II further declared, in 1996, that Doctrine and the Theory of Evolution were compatible.
Claiming that evolution is “against church doctrine” in direct contradiction to over 100 years of actual statements from the church is just silly and demonstrates a serious lack of investigation or study of the topic.
You can hold whatever position you like, it’s still wrong. Any resemblance is largely superficial. They study entirely different things. Climate science is interested in studying influences like radiative forcing from greenhouse gases, sulfate aerosols, surface albedo changes, the carbon cycle and carbon cycle feedbacks, ocean heat uptake, polar ice reductions and ice-albedo feedback, lapse-rate feedback, and the earth’s total energy budget as a balance between total solar irradiation and the earth’s blackbody radiation. None of that is of interest in telling you whether it’s going to be a nice day tomorrow or if it’s going to rain on your picnic.
And you’re still hung up on this business of “force”. I think possibly you have it confused with radiative climate forcing.
Thanks for the child’s primer on “where electricity comes from”, but that doesn’t answer the question. You just avoided the question instead of answering it, in that sentence which makes very little sense and is, at best, very badly worded. And joules are a unit of energy – they aren’t “converted” to anything.
The question, again, is where your mechanical notion of force as F = ma comes in to the picture when I turn on a light bulb. For a 100-watt bulb, what is the mass and what exactly is being accelerated when electrical energy is converted to heat and light? How is this a useful concept?
There’s actually a theoretical answer to that and you’re not getting it, but it isnt a useful concept in helping our understanding of how a light bulb works. My point was to show that any such perspective, should you be able to come up with one, is completely irrelevant to understanding radiative forcing and climate.
