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Entangled Histories: Climate Science and Nuclear Weapons Research
Harperdog writes "Paul N. Edwards has a great paper about the links between nuclear weapons testing and climate science. From the abstract: 'Tracing radioactive carbon as it cycles through the atmosphere, the oceans, and the biosphere has been crucial to understanding anthropogenic climate change. The earliest global climate models relied on numerical methods very similar to those developed by nuclear weapons designers for solving the fluid dynamics equations needed to analyze shock waves produced in nuclear explosions. The climatic consequences of nuclear war also represent a major historical intersection between climate science and nuclear affairs. Without the work done by nuclear weapons designers and testers, scientists would know much less than they now do about the atmosphere. In particular, this research has contributed enormously to knowledge about both carbon dioxide, which raises Earth's temperature, and aerosols, which lower it.'"
I wonder about the climate impact of the series of multi-megaton surface blasts by the US and USSR in the 1950's and 1960's. These tests put both dust and radionuclides into the atmosphere in large, possibly globally-significant quantities. When we see surface temperature changes over the last 50 years, how much of that is a recovery from an abnormal climate?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IUxK_0WLbg
It seems the point is that scientists were employed during wartime, and the science they discovered has peacetime uses.
Gently reply
The effect of greenhouse gasses has been known for a couple of hundred years.
However, I think it was Sagan's group's concern about a possible Nuclear Winter that got people started actually thinking about greenhouse gasses and climate.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
it can be used for good, it can be used for evil
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Much of the CO2 processing occurs in the oceans by plankton. Trees definitely help, but plankton does more. Of course plankton is dying too and it's much more difficult to remedy than planting more trees.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
But do you know anything about your field? What would you think if someone said "I'm not sure the experts in smaddox's field really know anything about their field"? Saying, "experts aren't experts" can become very negative very quickly, and today there is an organized, committed effort to devalue all expertise. Once you do that, you can tell people anything at all because "I know as much as the so-called experts".
Yes, but chaotic systems are seldom made less so by adding greater instability. So may predictions about limits can not be accurate, but the prediction that "greater instability will make the chaotic system more unstable" is pretty straightforward. So while climate scientists can't predict the exact amount that temperature will change as greenhouse gas emissions increase, they can predict that continuing to increaase greenhouse gas emissions at the rate they have been increasing is not a good idea.
I, myself, believe that the expertise represented by the group of people known as "climate scientists" probably rates some consideration of their findings.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So the contribution of nuclear weapons research to atmospheric understanding is the justification for billions (trillions?) of dollars spent on nuclear weapons stockpiles and the entire Cold War fiasco? Let's trot out nuclear medicine as the next justification or, gasp, nuclear power. Humanity has been on the brink of extinction through nuclear war for fifty years. If those benificent aliens are going to save us they had better hurry...
Let's release some aerosols into the atmosphere!
Two comments -- just to be picky. One: Read Taleb's "The Black Swan". It is basically a systematic proof that in fact most experts aren't experts, with narrow exceptions in non-complex scientific fields such as physics. In complex systems, experts in fact are rarely experts, and almost invariably claim more knowledge than time and data prove that they have/had. It's quite understandable -- in the end you can understand why many experts aren't expert.
Two, chaotic systems are often made less so by increasing a driver. In fact, many of them have narrow parametric regions where they are chaotic, and if you move any parameter out of that region the system stabilizes.
As a single example, the most violent weather tends to occur when warm fronts and cold fronts are in close proximity, when/where high pressure systems and low pressure systems collide or interact. For any given heat input, temperature differentials on the surface of the Earth actually increase cooling efficiency because outgoing power is radiated proportional to the fourth power of the temperature but only the second power of the relevant surface length scale. The more uniform the temperature, the warmer the average temperature. It is therefore entirely possible for a warming climate to have more uniform temperatures and less violent weather. It is similarly quite possible for a globally cooling climate to be setting local temperature records (concentration of heat in a comparatively small area, from which it is relatively rapidly lost) while only cooling very slightly elsewhere, and to have more violent weather when cold fronts impinge on those heated areas.
I have code and descriptions if you want to numerically study a very simple actual chaotic system (or two, or three) so that you can see for yourself that you have to drive it at just the right frequencies, amplitudes, and dampings to observe a Feigenbaum tree (period doubling into chaos) and equally rapid emergence from the chaotic regime as you increase amplitude or frequency or damping. That doesn't make this a universal truth about chaotic systems, BTW, it just points out the danger of making sweeping statements about something you don't really know much about. One could go on -- is there a proof that adding more CO_2 creates greater instability? What, exactly, is greater instability (how do you define it)? I fully agree that adding more CO_2 (e.g. taking it to 600-700 ppm by 2100) is likely to raise global temperatures by some amount (the exact amount is a matter of considerable debate even among experts with a lower bound that is just over nothing).
It is by no means clear -- and to the best of my knowledge there is no statistically sound evidence to support the conclusion that -- the warming of the late twentieth century resulted in "greater instability" in the form of more violent weather, nor has any other kind of "instability" other than the motion of the mean global temperature itself been convincingly demonstrated. It has been drier, wetter, stormier, hotter, colder, both locally and globally, in the past without CO_2 forcing.
The really interesting thing is that many climate scientists are quite open about their lack of certain knowledge in climate science -- in a scientific forum where they might be called on it if they utter something really speculative as if they are sure. A George Mason survey of actual climate scientists found that roughly one in seven think that there will be little to no warming and no catastrophe by 2100. Over half think that there will be significant, but probably not catastrophic warming. In the end, I agree with you -- this honest lack of consensus among climate scientists probably rates some consideration.
For one thing, it makes the entire field more credible. When was the last time you were in a room full of scientists who agreed about everything, even important things for which there is far better experimental data and far more computable theory
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Modest measures that the energy industry would spend billions to block.
Cap and trade seemed like a very reasonable modest measure. It didn't require anyone to give up their cars or stop the use of coal. It just place a very modest and market-driven cost on the emission of greenhouse gas. Even the Kyoto Accord was fairly modest, and at least focused on a way to start dealing with the externalities of emissions without snuffing out the developing countries.
The discussion in the scientific community regarding AGW has been very modest, reasoned and data based. Just because there have been squeals and howls of outrage from the right and the fossil fuel industry, don't assume that those drama queen reactions are an indication otherwise.
You are welcome on my lawn.
it is what you make it.
i see far too much herp derp from "both" sides of the fence. people's political affiliation seems to have defined their sense of morals as well. it's a really fucked way to think. human ethics are not a line between left and right. it's a bit more dimensional than that.
The majority of CO2 warming models rely on a concept of "back radiation" that (according to "physicists") does not even exist ...
You know these pseudo-scientific refutations of climate science are getting, well a bit lame, to be honest. Why don't you try something more exciting, like proving that thermo-nuclear weapons break the rules of thermodynamics and therefore can't even exist. C'mon you can do it!
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
I've just been participating in a rather extended round of debate with Olsen (sky dragon slayer). Two comments again:
a) CO_2 warming models don't "rely" on back radiation. They are inferable from simple subtraction, using utterly empirical evidence. Find a website that shows top of atmosphere spectrographs, ideally ones taken at night over e.g. the arctic so that you can eliminate the confusion of reflected sunlight and focus only on radiation given off by the ground as it cools. Look at the hole in the CO_2 absorption/scattering band. The total power radiated from the area being photographed must, on average, match the total rate at which heat is delivered there by all sources. The CO_2 hole is clearly visible in daytime, equatorial, temperate, polar spectrographs. If one integrates the outgoing flux of the Poynting vector over the entire sphere above the TOA, this has to equal the rate power is delivered to the interior of that sphere. Since energy lost from the surface via blackbody radiation is blocked in the CO_2 band, the surface must warm up until total energy lost is (still) equal to the total energy input (averaged over both the surface and time and all wavelengths). End of story.
b) For what it's worth, one can actually take bottom of atmosphere spectrographs from the same place at the same time as one takes the TOA spectrographs. This has been done. The spectrographs compliment themselves (at least in the arctic where there is little water vapor or confounding signals from other stuff going on). One can see a nearly perfect match between downwelling radiation in the blocked bands so clearly visible up above.
IMO fairly professional opinion as a physicist, Olsen is not competent; his arguments are not sound, nor are they in any way quantitative (that I've been able to determine). For example, when he discusses how fission "must" be a missing source of energy and the real cause of climate change instead of CO_2 modulation, solar output modulation, albedo modulation, global circulation decadal oscillation modulation he fails to provide any sort of quantitative or plausible computation of the actual energy production one might expect in the interior, relying instead on a verbal/heuristic argument that reduces to "the interior is very hot, therefore fission must be important". I've tried fairly patiently to walk him through the spectrographic data -- which are for all practical purposes photographs of the greenhouse effect in action -- to no avail -- he doesn't seem to understand electromagnetic radiation theory very well (as in, as well as a bright undergrad physics major). Some things he states are blatently silly -- the assertion that a "space blanket" (reflective mylar sheet) works by blocking convection instead of trapping radiation (it's both, but the human body loses heat primarily through radiation, a simple fact that can once again be directly photographed). And he has somehow taken an experience where he was lost inside a cold cloud when he first learned to fly and turned it into an entire theory of cloud cooling.
For what it is worth, you can see back radiation and side radiation and all sorts of radiation from the sky with your eyes. Blue sky? Rayleigh scattering. Live in a city and want to do some stargazing? Sorry, too much backscattered radiation from the city lights, worst viewing on hazy nights (lots of greenhouse gas H_2O in the air), best on clear, cold, dry nights in the winter (not so much greenhouse H_2O in the air. Sure, you only see visible light "back radiation", but that's because of limitations in your eyes, not because it isn't there in other wavelengths of invisible light as well (such as infrared). In the CO_2 absorption band in the IR, the sky is so "hazy" it is completely opaque. Think of it as being a thick fog, visibility a few hundred feet. Not all radiation that is emitted from the surface in that band is reflected back -- some diffuses through to eventually escape above at a mu
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Why would your strawman "lefty" deny it?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Climate is not mathematically chaotic, exept on geologic time scales. Climate is the statistics of (mathematically chaotic) weather patterns, without man-made forcings it is remarkably stable on human time scales.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Here's another quote from Dyson; "my objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it’s rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have.".
In other words his argument is not based on facts, it's based on the way he percieves the behaviour of climate scientists ( coincidently that perception matches the propoganda put out by "for hire" anti-science lobbyists, not heretics). Don't get me wrong, I admire Dyson, however wrt climate science, he is the one clinging to dogma in a field of study "about which [he does] not know much".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Cap and trade seemed like a very reasonable modest measure.
Here's the thing I don't get, "conservatives" have been leading the anti-science movement against these measures for 20yrs, yet their "hero" Ronald Reagan (prompted and supported by Thatcher who graduated as a Chemist from Oxford) enthusiastically campagined for a solution to acid rain, he was successful and his international cap and trade system on sulphur emmissions has been up and running for over 20yrs now.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I'm impressed. You managed to put in a link to your sources this time. Sadly it's to a site trying to flog a book but the fact you managed to link to a source is an improvement.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
YMMD :-D
I like my spaghetti with source.
I'm not the first person you've accused of trying to put words into your mouth. Here's an example. I think this wastes my readers' time, but they can judge for themselves whether your statements are being distorted. Anyone else who's bored by this can skip ahead LINK LATER to more science.
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I've copied an example below, so other people don't have to follow the links. Also, here's my "grossly cherry-picked" version of a conversation we had regarding dark matter. Compare that to the originals that are available by following the links. I think this wastes my readers' time, but they can judge for themselves whether your statements are being cherry-picked in an attempt to make myself look good. Anyone else who's bored by this can skip ahead LINK LATER to more science.
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Oops, the previous comment used relative links that only work on Dumb Scientist. This version uses absolute links.
I'm not the first person you've accused of trying to put words into your mouth. Here's an example. I think this wastes my readers' time, but they can judge for themselves whether your statements are being distorted. Anyone else who's bored by this can skip ahead LINK LATER to more science.
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I've copied an example below, so other people don't have to follow the links. Also, here's my "grossly cherry-picked" version of a conversation we had regarding dark matter. Compare that to the originals that are available by following the links. I think this wastes my readers' time, but they can judge for themselves whether your statements are being cherry-picked in an attempt to make myself look good. Anyone else who's bored by this can skip ahead LINK LATER to more science.
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Taleb is an idiot whose success can be boiled down to watching which way the market is going, then doing the opposite. No black swans or other ominous-coloured fowl required. He has no particular insights to share on any other topics, as far as I'm aware.
The article hardly talks about climate research at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which develops the ocean (POP) and ice (CICE and CISM) components of one of the world's leading climate models, CESM. The climate group at Los Alamos got started studying nuclear winter (related work was mentioned in TFA), and built its strength in ocean modeling with new ideas in high performance computing for parallel partial differential equation solvers (fishing for new applications, since they had all these giant supercomputers lying around for nuclear hydrodynamics.). More history here.
It certainly is not irreversible in geological time, but given the slow relaxation of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, it is likely to persist for a period of time that is long in the scale of human lifetimes. Of course, there is the potential for intentional climate engineering (as opposed to the climate-engineering-by-neglect that we are currently engaged in)--but every such proposal I've seen so far seems to involve doing things that are as hard/slow to reverse (i.e. if they "go wrong") as increasing CO2.
I'm not sure what you consider to be a "fair bit of evidence." Certainly global temperature has been more than a degree or two warmer in the distant past, so any such stability mechanism must be of recent vintage, geologically speaking. And there is no statistical evidence that any such mechanism is currently limiting temperature increase. Once one corrects for known sources of short term fluctuation, global warming seems to be continuing unabated. So any such temperature limiting mechanism must have a very sharp threshold if it is going to save us from the temperature increase projected as a consequence of continued CO2 pollution. Sharp thresholds are somewhat hard to come by in nature, and generally require some sort of strong feedback. What specific physical mechanism do you have in mind, and what is the "fair bit of evidence" for it?
"a) CO_2 warming models don't "rely" on back radiation. "
Your logic may be 100% accurate, but it says nothing about the majority of CO2 models. Please, if you wish to actually refute my statement, show me some generally accepted models that do not make use of the back-radiation concept.
Please note that I did not say CO2 wasn't a cause of warming, I simply claimed that many models are flawed.
"IMO fairly professional opinion as a physicist, Olsen is not competent;"
That's fine, since I didn't reference Olsen at all. Did you even visit the link and view both sides of the discussion to which I *WAS* referring?
Based on your completely out-of-context reply to my argument, I wouldn't call you very competent, either.
"For what it is worth, you can see back radiation and side radiation and all sorts of radiation from the sky with your eyes. Blue sky? Rayleigh scattering."
Obviously you did not bother to even read the reference I gave. Rayleigh scattering is NOT "back radiation", in the context given.
No matter how competent a scientist you actually may be, you should probably take the time to actually learn what someone is arguing before you attempt to refute it.
I generally do link to my sources, troll. And your comment about "trying to flog a book" is entirely an ad hominem argument, not worthy of a response.
If you are attempting to refute an actual argument I made, please point out where, in this massive pile of your own maunderings, it exists.
Haha. So you have sunk yourself to blatantly obvious ad hominem. Not that I expected anything more from you.
Where is your refutation of any argument I made HERE, in this thread? Where is it? You are pretending that this stuff from your personal blog is RELEVANT to what I stated HERE?
You claim to be a scientist yourself, but you don't use logic and you don't address the actual issues. Instead, you would rather attempt to refute things I said MONTHS ago.
I think your posts reflect on you a lot more than they do on me. This is a gross example of nothing more than personal attack. Why aren't you discussing the issue I raised?
"Anyway, before you waste money hiring a lawyer, you might want to look up libel and copyright."
You persist in your implication that I "threatened" to sue you? That is laughable. I stated that I was NOT going to sue you. And just as I stated in that paragraph that you quoted above, anybody who clearly reads my whole, original comment can see that very clearly.
For someone claiming to be a scientist, you seem to be pretty weak at logic. I think your jumping in here was a pathetic attempt to justify yourself.
But to clarify further, in light one of your own comments: "back radiation", in this context, is not the same as "back scatter".
The "reflection from clouds" idea of IR backscatter was disproved long, long ago. It was replaced with the concept of absorption then re-radiation. That is "back radiation", and it is distinct from "backscatter". And it also doesn't work in the manner used by the majority of CO2 models.
But this only proves that you did not even read the article I linked to, or the original article it was refuting, by Spencer.
If you DO ever get around to reading it, maybe then, if you know so much about it, you can come up with a model that actually does work:
"Since energy lost from the surface via blackbody radiation is blocked in the CO_2 band, the surface must warm up until total energy lost is (still) equal to the total energy input (averaged over both the surface and time and all wavelengths). End of story."
I'm not disputing this. But please: show me the mechanism. We know it can't be all backscatter (that was disproved long ago), and the "absorption and re-radiation" model doesn't work either, as LaTour clearly shows. I placed my argument in LaTour's hands; you have done nothing here to refute it.
Charming. As I said in my responses, I'll address your Sky Dragon misinformation when I get the time, but first I need to address some of your other misinformation to put it in context. Patience.
And by the way: I am NOT a "climate change contrarian". I simply dispute the validity of certain CO2 warming models. I have stated this MANY TIMES over the last couple of years. But it has seemed to keep going over your head.
Correction: I was, at first, also arguing for other causes, too. I admit that. But I have since stopped doing so.
However, I have not, at any time, been denying that the climate is changing. The only thing that is even remotely in dispute, as far as I am concerned, is how much of it, if any, is due to CO2.
That's the definition of a climate change contrarian: someone who disagrees with the overwhelming scientific consensus that most of the warming since 1950 is very likely due to human emissions of greenhouse gases like CO2.
It's only "the definition" if you do not possess a frigging dictionary.
"Charming. As I said in my responses, I'll address your Sky Dragon misinformation when I get the time, but first I need to address some of your other misinformation to put it in context. Patience."
Again, you sidestep my question. Why can't you answer it?
And your further ad hominem, in regard to that article happening to be on a particular website, just makes you look that much more foolish. It is an article about physics. Would you like to refute the actual content?
The fact is that I suspect you will not actually address this. Unlike other things you post on your blog (which appear to be in a glaringy, self-servingly edited form). Because I don't think you really CAN refute LaTour's physics. Instead you will try to prove ME wrong.
And by the way: I really do expect you to run into legal trouble with that blog of yours, if you keep doing it the way you have. I meant that sincerely. But that is a far cry from ever threatening to cause any of it myself... that is something I never stated or even implied.
You've previously said: "Dictionaries do not accurately define words, they merely list popular usage. If you want technical accuracy, consult an encyclopedia, not a dictionary. "
That's why I'm referring to technical statements like these:
In 2005, 11 national science academies signed a joint statement saying "It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities ... The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action."
In 2007, 13 national science academies signed a joint statement referencing the earlier 2005 statement, and added: "Recent research strongly reinforces our previous conclusions. It is unequivocal that the climate is changing, and it is very likely that this is predominantly caused by the increasing human interference with the atmosphere. These changes will transform the environmental conditions on Earth unless counter-measures are taken. Our present energy course is not sustainable."
"... but first I need to address some of your other misinformation to put it in context. Patience."
Ah. I see. You are preparing even further ad hominem arguments. And you insist upon doing that FIRST, before addressing any actual issues I raised.
I expected nothing else from you.
You post a link on your own website to a page about "how to disagree" , and it is pretty obvious that on that same scale you can't bring yourself to do better than "DH1".
What does that have to do with my comment above? What you are saying, in effect, is that anybody who questions CO2 models is a "climate change contrarian", when even in POPULAR usage, "climate change" does not equal "CO2".
Dictionary or not, you can't just go around expecting English to mean anything you want, in any give month.
I am busy with other things, so please pardon my frequent, overly-brief replies.
What I mean is, just because YOU and a few fellows define "climate change contrarian" to be anybody who disagrees with your viewpoint, that does not make it so.
Either by dictionary OR "popular usage", you are still wrong.
"It's interesting that less than two hours after you noted [dumbscientist.com] that I had the integrity to link to the originals, you made a screenshot without a link to the originals and claimed it was "in exactly the same spirit" and "no more out of context than anything he has stated.""
What a completely ridiculous assertion. As you admit yourself, just prior to that WE HAD BEEN DISCUSSING THE CONTEXT in that very same thread, on the very same page. Anybody who saw that was EXTREMELY likely to have read prior parts of the discussion, in which the context was clearly spelled out. If they didn't, then they don't have a claim of "out of context" anyway.
That is far, far different from pulling something out of another thread, on another page, out of context. If you think they are the same things or even comparable, you have a lot to learn. But I suspect you really don't understand that difference, because I see you have done it on your blog, very often.
You are trying to compare apples and oranges and call it valid. Just another example of your foolish argument style. You would have been booted with prejudice from my high-school debate team.
... it is generally considered to be "fair use" to record something that is happening in public and not being charged for. There is a gray area, to be sure, but I think political speeches rightfully belong on the "fair use" side of the line. [Jane Q. Public, 2011-08-29] [slashdot.org]
... There is no justice involved in trying to hold a copyright on a speech that was given in PUBLIC, and broadcast to the public, almost 5 decades ago. ... I think we have to draw the line and say that public political speech, that wasn't done as a "performance" for profit, is public domain. [Jane Q. Public, 2011-08-29,30]
First, as I have pointed out earlier, I never "threatened" (your word) to sue you anyway. I did the opposite: I specifically stated that I was NOT going to sue you.
But second -- and this is most laughable of all -- YOU link to information about "libel", but you obviously don't understand the first things about it yourself. You demonstrate as much by somehow equating fair use of recordings of public figures with online libel. They haven't the slightest things to do with one another. As you further demonstrate, frequently, on your blog.
But that's just a comment about your behavior. No "threat" intended or implied. I'll let somebody else nail you for it, as they surely will if you keep it up.
Please note that I did not say CO2 wasn't a cause of warming, I simply claimed that many models are flawed.
Difficult to refute, phrased that way. I'm sure that they are. But not necessarily through the use of back-radiation in the model, although frankly I don't care for it either simply because it is so open to pointless argument.
That's fine, since I didn't reference Olsen at all. Did you even visit the link and view both sides of the discussion to which I *WAS* referring?
Sky Dragon is Olsen. He loves crank science. He finds it and puts it on his website. Nobody sane actually argues that the GHE is a cold system "warming" a warmer system, nor is that what climate models implement. It simply slows the cooling of a warm system heated by a system warmer still. Olsen -- in direct communications to me -- has asserted that the sun warms the Earth primarily in the IR band, I suppose to avoid that "warming by a system warmer still". That's insane. I confess to your accusation of not visiting, though. I've spent too much time on Sky Dragon recently and got fed up with the pompously presented crank physics. Which is easy to do. I'll even apologize for (perhaps mistakenly) assuming that you were trying to assert that the GHE doesn't exist, that the Earth is warmed by the Sun primarily via IR, and so on. Sky Dragon is not my idea of an authoritative source of information these days but you are right, I shouldn't assume that just because you reference something there that you are a crank too.
Outside of that, I don't much care what insane people think about the GHE, but I do try to point out what it really is in the fond hope that sanity will be restored to them if only I explain it clearly enough...;-)
As for back radiation, downwelling radiation, scattered radiation, blackbody radiation, emissivity and Kirchoff's law, extinction and optical path -- as far as the actual processes involved are concerned there isn't a huge difference between one kind of optical scattering and another, not at the molecular scale. I can refer you to your choice of graduate physics textbooks or a fairly good book of physical meteorology if you want to review or learn it someplace that simply presents it and the data that support it. I teach a lot of the basic physics at both the graduate and undergraduate level (and have written one of those textbooks that covers at least part of this), but of course you are right, I might not be competent and the field of meteorology and climate modeling is broad enough that even if I were, I could be mistaken about lots of things in one context or another.
As for Rayleigh scattering not being "back radiation" -- I was merely offering that as an example of how molecules can and do reflect and scatter photons in a way that varies with frequency. The photons that are (resonantly or otherwise) back scattered from atmospheric CO_2 near the surface -- whatever you want to call them -- reflect some fraction of the otherwise outgoing energy in those bands towards the source quite independent of the relative temperature of the source that is radiating. One can directly measure this spectrally resolved back scattered radiation in bottom of atmosphere spectrographs, looking up. Call it "back radiation" or not, call it whatever you like, but it is a term that acts as a differential gain in the heat balance of the ground, at least if you believe in Maxwell's equations and that the power incident on a surface is the flux of the Poynting vector through the surface.
In models that focus on ground temperatures, it is thus pretty natural to have it and easy to semi-empirically justify it. On top of atmosphere models looking down (which is what I personally prefer when trying to convince people that do not want to "believe" in the GHE because they have a hard time with differential gain terms in resonant absorptive bands or get lost in the thermodynamics of multi-channel cooling processes at the surface)
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
"But not necessarily through the use of back-radiation in the model, although frankly I don't care for it either simply because it is so open to pointless argument. "
That is a non-response and deserves no answer.
"Sky Dragon is Olsen"
NO... I specifically linked to an article by Pierre LaTour. The fact that it happens to be posted on the Sky Dragon site is incidental, and the article does not rely upon or even mention Olsen. Any argument of that sort is nothing but ad hominem. Surely you know what that is.
"Nobody sane actually argues that the GHE is a cold system "warming" a warmer system, nor is that what climate models implement."
On the contrary, as Spencer points out in his article (to which LaTour's article is a rebuttal, and which I did recommend you red first):
"This back radiation is a critical component of the theoretical explanation for the Greenhouse Effect. "
And if you read on, the back radiation he mentions is clearly the same as that being addressed by LaTour.
Please, if you will (as I originally pointed out): explain to me where these CO2 warming models do not rely on back radiation. All of those of which I am familiar do.
"As for back radiation, downwelling radiation, scattered radiation, blackbody radiation, emissivity and Kirchoff's law, extinction and optical path -- as far as the actual processes involved are concerned there isn't a huge difference between one kind of optical scattering and another, not at the molecular scale."
COMPLETE nonsense. While Spencer does not address the molecular or atomic scale, LaTour does. This is a bald (and rather bold) statement with no support; it is not a refutation.
"As for Rayleigh scattering not being "back radiation" -- I was merely offering that as an example of how molecules can and do reflect and scatter photons in a way that varies with frequency."
Of course they do, but that was not the subject under discussion. "Back radiation" has a very specific meaning in this context, which I was careful to point out.
"... reflect some fraction of the otherwise outgoing energy in those bands towards the source quite independent of the relative temperature of the source that is radiating."
Again, of course, but again: that is not the subject under discussion. It is the ABSORPTION of the radiation, not the emission of it, that is the relevant topic here. You cannot get temperature rise without absorption.
"Call it "back radiation" or not, call it whatever you like, but it is a term that acts as a differential gain in the heat balance of the ground, at least if you believe in Maxwell's equations and that the power incident on a surface is the flux of the Poynting vector through the surface. "
Again, not true, as shown by LaTour. A radiating body will only absorb radiation that is > T (its own radiative energy). When a radiative body radiates, and that radiation is absorbed and re-radiated by, say, a water molecule, some energy is inevitably given up in the process (this is simple thermodynamics).
So when the ground radiates, and its radiation is absorbed by water vapor, and re-radiated, it is always (it must be, according to elementary physics) at lower energy than the original radiation. THEREFORE, the ground cannot re-reabsorb it, because the energy of the "back radiation" is then
That is the "nutshell" summary of LaTour's argument; he gives it much more thorough treatment than I do here.
"On top of atmosphere models looking down (which is what I personally prefer when trying to convince people that do not want to 'believe' in the GHE because the
Correction: formatting error due to Slashdot's Neanderthal character-handling. I don't know if this will work, either:
"... because the energy of the "back radiation" is then < T."
Correction: formatting error due to Slashdot's Neanderthal character-handling: "... because the energy of the "back radiation" is then less than T."
Therefore the "back radiation" (which we know to be of a different nature and magnitude than "backscatter") cannot be absorbed by the ground, to cause surface temperature increase. It is physically impossible.
I linked to libel laws in response to your comment:
This high-schooler somehow thinks he/she can protect him/her self from libel and copyright by stating on the blog that “someone” said something, while still partially quoting said “someone”. And then even including a link to the original exchange. Haha. If I were this person, and possessed some intelligence, I would shut this site down. Sadly, it is looking more like he/she is going to end up in Litigation Land. [Jane Q. Public]
"I linked to libel laws in response to your comment: ..."
You think I didn't already see that?
This comment (and I will repeat it here myself):
"This high-schooler somehow thinks he/she can protect him/her self from libel and copyright by stating on the blog that âoesomeoneâ said something, while still partially quoting said âoesomeoneâ. And then even including a link to the original exchange. Haha. If I were this person, and possessed some intelligence, I would shut this site down. Sadly, it is looking more like he/she is going to end up in Litigation Land."
... stated my honest opinion at the time: your arguments were below the quality of a decent high-school debate, and that if you keep presenting things on your blog in the manner in which you have, then you are likely to get sued (the reference to "litigation land").
But as I also clearly stated: *I* was not threatening to do so. I told you in very clear English, where everybody could see it, that under current circumstances I had no reason to try to sue you.
Sheesh. Get it straight.
This is one of the things you have failed to get straight: you seem to have trouble distinguishing between what people actually state, and your interpretation or inferences about what they state.
There is a difference. In your case, and in my opinion, that difference is large.
"I linked to libel laws in response to your comment: ..."
And just in case you fail to understand the comments I just made above, as you have so thoroughly failed to comprehend so many of my other comments, I will sum it up for you here in fewer, simpler words:
The fact that I opined that you were screwing up and were likely to get sued, DOES NOT equal a "threat" to sue you myself!!!