Pettyfogs Global Warming Basic Physics

This page is under constant edit and is not organized to sequentially read and incomplete in addressing all factors

Anthropogenic (Man-Caused) Global Warming by means of man-dispersed Carbon Dioxide is a fraud based on Junk Science. The scientific models have not borne out in evidence which resulted in the scientists studying the issue manipulating data and covering up inconvenient truths.

First set the baseline of scientific truth:
  • CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It will tend to retard radiative cooling of land and water mass. How much it does that is still under debate no matter what you are told by eminent scientists. 
  • Burning fossil fuels has increased CO2 in the atmosphere. THAT is incontrovertable.
  • The earth's climate is changing, it may be warming. How much it is warming, for how long and why, is the question.
So far pretty much in line with ALGore, right? What I also believe..

Reducing Carbon Dioxide output, even reducing existing CO2 in the atmosphere by 50%, will have little to no effect on global temperatures and thus the 'Climate'.

Here, I'll try to explain why it wont happen and any money spent to do so, or to promote 'Green' Carbon taxes or exchanges is either theft, fraud or both. Just a scheme to redistribute your wealth.


CO2 is a trace gas. That means that, by volume, it is a minor but vital component of our atmosphere.
Lay $99.96 in bills and change on a table. That's every other part of our atmosphere. Now add separately 4 pennies. That 4 pennies is CO2.

Think about this: All plant life NEEDS CO2. If there were no CO2, everything would die.. including us.

CO2 has much more effect on growth of vegetation than it does on blocking cooling of the surface.

Another way:

Carbon and Carbon Dioxide: Clearing Up the Confusion
Literally thousands of scientists vigorously disagree with the hypothesis that CO2 is responsible for (dangerous) climate change. It plays only a minor role, they argue, in a complex, chaotic climate system that is driven by numerous natural forces, cycles, and positive and negative feedback loops. They also note that CO2 increases have followed, not preceded, temperature rises, throughout Earth’s history.

CO2 constitutes a mere 0.0380% of our atmosphere. That’s 380 parts per million (380 ppm), which sounds much more threatening, especially when used in juxtaposition with the pre-Industrial Revolution figure of 280 ppm. But even that 100 ppm increase represents only 0.0100% of Earth’s atmosphere – equivalent to one penny out of $100.
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Is it really CO2 'feedback'?

One of the first things an engineer, particularly an electronics engineer, learns is the principle of feedback.. which is either a reinforcing/positive force or a moderating/negative force.
"CO2 forces more Water Vapor"
The concern is that increased CO2 warms ocean waters which results in increased water vapor in the tropical upper troposphere which, because water vapor is much more a greenhouse gas, causes even further warming. The postulated forcing effect is theorized by the warmist as 1:4, meaning that for each bit of warming caused by CO2, resulting vapor warms 4 times.

Carbon Dioxide and Temp from fossil and ice records


 While I wouldn't say the data in this chart is perfect, it is used by alarmists to show the supposed relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature over the long term. Notice something? The peaks and valleys of temperature precede and carbon follows. This is what set off my BS detector.
- AlGore explained this curious effect .. much the same as trying to push a car with a chain.. as 'complicated'. I call it an inconvenient - for his cause - fact.
  • Note that while CO2 has risen greatly since the Industrial Age began, the climate temp has not risen correspondingly.
  • The chart plainly implies that temperature increases the CO2, not the reverse
- If either the peaks OR the valleys of carbon happened before those of temperature, it might be a different story, but they dont. Both peaks and valleys of Temp precede the peaks and valleys of CO2.

Thus, temperature is causative; the higher the ocean temp, the more CO2, everything else equal. This is because warmer water holds less CO2. And almost all our atmospheric temperature, not to mention weather patterns, depends on water surface temps: Sea Surface Temperature (SST).

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How Air and Water interact

The temperature of water moderates air temperature MAINLY by the evaporative process.
- Try heating water  in a saucepan using a hair dryer blowing on the water surface. It's VERY HARD to transfer heat from air directly to water. It is very easy to cool water and the air boundary by evaporation. Water bags and swamp coolers are examples.
NOW try blowing the hot air from hairdryer on the side of the saucepan. Note how much faster the water warms? It's easier to transfer air temp to water through a heat-conductor that also prevents evaporation.
That's sort of an allegory for the complicated science of climate: the heating at the air/water boundary was offset by the cooling effect of evaporation.
Well, what about melting of polar ice sheet?  This has been used by non-scientific alarmists to claim 'climate warming'.
- Take two identical glass jars from the closet.  Fill each to near top with water but at two different temperatures. One with 32 deg. water, the other with 35 deg water, wrap both jars with DRY towels. Then put four identical size ice cubes in them, two in each.  Quickly cover the warmer water jar and then direct the hairdryer, cool and low speed setting, from about six feet to the top of the cooler water jar. See which cubes melt first.
  It will be the ones in the warmer water jar.
Ocean current changes,  NOT warmer air, cause loss of Arctic sea ice.
 - There are obviously other factors such as local precipitation, humidity etc.
Bottom Line: Icebergs melt from below.

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How 'Greenhouse Gases' Work

Ever notice that,  after a 90 degree day, a calm, (no wind) cloudy night is much warmer than a calm, clear night?    Put another way, after a hot July day, if you're able to go out and watch the stars at midnight, you sure better take a jacket with you.  If you are driving a convertible around the Ohio countryside at midnight with the top down, in a shirt and shorts, you can be darn sure you aren't seeing any stars.
That's because water vapor (Humidity leading to clouds) is a great greenhouse gas.

CO2 and Radiative Forcing
 This is the simplest yet accurate image I could find.
 From SkepticalScience.com   A site devoted to advancing the warmist agenda

Truth:
  • The full spectrum of solar radiation not reflected back to space by bright surfaces, clouds or  incidently absorbed by the atmosphere  warms the surface and waters. All radiation, including sound and radio waves, warms a surface that absorbs it! Radiation that is reflected DOES NOT warm the surface that reflects it.  A sunny day; white is cooler to the touch than black. Chrome surfaces are just about air temperature.
  • The energy absorbed as heat is radiated back towards space as Long Wave Infrared (IR). This continues at night, of course.
  • If that Long Wave IR hits a GHG molecule, like CO2, Methane, or water vapor (H2O) it is absorbed and reradiated in all directions until it hits another absorbing molecule, which then reradiates it in all directions.
Issues/facts NOT addressed:
  • Note the curvature of the earth. Unlike a closed lab environment, all re-radiation ultimately ends in space. Funnily enough, for those who call skeptics 'Flat Earthers', even if it was flat all radiation would end in space, it would just take more time. Space is relatively a vacuum  and, once there's no close molecules to hit, the Long Wave IR continues till it finds one. The further in space that is, the less likely it is to find earth (even a flat earth) when it re-radiates.
  •  If you heat a poker or any other piece of matter to glowing red-hot in space it will still cool quickly.
  • What that means is that after a day or two without a sun it will start to get damn cold in our greenhouse gas atmosphere. Even Long Wave IR travels at near the speed of light. Being absorbed just slows it down a little. That's why you never see a 'warmist' talk about the night time lows in the middle of Mojave or Sahara. If the nighttime lows in the middle of a desert were increasing in temperature, that would be a GREAT sign that increased CO2 was causing warming. Common sense tells you, if the sun suddenly went out and you were in those deserts, you'd be a human popsicle by late afternoon on the first day the Sun didn't rise.  Wouldnt matter if there were ten times the CO2.
Back to  SkepticalScience.com  
An enhanced greenhouse effect from CO2 has been confirmed by multiple lines of empirical evidence. Satellite measurements of infrared spectra over the past 40 years observe less energy escaping to space at the wavelengths associated with CO2. Surface measurements find more downward infrared radiation warming the planet's surface. This provides a direct, empirical causal link between CO2 and global warming.
I   don't   think   so.  In their own chart, the re-radiation is in all directions.  Then how can the satellite seeing less and surface instruments more happen?  No matter how many molecules there are to go through, ultimately all of it ends in space. Unless it's being converted to something else, or reradiating at another wavelength.
So, in fact, that really does not prove the point.  That missing radiation went somewhere and it did NOT JUST go 'down' to the earth as more observable IR.
MORE likely it's 'lost' in the filtering algorithm that processed the data.
During that same time period global energy use  has increased greatly.  100% of all energy man uses is ultimately converted to heat, except for the small amount of lighting and radio radiation that makes it directly to space.  All heat is shed by long wave Infrared, and it all heads ultimately to space.
If you looked at the raw data on that IR wavelength, it surely would have gone up quite a bit, CO2 stifling or not. So to 'measure' the effect of increased CO2 that increase in energy would have to calculated out of the formula.
I suspect a "Global Warming Goof!"


But.. that energy use increase is also why I am for Energy Conservation wherever practical. If you seal up a concert hall and light two candles in it, the air temperature will go up a fraction of a degree.  Just don't blame it on the CO2 the candles put off.

Caused by Man, alright..
Notrickszone: US warming data matches energy used
- now, I don't believe that all the energy used in US resulted in warming the air above the US by the calculated amount;. what it points out is that it probably was not caused by CO2. And remember... air doesn't do a great job of warming water.

And in a followup, Caryl points to actual studies of the heat island effect and how it ties to energy use, despite some urban shifting to more reflective colors and surfaces.
Notrickszone: Urban Warming – Where Does It Come From?
A city with an urban core that has an albedo of less than 0.2, surrounded by desert or grasslands with an albedo of 0.4 to 0.5, will be warmer than the surrounding area because it absorbs more solar radiation. Any heat energy produced by the population will simply add slightly to that heat. Examples would be Phoenix, Arizona or Cairo, Egypt.
Yet the major point is that the gross quantity of energy used does more to change the atmospheric heat than CO2. And in the case of Phoenix it has already been proven that the entire environment was modified by lawns and water use, increasing the vapor in the immediate area.
If governments and science were straight up with us, they would admit that it is total increase in energy produced that has contributed most to 'man-caused warming', not the byproducts of energy use. There is of course a difference.. because, as we illustrated earlier, it is very hard to heat the surface of water with warm air. The atmospheric heat produced by man directed energy use will relatively quickly escape to space. And the remaining atmospheric heat product will accept evaporation which later become clouds, reflecting a sizable amount of solar heat.
Am I absolutely sure? No. But it certainly addresses how difficult it is to predict how earth will respond to more CO2, in particular and warmer air temperatures in general.

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More Climate Goofs
AlGore points to Venus hellish surface temps as an alarming analogy to what can happen when high atmospheric CO2 results in 'runaway warming'. 
Well, some more inconvenient truth: Though Venus is much closer to the Sun than the Earth and CO2 comprises 95 % of the atmosphere, at the altitude point where the air pressure is similar to that at Earth's surface, approximately 50 km, the temperatures are also similar to Earth's.
 - If AlGore was asked to explain that, I'm sure he would explain that it's complicated.
In fact, air pressure at Venus' surface is 90 times that of Earth's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus
 Though that attributes the very high CO2 with the surface temps, and compares it to Mercury's surface which is actually cooler, Mercury has no atmosphere to speak of and it is NOT certain that runaway warming has much to do with the hellish temperatures at the surface of the Venus. Even slight winds at that pressure would have a strong heating effect due to molecular friction. Complicating this idea is  that Venus' core is much different from that of Earth's and instead of rotating to form magnetic poles, periodically subsumes the mantle of the planet throwing its heat toward the crust.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus#Magnetic_field_and_core

For more Global Warming Danger meme's and myths exploded:
http://notrickszone.com/climate-scandals/

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The UEA/CRU Climategate Inquiry was a fraud in itself
- Suppose the Watergate cover-up inquiry panel was made up of only Republicans and Nixon's cabinet!


Former “alarmist” scientist says Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) based in false science

referring to:
David Evans in Financial Post:Climate models go cold
Review of 'The Hockey Stick Illusion'
A. W. 'Bishop Hill' Montford