CRU Scientists Find Solar Connection in Climate (extracted from the email dump)

Now let me know when the vanished glaciers of Glacier National Park start returning, as per your and Gojira's prophecy of a "40 year cooling trend going by low solar activity".

I am not making any predictions, just observing that temperatures have plateaued and may be falling. Solar as the culprit? Probably. What I have always said is that it will take 10-20 years to know for sure.

You know, you know nothing.

I am 100% for alternative energy as well as 100% opposed to those who would use a lie to promote what they think is the greater good. There are other solutions than the ones favored by the elite.

Space guy, you need to fill in your bio so we can see where you are coming from.

What you are wanting is the means to personally attack me rather than to discuss the subject at hand, sorry I don't play your games.

You have credentials in this area. How is it that you don't understand the greenhouse effect?

laf

Oh I do, it is just that I derive my understanding from first principles, not from webpostings on real climate.org.

Sorry, but you don't seem to. Derivations from first principles must agree with observations.

Yep, and I have the observations carried out by the U.S. military across the infrared spectrum for both CO2 and H2O that were used in the design of heat seeking missiles. I also have their numbers for CO2 concentrations that are at variance with the Mauna Loa data. I trust their numbers.

Why don't you explain where I am wrong and where you are right.

Are you denying that CO2 absorbs in the IR at all ? Many people have measured the CO2 concentrations and they mostly agree - the Mauna Loa data has the longest history.

Of course not. No one is arguing that Mauna Loa has the longest continuous record of CO2 either. What I am talking about is that the entire scientific field of IR spectroscopy after WWII was pretty much funded by the USAF under the moniker "upper atmospheric research" which was a cover for them doing the measurements of the atmosphere necessary to allow them to design the detectors used in heat seeking missiles.

I do have data from the military showing that total global atmospheric concentration of CO2 was 330 ppm in 1962, which is considerably higher than what Mauna Loa shows at the same time period. The data from the military that I have also indicates that CO2 varies quite a bit at altitudes up to a few hundred feet, from 200-600 ppm, which is NOT covered in any of the GCM models.

There is plenty of overlap between H2O and CO2, especially at wavelengths longer than 14 microns and H2O absorbs at higher energy wavelengths directly from the sun as well.

The entire argument of the AGW crowd is that the increase in concentration of CO2 widens the absorption bands and increases the absorption on the wings. This increase in absorption increases the temperature at the ground and increases the absorption by other species, especially H2O.

How about delving into the real physics of the matter.

I ask you again, what am I wrong about here?

I don't claim any broadening and don't need to.

If you do not claim any broadening, what is the claim of anthropogenic CO2 warming? If you go to realclimate.org this is exactly what James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt claim.

Your claim that others don't understand the real physics of the matter is just an attemt to discredit them. That won't work with me.

I did not claim that others don't understand the real physics. What I am claiming is that James Hansen has used an empirical relation of CO2 to temperature in his computer models that is not supported by the fundamental physics of the absorption and emission of CO2.

What I am challenging you on, is to explain, as a principle of physics, how increasing CO2 from 280 ppm to 380 ppm results in the warming claimed by the IPCC.

I have explained it several times.I even explained the mechanism to you. If you do not understand the mechanism, or the greenhouse effect or do not think CO2 is a greenhouse gas, then I probably won't be able to explain it to you to your satisfaction.

No you have not. You have talked a lot but there has been little in the way of explanations.

I ask you again, what is the mechanism whereby a 100 ppm increase in the partial pressure of a trace gas cause the amount of warming that is claimed by the IPCC. The explanation that is out there, which is line broadening, which is endorsed by the IPCC and NASA, you claim is not necessary.

So, no you haven't. I will bet that you have never studied the issue in detail and have just taken the word of the climate science community. That's ok, that is what most people that do not work in the field do. However, in my case, after working with John Christy I developed a healthy skepticism for the climate science after what Albert Gore did to try and destroy him in congressional testimony.

I took the time to read all that I could about it and since I design sensors and spacecraft systems for remote sensing of the Earth and other planets in our solar system, I do have the background to understand the science.

I challenge you to go back and go from first principles. When I challenged you before, you even denied the existence of detailed equations on the subject until I pointed out the chapter and pages in the appropriate graduate texbook on the subject. These equations are bedrock in IR radiation and I have yet to see them incorporated in the GCM models.

I'll be at the AGU in a few weeks, it should be interesting.

E

Yep

You don't read carefully. It is not necessary to compute line broadening when you have the spectra and can measure it directly. The IR spectrum of H2O and CO2 do not overlap appreciably. To see this go to :

I know these spectra. The ENTIRE contention of anthropogenic global warming is that increased CO2 broadens the spectral lines, leading to more absorption. At the concentrations that we have had or will have in the next several decades, this is NOT going to happen to any real measurable extent.

At around 3500 there is complete overlap and there is some overlap at the shorter wavelengths. You will also see that the absorption of H2O is far broader than CO2 and the graph that you showed does not cover all the significant wavelengths.

increasing concentration of CO2 leads to more IR radiation absorption which causes the Earth to warm by either reradiating energy back to Earth or transferring it to the air molecules by collision.

I think that you need to go back and read the explanation at realclimate.org. That is not their contention. That explanation IS the official James Hansen explanation.

All that increasing CO2 does is to increase the altitude where the spectral lines desaturate and the model based predictions made even in this respect (which is that temperatures will increase in the lower stratosphere) have not come to pass.

"The increasing concentration of CO2 leads to more IR radiation absorption which causes the Earth to warm by either reradiating energy back to Earth or transferring it to the air molecules by collision." That is my explanation and it is consistent with both theory and observation. That argument about saturation and desaturation is nonsense.

Considering that the addition is no more than one molecule per 100,000, the quantitive evidence is not in your favor. If you think that the argument about saturation and desaturation is nonsense, then you simply have not read the papers on the subject nor paid attention to NASA's own explanations.

Again, making simple assertions and expecting people to bow down to them is not science, it is an appeal to authority, which is what is getting these guys in trouble in England now.

Global warming is about the Earth's surface temperature and that has clearly increased. Any argument that leads to a clear contradiction with the evidense is nonsense.

Correlation does not equal causation, you of all people should know this. If you want to find out what the current explanation is about CO2 why don't you visit realclimate.org and look at the official NASA explanation.

Saturation of a spectral line is where the gas in question absorbs all of the energy at the wavelength of whatever mode (molecular stretching or twisting in the case of CO2) the molecule absorbs at. There are many experiments that show that at IR wavelengths of importance to this discussion, CO2 absorbs all the energy at those specific wavelengths. It also reradiates it and eventually it gets back up to space but as you accurately observed, some of that energy is lost to collisions with other molecules, which is the means whereby temperature is increased in the atmosphere. This can be quantified by gas theory and the mean time for collision with another molecule.

If you add more of a trace gas in the atmosphere, the altitude when there is not enough gas to saturate the spectral line increases. Read up on remote sensing theory if you don't believe this.

What I am giving you ARE the NASA explanations.

It is my contention, as well as others, is that adding 1 molecule of CO2 per 100,000 molecules of atmosphere makes little difference in absorption.

Before you continue to attack me why don't you read up on some of the specialist literature in this area.

Your contention that " adding 1 molecule of CO2 per 100,000 molecules of atmosphere makes little difference in absorption." is probably in error. I looked up several papers on the lifetime of the excited vibrational states of CO2 and there seems to be agreement that the mean lifetime, ( considering both emission and collision, at STP) is about a microsecond. This means that a single CO2 molecule could absorb and emit a photon as often as a million times a second ( not likely that often, but that's the idea).

Ok, now look at the mean time between collisions between other molecules.

As you know the re-radiation is a gaussian probability curve centered on a microsecond.

There are also different modes of absorption, related to the different stretching modes between the molecules (which gives you the different absorption wavelengths). This also influences the energy imparted in the collisional modes.

Remember also these collisional modes are dependent both on temperature and pressure.

I will get you to the solution, one way or another. This is not an easy problem to solve but there is a tractable analytical solution. However, Hansen never used this method, he just used his empirical relationship and let it go at that.

You will also find that increasing concentrations and their influence on temperature follow a logarithmic rather than linear curve.

This is actually a very fascinating academic subject which is one reason why, when I had a few months down time a couple of years back, I really dug into the subject. I was agnostic on the issue but with a nagging doubt. After my research, I no longer doubt, the mechanism described by Hansen, et al, is crap, with little basis in fundamental physics.

Have you tried applying your equations to Venus's atmosphere? And again, if you have a proof, why don't you publish it?

Because I am being very careful. I know that it will generate a lot of controversy and I have already been threatened in my livelyhood for being a skeptic. I am slowly building the theoretical underpinnings and will have it peer reviewed by climatologists as well as physicists before I submit it to "official" peer review. I have even thought about going back into academia to get another degree and use this as a thesis as there is plenty of original material here.

It is better to build up a publication record in this field before just jumping in. As you know, academic disputes are quite bloody and the more track record you have, the easier it is to withstand the inevitable onslaught. I watched what happened to John Christy when all he originally did was publish a paper whereby he had gone back and examined satellite temperature measurements over a 20 year span (that no one else had ever bothered to look at), and found that the then popular computer models for climate change were wrong.

I used to chat with him often (my office and his were only a few doors apart) and all he thought he was doing is publish a paper that falsified some findings of a computer model and that the science would thereby be improved. Instead he got hauled before congress and personally villified by none other than Senator Albert Gore. I watched his research funding dry up after that for a while from NASA and he was unable to get other funding. The CEO of a coal company in Alabama told him that he would like to help but that if he did, Christy would be forever branded as a hack in the service for coal and that it would be better for him to be poor and pure.

So, I know exactly what happens when new and controversial results are presented, and I know that these results, if they survive the review (I have already turned one MIT professor from an AGW proponent to skeptic), then at the appropriate time (which may be sooner than I would like), they will be published.

I don't claim to know it all and there may very well be some reason that I am wrong on this, but the more that I dig, the more confident I am getting and the more it is surviving scruitiny.

As far as Venus is concerned, it is an inappropriate subject for comparison and James Hansen damn well should have known it. The atmosphere of Venus is by far dominated by CO2 while on the Earth it is only a trace gas with H2O having approximately 100 times the IR absorption. Many stupid strawman arguments have been tossed out about the residence time of H2O vs CO2 as if that had any relevance, especially is it is the amount in the atmosphere at any one time, not the average residence period, that is important.

I also understand the other political angles involved and why Gore went so hook, line, and sinker for the AGW meme.

So, that is what is up and why I am being extremely careful with what I am doing.