The system closes comments on items after 2 weeks but Paul Tullis wishes to reply to comments on this Time piece: “Paul Tullis: Global Warming: An Exclusive Look at James Hansen’s Scary New Math”
As received from Paul Tullis:
@Roger, Hansen is a physicist. “Climatologist” is more of a construct than a scientific discipline in itself; chemists, physicists, hyrdologists and more can all be qualified “climatologists.” As for Hansen, has been publishing peer-reviewed papers about Earth’s atmosphere for more than 40 years. Anyone qualified to speak knowledgeably about the climate would know that already.
@Johnnyreb, if you read Hansen’s paper or looked at any of the data on global temperature trends over the past century or two, it would be clear to you that the overwhelming trend is toward warmer temperatures. Extreme heat events such as those discussed by Hansen are more frequent, which causes the average to go up. There continue to be colder than average readings, but not enough of them, and not cold enough, to pull down the upward trend.
@Allen Brooks, regardless of what you may have to say about how the media reports temperature anomalies, if you would look at the entirety of temperature records, as Hansen has spent several years doing, you would see that the last decade was the hottest on record. This is just a pure, unassailable fact which is unaffected by perspective or opinion. To take just a small sampling, in the 1950′s the number of record temperatures in the US were composed of 52% highs and 48% lows. In the 2000s, it was 67% highs and 33% lows. In 2011, 73% of record temperatures were highs and 27% were lows. So far in 2012–probably skewed by the midwestern heat wave in March, and the fact that the year is barely 1/2 way done–it’s 90% highs and 10% lows. Still, the first 6 months of 2012 was the hottest first half-year on record. Again, these are unedited facts, not opinions, drawn from whole data sets and not samples.
Feel free to educate Paul on Hansen’s math.
Global climate change is “global” so why is the US temp any more important than Germany or Viet Nam? What about total global highs and lows? The US is swathed by Chinese pollution, yet we have to pay the consequences? My suggestion is to force stop EPA regs that kill our industries until all the rest of the world is as pure as we are… The EPA is just another bureaucracy on a power play – more influence, more $, fine-tuning specs in their world to influence the progressive scientific illiterates in Congress.
US temp is not more important, it’s just the figures I had at hand. As Hansen and others have established, global temps are also increasing. As to your suggestion re the EPA, according to that line of thinking we ought to go ahead and have slavery because slavery still exists in some countries that produce things in competition with our own. Because other people suck is not a reason to not try to do better.
The whole problem with this “global warming” arguement is that its based on a wrong assumption. An assumption which scientists have failed to check.
It is assumed that if the sun heats a gas in the atmosephere that heat can find its way to surface and pass into the ocean. In Trenberth’s case diving deep into the ocean and “hiding”.In a crude experiment, if you try to heat the water in a bucket using a heat gun you will find the heat is blocked. The cause of the blockage appears to be surface tension. Surface tension dictates that no heat enters the ocean only the sun’s radiation. This effect is probably the reason why we still have oceans. If you contemplate the events of the past such as the formation of the Deccan traps and the amount of gas which would have been released to be “heated” the evaporation over 30000yrs would have been horrendous. Get a heat gun and a bucket of water, you’ll see the world in a whole new light.
Not even wrong –Ed.
Robert, shut up.
Seriously, that’s a stupid, idiotic idea that makes as much sense as “clowns prevent global warming”. Surface tension cannot affect conduction, and while it would affect the mixing of convection, it would certainly not “block” heat.
Secondly, I’ve certainly tried heating water using a “heat gun”, more commonly known as a “hair dryer”, and it works quite well.
There are two parts to the word Sophomore. “Soph” as in Sophocles, and “More” as in moron. You harm your own position by spewing half-educated nonsense
I thought Ben‘s reply uncharacteristically sharp – he’s normally very patient with explanations for those whose education has been found wanting. Alas a quick search shows Robert has been peppering the site with his bizarre surface tension hypothesis.
Robert you need to learn what the enhanced greenhouse effect actually is before commenting on it. Extremely briefly it is over whether increased greenhouse gases can further slow earth’s radiative cooling to an extent that will have net detrimental effect and whether attempting to address such a situation.
That earth, including its oceans, absorbs thermal radiation from the atmosphere is beyond dispute – the atmosphere is composed of molecules of non-zero temperature and every entity of non-zero temperature emits thermal radiation as a spontaneous function of entropy. Said radiation is emitted in all directions equally and earth is not transparent to these emissions. Since there is no magical repulsive force at work earth therefore absorbs a non-trivial portion of said emissions, thus slowing radiative cooling. We even measure downwelling infrared radiation in electromagnetic wavelengths which Planck’s and Wien’s Laws define as coming from an emitting source at the same temperature as the atmosphere and can tell you the flux is in the order of 350 W/m2.
There are reasons to dispute claims made by promoters of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming but “surface tension” is not among them.
To address Mr. Tullis. I would hope and expect us to be warming. After all, there is a reason the Renaissance through the Victorian Era was called the “Little Ice Age”. It was a well documented global cold period following another well documented warm period (unfortunately Euro-centrically called the “Medieval Warm Period”).
Of significantly more import is the fact that evidence exists that the medieval warm period was as warm or warmer than the current period. The transition shift, of less than a degree over the course of a century, is neither unusual nor extreme in this context.
Unfortunately, Mr. Hansen subscribes to the “Hockey-stick” interpretation of temperatures. This interpretation ignores actual evidence of warm and cold periods in favor of limited models.based largely on tree ring studies, which McIntyre ripped apart on a statistical basis. To give them the same level of respect that they give their opposition, I label these people “Deniers of Natural Climate Change”.
Warming is but one step in the proof. The second, attribution, tends to be frustratingly dominated by circular reasoning (a parameterized model is inherently circular), the post-hoc fallacy, and proof by exhaustion (which is a fallacy in itself as we know so little about climate).
If you would actually read the paper you would see that Hansen’s data is not based on tree ring studies. The “hockey stick” does not ignore warm and cool periods; the line that makes that shape is an average of figures surrounding each point on the line. Those figures indeed fluctuate, but the trend is clearly upward. You can find this graphic all over the Internet.
I believe that you fellows are making complex that which is not complex. This is just about the transfer of heat from one place to another or the second law of thermodynamics which I believe in and so does everybody else. I now believe that when it comes to the transfer of heat through the surface of water we’ve been had.
Remember that the scientists are reporting “missing heat” not me and you have done nothing to explain the missing heat.
After I found that I appeared to be unable to get heat into water from above I tried an admittedly crude experiment as follows. I heid a heat gun( no sissy hairdryers) over a basin of water for 15mins. Temp rise 6degF. I tried the same experiment but this time I floated a baking dish on the surface and applied the heat to that. Temp rise 48degsF. If water obeys the second law of thermodynamics, why the difference in heat uptake between covered and uncovered water. Just asking.
There is no real reason why heat should penetrate the surface of water. Surface tension is demonstrated by placing a paper clip on the surface of water and observing that although it is not shaped like a boat and has measurable weight it does not sink. Heat has no weight.
You can “radiate” water but you can’t “heat” it. Thats why with increasing co2 there is no rise in temperature.
Robert, I wrote out a detailed reply, but I deleted it. There’s really no point. You lack a basic understanding of what the second law states, and what Heat actually is. Please note: if your textbook uses the word “phlogiston” or uses “Caloric” as a noun, it is severely out of date. Heat is not matter and is not affected by the same things as mass transport.
As for your experiment, the answer is that “you changed the conditions and changed the answer. The greatest single change would be increased reflection. The hot air hits the pan and bounces off still hot. The hot air hits the water, mixes with it, and much more gets absorbed.
Finally, the “missing heat” is an artifact of bad assumptions. The fact that it is missing indicates that the warming influences on climate are less than what is commonly assumed.