WSJ: Whatever Happened to Global Warming?

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Ender said:
The problem with the assertion that global warming is caused by additional atmospheric CO2 is explaining how the oceans have warmed while the atmosphere has not. The underlying premise for AGW is warming in the atmosphere, because that is where the CO2 is. It is all well and good to show the oceans have been warming but what is the mechanism whereby the oceans warm and the atmosphere does not? That is, how is the excess atmospheric heat exchanged with the oceans when there is no excess heat to transfer?

Ender
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I think this is how it works:

The solar radiation comes thru the atmosphere and warms the earth’s surface (water and land…and there is more water than land, plus water has a better heat storage capacity). Some of that radiation is reflected back by the atmosphere, water, and land.

Some of the radiation reflected back as infrared hits the greenhouse gases, which radiate it in all directions, including back towards earth (the GHGs have “trapped” that portion). It is that last factor that causes the “greenhouse effect” – the infrared reflected back towards earth…most of it (90%) reflected back to the oceans (since there is more ocean than land and it can store the heat better) with only a small portion (2%) retained in the atmosphere.



I’m thinking if the oceans then take a portion of that heat down to deeper levels, then the atmospheric warming effect from the sea surfaces decreases, while the leakage of heat out of the atmosphere remains the same, so the net balance result could be no significant warming of the atmosphere, perhaps even cooling, or only slight warming.

Once that process of subducting heat to lower ocean levels halts or is reversed, then the atmosphere would again continue to warm significantly.

However, there is another factor at work and that is ocean hydrates at the bottom, especially in shallow, continental shelves, may start melting at higher rates with lower ocean levels warming more rapidly than expected, releasing methane, some of it into the atmosphere where its molecules become a power GHG for some 10 years, before degrading into the less powerful, but extremely long-lasting CO2.

In other words, we are in process with our pittily human-caused warming to date of poking a sleeping dragon of huge methane deposits caught in ice (in ocean hydrates and arctic permafrost) …melting that ice and releasing that methane.

Climate scientists were not around during the other great GH effect warmings happened in the earth’s distant past, and they don’t know all the pieces of the puzzle. From this direct experience now they are learning about those mystery pieces and a lot of things of the past (and today) are being explained and make sense.

The basics of GH effect warmings have been understood and accepted for a long time – there is no debate there – but some of the other issues surrounding it are now being made clearer as the science advances. That’s how it is in many scientific and natural history fields. One should not be surprised that scientists are coming up with new and better understanding all the time.
 
lynnvinc said:
I think this is how it works:

The solar radiation comes thru the atmosphere and warms the earth’s surface (water and land…and there is more water than land, plus water has a better heat storage capacity). Some of that radiation is reflected back by the atmosphere, water, and land.

Some of the radiation reflected back as infrared hits the greenhouse gases, which radiate it in all directions, including back towards earth (the GHGs have “trapped” that portion). It is that last factor that causes the “greenhouse effect” – the infrared reflected back towards earth…most of it (90%) reflected back to the oceans (since there is more ocean than land and it can store the heat better) with only a small portion (2%) retained in the atmosphere.

https://www.koshland-science-museum...pup/public/GreenhouseEffect.jpg?itok=7841t05U

I’m thinking if the oceans then take a portion of that heat down to deeper levels, then the atmospheric warming effect from the sea surfaces decreases, while the leakage of heat out of the atmosphere remains the same, so the net balance result could be no significant warming of the atmosphere, perhaps even cooling, or only slight warming.

Once that process of subducting heat to lower ocean levels halts or is reversed, then the atmosphere would again continue to warm significantly.

However, there is another factor at work and that is ocean hydrates at the bottom, especially in shallow, continental shelves, may start melting at higher rates with lower ocean levels warming more rapidly than expected, releasing methane, some of it into the atmosphere where its molecules become a power GHG for some 10 years, before degrading into the less powerful, but extremely long-lasting CO2.

In other words, we are in process with our pittily human-caused warming to date of poking a sleeping dragon of huge methane deposits caught in ice (in ocean hydrates and arctic permafrost) …melting that ice and releasing that methane.

Climate scientists were not around during the other great GH effect warmings happened in the earth’s distant past, and they don’t know all the pieces of the puzzle. From this direct experience now they are learning about those mystery pieces and a lot of things of the past (and today) are being explained and make sense.

The basics of GH effect warmings have been understood and accepted for a long time – there is no debate there – but some of the other issues surrounding it are now being made clearer as the science advances. That’s how it is in many scientific and natural history fields. One should not be surprised that scientists are coming up with new and better understanding all the time.
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Of course the best explanation is that Co2 does not cause the atmosphere to warm. Having assured us with 97% certainty 20 years ago this was the case we now see AGW advocates desperately scrambling to come up with excuses as to why even though there were wrong that proves they were right.
 
estesbob said:
Of course the best explanation is that Co2 does not cause the atmosphere to warm.
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It is only the “best” explanation when it is confirmed by not only empirical observation but also a coherent scientific theory that is consistent with those observations. So far you have only cited empirical observations, which are fine for challenging someone else’s theory, but they do not address the underlying scientific theory - a theory which has a lot of laboratory support. If you really want to challenge AGW you should cite not only empirical observations, but also cite the alternate theory that does explain the things that you say the existing theory does not.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
It is only the “best” explanation when it is confirmed by not only empirical observation but also a coherent scientific theory that is consistent with those observations. So far you have only cited empirical observations, which are fine for challenging someone else’s theory, but they do not address the underlying scientific theory - a theory which has a lot of laboratory support. If you really want to challenge AGW you should cite not only empirical observations, but also cite the alternate theory that does explain the things that you say the existing theory does not.
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One would think for AGW to be correct some warming should be taking place.
 
lynnvinc said:
However, in this case I think due to ocean current overturning or some such mechanism the oceans took that warmed sea surface water (which would have warmed the atmosphere) to some lower depths where it could not warm the atmosphere as much…
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I must have missed in science class.
When did heat cease to rise?
 
estesbob said:
Of course the best explanation is that Co2 does not cause the atmosphere to warm…
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Zero climate scientists believe that. Everyone – well-read scientists and laypersons in the know – accepts that CO2 and other GHGs keep our earth nice and warm, allowing life to emerge and exist. This has been a known fact for over 100 years, and there has been nothing to disprove it and it is based on the laws of physics. See chriscolose.wordpress.com/2008/03/09/physics-of-the-greenhouse-effect-pt-1/

I think there was one scientist out of 10s of 1000s who wrote some paper about the GH effect being untrue (published in a Hungarian science journal) and his work has been discredited. Aside from that single paper, and there has been no other bona fide study published in a reputable science journal in recent decades to disprove the natural GH effect. None.

From skepticalscience.com/does-greenhouse-effect-exist.htm:

We only have to look to our moon for evidence of what the Earth might be like without an atmosphere that sustained the greenhouse effect. While the moon’s surface reaches 130 degrees C in direct sunlight at the equator (266 degrees F), when the sun ‘goes down’ on the moon, the temperature drops almost immediately, and plunges in several hours down to minus 110 degrees C (-166F).

Since the moon is virtually the same distance from the sun as we are, it is reasonable to ask why at night the Earth doesn’t get as cold as the moon. The answer is that, unlike the Earth, the moon has no water vapour or other greenhouse gases, because of course it has no atmosphere at all. Without our protective atmosphere and the greenhouse effect, the Earth would be as barren as our lifeless moon; without the heat trapped overnight in the atmosphere (and in the ground and oceans) our nights would be so cold that few plants or animals could survive even a single one.

The most conclusive evidence for the greenhouse effect – and the role CO2 plays – can be seen in data from the surface and from satellites. By comparing the Sun’s heat reaching the Earth with the heat leaving it, we can see that less long-wave radiation (heat) is leaving than arriving (and since the 1970s, that less and less radiation is leaving the Earth, as CO2 and equivalents build up). Since all radiation is measured by its wavelength, we can also see that the frequencies being trapped in the atmosphere are the same frequencies absorbed by greenhouse gases.
The only debate is whether added CO2 and other GHGs will increase that natural GH effect warmth (logically they should…but the effect is loglinear, not linear) and by how much.
 
lynnvinc said:
Zero climate scientists believe that. Everyone – well-read scientists and laypersons in the know – accepts that CO2 and other GHGs keep our earth nice and warm, allowing life to emerge and exist. This has been a known fact for over 100 years, and there has been nothing to disprove it and it is based on the laws of physics.
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I always thought the sun was responsible for warming the planet.
:confused:
 
vz71 said:
I must have missed in science class.
When did heat cease to rise?
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The principle that “heat rises” has been misrepresented and over-simplified in comments like that. Heat does not always rise. It only rises under certain conditions. In particular, when a fluid (either gaseous or liquid) has an area that is hotter than its surrounding areas, the hotter area normally expands a little, making it less dense. A less dense area in a fluid is going have a buoyant force exerted on it that will tend to push it up in its surroundings. If there is no stronger force acting on it, this buoyant force will cause the warmer area of the fluid to rise. That’s it. That is the extent of “heat rises”. Nothing in this theory would cause a homogeneous volume of fluid to become segregated with the warmer molecules migrating to the top and the cooler molecules falling to the bottom. That would violate any number of physical laws. In fact, in the process of “heat rising”, some mixing will undoubtedly occur, causing the warmer rising area to be less warm after it rises and to cause the surrounding area to become warmer after the hot area passes through it.

This brings us to the situation in the ocean. Initially the heat from the sun is absorbed by the top most layer of water. This layer is only a few molecules thick, but it is in intimate contact with the layers below it. So while a warm area of water on the surface of the ocean will tend to stay on the surface, that tendency is fairly weak. The water will remain stratified with hot on the top and cool below only if the water is absolutely still. But as we know, the oceans are anything but still. There are waves and wind constantly disturbing the static layering of warm over cool water. This causes heat to be transferred from the upper layers to the lower layers. Note that when this transfer takes place, the surface layers are still warmer than the lower layer, but the difference is not as great as it would have been had there been no mixing. So when we say that heat from the sun is being conducted to the deeper ocean, we do not mean that the deeper ocean is becoming warmer than the surface. It is just becoming “less cool”. And after some heat has been forced down to lower layers like this and has mixed in with those layers, there is no force tending to bring that warmth back up to the surface, because the deeper ocean is still cooler than the surface. So saying that heat from the sun is being accumulated in the deeper ocean is not in conflict with anything you might have learned (or missed) in science class.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
And after some heat has been forced down to lower layers like this and has mixed in with those layers, there is no force tending to bring that warmth back up to the surface, because the deeper ocean is still cooler than the surface.
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I see…:confused::confused:

Heat, once below the surface, stays there because the surrounding water is cooler then the surface.
It does not rise, it just sits there surrounded by cooler water doing nothing but warming everything else.

Tell you what…
Next time you need to boil water, fill the pot and put it under the broiler.
Set it on high and let us know how long it takes.
 
lynnvinc said:
The only debate is whether added CO2 and other GHGs will increase that natural GH effect warmth (logically they should…but the effect is loglinear, not linear) and by how much.
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The debate is whether increased CO2 causes the atmosphere to warm. The answer is no.
 
vz71 said:
I see…:confused::confused:

Heat, once below the surface, stays there because the surrounding water is cooler then the surface.
It does not rise, it just sits there surrounded by cooler water doing nothing but warming everything else.
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No, I don’t think you do see. I didn’t say an area of warmer water would stay down indefinitely. I said after the heat was transferred and fully mixed in with a lower layer, it is no longer a separate chunk of warm water surrounded by cooler water. The heat is in the form of the whole lower layer becoming warmer than it was (but still cooler than the surface).
Tell you what…
Next time you need to boil water, fill the pot and put it under the broiler.
Set it on high and let us know how long it takes.
Click to expand...
That proves nothing. For one thing the water is still and has very little mixing. And for another thing, it will eventually all boil, even if it does take much longer. Of course it is more efficient to boil water from the bottom, but what did you think that would prove?
 
vz71 said:
I always thought the sun was responsible for warming the planet.
:confused:
Click to expand...
But without a barrier opaque to infrared radiation, most of that heat from the sun would re-radiate out into deep space, leaving the earth too cold to support life.
 
vz71 said:
I must have missed in science class.
When did heat cease to rise?
Click to expand...
This is something emerging in science the mechanical mixing of the oceans heat content.

Heat will rise, but if it is taken down in water to a lower depth (mixed) and perhaps kept there to some extend by some mechanical motion, it will take a lot of time for the heat to rise. Water is more sluggish than air.

“Kitchen physics” – a watched pot never boils 🙂
What that means is it takes a very long time for the heat to permeate through the pot from the bottom and eventually bring the whole thing to a boil, esp if it is a big pot full of water.

RE the oceans, with mechanical motion mixing the warm surface water downward, the resulting (mixed) surface water will not as warm as it would have been without the mechanical mixing. The atmosphere (and sea surface temps) these past 18 years have not been cooling, but remaining stable, which is what one would expect with greater mixing of ocean water thru a mechanical means (like stirring the pot).
 
lynnvinc said:
This is something emerging in science the mechanical mixing of the oceans heat content.

Heat will rise, but if it is taken down in water to a lower depth (mixed) and perhaps kept there to some extend by some mechanical motion, it will take a lot of time for the heat to rise. Water is more sluggish than air.

“Kitchen physics” – a watched pot never boils 🙂
What that means is it takes a very long time for the heat to permeate through the pot from the bottom and eventually bring the whole thing to a boil, esp if it is a big pot full of water.

RE the oceans, with mechanical motion mixing the warm surface water downward, the resulting (mixed) surface water will not as warm as it would have been without the mechanical mixing. The atmosphere (and sea surface temps) these past 18 years have not been cooling, but remaining stable, which is what one would expect with greater mixing of ocean water thru a mechanical means (like stirring the pot).
Click to expand...
So how many climate scientists predicted this when they started issuing dire warnings 25 years ago? Since they have yet to produce a single accurate model why should we accept this new round of excuses as to why they were right even though they were wrong?
 
breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/10/07/Bad-news-for-the-alarmists-missing-heat-from-non-existent-global-warming-isn-t-hiding-in-the-deep-ocean-after-all

Well-- it looks like the heat isn’t in the deep ocean, where do we look next?

"Using a combination of satellite observations and direct measurements taken by a network of 3,000 floating Argo temperature probes, the NASA team set out to calculate temperature changes and thermal expansion in the deep ocean (below 1.24 miles).

What they have found is that the deep ocean has not warmed measurably since at least 2005.

This unfortunate discovery represents a major problem for the climate alarmists because the “missing heat” supposedly hiding in the deep oceans has long been their favoured explanation as to why there has been no measured “global warming” for the last 18 years."
 
styrgwillidar said:
breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/10/07/Bad-news-for-the-alarmists-missing-heat-from-non-existent-global-warming-isn-t-hiding-in-the-deep-ocean-after-all

Well-- it looks like the heat isn’t in the deep ocean, where do we look next?

"Using a combination of satellite observations and direct measurements taken by a network of 3,000 floating Argo temperature probes, the NASA team set out to calculate temperature changes and thermal expansion in the deep ocean (below 1.24 miles).

What they have found is that the deep ocean has not warmed measurably since at least 2005.

This unfortunate discovery represents a major problem for the climate alarmists because the “missing heat” supposedly hiding in the deep oceans has long been their favoured explanation as to why there has been no measured “global warming” for the last 18 years."
Click to expand...
Ill bet its hiding in Volcanos!
 
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