tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1205553946247440689.post3556954360015723674..comments2023-10-14T07:58:55.155-07:00Comments on Ron's News and Musings: Global Warming: Leave CO2 Alone!Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1205553946247440689.post-76986708724421593032010-09-12T14:27:15.993-07:002010-09-12T14:27:15.993-07:00Ron, please permit me to pick a nit. (It is just ...Ron, please permit me to pick a nit. (It is just a nit because it doesn't affect your main points, which are excellent.)<br /><br />You wrote, "An analogy for this is a car parked in direct sunlight. The car gets hot inside since the sunlight goes through the window and heats up the interior. The thermal or infrared radiation from the interior is then blocked by the window glass (glass is opaque in the infrared). Making the glass in your windshield slightly thicker is similar to increasing CO2 levels and unlikely make your car hotter."<br /><br />But that isn't correct.<br /><br />The reason your car heats up in the sun is not mainly because the windows block IR. It would heat up nearly as much if they did not block any IR at all. It heats up almost entirely because the windows block <b>air movement</b>.<br /><br />The main thing that cools the interior of your car when the windows are down is air movement, due to convection & wind. Radiative emission of IR is a very minor factor.<br /><br />That's why greenhouses made with plastic windows work just as well as those with glass windows, and also why the terms "greenhouse effect" and "greenhouse gas" are misnomers.<br /><br />Also, it turns out that window glass is actually transparent to quite a bit of the IR spectrum, roughly from the red end of the visible range (~700 nm) to ~2750 nm. However, this is a minor nit because the IR emitted by your car's hot upholstery is almost all in the far-IR, outside this range:<br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Soda_Lime.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Soda_Lime.jpg</a><br /><br />Dave<br /><a href="http://tinyurl.com/MSLavg2" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/MSLavg2</a>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1205553946247440689.post-16230490168329362762010-02-24T16:51:08.366-08:002010-02-24T16:51:08.366-08:00I don't have the science credentials of the au...I don't have the science credentials of the author or the commentors (I am a graduate engineer but got a "D" in Fluid Dynamics). What bothers me most about all of this is the leap to draconian action without a fair cost/benefit analysis - even given the worst predictions of those "thousands of really smart people who have dedicated their lives to AGW" - who by the way are looking pretty dumb right now. <br /><br /><br />There is a signifiant cost of being wrong and since weather and climate are really chaos phenomena, I don't believe anyone sould bet their house on what any model says. <br /><br />Furthermore, if you model the system in its entirety - taking into account the abilities of mankind to adapt and the high correlation between the wealth of a community and its ability to achieve harmony with nature - I see scant reason to empower governments and organizations like the UN to further abuse the people of the world over this issue.Mike Ghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12644364422758573548noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1205553946247440689.post-4212901050922104832010-01-03T19:15:37.794-08:002010-01-03T19:15:37.794-08:00As someone who is NOT a physicist, but is a fairly...As someone who is NOT a physicist, but is a fairly decent aerospace engineer with a couple of fluid mechanics classes under my belt, and a lot of experience with physical modeling of complex systems, my biggest problem with AGW is the uncertainty: are there models, calibrated to the data for, say, 1860 to 1960, that can reasonably accurately reproduce the filtered global temperature anomaly (let's use a filter time constant of, say, 3 to 5 years) from 1961 to the present day? Can that same model predict backwards past the terminus of its calibration data? If so, then that would be something worth looking at. I don't know if such a model exists or not; I haven't seen one, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.<br /><br />Also, I understand that projecting into the past is tricky, because you have to calibrate your proxy data (modern thermometer was invented in 1724) such that you can use it. Once again, I would like to see an actual calibration of a physics-based model for said proxy data; a purely statistical method such as regression using principle component analysis doesn't cut it. Again, maybe this exists, but I haven't seen it.<br /><br />If a physical model, with genuine predictive power as outlined above, says that we are in trouble with the current anthropogenically-caused CO2 changes, then I'll take notice. Otherwise, I'll tend to agree with Freeman Dyson, Bjorn Lomborg, etc.<br /><br />Finally, cheap and abundant power that does not rely on burning fossil fuels would be the game-changer that we're looking for, because it would remove both the worry about the potential effects of AGW, and provide the means to improve the world's standard of living. I'm beginning to believe that 4th gen nuclear power, in particular the Liquid Floride Thorium Reactor (see http://www.energyfromthorium.com/ for more details) could bring that about.Ex-PFC Wintergreenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00422458739121731831noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1205553946247440689.post-32151895258605851362009-12-28T18:43:02.437-08:002009-12-28T18:43:02.437-08:00Spencer, I have a hard time believing that I'v...Spencer, I have a hard time believing that I've found something that 1000s of smart people should already know. That's why I've published this, hoping that someone could help me find the science that includes increased radiative cooling due to raising global temperatures. Please share. BTW, this insight was not solely from a few weeks but from over a decade of work with radiative exchange models.Ronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03776120261257897220noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1205553946247440689.post-51659632672172556122009-12-28T07:30:15.547-08:002009-12-28T07:30:15.547-08:00Nice try, Ron, but by leaving out the amplificatio...Nice try, Ron, but by leaving out the amplification due to the increase of water vapor in the atmosphere, you are leaving out the most important effect of adding CO2. This is not a calculation performed by "Al Gore and friends" but by actual scientists, beginning more than a hundred years ago... Arrhenius didn't have a computer, he did it with pencil and paper and got substantial warming, because he did include H2O. Of course his calculation was still far from good, leaving out lots of things... which you, too, overlook.<br /><br />It must be nice to believe that in a few weeks you can figure out stuff that thousands of really smart people who have devoted their lives to the subject just somehow don't understand...Spencerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10179874861882908594noreply@blogger.com