Home/BlogI’ve seen a couple reports of scientists diverting attention from global warming (which went on vacation about 15 years ago) to the increase in the ocean heat content instead. They mentioned how all of that heat which has been accumulating in the ocean, if released at once, would warm the atmosphere by hundreds of degrees.
While theoretically true from an energy conservation standpoint, such a thing could never happen, of course.
This is what I told a reporter today, who just posted a story on the dubious reporting by CBS among others. The Second Law of Thermodynamics would not allow moving energy from a heat reservoir that is 0.1 deg C warmer than “normal” (whatever that is) and create hundreds of degrees of atmospheric heat from it.
We could throw our hands up and blame reporters…except that the hundreds-of-degrees claim started with people who should know better. Marc Morano reminds us that Stephen Hawking made a claim in Leonadro DiCaprio’s box office bomb “The 11th Hour” that Earth could become like Venus, with a temperature of 250 deg. C (100 deg. C boils water). (BTW, I think DiCaprio is an awesome actor).
Now, I’ve heard this Hawking guy is pretty smart. But…Really? As I recall, Venus has around 230,000 times as much carbon dioxide as Earth’s atmosphere. In contrast, we are worrying about what might happen when we reach 2 times as much CO2 as we had before. The difference between 2 and 230,000 is pretty darn big. Maybe Professor Hawking should stick to theoretical physics.
I’m reminded of Al Gore’s claim on late night TV that the Earth has a temperature of millions of degrees only a couple kilometers down in the ground.
Now, when the masses hear such drivel from people they admire — people who should know better — is it any wonder that so many people are scared out of the minds over global warming? I once got an e-mail from someone in Europe who was positively despondent, almost suicidal, over the fate of the Earth.
I really worry about the fate of a society where people are no longer capable of thinking critically. And it’s only hump day!! Sigh.
Dr Roy,
[“I really worry about the fate of a society where people are no longer capable of thinking critically.”]
Glad to hear you say that!
Why don’t you write to the main media outlets (such as the BBC in the UK) and offer your services as the ‘scientific voice of reason’ to combat these ludicrous ideas that get tacit approval from pro-cAGW politicians and so-called scientists?
Almost every news report after AR5 has been completely one-sided.
The media will not change tack until it pays them to do so. Offering the chance to ridicule consensus science might just be the carrot the media requires!
“The Second Law of Thermodynamics would not allow moving energy from a heat reservoir that is 0.1 deg C warmer than normal (whatever that is) and create hundreds of degrees of atmospheric heat from it.”
True, a body 0.1C warmer could only cause a second, colder body to warm by an additional 0.1C.
The 2nd law of thermodynamics says total entropy always increases.
However, the “hot spot” in the upper troposphere predicted to form by climate models, but not found in observations, would require an impossible decrease in total entropy.
CAGW disproven in a nutshell
Decreasing entropy is observed everywhere in the physical world. It’s a matter defining your system and there is no problem for the hotspot to form on the grounds of Thermodynamics because the system which is part of the atmosphere is open. Every plant on the planet is an example of a subsystem that reduces entropy. You can even just look at Q/T for hot and cold system in thermal contact before they reach equilibrium. In the hot, the entropy decreases but in the cold, the entropy increases (even more).
Note I said “total entropy”
For the “hot spot” to form requires work input to create a localized reduction in entropy, with an offsetting increase in entropy elsewhere in the system equal or greater than the localized reduction in entropy, such that total entropy always increases.
1. Where do you propose the offsetting increase in total entropy occurs?
2. Greenhouse gases cannot create work input, and therefore cannot create a localized reduction in entropy
3. Plants are a false analogy because work input from the Sun causes a localized reduction in entropy
4. Likewise, a refrigerator causes a localized reduction in entropy, only with work input, while total entropy increases.
The “hot spot” in the models isn’t hot. It’s just hotter than it was before the warming.
The prediction arises from the change in lapse rate from a moister atmosphere. Normally, the air gets colder the higher you go because of adiabatic expansion. The latent heat carried by evaporating/condensing water vapour partially offsets this cooling, resulting in a shallower gradient. i.e. the heat is more evenly distributed, and the entropy is *higher*. A moister atmosphere increases this offsetting effect, and the upper atmosphere is less intensely cold as a result. The colour of the red blob in the pictures is misleading – it’s actually at somewhere around -40 C. Not hot!
The SLOT only applies to adiabatic systems.
The Earth is not such a system.
Well, the SLOT in appropriate form, namely that local entropy production must be always positive, applies of course everywhere, earth included.
The earth is a system maintained far from thermodynamic equilibrium by radiation from a hot star and radiation to the cold deep space and therefore a matter of NON-EQUILIBRIUM thermodynamics, not just ordinary equilibrium thermodynamics
In such a system it is well known that different kinds of order can indeed be spontaneously formed out of disorder and then maintained such as plants, animals, tradewinds, ocean circulation, hurricanes etc.
Yet the formation of such order is a way to more efficiently dissipate energy and increase total entropy production and so to transport heat from high to low temperature regions by ocean currents or wind for instance, not the reverse.
So it is highly unlikely that such a system might ever spontanously create localized order so that its effect is to take heat out of the ocean and put it in a warmer atmosphere.
Unless the localized order is an homo sapiens that studied thermodynamics, builds a huge heat pump and gets enough oil (sorry solar or wind energy) to run it.
“The SLOT only applies to adiabatic systems. The Earth is not such a system.”
LOL
1. The atmosphere IS an adiabatic system…why do you think the temperature profile of the atmosphere is controlled by the “adiabatic lapse rate”
2. Your premise is also incorrect that “The SLOT only applies to adiabatic systems”. So, according to you, if I have an non-adiabatic iron bar and I heat one end, heat can flow spontaneously from cold to hot and entropy reduce because the SLOT doesn’t apply to iron bars. LOL
A lie will travel twice round the world while Truth is
pulling on its boots.
While Dr Spencer is, of course, correct in saying
that there is no way for any extra heat in the Ocean
to rush back into the atmosphere as a result of a
trivial 0.1 C change in the temperature gradient…
Yet it is not because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics
but because of what is called the Zero’th Law – heat
flows between bodies in physical connection from the
hotter to the cold, and at a rate which depends
upon the difference of temperature.
It is perfectly possible for heat to be taken from a
cold body to a hot one – it is done all the time by heat
pumps. But heat pumps are specially designed machines.
And so this is not very relevant to natural phenomena.
Explain, then, the large surface warming observed after the 1998 El Nino.
I mean there is no way for heat to come back from deep sequestration quickly, or as a result of superficial phenomena one thousand feet higher up the water column.
If and when I have children I hope to teach them critical thinking and logic at a very young age. Much of the environmental movement is simply a religion with no basis in rational thought. Not all of it is that way, but enough to make many of its followers fanatical and dangerous.
I had not heard of that faux pas by Gore. The
actual video clip seems to have been censored away
but I found a transcript. He did claim the inside
of the Earth is Millions of Degrees hot. I am
reminded of what Mark Twain said:
Man is often compared to the Jackass; I think that
is most unjust to the Jackass.
Common sense, let alone the second law of thermodynamics, should tell us that if all of the heat in the oceans, went into the atmosphere, that would presumably leave the oceans frozen solid?
In any case, the additional heat in the oceans is only equivalent to the amount by which the atmosphere hasn’t warmed since 2000, which is much less than 1 degree, so even if the atmosphere were to warm more than that, “global warming” since 2000 wouldn’t be responsible.
Where is your calculation showing this? Because I don’t believe it — a lot of heat has gone into the oceans since 2000 — several tens of 10^22 Joules. Convert that to a delta-T using the atmosphere’s mass and specific heat….
Hawking “should know better” reminds me of “The Lord of the Ring, the Two Towers” when Treebeard sees the land devastated by Sauruman, “A wizard should know better”.
The metaphor carries quite well I think when we see the devastated science of climatology. A physicist should know better.
Venus also has about 100 times as dense of an atmosphere as earth. And Mars has an atmosphere that has 15 times as much CO2 in it as earth’s (in fact its atmosphere is almost all CO2 just like Venus) but it is much colder than earth. So which counts the most? Composition or Density? If you say that you can’t compare the earth to other planets because they are so different then stop doing so selectively. Mars should always be mentioned every time Venus is mentioned in this type of discussion.
The proper comparison is to see how well models similar to the ones used for Earth can also reproduce the observed climate on Mars and Venus, and as far as I know they do a pretty good job. I think Hansen made a pretty good early prediction of the surface temperature of Venus based on the spectrum of its upper atmosphere. Incidentally, the clouds of Venus reflect so much sunlight that despite being closer to the sun it actually absorb less energy.
Re: Mars. See — pressure broadening.
I’m really terrible at physics, but doesn’t Venus orbit at 108 million km vs 150 million km for the sun? Assuming roughly the same diameter and that the amount of radiation intercepted is a function of distance squared, I think that says that Venus gets about twice as much radiation as the Earth. Absolute temp seems to be about 288 Kelvin for Earth vs about 523K for Venus. If anything, Venus seems to be a bit cooler than one might expect from a simplistic model. Maybe all that CO2 is cooling it? (But my bet would be that higher black body radiation from Venus would be the major actual cause.)
BTW ln(230000) is around 12 and water vapor amplification wouldn’t seem to apply to Venus, so invoking Svante Arhennius (1906) in whom I have more faith than the IPCC, that would seem to suggest that Venus’ CO2 is raising its temperature by about 12*1.6 =~ 19 degrees C.
You are right — you are terrible at physics.
Drat!. Make the last phrase of the first sentence “150 million km for the EARTH”.
According to our Weather Service (The Bureau of Meteorology):
“Australia has just experienced its warmest 12-month period on record, again!
Breaking the previous record set in August by a substantial margin, September 2013 was also Australia’s hottest September on recordsetting a new record for Australia’s largest positive monthly mean temperature anomaly (+2.69 C).”
Note that Australia has an area of 7,700,000km2, so this is not inconsequential.
And, I have just collected on a bet with a denialist who thought it unlikely that Australia (as a whole) would break a warm record in any 12-month period so soon.
And look likely to collect on a record for the January to December period.
And also have a few bets running at good odds of a new global warm record in the near future.
What odds can you guys quote me?
The record for most consecutive days above 100 F (37.8 C)
anywhere in the World; 160 days Marble Bar Western Australia from 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924.
If this record is beaten for anywhere in Australia in the
coming Australian Summer and you can cite an official
confirmation of it – I will send 50 (Fifty) Australian
Dollars to your favourite charity.
You obviously need to set the bar very high!
And for a lousy $50 !!!
You are obviously are too nervous to quote odds on global warming.
I have given you infinite odds, haven’t I?
Becauase I did not ask you to pay anything
if you lost. Please try to keep up.
“Because”
If there IS a healthy warming trend, a
heat-related record from 1924 should
be ready to fall.
I think that is setting the bar quite low,
not “very high!”.
In the last 11000 years the CO2 concentration went up 15 ppm but temperatures dropped -2K and no human intervention. Who can explain this to us ?
Roy,
I’ve not seen the movie but Prof. Hawking must be joking. Surely he knows it’s impossible to heat earth to 250 C by greenhouse gases. That never happened in the last 4 billion years. And it’s impossible because Venus atmosphere is 97% CO2 by weight. Earth’s atmosphere weigh 5 x 10^18 kg. All the carbon in earth’s crust, biomass and ocean weigh 5.7 x 10^16 kg. It translates to 2 x 10^17 kg of CO2.
If we put all that to the atmosphere, CO2 will account for 4% by weight. A far cry to 97% in Venus atmosphere. How much will be the increase in earth’s temperature? Present CO2 is 592 ppm by weight. Going by the best estimate of climate sensitivity 2 C for doubling of CO2. Double it 6.1 times to reach 4% by weight. That translates to 12 C increase in temperature. At 15 C average temperature today plus 12 C = 27 C. Cooler than summertime in many places.
But Al Gore is dead serious that two kilometers underground is hotter than the sun. He should take science tutorial from 6th graders.
Dr Strangelove,
Good points. In addition, at 4.8 10^20 kg the Venusian atmosphere is 93 times more massive than the Earth’s atmosphere and suffers far nearer solar proximity. Any simple comparison of the two atmosphere’s will almost inevitably fail to convince.
You also wrote:
“All the carbon in earths crust, biomass and ocean weigh 5.7 x 10^16 kg. It translates to 2 x 10^17 kg of CO2.”
Keep in mind much of the carbon that enters our atmosphere via simple alkane gasses formed deep beneath the earth’s crust in the mantle. CH4 (hydrocarbon methane) is a volcanic gas. Thomas Gold (Astrophysicist) theorized that iron oxide, calcite and water will form hydrocarbon methane when compressed to around 50000 gigapascals (if I remember correctly) and heated to temperatures commonly found 100 miles below the surface. Thanks.
Dr. Strangelove,
FYI Sandia Labs experimentally confirmed Thomas Gold’s theory.
In addition, numerous threads ago you mentioned you knew of a heat engine that could generate 20K degree centigrade temperature without using electricity (electromagnetism), fuel, solar energy and/or geothermal energy. Last I checked you hadn’t responded with an answer. Since electrons/electricity comprises the third part of matter it seems unlikely that can be done. Please identify the heat engine. Thanks again.
P.S. – By “no fuel” it seems you mean no nuclear processes, chemical reactions especially incendiary ones, or any element or compound consumed in some process.
20,000 C refers to temperature of plasma in spark plug. I described a thermoelectric device powered by ice to attain that temperature. For a heat engine, the temperature is at least 1,000 C. Not as hot as plasma.
The heat engine is also powered by ice. At 25 C ambient temperature, you have a temperature differential of 25 C between ice and air. Use a Kalina cycle vapor turbine with ammonia-water mixture as working fluid. It boils at 20 C as it passes in the air heat exchanger and condenses in the ice heat exchanger. The expanding gas drives the turbine whose shaft is connected to a pump and a grinding wheel. The pump circulates the fluid to the heat exchangers.
Put the sharp edge of a steel knife on the rotating grinding wheel. You generate grinding sparks at 1,800 C. The sparks are tiny pieces of molten steel with yellow incandescence. The engine needs to generate only 100 to 200 watts. It uses no electricity, fuel, solar or geothermal energy. Just ice.
Thank you Dr. Strangelove,
Hmmh! It seem I misunderstood your claim. At 1800 C of heat generation different heat engines come to mind. Nevertheless, thank you for the Kalina cycle vapor turbine referral.
If you like heat engines and if you haven’t done so already, you might want to investigate the Magnesium Injection Cycle (MAGIC) engine that Mitsubishi apparently came up with but still develops. They mix elemental powdered magnesium (Mg) to room temperature water (H2O). A chemical reaction binds magnesium with oxygen creating heat. The collected leftover hydrogen is burned to produce more heat with water as its byproduct.
Solar-powered lasers separate the oxidized magnesium back to metallic magnesium and oxygen renewing the process. Sunlight is apparently the only energy used while the waste products are oxygen, hydrogen and water. Abundant, light, shiny silvery, magnesium is the ninth-most common element in the universe, comprises 2 percent of the earth’s crust and is the third-most common element dissolved in seawater.
However, powdered magnesium can be dangerous stuff. Magnesium burns at a temperature of approximately 3,100 C (3,370 K; 5,610 F), and cannot be extinguished with water. In fact, the heat will separate the hydrogen and oxygen in the water then proceed to burn the hydgrogen and re-combine it with the oxygen as a fuel. It radiates at such high energy that not only does the fire appear white but it will radiate in the ultra-violate and from what I’ve read can cause blindness if stared at too long. Probably, not the kind of stuff many people might want to play with. Have a great day
Im not impressed with Mitsubishis MAGIC. It uses magnesium as fuel. To obtain Mg, you need electrolytic reduction of magnesium oxide. This requires a lot of energy. MAGIC process is the reverse chemical reaction – exothermic oxidation of Mg. However, you need more energy input in endothermic reduction than useful energy output in exothermic oxidation due to heat loss. Since theres no net energy output, its really solar energy thats powering the engine.
In Kalina cycle engine, you dont need ice if you live in New York in January or any cold place. If temperature inside your house is 20 C and outside is 0 C. Put the cold heat exchanger outside and the hot heat exchanger inside you house. These can be copper tubes as copper has high thermal conductivity. Connect the turbine to an electric generator and you can produce 1 to 2 kw. Enough to power your house using energy out of thin air.
Thank you Dr. Strangelove (Or How I learned to Stop Worrying and enjoy the Thermoelectric (Seebeck effect, Peltier effect, and Thomson) effect),
You proved exactly correct about the ridiculous MAGIC engine, I simply wanted to get your thoughts. You stated:
“To obtain Mg, you need electrolytic reduction of magnesium oxide…its really solar energy thats powering the engine.”
The actual state of the system fails even further if you consider that highly reactive elemental Mg cannot be found in nature. It MUST be extracted from magnesium compounds most typically salts (MgCl for example) typically through some Humphry Davy, electrolytic process. The Japanese actually considered producing many tons of elemental magnesium powder. Which seems to me like an environmental disaster waiting to happen.
You further claimed:
“In Kalina cycle engine, you dont need ice if you live in New York in January or any cold place.”
Hmmh! Depending on the purpose, if you use a thermoelectric generator, you may not need the Kalina cycle engine or any heat engine at all. While a much less efficient energy producer, a solid state thermoelectric generator doesn’t require one to live in winter time New York or some cold place. They work well in automobiles to recover energy lost to heat and other venues as well.
Thermoelectric generator (TEG) is not popular because it’s inefficient 1% to 5% vs. PV cell 20% and Otto cycle engine 25%. Application to automobile is impractical. TEG needs big surface area for heat transfer. The car exhaust system and radiator have small surface area. And you need to cool the radiator or the engine will overheat. You might be able to get 1 sq. m. of surface area in the exhaust pipe and get around 200 watts of electric power. Not even enough to power the car’s aircon.
There’s huge amount of carbon in the mantle but the release to the atmosphere is slow. Volcanoes emit 130 million tons of CO2 annually. Humans emit 33 billion tons annually. It will take 254 years of volcanic emissions to match one year of human emissions. In geologic time, volcanoes are significant because they’ve been emitting for billions of years. Humans for only 250 years.
Known and cataloged volcanoes emit and estimated 130 million tons of CO2 annually.
Fixed that for you. We don’t know how good the estimates are. And, we actually have very little knowledge of volcanic activity at the depths of the ocean. New fields are being discovered all the time.
In fact, we do — natural CO2 emisaiona have a different iaotropic signature than manmade CO2. See:
“Volcanic vs Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide,” T Gerlach, EOS v92 n24, June 14, 2011.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/pdf/2011EO240001.pdf
Stan says:
“…iatropic signature…”
What? A signature that “needs to go to the doctor”?
Oh, “isotopic”.
At 0.26 gigatons annual CO2 emissions of land and ocean volcanoes, it will take over 55,000 years for atmospheric CO2 to reach 7,000 ppm assuming all that went to the atmosphere. Last time we reach 7,000 ppm was during Cambrian era and temperature was a cool 22 C. Hotter than our world today of course because we’re still in an ice age.
Dr. Strangelove,
Thank you for the reply. You stated:
“At 0.26 gigatons annual CO2 emissions of land and ocean volcanoes, it will take over 55,000 years for atmospheric CO2 to reach 7,000 ppm assuming all that went to the atmosphere. Last time we reach 7,000 ppm was during Cambrian era and temperature was a cool 22 C.”
The Cambrian is the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, lasting from according to Wikipedia from 541.0 1.0 to 485.4 1.9 million years ago (mya). Another geological column source I have dates the period from 570 million to 500 millian years ago.
From my reading I understand that Carbon 14 while rare in sedimentary rock exists throughout much of the world’s carbon deposits (i.e., natural gas, oil, coal, carbon dioxide etc.). If true your claim to a Cambrian age for CO2 must be completely false. Please let me know if you have any data (i.e. chemical assays) showing CO2 deposits to be completely free of carbon 14. Hmmh! I kind of doubt such thorough studies have been made but I’m interested in anyone who has made such a claim and has had multiple labs confirm the measurement.
Dr. Strangelove,
You stated:
“Thermoelectric generator (TEG) is not popular because its inefficient 1% to 5% vs. PV cell 20% and Otto cycle engine 25%.”
True. Perhaps, that lead me to state: “While a much less efficient energy producer, a solid state thermoelectric generator…”
However, improvement in materials may bring efficiency to 15% and I think I remember having read they already reached 8%. In any case, they can return some energy to the system. Combined cycle engines like BMW’s Turbosteamer currently work better. As to car air cons the can suck up a lot of juice and significantly reduce engine performance in many cases. I’m not surprised that a TEG won’t fully supply it.
BTW if efficiency rules I’m sure you’ve considered fuel cells (Alkaline Fuel Cell (Hydrogen-Bacon) 60-70%, methanol 20-30%, reformed methanol 50-60% or most impressive the Magnesium-Air Fuel Cell (MAFC – which is a battery type often called a fuel cell. It is made up of a magnesium anode which is consumed, oxygen from air as a cathode and a salt water electrolyte.
Research and commercialization of the technology by MagPower Systems showed an efficiency of 90% and an operating range of -20 to 55 degrees Celsius). The previous list of fuel cells represents only a fraction of the alternatives, and by no means exhaustive.
Dr No says:
“And also have a few bets running at good odds of a new global warm record in the near future.
What odds can you guys quote me?”
What do you mean by “the near future” and which data series are you referring to?
Near future could be any of the next 10 years.
Data series could be any of the most often cited data sets.
Marble Bar. That’s a hot place, and no mistake.
Strewth! The corks round me hat burst into flames there.
“Venus has around 230,000 times as much carbon dioxide as Earths atmosphere. In contrast, we are worrying about what might happen when we reach 2 times as much CO2 as we had before. The difference between 2 and 230,000 is pretty darn big.”
230,000 is about 18 doublings. So even if Venus’s surface temperature excess to Earth’s (450 deg C) was caused by the greenhouse effect, one doubling of CO2 could only produce a rise of 25 deg C. Obviously, this is nothing to worry about.
Venus has no virtually no water in its atmosphere.
The lack of this greenhouse gas means that the
atmosphere radiats poorly to space. That is the real
reason for its high temperature.
The tempature gradient on Venus is comparable to that of the Earth only the athmosphere of Venus is much heigher.
Fulco,
Venus’s atmosphere is much more MASSIVE. About 93 times more massive than the earth’s.
Should be “radiates” not “radiats”, of course.
On second thoughts, 20 ppm of water in
the DENSE atmosphere of Venus is quite
a lot in absolute terms. Might still be
a significant factor.
What is of course completely discriminant between
Venus and Earth at present, is that the atmosphere
of Venus is in not in communication with a heat source
or sink like the Earth’s Oceans.
“They mentioned how all of that heat which has been accumulating in the ocean, if released at once, would warm the atmosphere by hundreds of degrees.”
Now, this sounds like a wonderful sequel to The Day after Tomorrow 🙂
Maxwell’s Demon has obviously branched out,
and found new ways of confusing us.
Some people may remember George Gamow’s
Mr Tompkins dreaming that Maxwell’s Demon
was showing him the molecular world –
and then waking with a start to see the
centre of his scotch and ice boiling.
“I really worry about the fate of a society where people are no longer capable of thinking critically.”
Sheeple is the term you are looking for.
One gets bitter.
I live on the South Coast of England.
I was promised in 1990 by a climate scientist
(promised, I tell you) that by 2010 my
climate would be like the French Riviera’s.
I have to tell you that in 2013 it is NOTHING
LIKE LIVING ON THE FRENCH RIVIERA HERE.
The Russian Mafia is staying away in droves.
The ratiocination of most people is rubbish.
Fortunately, their guts are usually more accurate
than their heads. In economics it is characterised
as the difference between “Rational Expectations” and
“Adaptive Expectations”. For example, most people
might believe in a certain high level of inflation based
on what they are told or what they calculate. HOWEVER
a few years of low inflation will produce a new lower
forecast in most people, whether they acknowledge it
rationally or not.
A few years of lowish temperatures will produce a gradual
fading of interest in global warming issues. Of course,
it would not take much of a rise in temperatures to
bring it all back – because people have been sensitised by
propaganda.
“The ratiocination of most people is rubbish.”
That is putting it mildly. For instance: Nobody could possibly be said to understand ANYTHING AT ALL about the
heat budget of the Earth who does not know about outgoing
I.R. radiation and the approximate modelling of it by
the Stefan-Boltzmann law. And yet when I enquire in my
circle of acquaintances, which includes University graduates,
medical doctors, and the learned professions, I do not find one person who says he has even heard of it. They often
have quite firm beliefs about climate, too! I said
to a man with a First in Physics from Imperial College,
London, that it was inconceivable he wasn’t taught it.
But, it was gone like the snows of yesteryears.
It got worse. A man who left High School with good
passes in maths and science could no longer remember
what a fourth power was.
PewResearch is a survey corporation which has
compiled some statistics about knowledge of
basic science among the population of the U.S.A.
Knowledge of biology and medicine is not a complete
disaster (visits to Grand-dad in hospital, I suppose).
But knowledge of physics is abysmal – 41% of college graduates think electrons are bigger than atoms. And knowledge of the Earth sciences is virtually non-existent – 69% of college graduates do not know that nitrogen is the most abundant gas in the atmosphere, and 86% of all women
are in blissful ignorance on this matter.
Honestly, why do people bother to go to school? It is
no wonder they are so easily blinded with science.
Most women think it is the job of the Man
to fix the nitrogen thingimmy.
There is no physics we know of that transports heat from the surface to the deep ocean. This defies gravity and what we learned at school. Hot brine is buoyant and floats to surface. They have to provide us with a physical explanation of how heat actually is transported from the surface to the depth of the ocean.
Is this another violation of the laws of physics such as the concept of the GreenHouse Gas Effect?
See: ocean currents. (Look especially at those in the North Atlantic.)
The presence of hot and cold reservoirs is a necessary condition for heat transfer from the hot reservoir to the cold reservoir but insuficient. The means for heat transport must exist. In the ocean case, the mean does not exist.
Firstly, it is true that there is no evidence at all
of an increase in temperature of the bottom layers of
the Ocean in the last 150 years. It might be heating up
but the heat capacity there is simply enormous.
Secondly, there is evidence of heating in the top
thousand feet of the Ocean in the last 150 years.
It is about 0.4 C. That is good news; it shows there
are checks and balances in the system.The mechanisms by which a warmer surface temperature gets down to this depth are diffusion, turbulent mixing, and some less obvious phenomena, such as internal shear-waves and salt-fingering break-down.
You say hot brine floats on top of cooler fresher water.
So it does – until it starts to cool and then blobs of it sink. The technical reason is that salt diffuses one hundred times slower than heat.
There is a mechanism for heat to be transported to the deep. Water sinking at the Poles is carrying heat down. The fact that it would seem cold to our senses is neither here nor there. Normally it simply causes an equal amount of heat to be displaced upwards from the deep, by upwelling
elsewhere. But if the water that goes down is 2.1 C and the water that comes up is 2.0 C…
Not so sir, Brine cools first as it reaches the polar waters to the points that its density is equal or more than that of the deep ocean, otherwise it can never sink by gravity. This means that the temperature of the falling water is equal or less than that of the ocean floor. Therefore, no heat can be transported from the surface to the depth of the ocean with the thermohaline circulation, absolutely none.
Heat difusion downward is simoultaneously opposed by brine buoyancy. The heat an never go to the deep ocean. It stayes on the surface.
Again, the “main-stream Science” fails to expain the slow warming.
The observed warming of ocean floor is earth’s internal heat that is nearby and caused by global warming, but it is not from the surface. As surface warms, brine density decreases, ocean flroor temperature has to increase so that the density of ocean floor decreases as well and the thermohaline cirulation continues.
“Normally it simply causes an equal amount of heat to be displaced upwards from the deep, by upwelling
elsewhere. But if the water that goes down is 2.1 C and the water that comes up is 2.0 C”
And, it generally takes centuries for overturning to occur by this method. Forget it. There hasn’t been nearly enough time.
There has been ~165 years since the Industrial Revolution. That is not nothing.
“Firstly, it is true that there is no evidence at all
of an increase in temperature of the bottom layers of
the Ocean in the last 150 years. It might be heating up
but the heat capacity there is simply enormous.”
Really?
http://uwpcc.washington.edu/documents/PCC/purkeyjohnson_2010.pdf
“In summary,we show that the abyssal ocean has warmed
significantly from the 1990s to the 2000s (Table 1). This
warming does not occur uniformly around the globe but is
amplified to the south and fades to the north (Fig. 8). Both
Indian and Atlantic Oceans only warm on one side, with statistically insignificant cooling on their other side. The
recent decadal warming of the abyssal global ocean below
4000 m is equivalent to a global surface energy imbalance
of 0.027 (60.009) W m22 with Southern Ocean deep
warming contributing an additional 0.068 (60.062)Wm22
from 1000 to 4000 m.”
I am well familiar with this paper, and it answers the question. The observed warming of the abyssal waters of the southern hemisphere can never be originated in the surface, because it would require several centuries for the heat to get there. The only other source of the observed abyssal warming is the earth’s internal heat, which is in the vicinity of the abyssal brine.
Indeed, that is pretty much what I CALCULATE the rate
of heating to be, down there. But I do not think the
EVIDENCE is good enough to be SURE a heating signal
has got all the way down. The authors of the paper
“found” heating in but 3 out of 24 sampled abyssal basins.
The hint of heating was in the three Southernmost
basins – exactly where one would expect the heating to
show, since the thermo-haline driven circulating water
from the Arctic flows to there.
I see the authors state that 80% of excess heat coming into
the Earth system is going straight into the oceans and down. I can live with that. Indeed, is not that the point? WE CAN ALL LIVE WITH IT.
Only a climate clown takes “the signal’s so small everybody else says the oceans aren’t warmer but I find they ARE warmer in the parts on the southern part.
Less in the North. The Atlantic and Indian [Northern Oceans] have had some signal translated by me as they ARE warming but not only just more north, but more to one side, or mostly in one quarter,”
as “Oh yeaH? Wayle,thin Heeyurz my rebuttal!”
You’ve gotta be a Hockey Stick Quality Bore Hole Believer.
It has been 150 years already.
Just because it takes 500-1000 years to happen COMPLETELY,
it doesn’t mean that it isn’t having an effect during that mixing time. It is not a particularly obvious effect as yet,
because the extra heat entering the Earth’s system is
trivial compared to the heat capacity of the Ocean, and
the effect on the heat gradient at the water/air surface also is tiny. I calculate that heat is going into the deeps at a rate of 0.05 w/m^2 which is 1/5th of estimates of the present
surface heat imbalance.
Nabil perhaps forgets that the falling water at the Poles
is saltier and hence denser than the Ocean depths as a
whole. Also, water is denser at 4 C than at 2 C.
Why do I feel we are all in a performance of “Waiting for Godot”?
カシオ スマートフォン
Wow, marvelous blog layout! How long have you been blogging for?