UAH Global Temperature Update for January 2020: +0.56 deg. C

February 5th, 2020 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for January, 2020 was +0.56 deg. C, unchanged from the December 2019 value of +0.56 deg. C.

The linear warming trend since January, 1979 remains at +0.13 C/decade (+0.11 C/decade over the global-averaged oceans, and +0.18 C/decade over global-averaged land).

Various regional LT departures from the 30-year (1981-2010) average for the last 25 months are:

YEAR MO GLOBE NHEM. SHEM. TROPIC USA48 ARCTIC AUST
 2018 01 +0.29 +0.51 +0.07 -0.10 +0.70 +1.39 +0.52
 2018 02 +0.25 +0.28 +0.21 +0.05 +0.99 +1.22 +0.35
 2018 03 +0.28 +0.43 +0.12 +0.08 -0.19 -0.32 +0.76
 2018 04 +0.21 +0.32 +0.10 -0.14 +0.06 +1.02 +0.84
 2018 05 +0.16 +0.38 -0.05 +0.02 +1.90 +0.14 -0.24
 2018 06 +0.20 +0.33 +0.06 +0.12 +1.10 +0.77 -0.41
 2018 07 +0.30 +0.38 +0.23 +0.28 +0.41 +0.24 +1.49
 2018 08 +0.18 +0.21 +0.16 +0.11 +0.02 +0.11 +0.37
 2018 09 +0.13 +0.14 +0.13 +0.22 +0.89 +0.23 +0.28
 2018 10 +0.20 +0.27 +0.12 +0.30 +0.20 +1.08 +0.43
 2018 11 +0.26 +0.24 +0.28 +0.46 -1.16 +0.68 +0.55
 2018 12 +0.25 +0.35 +0.15 +0.30 +0.24 +0.69 +1.20
 2019 01 +0.38 +0.35 +0.41 +0.36 +0.53 -0.15 +1.15
 2019 02 +0.37 +0.47 +0.28 +0.43 -0.02 +1.04 +0.05
 2019 03 +0.35 +0.44 +0.25 +0.41 -0.55 +0.96 +0.59
 2019 04 +0.44 +0.38 +0.51 +0.54 +0.50 +0.92 +0.91
 2019 05 +0.32 +0.29 +0.35 +0.40 -0.61 +0.98 +0.39
 2019 06 +0.47 +0.42 +0.52 +0.64 -0.64 +0.91 +0.35
 2019 07 +0.38 +0.33 +0.44 +0.45 +0.11 +0.33 +0.87
 2019 08 +0.39 +0.38 +0.39 +0.42 +0.17 +0.44 +0.24
 2019 09 +0.62 +0.64 +0.59 +0.60 +1.14 +0.75 +0.57
 2019 10 +0.46 +0.64 +0.28 +0.31 -0.03 +0.99 +0.50
 2019 11 +0.55 +0.56 +0.54 +0.55 +0.21 +0.56 +0.38
 2019 12 +0.56 +0.61 +0.50 +0.58 +0.92 +0.66 +0.94
 2020 01 +0.56 +0.60 +0.53 +0.62 +0.73 +0.12 +0.66

The UAH LT global gridpoint anomaly image for January, 2020 should be available in the next few days here.

The global and regional monthly anomalies for the various atmospheric layers we monitor should be available in the next few days at the following locations:

Lower Troposphere: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0.txt
Mid-Troposphere: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tmt/uahncdc_mt_6.0.txt
Tropopause: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/ttp/uahncdc_tp_6.0.txt
Lower Stratosphere: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tls/uahncdc_ls_6.0.txt


1,250 Responses to “UAH Global Temperature Update for January 2020: +0.56 deg. C”

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  1. Tom Burwell says:

    Coolest Arctic result since Jan. ’19

    • Dave says:

      Anyone want to take bets on whether we will see that 13 month average creep above the previous record set in 2016 in the coming months? Now that would be hard to blame on a super El Nino right?

      • Mike Sanderin says:

        Dave,

        Although your point is well taken, I’ll take your bet.

        If I did the quick arithmetic correctly (ignoring differences in lengths of months), the high 13 month ave in 2016 is about 0.526. The average of the last 6 months is about 0.523, which is remarkably anamolous given the lack of a strong El Nino. The current 13 month mean is about 0.45.

        With a fizzling weak El Nino, I think it is unlikely that the next 6 months will be warm enough to force the 13 month average over the 2016 level. Remember, there were three months in 2016 over 0.7 and one over 0.8 in that stretch. If the ENSO predictions are correct (a big “if” given the track record), 2020 will likely be cooler than 2019. But the current readings throw a huge error bar over all predictions for me.

        I should note that with a few more readings above 0.5, the current 13 month average could surpass the 1998 high of about 0.46, which occurred during the largest El Nino “ever”. On the flip side, even a single monthly dip would derail that.

        I think a more intriguing bet is whether Roy will release a version 7.0 UAH temperature in 2020 to “correct” the temperatures.

        Finally, if you bother to compute running averages over 25 or 37 months, that “red line” takes out much of the wild El Nino spikes and shows how dramatic the warming is. It is not nearly as entertaining as Roy’s quickly abandoned cubic fit to the data, and I have often wondered if the 13 month window was chosen to make the “eye test” as ambiguous as possible.

        Mike S.

        • Dave M says:

          Dr. ROYally disSPENCERing lies Version 7 will involve a linear fit across the whole data set, which will then have it’s slope removed and the fit itself set as the zero temperature point. Let’s see those dastardly climate doomers generate warming from that data set!!

          • x says:

            insulting the person who created the site where you regularly live as a parasite. What kind of man are you? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Living alone with your cats must be dangerous for your mind, do you have sex with them?

          • Greg says:

            Well said x. That is a totally brainless comment without the insults.

            It’s interesting that there is this kind of camel double hump pattern which repeats throughout the record. It seems to repeat about every 7.2 years.

            Looks like we are about to get the second hump of the latest cycle right now.

    • Robvert Ingersol says:

      I guess it wasn’t worth mentioning that this was the warmest January in the UAH global record. OH, LOOK AT THE ARCTIC!!!

  2. Peter Langlee says:

    Something must be wrong with the measurements because everyone said that the cooling would start 2020.

    • Robert Corpelyn says:

      No, that’s not correct. The Russian scientists said more than twenty years ago that cooling would start 2000, or maybe 2008, perhaps 2012. See, you don’t get it. It doesn’t matter whether cooling actually starts or not. It’s essential we keep saying it will soon start, not right now, but soon. The date is constantly revised and moved forward but the it’s the continuous discussion, year after year, that matters. That’s called the Russian method or socialist realism.

      • colin says:

        Not sure where did you see those Russian predictions, but the Western method of capitalist science is well documented in the Al Gore movies and it predicted the melting of the Arctic by 2008.
        And Russia abolished socialism in 1989, so those predictions are maybe coming from Putin or primordial Russian mischief, but not socialist realism.

        • bdgwx says:

          FWIW, the IPCC AR5 prediction for the timing of an ice-free Arctic summer is 2050 for RCP8.5 and 2080 for RCP4.5.

        • Midas says:

          Colin,
          In case you didn’t know, Al Gore is not a scientist.
          Would you please link to a claim by the actual scientists of the IPCC that the Arctic ice would be gone by 2008.

        • barry says:

          “the Al Gore movies… predicted the melting of the Arctic by 2008.”

          Transcript from An Inconvenient Truth (2006):

          “Starting in 1970 there was a precipitous drop off in the amount and extent and thickness of the arctic ice cap. It has diminished by 40 percent in 40 years. There are two studies showing that in the next 50 or 70 years in summertime it will be completely gone…”

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          bdgwx, Des, barry, please stop trolling.

    • Mike says:

      OK Doomer!

  3. fonzie says:

    http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst3gl/from:2010/plot/hadsst3nh/from:2010/plot/hadsst3sh/from:2010

    O.K., folks… The latest SSTs show that the northern hemisphere is dropping like a rock, HOWEVER, the southern hemisphere is taking up the slack. Interesting times. Maybe what is happening concurres with what Tom is saying at the top of the thread. ‘scuse me if i sound a little enebriated here. Carnival is in full swing down here in new orleans and st. ron of bacardi is ruling the day. (even in this state, i could still throw a yellow flag which is a lot more than i can say for the NFL) Happy Grardi Ma, i’ll see y’all in March, when lenten sobriety prevails…

  4. Krakatoa says:

    When we saw temps rising again at the end of 2017, I remember people on this site were accusing NOAA of fudging the satellite data.

    • Bindidon says:

      Krakatoa

      “I remember people on this site were accusing NOAA of fudging the satellite data.”

      You correctly remember. But one of them also accuses NOAA of fudging the surface data.

      He is the most ignorant and therefore, not quite surprisingly, the most boastful commentator ‘evah’.

      He also denies the existence of time dilation, of Moon’s rotation about its axis, and of lots of other similar ‘spurious’ things.

      A really, really ‘good’ guy!

  5. Midas says:

    For all of the past 5 years, the 13-month average has been beaten only by the peak of the super el ninos.

  6. Eben says:

    Wormistas getting real cocky now

  7. esalil says:

    Dr Spencer:
    Is UHI visible in the satellite series? If not where does the UHI heat from the surface go? If yes are there any estimations how much it is.

    • Bindidon says:

      esalil

      ” Is UHI visible in the satellite series? ”

      What about
      – choosing an allegedly so terribly UHI-infested surface corner, e.g. Los Angeles,
      – generating the UAH time series for the grid cell encompassing the town, and
      – comparing it with a grid cell nearby, encompassing ‘the middle of nowhere’, e.g. the Grass Valley Wilderness Area, distant by 150 km?

      Linear estimates, in C / decade:
      – above LA: 0.15 +- 0.04
      – above ‘nowhere’: 0.24 +- 0.04

      https://tinyurl.com/tpcakyd

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      Bindidon, please stop trolling.

  8. Scott R says:

    I see the arctic is at +0.12. Coldest place on the globe, right where the cooling needs to start to change the earth’s albedo. I see they have a lot of snow this year too.

    The tropics / ocean is still at +0.61. That is the 2nd highest number since the 2016 EL NINO ended. Note that was at -0.18 April of 2018. It is very likely the tropics are still in the 3.6 harmonic and will return to baseline. Blame the nino 4 region. What goes up fast comes down fast FYI. Do you guys really think the tropics won’t come down? Keep laughing it up the drop is coming.

    As for past predictions of cooling… history shows that the AMO can not drop until after you get past the Jupiter / Saturn conjunction near earth’s aphelion. This conjunction location is reducing the summer melt in the arctic and allowing the ice to recover. Just getting past the Yoshimura style conjunction isn’t enough. Especially when you have the gleissberg cycle also peaking at the same time due to Uranus and Neptune being aligned with Jupiter’s perihelion location, amplifying it. The activity on the sun will finally be able to drop… including the rising min values.

  9. Darwin Wyatt says:

    The Eemian period had sea levels much higher than now indicating warming with low co2. I think Barry said the sun was warmer back when, defeating their argument it’s not the sun in charge now. With the sun in such a dormant state, pretty obvious we will have cooling. How long it takes is the question. Pretty obvious temps and co2 loosely linked if at all considering the pause while aco2 increased exponentially. The alarmists are all embarrassing themselves considering an ice age is geologically speaking right around the corner. Meanwhile, co2 not preventing one of the coldest winters in my lifetime here in Alaska (outside the city) as measured by firewood consumption. I suggest you alarmists get out of your magically heated homes and cities more often and consider the obvious implication that co2 is blocking as much heat as it absorbs and reradiates downward.

    • Bindidon says:

      Darwin Wyatt

      It is really strange to observe all these people in Norther America thinking that the Globe is cooling just because their little, tine piece of land is cooling down.

      Moscow had in December 2019 10 C above average, and the entire Russia was much too warm.

      Here in Germany, we experience for the third time in sequence a supermild winter with, for December and January, about 10 C over average as well.

      And between these three supermild winters, there were – oh dear – two superwarm, much too dry summers…

      There is something really morbid about this permanent americanocentrism.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      Bindidon, Des, please stop trolling.

  10. Mark Shapiro says:

    More evidence for #ClimateChange!

  11. Mark Shapiro says:

    Tied for the warmest January in Dr. Roy’s data!

  12. bdgwx says:

    Like all main sequence stars the Sun’s luminosity increases with time. It was dimmer/cooler in the past. That’s actually the crux of the faint young sun problem. GHGs are an essential piece of the puzzle in solving the problem. It does not have much relevance to the Eemian though. At any rate GHGs are equally essential in explaining the magnitude of the glacial cycles including the Eemian interglacial.

  13. Darwin Wyatt says:

    Sorry guys but within the margin of error readings when your thumb on the scale agenda is so well known is meaningless to me. You all need to accept that a trace trace gas (aco2) isnt going to do squat. And if it is, its a long term problem and already being addressed by science and innovation. Your opinions mean little here when we can all see the recovery from the little ice age is the same as it ever was. Now expect it to get at least as warm as past warming or cooling periods and all within natural climate variability.

  14. esalil says:

    Bidindon: how do you see UHI in anomalies? How much higher is the temperature in LA?

    • Bindidon says:

      esalil

      The inverse is the case: using anomalies, you see that UHI doesn’t play the allegedly major role so many people would like them to play.

      But OK, I’ll generate tomorrow (it’s now 1:00 AM here) absolute UAH data for the two corners, using UAH’s climatology for the LT.

    • bdgwx says:

      Berkeley Earth has a good write up of the UHI effect and how much it contributes to the global mean surface temperature.

      https://tinyurl.com/szwhz8l

      We observe the opposite of an urban heating effect over the
      period 1950 to 2010, with a slope of -0.10C/century +/- 0.24 in the Berkeley Earth global land temperature average.

      • Bindidon says:

        Exactly, bdgwx!

        • esalil says:

          So, your answer to my question is no. My second question was: where does the UHI heat go if it is not visible in the temperature series?

          • bdgwx says:

            It is visible in some urban series like Tokyo for example. It’s just not visible in all urban series. And in some cases the effect is negative. I suspect UAH and other satellite datasets are less sensitive to the UHI effect due to the significant weighting above the planetary boundary layer.

          • barry says:

            A thermometer at an airport may not be at all affected by UHI, with enough space between it and the changing environment. Stations within a city can move, lowering or raising the baseline temp. Thermometers in large city parks may not be affected by UHI. A station that once stood in direct sunlight all day may later in its be partly shadowed due to nearby urban build-up, or because a small tree grew large enough to shade it.

            There are many factors at work, but the simplest thing is to do what Bindidon has done and similar tests. Many different teams of researchers find that UHI contribution is negligible, non-existent, or even slightly negative. But some people seem desperate to have it explain away some, most or all of the warming.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            Des, bdgwx, barry, please stop trolling.

  15. Bindidon says:

    Scott R

    “I see the arctic is at +0.12. Coldest place on the globe, right where the cooling needs to start to change the earths albedo.”

    Again this ridiculous nonsense.

    Scott R, I just downloaded UAH’s grid data for the LT in 2020, and generated a time series of absolute data for the Arctic (60N-82.5N), by using their climatology. I’m sure you are clever enough to find it by your own.

    *
    Here is the top 25 of an ascending sort of the absolute monthly temperatures in the Arctic’s LT:

    1989 1 -33.23
    1982 1 -32.28
    1993 1 -32.24
    1990 1 -32.17
    1994 1 -32.15
    2000 1 -32.01
    1999 1 -31.99
    1984 1 -31.97
    1986 1 -31.82
    2008 1 -31.75
    1997 1 -31.74
    1983 1 -31.67
    1988 1 -31.65
    1979 1 -31.63
    1991 1 -31.55
    2019 1 -31.44
    1987 1 -31.36
    2001 1 -31.32
    2006 1 -31.29
    2012 1 -31.27
    2015 1 -31.18
    1998 1 -31.17
    2007 1 -31.15
    2020 1 -31.15
    1992 1 -31.10

    Do you see Jan 2020 in the list, with its horrifyingly low +0.12 C anomaly above the mean of 1981-2010? It is at position 24 of 41.

    And you talk about “the Coldest place on the globe“.

    When will you stop talking such incompetent nonsense, Scott R?
    Isn’t one Robertson enough on this blog?

    • Midas says:

      Is Robertson still around?

    • Bindidon says:

      Oh Noes.

      I see the ascending sort contains only the Januaries! If we sort all months, January 2020 comes at position… 53.

      I do not at all insist on warming, no interest.

      But conversely, we are far far from any cooling, except for people like Scott R, ren, skeptical, Rob Mitchell, and a few others.

    • Scott R says:

      Bindidon,

      You can not erase a 40 year warming trend overnight. The divergences we are seeing starting with the arctic sea ice recovering and NH snow mass is the crack in the ice of the whole global warming theory. That matches MY theory, not yours. Global temperature departures will SLOWLY roll over in the predictable 3.6 year pattern as the longer time frames take over and cause cooling. I’m sure AGW alarmists will continue to try to use the end of the mid century cooling to start their trends for years to come as they hang on to their theories until the bitter end.

      • Bindidon says:

        Scott R

        “The divergences we are seeing starting with the arctic sea ice recovering and NH snow mass is the crack in the ice of the whole global warming theory. ”

        1. Where is your Arctic sea ice recovery, Scott R?

        http://www.drroyspencer.com/2020/02/uah-global-temperature-update-for-january-2020-0-56-deg-c/#comment-429310

        There is NO Arctic sea ice recovery at all, Scott R. You can’t give any proof of that.

        2. What now concerns your ‘NH snow mass’, I explained you a few days ago that
        – the NH snow surface is DECREASING, and that
        – snow mass does by no means ncessarily presuppose that more snow felt down.

        I’m sure you know that.

        Feel free to continue talking about ‘the predictable 3.6 year pattern’. After all, this is a blog here, verybody can write what s/he wants.

        But with such pretentious claims you will never impress me.

        • JP66 says:

          If you can not see that Arctic Sea Ice is unchanged for 13 years then you are wearing the biggest blinders known to man. 2019 full year cycle was EXACTLY the same as 2007 AND the current year is starting out higher than both of those. Yes, the last decade’s average was less than the previous decade, but given that we only have 4 decades of satellite data it is WAY too early to predict further decline and given the evidence of decadal variability in Arctic Sea Ice it is HIGHLY likely 2012 was the low for the next several decades.

          https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2004JC002851

          https://i.postimg.cc/XYG2jC4W/arctic-ice.jpg

          Wanna bet that this Septembers minimum will be higher than 2007?

          I’ll bet $100 to the charity of your choice.

          • JP66 says:

            Guten Morgen Bindi,

            Jetzt verstehe ich. Sie sind Deutsch! Also, sie müssen immer richtig sein. (Hope I got that right haven’t used my German since college) (hey just noticed the auto correct even put in an umlaut cool . . .)

            Anyways, was looking more at the Arctic Ice situation and came across some new info. Tres interesant.

            https://climategrog.wordpress.com/category/periodic-analysis/

            https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/10/05/arctic-ice-natural-variability/

            Looks like I can safely predict that there will be no further reductions in September Ice for decades to come. So I guess the IPCC will have to come up with some other bugaboo.

          • bdgwx says:

            The trend of annual sea ice extent over the last 13 years is -0.4e6 km^2/decade. That is a -3.7%/decade.

          • bdgwx says:

            The trend of just the September mean over the whole dataset is -0.80e6/decade. At that rate the Arctic will be consistently (not just the minimum) ice-free by around 2070. And that’s being generous. And the 2012 record of 3.56e6 will be consistently (not just one time) surpassed in less than 20 years. Assuming the trend holds of course. Considering the energy imbalance on the planet has been +0.6 W/m^2 or higher for decades, the Arctic has been warming consistently for decades and at 2x the rate of the global average, and because net radiative forcing is expected to rise in the future it would be foolish to think Arctic sea ice is going to make a miraculous recovery.

          • Elliott Bignell says:

            “If you can not see that Arctic Sea Ice is unchanged for 13 years then you are wearing the biggest blinders known to man.”

            This is the same mistake the deniers made for years on end with the 1998 el Nino peak, just reflected around the x-axis. Your trend analysis sucks. Use the whole dataset, as one of our compadres often says, rather than just picking a couple of years that confirm what you want to believe.

            P.S. Deine Mutter war ein Hamster und Dein Vater roch nach Holunderbeeren.

          • barry says:

            No change in 13 years???

            https://tinyurl.com/uh2mfyn

            The trend decrease is 48 000 sq/km per year for that period.

            What is JP smoking?

        • Scott R says:

          Bindidon,

          I looked at your data where you made the claim that the October departure was a new ice min. Problem is, you don’t measure the annual ice minimum during the polar night. (should be a no brainer) The absolute min has not been taken out since 2012 despite a super enso cycle.

          I see the arctic sea ice index is at 13.65 right now. That’s the highest December reading since 2013. By the way, the absolute highest this index has ever been was way back in 1979 at the end of the mid century cooling. 16.34 right? The lowest was 3.57 back in 2012. Isn’t that roughly a 79% recovery? Anyways… the annual ice recovery dwarfs the maybe 15% decadal variability. Yeah… the polar winter does that sort of thing. No chance of the arctic ever being ice free.

          bdgwx,

          Have you ever considered study of a longer time frame to determine the trends and applying a sin wave as part of your equation? If you are only capturing 1/2 of a cycle, your linear trends could lead you to the wrong conclusion.

  16. Eben says:

    Best climate documentary ever
    remarkably – the global warming propaganda is totally absent and CO2 only mentioned as a part of the life cycle
    https://youtu.be/aU0GhTmZhrs

  17. bdgwx says:

    And here is the January 2020 Copernicus report which uses ERA.

    https://tinyurl.com/usnvplg

    0.77C warmer than the average January from 1981-2010, becoming by a narrow margin the warmest January in this data record

  18. skeptikal says:

    It’s half a degree C above the thirty year average and the alarmists are swarming the comments like a plague of cockroaches.

    It will cool somewhat between 2021 and 2024… and then the anomaly will be so far below the CMIP projections that all these cockroaches will simply disappear.

    • Midas says:

      Yeah, just like it was meant to cool after 2015, and before that 2010, and before that 2000. They just keep putting the start off 5 more years.

      • Elliott Bignell says:

        At least they’ve given up claiming 1998 was the peak now. Hey, what would a graph across time of the projected year for the imminent cooling look like? I’m betting y = n + 1, with units of years.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      Midas, Elliott Bignell, please stop trolling.

  19. Frederick J Schreyer says:

    Global trend over the last 25 months is definitely up, right? Or am I missing something?

    • Midas says:

      Probably, but that is not climate. It is the fact that we have a positive trend over the entire 40 year record, and no sign of the oft-predicted reversal, that is the issue.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      Mi-Des, please stop trolling.

  20. Elliott Bignell says:

    So, remind me please, when is the imminent cooling period now projected? I keep losing track – sorry, dementia kicking in after too many afternoons bashing my head on the key-bored.

  21. Rob Mitchell says:

    Maybe when the Arctic sea ice starts to expand again. The National Snow and Ice Data Center has observed a trend of the sea ice decline slowing down in the last 13-14 years while all of the global warming zealots were screaming the Arctic ice was going to melt away to oblivion. There is most certainly a pause in the sea ice decline. In fact, the current sea ice extent is higher now than the previous 10 years at this time.

    • Elliott Bignell says:

      So basically you are saying that sea ice (extent? area?) has declined unbroken for at least 13-14 years towards oblivion, plus that you are prone to wishful thinking. Not just extrapolating from a rate, but from a rate of change in a rate!

      Well, you’d better hope that the rate of decline in sea-ice extent slows now and again, because the IPCC didn’t project its disappearance until the second half of the century. It all the ice were gone before then it would be, well, alarming.

    • bdgwx says:

      Rob,

      I’m not sure who the “global warming zealots” are that you speak of or what their prediction is but you can find the real prediction at IPCC AR5 WGI Technical Summary TS.17 pg. 92.

      https://tinyurl.com/wh6mrsa

      For < 1e6 km^2:

      RCP2.6: never
      RCP4.5: 2080
      RCP6.0: 2065
      RCP8.5: 2045

      I will say that the IPCC has a poor track record with sea ice predictions though. In 2001 they predicted an annual mean < 10.5e6 would not be achieved until 2040. It actually happened in 2007. And at the current rate of decline their sea ice minimum prediction from AR5 might not do a whole lot better.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      Elliott Bignell, bdgwx, please stop trolling.

  22. Bindidon says:

    Rob Mitchell

    1. “There is most certainly a pause in the sea ice decline.”

    Oh yes yes!

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F6uQ_YOOyUOBsgSATxJiNYajB54PG9g3/view

    And… the trends show ‘slower declining’ only because of the extreme drop in September 2012.

    2. “In fact, the current sea ice extent is higher now than the previous 10 years at this time.”

    Here are the (absolute) Arctic sea ice levels (extent & area) for the last Januaries, in Mkm2:

    2010 1 13.74 12.04
    2011 1 13.46 11.83
    2012 1 13.73 12.21
    2013 1 13.70 12.02
    2014 1 13.65 12.10
    2015 1 13.60 12.17
    2016 1 13.46 11.80
    2017 1 13.19 11.37
    2018 1 13.08 11.70
    2019 1 13.56 12.10
    2020 1 13.65 12.11

    You Coolism zealots are all the time telling the same nonsensical stuff.

    *
    Source:

    ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/north/monthly/data/

  23. Midas says:

    Where is Salvatore?
    It would be good to know in advance when the next strong La Nina will begin and end. Then we would know when to expect the return of Salvatore, and also his subsequent re-departure.

  24. Midas says:

    Let me remind everyone that the trend value is only +0.32.
    +0.56 is not “the level of the current climate”.

    These high values cannot be sustained. There is certainly a good chance that we will go into the negatives again when we get the next strong La Nina. Again, those numbers will not represent “the climate”.

    I think it’s safe to say that we will never again reach sustained values of -0.2, even during a strong La Nina, except with the aid of another Pinatubo. In fact, another Pinatubo would probably make -ve values the norm, though only for a couple of years. Again, that is not climate.

  25. Rob Mitchell says:

    Hey Bindidon, What makes you think you have the “absolute” data?

    This is from the National Snow and Ice Data Center for 05 FEB –

    2020 – 14,385,000 km^2

    2019 – 14,077,000 km^2

    2018 – 13,880,000 km^2

    2017 – 13,871,000 km^2

    2016 – 13,991,000 km^2

    2015 – 14,243,000 km^2

    2014 – 14,306,000 km^2

    2013 – 14,403,000 km^2

    2012 – 14,121,000 km^2

    2011 – 14,149,000 km^2

    2010 – 14,271,000 km^2

    As of 05 FEB, there is one year that is higher than 2020, and that was 2013. So, the 2020 Northern Hemispheric sea ice extent is now running higher than 9 of the previous 10 years. The data does not support the idea that human-caused global warming is melting the ice to oblivion, and millions of people will become climate refugees, fleeing their coastal communities because of the rising sea level within this century. You global warming zealots are nothing more than yet another apocalyptic cult trying to tell everybody else how to live their lives, so the planet will be saved.

    • bdgwx says:

      The term “ice-free” means < 1e6 km^2 at the summer minimum only. Oblivion means absolutely nothing indefinitely. Even under an RCP8.5 scenario that likely won't happen for hundreds of years. Nevermind that melting sea ice does not cause sea level rise anyway so this data has limited usefulness in adjudicating whether people will need to flee coastal communities.

      Also, consider that even at 14.385e6 2020-02-05 is STILL below the 1981-2010 average. And that all years prior to 2005 were higher. Nevermind that in terms of climate arbitrary daily (or 5d means) are not particularly useful see they ebb and flow with weather patterns. It is more useful to use annual means as that discriminates the integrated albedo warming potential better.

      And one last point…2012 actually went above the 1981-2010 average before descending to a record low minimum. The lesson…don't count your chickens before they've hatched.

    • Bindidon says:

      Rob Mitchell

      “What makes you think you have the ‘absolute’ data?”

      When I read such a sentence, I get a big, big laugh. You don’t seem to have understood what I meant here with ‘absolute’. Great.

      Moreover, I spoke about monthly data, as you easily can see above. And the newest monthly data is that of January, isn’t it?

      *
      How could I guess that you in fact mean daily data?

      Only a Coolista like you can rely on such an arbitrarily fluctuating stuff like daily data to pretend anything valuable, reliable. Why not hourly?

      I have no problem at all in looking at

      https://tinyurl.com/yx7nut8c

      when it makes sense for me, as you may see here (absolute values):

      https://tinyurl.com/qs7k6ov

      Looks pretty good like sea ice recovery, huh?

      But, but: it’s always good to have a look at the departures from the 1981-2010 mean as well:

      https://tinyurl.com/wj7my6n

      My little finger tells me that it would be wise to await the end of March before trumpeting.

      By the way: do you see the red 2012 plot, Mitchell? Who would have imagined on April 24 how the Arctic sea ice would behave just a few little months later?

      *
      All in all, it’s amazing to see how similar people like Scott R, ren and… Mitchell all behave.

      A-maz-ing.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      bdgwx, Bindidon, Elliott Bignell, please stop trolling.

  26. Leitwolf says:

    @Dr Spencer

    Did it ever occur to you it is contrails, rather than CO2 causing warming? There are a lot of profound reasons to this finding, but even if you only look at these satellite data it should raise some eyebrows.

    – Most of the warming is in the NH, where most air travel takes place. Why so, if CO2 was the reason?
    – Far less warming in the SH, where there is far less air travel.
    – No warming at all in Antarctica, where there is no air travel.

    And that is (among many more aspects) in the view, that autonomous warming of Earth (that can not be related to solar activity) started around the 1970ies and since then showed almost liniear correlation to the increase of air travel.

    • Roy W. Spencer says:

      I’ve wondered about contrails from time to time for many years. I once had a plot of jet fuel usage over time, and the increase over the last several decades is dramatic. I suppose it’s a possible influence.

      • Leitwolf says:

        And since you are a satellite man, maybe you could help me with this one problem. According to NASA (and others) we have regions where clouds are warming and regions where they are cooling, as shown in the linked graph. Strangely it colors strong cooling “red” and warming “blue”. Anyhow..

        https://www.climate-debate.com/forum/attachments/cloudforcing.png

        Among those red regions is the northern Pacific, right where the Aleut Islands are located. I was curious and looked up the data of 10 stations located there, reporting in the METAR format to the NOAA. Because honestly, given all I know so far, I could not believe clouds were actually cooling, neither there nor anywhere. This is what I got:

        https://www.climate-debate.com/forum/attachments/aleuten1.png

        https://www.climate-debate.com/forum/attachments/aleuten2.png

        An almost linear, POSITIVE correlation between cloudiness and temperature. The more clouds, the warmer it is. Since these are real life data, without assumptions, without modelling or anything, I dare to say we have a problem here (which might well be the solution..).

    • bdgwx says:

      The IPCC uses a value +0.05 W/m^2 in AR5 for contrail and contrail induced cirrus. Refer to supplementary material for section 7.2.7.1.

    • Bindidon says:

      Leitwolf (& indirectly: Roy Spencer)

      I agree with you: at a (very) first glance, it looks like a possible major cause for warming indeed, and I believed that too some years ago, especially after 9/11, where Americans reported about ‘rediscovering a clear sky’ because flight activity was interrupted for a week or so.

      But… Leitwolf writes ‘Most of the warming is in the NH, where most air travel takes place’.

      And that is IMHO the point where he contradicts his, say, theory.

      Simply because most warming is NOT in the NH: it is in the Arctic, be it at the surface or in the lower troposphere.

      Even Roy Spencer’s data, though showing less warming than most other temperature series, gives for the Arctic a much higher trend than for the NH as a whole.

      And if we look at Mr Spencer’s grid data, we see that UAH6.0’s uppermost active latitude band (80.0N-82.5N) regularly shows the highest trends worldwide, with some cells at about 0.5 C / decade.

      Now let’s have all a look at a web site showing worldwide air traffic, namely flightradar24:

      https://www.flightradar24.com/6.9,-34.97/2

      We easily can see that apart from a few intercontinental flights optimizing their route by flying great circles over the Arctic, air traffic there is minimal to absent in comparison with the rest.

      What do you mean, Leitwolf?

      • Leitwolf says:

        I agree on both arguments. The Arctic seems to show the strongest warming and it is not a region of dense air travel. However I do not think it contradicts what I was saying. There are two more things to consider.

        1. The Arctic is not an isolated region. If temperatures in neighboring regions (North America, North Atlantic, Europe..) with dense air travel go up, then due to convection the Arctic will be affected too.

        2. Temperatures in the Arctic are somewhat unstable by nature. The thing is, as long as the water is not frozen temperatures remain “sticky” around zero degree Celsius. Only once the sea is frozen, temperatures turn loose and it will get pretty cold. Effectively the icing serves as a feedback on average temperatures. And although I did not pay much attention to it, I does not surprise that a region a variable icing (80-82.5N) shows the strongest warming.

        • Bindidon says:

          Leitwolf

          I didn’t see your reply a few minutes ago when posting.

          I fully agree in turn with your remarks.

          And of course: we must consider the relative influence of the regions according to their real surface on the spheroid.

    • Bindidon says:

      Leitwolf (cntnd)

      As an addendum to my comment above, I have to put my opinion into the correct perspective when comparing the Arctic and the NH.

      I just saw in a file that the area from 60N to 90N on the sphere is no more than 15 % (!) of that between 0N and 60N…

  27. m d mill says:

    test

  28. ren says:

    The distribution of ozone over the polar circle in winter during periods of low magnetic activity of the Sun is highly asymmetrical and leads to SSW.
    Asymmetry of ozone distribution is visible throughout the stratosphere.
    https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_z05_nh_f00.png
    https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_t05_nh_f00.png
    https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/05mb9065.png

  29. ren says:

    The Czech Republic reported major disruptions caused by snow. A tree that fell on a road north of Prague hit a car, killing the driver.

    The major D8 highway that leads to Germany was blocked near the northern Czech city of Usti and Labem, causing several hours of delay.

    A bus with 12 passengers overturned in the northwest of the Czech Republic, injuring three people. Some 16,500 households were without electricity for some time.

    In Bosnia, heavy snow and storms caused several trucks to overturn, blocking traffic on different roads. Ski centers around the capital, Sarajevo, have been closed as high winds forced the closure of ski-lifts and cable cars running to the mountain tops.

    Many drivers complained that road services in Bosnia have again not reacted well to the heavy snow, despite the fact that country is well known for its harsh winters.
    https://apnews.com/4eba487561f52e5f963a354537d14b23

    • Bindidon says:

      And… how many children died today in Poland because of the carelessness of car and truck drivers, ren?

      Some stat?

  30. ren says:

    A weather battle zone will continue to take place as winter fights back in the northeastern United States with areas of flooding rain, dangerous ice and a blanket of heavy snow through Friday.

    The multifaceted and two-part storm will continue to affect the region just days after springlike warmth surged in. It is the same storm system responsible for heavy snow over the southern Plains on Wednesday and ongoing heavy rain and severe weather in the South during Thursday.
    https://www.accuweather.com/en/winter-weather/northeast-is-next-up-for-barrage-of-precipitation-as-storm-barrels-across-nation/674895

  31. Rob Mitchell says:

    Bindidon, I am not claiming cooling at all. I do make the claim that climate warms and cools over multi-decadal time periods. And that the warming and cooling trends do not occur with a perfect sine-wave regularity. I also claim that you global warming zealots are exaggerating the effect of CO2, and you are extrapolating the latest multi-decadal warming trend well into the future. All of you are making the classic correlation is causation mistake.

    The fossil fuel age will only be a mere, insignificant blip on the paleoclimate time scale. There is much to be grateful for when you consider our fossil fuel use. Can you imagine what would happen to our forests if we were still burning wood to heat our homes and cook our food?

    This whole human-caused global warming bandwagon is nothing more than a movement for Social Justice Warriors worldwide to subjugate others to their will. And they are using earth science as a tool to achieve their goal.

    However, there is data out there. And, there are honest climate scientists like Dr. Spencer who don’t immediately knee-jerk to the idea that the human contribution of CO2 is the primary driver of our climate system.

    • Bindidon says:

      Rob Mitchell

      I’ll reply in detail tomorrow.

    • bdgwx says:

      It’s more than just correlation is causation. We know the causative mechanism and in great detail.

      The pulse of CO2 is so massive that our ancestors a million years from now will see clear and decisive evidence of it in their paleoclimate records. In fact, it will stick out like a sore thumb even among the high pulse events in our past.

    • Elliott Bignell says:

      “All of you are making the classic correlation is causation mistake.”

      No, the causation was understood well before the predicted correlation turned up, and has been verified using an array of other methods. Direct measurement of the Earth’s radiation budget and observations of CO2-forced back-radiation are just a couple of the most incontestable thereof. It’s just you making the classic “correlation means everyone is making the classic correlation is causation mistake” mistake.

      “the idea that the human contribution of CO2 is the primary driver of our climate system.”

      Straw Man. Anthropogenic GHGs are the driver of the current warming. Palaeoclimate reconstructions largely confirm their effect as a FEEDBACK in which, for instance, orbital changes are the initial forcing.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      bdgwx, Elliott Bignell, please stop trolling.

    • Nate says:

      “The fossil fuel age will only be a mere, insignificant blip on the paleoclimate time scale.”

      Ok, and all of human civilization is also a blip.

      So what?

      The point is that all of human civilization has had relatively stable climate.

      Not anymore, humans have changed it in a significant way.

  32. Bindidon says:

    JP66 / Part 1

    No need for your school German/French talk here, I have enough of it at home.

    But conversely, I hope my poor school & job English will match your least requirements.

    Now back to your very, very interesting sentence I split for a more convenient reply:

    1. “If you can not see that Arctic Sea Ice is unchanged for 13 years then you are wearing the biggest blinders known to man.

    WOW! I’m impressed about your ability to detect how good my blinders are!

    Here is a chart showing you, for the 13-year period 2007-2019 (Jan 2020 added), the monthly Arctic sea ice anomalies wrt the mean of 1981-2010, for both extent and area:

    https://tinyurl.com/smc74v6

    The linear estimates for anomalies over 2007-2020, in Mkm2 / decade:
    – extent: -0.48 +- 0.11
    – area: -0.35 +- 0.12

    The estimates for anomalies over 1979-2020:
    – extent: -0.55 +- 0.02
    – area: -0.23 +- 0.02

    *
    You might be skeptical of anomalies! So let us show you the same sea ice data, this time in absolute form:

    https://tinyurl.com/uqv5f3x

    The linear estimates for absolute values over 2007-2020, in Mkm2 / decade:
    – extent: -0.81 +- 0.73 (statistically poor)
    – area: -0.66 +- 0.74 (statistically insignificant)

    The estimates for absolute values over 1979-2020:
    – extent: -0.57 +- 0.12
    – area: -0.25 +- 0.12

    As you can see,
    – despite higher rough estimate values, the trend lines for absolute values in the graph are more flat than those in the anomaly graph (this is due to the higher value range);
    – the standard errors for anomalies are much lower (due to the much smaller deviations when using anomalies because the annual cycles are removed. Roy Spencer is a good teacher).

    *
    I won’t reply using your desperado polemic, Mr JP66. But should you really think that Arctic sea ice was left unchanged since 2007… your problem, for sure!

  33. Bindidon says:

    JP66 / Part 2

    Let’s continue with the second part of your so amazingly competent sentence.

    2. “2019 full year cycle was EXACTLY the same as 2007 AND the current year is starting out higher than both of those.

    Oh! Interesting. By accident, I have all SIDADS north/south daily data as well.

    Here is a chart showing, for 2007, 2012 (added), 2019 and 2020, the absolute Arctic sea ice extent data (area is here unfortunately absent):

    https://tinyurl.com/qra5334

    Looking at it I would say: JP66 is more or less right.

    But a closer look at the data using departures from the usual 1981-2010 mean shows this:

    https://tinyurl.com/sq4t8wf

    Sorry, but imho 2007 and 2019 differ by a lot.

    At best, we could agree that 2020 will start pretty quickly! But … that’s why I added 2012 in the graph: we will see at the end of March at the earliest how 2020 really will behave.

    *
    3. Finally, you added a link to a WUWT article written some years ago by guest poster Javier. Did you really notice what he wrote:

    In fact, I can predict that the Arctic will gain between 9.3 and 9.7 million square kilometers from this past September to March 2018.

    I think that was the worst prediction I have ever read in my entire life (I am 70).

    Today, Javier concentrates on telling us that since 2007, the Arctic sea ice extent melting is stable.

    Here is a comparison of extent plus area data for March vs. September since 1979, now till 2019 of course:

    https://tinyurl.com/svevz5f

    The estimates for the period 2007-2019 are as follows, in Mkm2 / decade:

    – March: -1.12 +- 0.47
    – September: -0.01 +- 0.65

    As you can see, the September’s rough estimate looks correct, but due to the tremendous standard error, it is – statistically – absolutely insignificant.

    *
    Sie haben Recht, JP66! Man muss immer “alles richtig” machen.

    Viele Gruesse aus Deutschland
    J.-P. D.

    • JP66 says:

      Vielen Dank JPD 🙂

      However, I must point out 3 simple aspects of your data and analysis that I think are mistaken and/or not relevant.

      1) Everyone knows the last decade had less Arctic Ice than the 1981-2010 average. That’s wasn’t the point. The point was that the decade to decade downward trend is dead: https://climategrog.wordpress.com/category/periodic-analysis/

      2) The sea ice minima vary both in amount and time. You can not use least squares regression on data that varies in both the X and Y axis. Doing so gives a false trend. This is taught in statistics 101 and is arguably the most frequent and most damaging mistake in Climate Science as it directly impacts most estimates of CO2 forcing:

      Lindzen & Choi 2011

      “[Our] new method does moderately well in distinguishing positive from negative feedbacks and in quantifying negative feedbacks. In contrast, we show that simple regression methods used by several existing papers generally exaggerate positive feedbacks and even show positive feedbacks when actual feedbacks are negative.

      … but we see clearly that the simple regression always under-estimates negative feedbacks and exaggerates positive feedbacks.”

      2) You didn’t take my bet? Are you not confident that sea ice minimums will continue lower because I am confident the opposite is true that September minimums have turned and will continue to increase for some time. As such, I will go one further now and bet $100 to charity that not only will September 2020 have a higher minimum than 2007 there will be no minimum between now and 2025 that is lower than 2007.

      Any AGW enthusiasts interested in taking that bet and putting the money in escrow?

      Thanks for your ever informative and entertaining additions to the discussion. I hope to be here in 2025 to discuss the situation again.

      All the Best from NY

      JP66

      • Bindidon says:

        JP66

        I can’t reply here directly, the blog’s scanner causes problems again.

        Here is my answer:

        https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PT81PniBRFYxhgICOtqBgqtUJ71LJeU7/view

        Regards
        J.-P. D.

      • Arless McGee says:

        JP66,

        Not an “AGW enthusiast” here as imho there’s not a whole lot to be enthusiastic about AGW so am not sure that I qualify yet there are still some questions about the bet itself.

        First, wasn’t sure as are there two bets going on here?
        A) being that Sept 2020 will have a higher minimum than 2007 and
        B) that there will be no minimum lower than 2007 between now and 2025?

        Also, does the bet end 1 Jan 2025 or is all of 2025 included?

        Just wondering,

        Atb from NC

    • barry says:

      JP66,

      “The sea ice minima vary both in amount and time. You can not use least squares regression on data that varies in both the X and Y axis.”

      The sea ice daily minima vary in time, but September is always the monthly average with the least sea ice cover. It’s perfectly reasonable to regress by month.

      If you are placing your eggs in the daily minima basket to claim a slow down of decline, I would like to make a bet with you on precisely that metric, not the September monthly data.

      I bet you $100 that, excepting 2012, the daily minimum coverage set in 2007 is beaten by 2025.

      If you are willing to go up to $1000 I’m good for it. But $100 is fine if you want.

  34. juan says:

    Hello
    from Valencia, Spain,
    working in remote sensing of cirrus clouds,

    how is it possible that satellite temperatures data from the lower troposfere are not considered by the IPCC?

    Is this possible?

    bets wishes

    great blog,

    keep going!

    Juan

    • Midas says:

      Because the IPCC are interested in temperature evolution at the surface. And how would they determine which (if either) of the two main satellite data sets is correct? Mr. Spencer has already admitted that the UAH temperature for a particular region (such as the USA) is not necessarily consistent with actual surface temperatures in that region.

    • barry says:

      “how is it possible that satellite temperatures data from the lower troposfere are not considered by the IPCC?”

      They ARE!

      You know how to use a search engine, right?

      Google ‘IPCC reports’

      Look in Chapter 2 of the 2001 3rd Assessment Report. Search under ‘satellite’.

      Do the same for the next 2 assessments reports in chapters to do with observations of temperature.

      And make sure you check stuff better in your work than you did for this silly question.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      Midas, barry, please stop trolling.

  35. Rob Mitchell says:

    Hey bdgwx,

    “The pulse of CO2 is so massive that our ancestors a million years from now will see clear and decisive evidence of it in their paleoclimate records.”

    Haven’t you heard Dr. Spencer make public comments about the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere? He said the remarkable thing about CO2 is how little of it there is in the atmosphere. Even though it is a molecule that is essential for life on our planet.

    This so-called “massive pulse” of CO2 is a massive overstatement.

    And Bindidon, this is from the National Snow and Ice Data Center:

    “Within the overall decline, it is notable that the most recent 13 years, from 2007 to 2019, have shown very little decline.”

    From 1979-2019, the NH sea ice extent has fallen at the linear rate of 82,400 km^2/yr. However, from 2007-2019, the sea ice decline has slowed to a crawl at 1200 km^2/yr. It looks like to me the Arctic sea ice decline is bottoming out.

    • Elliott Bignell says:

      You make no effort to refute the assertion that it will leave clear evidence. Why not?

    • Elliott Bignell says:

      “Even though it is a molecule that is essential for life on our planet.”

      This seems to support the contention that it should have a fertilising effect. Are you denying that a fertilising effect would show up in palaeoclimate records a million years hence, despite the fact that plant growth and shell generation in molluscs both contribute to palaeoclimate proxies? If so, is this because you deny CO2 fertilisation outright, or because you believe its magnitude to be to negligible to leave a record?

    • bobdroege says:

      If you look at PIOMAS, for volume, you see a triple bottom, so if it was the stock market I would say buy, cause it’s tested the bottom and can only go up.

      https://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2019/12/piomas-december-2019.html#more

      But it’s not the stock market and the ice continues to thin, even as the extent seems to be stable.

      2019 was still the second lowest in average extent for the year so both sides can continue to cherry pick which data supports their case.

      Me, I don’t see any recovery.

      • Bindidon says:

        bobdroege

        “Me, I don’t see any recovery.”

        I don’t either, regardless which series I observed.

        My only problem with the PIOMAS stuff has been, as long as the Danish DMI published its own thickness data:

        https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-znQ31OLmNTPJ0oGHxIJjFmIzW70U-p5/view

        Estimates for Jan 2003- Jun 2019, in Mkm3 / decade

        PIOMAS: -3.1 +- 0.05
        DMI: -1.9 +- 0.17

        Hmmmh. Ho is right here? asks the old layman.

        Unfortunately, DMI’s data seems to be accessible by scientists working in institutions only. And… the data is no longer ASCII, all NetCDF.

  36. Bindidon says:

    Mitchell

    For the nth time in sequence, you write about text and data you pretend to have obtained from the National Snow and Ice Data Center:

    Within the overall decline, it is notable that the most recent 13 years, from 2007 to 2019, have shown very little decline.

    From 1979-2019, the NH sea ice extent has fallen at the linear rate of 82,400 km^2/yr . However, from 2007-2019, the sea ice decline has slowed to a crawl at 1200 km^2/yr . It looks like to me the Arctic sea ice decline is bottoming out.

    *
    You should really publish right now a link to to all that, so everybody here can get convinced that it is a real, official information, and not some faked info of your own or coming from a ‘skeptic’ site.

  37. Midas says:

    Something interesting which seems somehow similar Simpson’s paradox:
    UAH trend from Dec 1978 to Dec 1999 … +0.150
    UAH trend from Jan 2000 to Jan 2020 … +0.153
    UAH trend from Dec 1978 to Jan 2020 … +0.133
    Could someone give me a mathematical feel for how the overall trend can be less than the trend in each of two partitions.

      • Midas says:

        I already knew from my example that it can happen, so I’m afraid that graph tells me nothing new. I am hoping to understand in terms of least squares how this can happen mathematically. And I didn’t claim it to be a paradox – I was noting the similarity to “Simpson’s paradox” whose name I didn’t choose.

    • Scott R says:

      Midas,

      You started and ended the first data set on la nina events.

      You started the 2nd one on la nina, and ended on unofficial el nino.

      For the overall you started on a la nina and ended on unofficial el nino.

      Overall you are warm biased with your data selections. Perhaps the problem is that the data is not linear, so data selection matters. Try adding a SIN function to your linear trend. Period 3.6 years, amplitude 0.6 deg c and see if that is a better data match.

    • Bindidon says:

      Midas

      I’m afraid I don’t really understand your problem.

      If I well remember, OLS builds the trend line such that the sum of all squared distances (from each considered point to the trend line) is minimal.

      • barry says:

        Yes, that’s it, Bindidon.

        If we did not square the distances, we could find any number of linear trends that all have zero sum of distance between all data points and the straight line.

        Squaring gets rid of the negative signs in anomalies, leaving only one mean trend for “ordinary least squares regression” that has the smallest possible sum of (squared) distances between all the data points and the trend line.

      • Midas says:

        Yes, that’s the maths of it. I’m asking what happens in this calculation which allows this effect to happen. It seems you’re not the one who can answer my question.

      • barry says:

        “This effect”?

        You mean that two linear trends within a series can be different from the overall series? Or that the two smaller segments each has a higher trend than overall?

        If the latter, the fact that there is a step jump (downwards) between the first line segment and the other indicates that either one or both of the trends are higher than the long term trend.

        There’s no way to work with the two independent time series mathematically to discover the trend overall. There’s no maths to explain it – it’s simply a product of lienear regression on 2 different data sets. The random nature of the data is bound to display different trends whenever you change start and end points.

        It’s difficult to understand what you want to know – do you want to see the math?

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinary_least_squares

        • Midas says:

          I KNOW the maths.
          This is like me asking people to explain what is happening in Simpson’s paradox, and being told how to compute averages.

        • barry says:

          Simpson’s paradox:

          “Simpson’s paradox (or Simpson’s reversal, YuleSimpson effect, amalgamation paradox, or reversal paradox)[1] is a phenomenon in probability and statistics, in which a trend appears in several different groups of data but disappears or reverses when these groups are combined.

          This result is often encountered in social-science and medical-science statistics and is particularly problematic when frequency data is unduly given causal interpretations. The paradox can be resolved when causal relations are appropriately addressed in the statistical modeling. Simpson’s paradox has been used as an exemplar to illustrate to the non-specialist or public audience the kind of misleading results mis-applied statistics can generate.”

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox

          I have no idea how “Simpson’s paradox” applies to your query.

          I think you need to drill down to your query in ytour own mndm and not lean on some other idea that approximates it.

  38. Snape says:

    The first trend line was steepened by ENDING near the very strong 97/98 el nino. The second trend line was steepened by STARTING during the strong 1999 la nina.

    https://ggweather.com/enso/oni.htm

    In other words, the two trend lines do not connect. The second starts lower than the first.

    • Midas says:

      The start of the second trend line is only one month after the end of the first.

    • barry says:

      Why do you think that the end points should join up?

      Each segment has a higher trend than the whole – and this ‘step-jump’ between them indicates that they do not reflect the long term trend. That is a non-physical increase in temperature – thus, it is an artefact of the data processing.

      • Midas says:

        I don’t think either of us said that we believe that the end points should line up.

      • barry says:

        You seemed to be indicating surprise that they were apart despite being only one month apart.

        “…the two trend lines do not connect. The second starts lower than the first.”

        “The start of the second trend line is only one month after the end of the first.”

        (My emphasis)

        • Midas says:

          It was a mere statement of fact, no surprise. I was hoping someone could give me some mathematical insight on what is happening in the least squares process, but everyone is telling me what they want to tell me instead of what I asked.

        • barry says:

          I’m pretty confident that this is because of a lack of clarity on your part.

          The least squares process is easily explained, but the math is above high school level and out of my ken. What do you want to know, exactly. I’m sure I’m not the only one having trouble working that out.

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          Des, you could always try not being relentlessly unpleasant to absolutely everyone.

          • Midas says:

            I don’t see anywhere in this thread where I have been unpleasant.
            As opposed to “slurp, slurp, gurgle”.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            You wouldn’t, Des.

          • Midas says:

            And neither would you, given that you refused to address by second sentence.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            OK, Des.

          • Midas says:

            So why don’t YOU try not being relentlessly unpleasant to absolutely everyone?

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            I’m not. Just to Svante, David App.ell, MikeR, bobdroege, Norman, and perhaps a couple of others, in the time I’ve been commenting here – and they all have reasons they deserve it. David’s banned now anyway (much to the improvement of this site).

            Now Des, why don’t you try not being relentlessly unpleasant to absolutely everyone.

          • Svante says:

            Thank’s for putting me in that group but flattery will get you nowhere.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            Here come the tricks…

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          Huh? A group of extremely unpleasant people?

          • Svante says:

            Yeah,they don’t suffer fools gladly.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            Why not try arguing from a different perspective, for a few months, just as a critical thinking exercise.

            See how you find talking to these people, and how you would describe them, after that.

          • Svante says:

            Good idea, I’ve been thinking I should do that.
            I have disagreed with David, he’s a bit too quick sometimes.
            He’s a lot more knowledgeable than us though.
            MikeR is brilliant, bobdroege is great and Norman is rock solid on physics. I’m more alarmist than them, so that could be something to discuss.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            No, I mean try arguing with various people here against the GHE, for a few months.

          • Svante says:

            Of course people get annoyed if you argue that the Earth is flat,
            or that the GHE violates the 2LOT.
            It’s plain stupidity.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            There’s no way someone like you would have the strength of character to endure all the cyber-bullying, I suppose.

            Imagine, being relentlessly bullied for being right about something so trivially obvious as “there’s no GHE”.

          • Nate says:

            Imagine, being relentlessly bullied for being right about something so trivially obvious as ‘the Earth is Flat’.

            Yep, most likely thats just how Flat Earthers feel.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            “Of course people get annoyed if you argue that the Earth is flat…”

            Yes, believing in the GHE is akin to believing in Flat Earth Theory, quite directly. Thanks for reminding me, Svante:

            https://climateofsophistry.com/2020/02/10/earths-thermodynamic-energy-budget/

          • Svante says:

            Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            “Imagine, being relentlessly bullied …”

            I thought you were a troll. I’ll treat you with more respect if you have a better answer to why you keep coming back with the same points over and over.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            …and I will stop asking people to stop trolling if they stop coming up with the same points over and over.

          • Svante says:

            Those infantile PSTs do not help your case.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            …but you acknowledge that there are a team of people here who repeat the exact same points month after month? What else should I say to them?

          • Svante says:

            Try physical formulas and calculations instead of hand waving.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            I leave the hand-waving to you guys.

          • Svante says:

            Something like this I mean:
            ε * σ * (Tb^4 – Tg^4) * A = 200 W

            You can try it with Tb = 244 K and Tg = 244 K.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            Indeed you can.

          • Nate says:

            Dont bother DREMT with simple physics and math — it doesnt apply in his world.

            Magic, that does apply.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            #2

            Indeed you can, Svante.

          • Svante says:

            Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            “Indeed you can.”

            OK, lets try:
            200 = ε * σ * (244^4 – 244^4) * A =
            ε * σ * 0 * A = 0

            200 W = 0 W

            Equal sign means that both sides are the same.
            Zero is not the same as 200, that means that the solution is invalid.
            It looks like you need a temperature difference to make the result greater than zero.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            That is not how you use the RHTE…as you already know, Svante.

          • Svante says:

            1) How do you calculate the heat transfer between the blue and green plates then?

            2) We agree that the laws of physics apply between the plates, right?

            3) You realize that the heat (net energy) flow is the same at:
            – The blue surface.
            – The green surface.
            – Between the surfaces.

            4) Equations, math and numbers please.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            OK, I will show you again, no problem:

            For the normal “3-plate” problem, with emissivity and view factors equal to one, the heat flow equation is simply:

            Q = σ (Tb^4 Tg^4)

            We know at equilibrium, Q should be zero (as temperatures are not fixed, only the electrical input of 400 W to the central blue plate) so rearrange the equation:

            0 = Tb^4 Tg^4

            Tb = Tg

            and this applies between each of the two surrounding green plates and the blue.

            The 400 W input means that we know the blue plate is emitting 200 W/m^2 (assuming its 1m^2 per side). Then, using the Stefan-Boltzmann Law:

            E = σT^4

            Tb = (200/σ)^0.25

            Tb = 244 K

            So with Tb = Tg, at 244 K244 K244 K, you have 400 W coming in to the system via the electrical supply to the blue plate, and 400 W going out (200 W from each of the two green plates); so the system is in balance.

          • Svante says:

            You have a contradiction there.

            zero out of the blue plate here:

            0 = Tb^4 – Tg^4

            And 2×200 W here:

            The 400 W input means that we know the blue plate is emitting 200 W/m^2 …

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            You don’t use the RHTE on inputs and outputs from individual plates. It is for inbetween the plates.

          • Svante says:

            There ain’t no law that says that.
            The laws of physics apply everywhere in the universe.
            Even between a blue and a green plate.

            How can you have a different flow between the plates than you have at the surfaces?
            The flow goes from one plate to another, right?
            Formulas please!

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            Do you understand this:

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_equilibrium

            “Two physical systems are in thermal equilibrium if there is no net flow of thermal energy between them when they are connected by a path permeable to heat”

            ?

            There is a path permeable to heat between the plates, right? And, no net flow of thermal energy between them when they are at 244 K…244 K…244 K…right?

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            You also can’t include the so-called “temperature of space”, 3 K, into your considerations, since a vacuum doesn’t have a temperature, and the CMBR is too insignificant to include. You just consider the (lack of) net flow of thermal energy between the plates. The RHTE already includes the SB terms for the green plates, so the fact that they are emitting to space according to their temperature and emissivity is already taken into account in the “(lack of) net flow of thermal energy between the plates” computed by the RHTE.

          • Svante says:

            Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            Two physical systems are in thermal equilibrium if there is no net flow of thermal energy between them when they are connected by a path permeable to heat

            Yes, but you have a net flow of thermal energy from green to space.
            That same amount of thermal energy has to flow from blue to green, right?

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            You ignored my previous comment.

          • Svante says:

            I agree the 3 K is a non issue.
            Eli had it a 0 K, but it doesn’t matter.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            OK then.

          • Svante says:

            Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            Two physical systems are in thermal equilibrium if there is no net flow of thermal energy between them when they are connected by a path permeable to heat

            Yes, but you have a net flow of thermal energy from green to space.
            That same amount of thermal energy has to flow from blue to green, right?

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            “Yes, but you have a net flow of thermal energy from green to space.”

            Space = the absence of a “physical system”.

          • Svante says:

            Call it what you like.

            You are losing 400 W of thermal energy in that direction.
            That same amount of thermal energy has to flow from blue to green, right?

          • Svante says:

            You have a thermal energy flow from green to space.
            You have no thermal energy flow from blue to green.
            Green is losing thermal energy and will cool down.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            Space is not a physical system, Svante. Read the equilibrium definition again, and my associated comments, until you understand them.

            You can go into a loop on some semantic issue all you like, but there is nothing more to say. This issue is resolved.

          • Svante says:

            Let me summarize your argument.

            1) You calculated a loss of 2×200 W to space.
            2) You calculated 0 W between blue and green.
            3) But 2×200 W is still carried between blue and green because space is on the other side of green, and space can not be named “a physical system”.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            Here come the tricks…

          • Svante says:

            Never a straight answer.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            …see what I mean?

          • Nate says:

            He NOW seeemingly accepts the standard definition of equilibrium:

            “Two physical systems are in thermal equilibrium if there is no net flow of thermal energy between them when they are connected by a path permeable to heat”

            But he so badly wants to BE in equilibrium, so he applies perfect circular logic:

            “There is a path permeable to heat between the plates, right? And, NO NET FLOW of thermal ENERGY between them WHEN they are at 244 K…244 K…244 K…right?”

            IOW they are in equilibrium when we assume they are in equilibrium.

            However he hilariously forgets that he has repeatedly stated there IS energy flow of 400 W from the blue plates to space via the Green plates

            “The 400 W in from the electrical supply can only flow one way, and that is out via the green plates as they radiate 400 W to space ”

            which means NOT equilibrium.

            DREMT ties himself in knots whilst trying to stay in equilibrium.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            #2

            See what I mean?

          • Nate says:

            Yes we see that you are arguing with yourself, and neither of you have answers that work.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            #3

            See what I mean?

  39. Snape says:

    The paradox arises from imagining that the start of the second trend line is connected to the end of the first.

    • Midas says:

      You don’t seem to understand – I’m looking for someone to explain in MATHEMATICAL terms. What is happening in the least-squares calculation.

      • skeptikal says:

        People are trying to explain it to you but you’re just not listening. It’s not about what happens in least-squares…. it’s about the data in each part of the time series.

        Create a simple dataset…
        1 0.1
        2 0.2
        3 0.3

        4 0.1
        5 0.2
        6 0.3

        Now graph the first half of this series (first 3 values) and find the trend, then graph the second half and find the trend… then graph the entire series (all 6 values) and find the trend. Can you see now why each half can have a higher trend than the entire series?

  40. Scott R says:

    Bindidon,

    I like what you did there on that woodfortrees. Take it a step farther. Imagine for a moment that you take smaller and smaller samples for linear trends and you overlaid all of them to the same graph. What shape might the trendlines form? A SIN wave perhaps?

    • Bindidon says:

      Scott R

      “What shape might the trendlines form? A SIN wave perhaps?”

      I learned a lot from reading many Svalgaard papers.

      Especially to keep away from any cyclomania.

      What of course does not at all mean to ignore those having been detected, observed and evaluated by scientists like Milankovitch and many others.

      So feel free to do the game yourself.

    • Midas says:

      Why does the fact you get an oscillatory pattern have to mean it can be represented by a sine curve? If I gave you data generated by a random walk process, I’m sure you would manage to find harmonics and believe you have found a cause.

      • Elliott Bignell says:

        It might be worth interjecting that ANY cyclical pattern can be decomposed into or composed out of a series of harmonics of any other cyclical pattern. This is the basis of Fourier transforms and of profound utility in signal processing, image compression and a bunch of other engineering fields. So a sine wave will be a primary harmonic of one particular series resulting from the decomposition of any repeating series, yes.

        However, the point of trend analysis is precisely to filter out the seasonality to find the NON-periodic underlying rate of change. The sine curve on WoodForTrees is useful for illustrating the ways it is possible to make false inferences about trends from cyclical data, but its lessons don’t get through to the slurping Coolist zealots. They just say you set it up that way, and miss what you set it up to illustrate.

        • Yes, and in fact wavelet decomposition is a related technique used for reducing noise, especially in image processing. (If you’re into photography I strongly recommend trying wavelet tools for sharpening and denoising.)

          My point was that GIVEN that there are cyles, you will be able to find a sine wave in there somewhere. I was not endorsing the given but rather urging caution.

          Having said that, there clearly are periodic and aperiodic cycles in climate, and if one wants to be misled, these are a good place to look for comfort.

      • Nate says:

        Elliot, hooray for Fourier.

        Couple of points.

        a. You can do Fourier analysis on random noise to see it has a broad spectrum frequencies in it.

        b. Same goes for a perfect linear trend, just has more low frequencies in it.

        Dont be fooled that these two are actually periodic.

        ‘cyclomania’ a good descriptor.

  41. Bindidon says:

    Antarctica is an amazing corner, and so is the atmosphere above it.

    When you compare, using UAH6.0, the Globe and Antarctica

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iX2YqcItYWTul-BWJjVIKkbS2myElWBR/view

    you think ‘Huuuh! A little restless there!’

    But then you compare, above Antarctica, the LT layer with the LS above it

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/14iYG0aZujSl9zy7FBg2lCw_Yw2WPsABZ/view

    and you suddenly see that the lower stratosphere is even a bit more restless…

    Btw, on the right you see the most recent ‘sudden stratospheric warming’ which happened last September. Some grid cells there showed about 25 C above mean.

  42. Rob Mitchell says:

    Hey Bindidon, the data and statement came from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Just because you don’t like the statement does not mean it was made up. That was silly.

    http://nsi.org/arcticseaicenews/2019/10/falling-up/

    Put the “d” and the “c” in after “nsi.”

    Scroll down to “September 2019 compared to previous years”

    There you can see the statement in the 2nd paragraph.

    “Within the overall decline, it is notable that the most recent 13 years, from 2007 to 2019, have shown very little decline (Figure 3b).”

    While at it, look at Figure 3b. Click on the high resolution image. There you can see the flattest 13-year trend. The last 13 years.

    Note they are using monthly data, the kind you like.

    Now do you see why the Arctic sea ice decline is slowing down?

    You global warming zealots were alarming us for several years that the Arctic would become ice free during the summertime minimum. Well, that did not work out so well, so now you are using averages and volume to bolster the argument that the NH ice will melt away. But the bottom line is the summertime minimum. And that reached a multi-decadal minimum between 2007-2012.

    • barry says:

      Well, this is about September minimums, which you’ve not specified in all your comments. And you’ve left out the rest of the quote:

      “Within the overall decline, it is notable that the most recent 13 years, from 2007 to 2019, have shown very little decline (Figure 3b). Both 2007 and 2012 were extreme low extent years, and variability has been high in this period. However, an earlier 13 year period, 1999 to 2012, shows a rate of decline that is more than double the overall rate in the satellite record. This illustrates the challenge of extracting a quantitative rate of decline in a highly variable system like sea ice, and the benefits of looking at decadal, and not year-to-year variations.

      I recommend using TinyUrl to convert links into a form almost always usable here. This goes straight to the page.

      https://tinyurl.com/s9892uo

      It is no accident that there is a smaller trend when it begins with the 2nd lowest September anomaly on record.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      barry, please stop trolling.

  43. Eben says:

    In case you missed it , Green piece founder Patrick Moore
    presentation at Freedom Talk
    https://youtu.be/GXBBNcAvCsU

    • barry says:

      Yeah, he’s the guy that said 16 year-old Greta Thunberg is an evil puppet with a mental disorder. Not all at once, though. He spread these compliments out.

    • Midas says:

      He’s also the one who claimed that Monsanto weed killer was safe enough to drink, but refused the offer of drinking it himself.

    • Rob Mitchell says:

      I watched it. Very comprehensive and sane discussion about climate.

    • Nate says:

      Is it science from someone who does climate science? Or political advocacy by someone with an agenda?

      If the latter, then it deserves no attention.

      • Rob Mitchell says:

        Climate science. The kind you don’t like Nate.

      • barry says:

        I like climate science from Moore in the same way and for the same reason I like to get a diagnosis on a lump in my arm from a dentist.

      • Nate says:

        Yes, among many other distortions in his talk: he decides a 1 C rise in global temperature is insignificant by comparing it to biggest temperature differences he could find on Earth-between S. Pole and Sahara in July.

        Which is of course a pointless comparison.

        He should compare to the 5 C change in global temperature that caused NY city to be covered by a km thick layer of ice.

        His talk is clearly intended as propaganda not science.

      • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

        barry, please stop trolling.

  44. ren says:

    In a few days, the cold air will reach southern California.
    https://pics.tinypic.pl/i/00997/kyna5aarhayi.png

  45. Rob Mitchell says:

    OK, trying the TinyURL.

    https://tinyurl.com/ndhsnbu

    • Rob Mitchell says:

      OK, looks like it worked. I had a little trouble at first. OK, see the 1981-2010 median ice edge compared to the actual 07 FEB 2020 NH sea ice extent? Looks like a pretty tight fit. Is this anything to get all agitated about concerning the melting Arctic ice? Do we need a Green New Deal to correct this “problem?”

    • barry says:

      September 2007 is the 2nd lowest month of sea ice in the satellite record, beaten only by 2012. But the absolute minimum coverage in 2007 (September 18) was beaten in 2019 on September 19.

      Winter sea has declined much less than Summer sea ice in the Arctic, so you will see days near or even higher than the average for that given day, but the overall trend is down.

      You’re making the classic mistake of confusing short-term phenomena (weather) for long-term (climate).

      Also, the extent graph you linked to is sea ice that covers at least 15% of the water area. Sea ice can spread out over more area or it can be compacted, just by the behaviour of the wind, and will produce a different extent measurement even if the total sea ice area is exactly the same.

    • Nate says:

      Only paying attention to September in the sea ice record is like only looking at July in the Temp record.

      The September minima depends on vagaries of the weather in late August, the temperature and wind patterns that can spread or bunch up the ice.

      Makes more sense to average over seasons.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      barry, please stop trolling.

    • Nate says:

      Barry’s long gone from this thread DREMT. Just stop pointless posting.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      #2

      barry, please stop trolling.

    • Nate says:

      JSPP, DREMT.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      #3

      barry, please stop trolling.

  46. Eben says:

    There is nothing going on with sea ice its exactly normal
    https://sunshinehours.net/tag/global-sea-ice/

  47. Snape says:

    Whoops, wrong month. Here is February:

    https://tinyurl.com/r9wdtww

  48. Bindidon says:

    Mitchell

    It was a bit late for a reply yesterday night at 3 AM local time, and I have so much to do at home, too much in fact to keep busy with such ridiculous and arrogant blah blah.

    barry gave an excellent answer anyway; nonetheless, I’d like to add a few lines.

    *
    https://tinyurl.com/uujujqk

    Oh dear… OMG.

    Are you really so unexperienced, so ignorant?

    You remind me all these dumb people trumpeting all the time about ‘The Globe is cooling since 2016’, with no other proof than

    http://woodfortrees.org/graph/uah6/plot/uah6/from:2016/trend

    Do you see the thin green trend line, Mitchell?

    It is of exactly the same vein as what the National Snow and Ice Data Center so cluelessly published on its own page, as an invitation for stupid skeptics to drive their nonsense away all over the Internet.

    Yes, Mitchell, the Arctic sea ice melting trend INDEED is near zero for the period 2007-2019! That’s TRUE!

    More exactly, it is:
    -0.04 +- 0.36 Mkm2 / decade for the extent, and
    -0.01 +- 0.65 Mkm2 / decade for the area.

    { Let us silently ignore how insignificant these trends are statistically. }

    Absolutely flat. Yeeepeee! Sea ice melting stopped!

    Says the ‚No warming‘ zealot (don‘t wonder that I use the same pejorative name calling as you do all the time).

    But… a sort of the September extents for 2007-2019 tells us that nevertheless, 2019 was third lowest, just above 2007 and 2012… possibly not quite the place where you‘d have expected it.

    2009 9 5.26
    2014 9 5.22
    2013 9 5.21
    2010 9 4.87
    2017 9 4.80
    2018 9 4.71
    2008 9 4.69
    2015 9 4.62
    2011 9 4.56
    2016 9 4.51
    2019 9 4.32
    2007 9 4.27
    2012 9 3.57

    And moreover, when we build the yearly extent averages, we obtain this:

    2008 10.990
    2009 10.956
    2013 10.919
    2014 10.813
    2010 10.734
    2015 10.589
    2011 10.506
    2007 10.498
    2012 10.420
    2017 10.395
    2018 10.350
    2019 10.211
    2016 10.162

    What? Impossible! Why did these stoopid years 2007 and 2012 leave the bottom??

    This, Mitchell, is simply due to the fact that, while you only consider the September trend, you ignore or discard the March trend, which is

    -0.64 +- 0.25 Mkm2 / decade for the extent, and
    -1.12 +- 0.37 Mkm2 / decade for the area.

    Yeah. So are the numbers.

    *
    Don‘t misunderstand this comment, Mitchell!

    It is NOT about sea ice extent decline, let alone about warming.
    It is about YOUR desperate ignorance of facts.

    • Rob Mitchell says:

      Bindidon,
      After 40 years of aviation/marine operational weather forecasting, the issue isn’t my inexperience, the issue is your blind devotion to the new age religion known as human-caused global warming.

      Since the 2012 September sea ice extent minimum in the Arctic, the subsequent September minimums have closed higher 6 years in a row. Question for you bindyman – how many years in a row of September minimums closing higher than the 2012 minimum will it take before you come to the realization that maybe the Arctic ice is NOT melting away to oblivion like you think it is? How many years? 10? 15? 20?

      I would not be surprised that after 20 years in a row, the likes of you will still be running around like chickens with your heads cut off yelling, “the ice is melting, the ice is melting, and we are all going to drown!”

      • Rob Mitchell says:

        Correction – make that 7 years in a row after the 2012 September minimum.

      • bdgwx says:

        Well since even RCP8.5 does not predict sea ice will decline to oblivion (0e6 km^2) for at least 100 years I will go with well past 2100. Or did you actually mean ice-free (1e6 km^2) or the 2012 minimum (3.4e6 km^2)? For RCP8.5 I’ll go with 2040 for 3e6 and 2050 for 1e6. For RCP4.5 I’ll go with 2050 for 3e6 and 2090 for 1e6. Which RCP do you think is most likely?

        • Rob Mitchell says:

          bdgwx,

          We are still in the Pleistocene Ice Age are we not? After all, that age has been going on for 21/2 million years. You think this brief little Holocene will stop the Pleistocene? I seriously doubt it. Especially when you consider the previous Interglacial Periods were warmer than the current Holocene.

          As long as we are in the Pleistocene Ice Age, the polar ice will not melt away to oblivion like you Green New Dealers think.

          • bdgwx says:

            We are still in the Pleistocene Ice Age are we not?

            Yes.

            You think this brief little Holocene will stop the Pleistocene?

            I’m not sure I understand the question. I do think the anthroprocene may delay the next glaciation.

            As long as we are in the Pleistocene Ice Age, the polar ice will not melt away to oblivion like you Green New Dealers think.

            I think you might have me confused with someone else. I don’t think polar ice (meaning sea ice and land ice both) will melt away to oblivion anytime soon. And assuming that belief is a requirement to be one of these “Green New Dealers” then I can confidently say I’m not among them.

    • barry says:

      Hey Rob,

      Why are you focussing on September sea ice to say that sea ice decline has stalled since 2007?

      2019 Arctic sea ice extent was lower than 2007 for the months of January, April, May, June, July, August, October and November.

      So let’s try annual sea ice figures and see how they measure up.

      Here is the plot of 2007 – 2019 annual Arctic sea ice.

      https://i.imgur.com/7qkFkBW.png

      For annual sea ice, the lowest year is 2016. Three years ago. As you can see there is a lot of up and down year to year, and also a general downward trend. 2019 is the second lowest.

      Do you understand that it would be a mistake to claim that Arctic sea ice is now starting a long term upward trend, based just on 3 years data?

      And if you get why that would be specious, the monthly values are more variable – the swings are larger – so 7 years is too short to make such a call based on the evolution of a single month.

      There’s another way to do this. I’ll plot Arctic sea ice trend from 1979 to 2007, and then 1979 to 2019. We’ll see if the long term trend is leveling out.

      https://tinyurl.com/rg49jfk

      Nope.

      But none of that is definitive. But even less certain is any claim of a stopping or reversal of trend. The current null hypothesis is that NH sea ice is declining, and there is nothing statistical to indicate that this trend is easing.

      • Rob Mitchell says:

        Well Barry, the National Snow and Ice Data Center has noticed the slow-down of the Arctic sea ice decline. I can’t help but notice how the human-caused global warming alarmists are all trying to extrapolate the Arctic ice down to zero.

        I think the late great Dr. William Gray was spot on with his assessment that the Arctic ice ebbs and flows with ocean currents over multiple decades of time.

      • barry says:

        N.S.I.D.C did not say there was a definite slowdown – you didn’t read the entry there properly. Here it is again.

        “Within the overall decline, it is notable that the most recent 13 years, from 2007 to 2019, have shown very little decline (Figure 3b). Both 2007 and 2012 were extreme low extent years, and variability has been high in this period. However, an earlier 13 year period, 1999 to 2012, shows a rate of decline that is more than double the overall rate in the satellite record. This illustrates the challenge of extracting a quantitative rate of decline in a highly variable system like sea ice, and the benefits of looking at decadal, and not year-to-year variations.”

        IOW, short term trends do not necessarily reflect the true underlying trend, and longer periods are better for “extracting a quantitative rate of decline.”

    • barry says:

      Added a trend line for fun.

      https://i.imgur.com/75l5wQA.png

      That’s an averagge loss of half a million square kilometers of annual Arctic sea ice cover over 13 years.

      But probably not statistically significant. The variability is too high to get a decent fix over that short time frame.

      It’s impossible to tell if the loss is acelerating or decelerating. from that short time frame.

      • Rob Mitchell says:

        And for fun, I extrapolated that trend line. It will take 247 years for the Arctic ice to melt away to oblivion. Question. Does anybody actually believe that?

        • bdgwx says:

          That was a graph of annual mean Arctic sea ice. The annual mean is different than the summer minimum. Remember, the summer minimum isn’t expected to drop below 1e6 until well after 2050 for the more likely RCP4.5 scenario. Under that scenario an annual mean of 0e6 will never happen. Even with RCP8.5 an annual mean of 0e6 would take hundreds of years. 250 years is the absolute quickest I can envision. The reason is because sea ice will tend to cling to the north tip of Greenland in the winter. I think you’re building up strawmen here. But I don’t think its intentional. It sounds like these arguments are a product of insufficient understanding regarding the behavior of Arctic sea ice, the different metrics used, and the predictions of those metrics.

        • barry says:

          Yep, that was annual averages, not Sept minima. If ever the Arctic sea ice were to melt away to nothing all year round, I would not be surprised if that took more than twice as long as projections for Summer sea ice (ice free = less that 1 million sq/km extent basin wide.) Indeed, it may never happen in Winter.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      Bindidon, bdgwx, barry, please stop trolling.

  49. Bindidon says:

    Ebens link to

    https://tinyurl.com/wgbtb92

    motivated me to build, for the daily sea ice extent climatology and absolute values for some years, the sum of Antarctic and Arctic, but in departure form (wrt the mean of 1981-2010, like for UAH) :

    https://tinyurl.com/vuct6ek

    We all see here that if the Alarmists and Warmistas were a bit more clever, they would complain about 2007 much more than about 2012!

    2007 namely is, of all years represented here, tho one with the lowest absolute an anomaly values.

  50. Bindidon says:

    Ebens link to

    https://tinyurl.com/wgbtb92

    motivated me to build, for the daily sea ice extent climatology and absolute values for some years, the sum of Antarctic and Arctic, but in departure form (wrt the mean of 1981-2010, like for UAH6.0 LT) :

    https://tinyurl.com/vuct6ek

    We all see here that if the Alarmists and Warmistas were a bit more clever, they would complain about 2007 much more than about 2012!

    2007 namely is, of all years represented here, tho one with the lowest absolute an anomaly values.

    • Bindidon says:

      Ha! Got it.

      I add:

      Now what considers the black line, I hope that it keeps it steep slope.

      Because while having nothing against moderate warming as we experience it in Germany, I have a LOT against warming in the Arctic.

      Basta ya.

    • barry says:

      Could be my eyes, but 2007 isn’t listed on your chart, Bin?

      • Bindidon says:

        barry

        No your eyes are pretty good OK, It was me getting a bit tired.
        I have an alternative graph in which 2007 is in…

      • Bindidon says:

        barry

        Now feel free to test your eyes again!
        But in the comment, I meant 2016.

        2007 certainly enjoys all ‘skeptic’s… though despite the sudden peak in December, the yearly avertage was lower than in 2012.

      • barry says:

        Ya, I thought it was 2016.

        Now I need to get motivated to raise a hue and cry about the sky falling on our heads.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      Bindidon, barry, please stop trolling.

  51. Midas says:

    NSW has gone from drought to floods. A little bit more rain and it will be Sydney’s wettest 3-day period in 22 years.

    • barry says:

      The Sydney rain has been unusually persistent and powerful. There’s a leak in my sunroom window – and I’m going to New Zealand for a month in 2 days. Fun with the real estate agent!

      • Svante says:

        Your comments are the best but you need to fix that leak first.
        The main dangers to a house:
        – Water from above.
        – Water from below.
        – Water from outside.
        – Water from inside.

      • Midas says:

        Today turned out to be the wettest day since 1992. Interestingly, that was on exactly the same date – February 9.

        But they both pale into insignificance compared to our wettest day back in 1986, a day I remember well as I aquaplaned my way home from uni. Twice as much rain fell that day as today. As it’s been pouring all day day, I can only assume the rain was falling twice as hard that day.

        I find it hard to fathom the world record for the most rainfall in 24 hours – 1825 mm. That is more than 10 times as much rain as fell in Sydney today.

  52. Bindidon says:

    Mitchell

    Again: this is not a comment about sea ice, let alone about warming.

    It is a comment about your ignorance, and also about your dishonesty.

    I have explained enough that you are here the one who is blind on one eye, because you not only deliberately restrict your view on the Arctic sea ice data for September (below the link to data for both extent AND 100% pack ice aka area):

    ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/north/monthly/data/N_09_extent_v3.0.csv

    but above all deliberately ignore the corresponding data for March:

    ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/north/monthly/data/N_03_extent_v3.0.csv

    If you would not be so fixated on your tendentious cherry-picking, you would evaluate BOTH series, and not only the one fitting to your narrative.

    And then you would discover that during 2007-2019,

    – while the September sea ice extent data indeed shows a flat trend of 0.01 Mkm² / decade,
    – the March sea ice extent data shows a trend of -0.56 Mkm2 / decade, what is exactly the same trend as for the complete years during 1979-2019.

    You are the prototype of the dishonest, disingenuous commentator. I think it is better to simply ignore what you write.

  53. Rob Mitchell says:

    Poor Bindyman, I guess global warming zealot hurt his feelings.

    Here is University of Bremen data going back to 1972.

    Arctic
    https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/data/amsr2/today/ice_minmax_n.png

    Antarctic
    https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/data/amsr2/today/ice_minmax_s.png

    You can see the multi-decadal trend downward for the Arctic. Not so much for the Antarctic. You can see the satellite era high on 2014. The ice edge was obviously pretty thin because it collapsed the following two years. I seriously doubt anybody can claim the almighty CO2 molecule did that to the Antarctic ice. Maybe the Bindi feller will try to make the case.

    Now for the Arctic. You can see the summertime minimum trending down significantly faster than the wintertime mins. However, the wintertime is when most of the warming is occurring. Check out the DMI Euro temps for the Arctic.

    http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

    Click on any of the years between 1958 and 2019. You can clearly see the summertime temps not budging over 274K. It will take a lot more the 274K to melt the Arctic ice in the summer. This is why the idea of the Arctic ice melting away is a big farce.

    • Midas says:

      Why do you people always wear blinkers. Allow your eyes to stray from the summer maximum just for a moment, and look at how temperatures have evolved during the majority of the year.

      And you DO understand that the Arctic doesn’t start at a latitude of 80 degrees, right? You have cherry picked 18% of the Arctic, and the coldest 18%.

    • So you don’t think that a constant amount of Summer melt combined with a relentless decline in the amount of Winter refreezing might have an effect?

      Interesting.

      • Rob Mitchell says:

        Relentless decline of winter refreezing Elliott Bignell? All of you silly human-caused global warming alarmists love to overstate things a bit don’t ya think? Here, have a look –

        https://tinyurl.com/ndhsnbu

        Does that look like to you the winter refreezing is in a “relentless” decline?

        Look at the Bering Sea. It has already caught up to the 1981-2010 median ice edge. The Chukchi Sea was way below normal last summer. And you global warming fanatics were making a big ‘ol frigging deal about it. Now the Chukchi Sea is frozen solid, and the Bering Sea ice extent is now “normal.”

        There is no “resistance is futile” issue with me. I simply laugh at you global warming zealots.

        Unfortunately for Dr. Spencer and Dr. Christy, the laughing stopped with them when some Green New Dealer types shot at their office.

        By the way Dr. Spencer, I don’t know if you are monitoring this, was anything resolved about that?

    • barry says:

      I emailed DMI about the Summertime temps, and they said that this part of the Arctic is still mostly icebound year round. Therefore, the temperature North of 80N is largely set by the temperature of the ice. You’ll notice that the temp is very close to zero degrees C – the freezing point of water (sea ice freezing point is a little different).

      What’s interesting is that for the rest of the year, there is a clear upward trend over the long term North of 80N (with the expected interannual variability).

      • Rob Mitchell says:

        That is the wintertime warming trend barry. But there is no summertime warming trend, when it would really count for melting away the Arctic ice.

        • Midas says:

          As I said, you have made that claim for the whole of the Arctic based on a cherry pick of the coldest 18% of the Arctic.

          The Arctic UAH data for September shows a trend of +0.23 degrees per decade, just under the Arctic trend for all months of +0.25 degrees for decade.

          But that is not the result you want, so you will decide that the satellite data is not appropriate for this purpose, despite clinging to it for dear life for global temperatures.

        • Latent heat of fusion, me old china.

        • barry says:

          Rob,

          “But there is no summertime warming trend, when it would really count for melting away the Arctic ice.”

          Here is a plot of Arctic Summers with a trend line included.

          https://i.imgur.com/VCQmMeC.png

          UAH cover the region 60N to 82.5N, so mostly the region NOT covered by DMI.

          The overall warming for that region from Summer 1978/79 to Summer 2018/19 is 1.09 C.

          Do you understand that the DMI temperature iis set ny the temperatyre of the ice, and that the region they measure (80N to 90N) is almost entirely icebound all year, including summer?

          That’s why the Summer temps there hover around the freezing point of salt water (-1.8C).

      • Nate says:

        Rob, to expand on Barry’s point. What is the temp of a pitcher of ice water? Turns out it will be very close to 0C. That is what happens in Arctic summer.

        But what happens to your pitcher of ice water on an extra warm sunny day? It maintains ~ 0C, but its ice melts faster. Just like the arctic.

    • Bindidon says:

      Mitchell

      “Poor Bindyman, I guess global warming zealot hurt his feelings.”

      No, Mitchell: it shows how poor-minded you are. No one with a brain under the skull uses such discrediting words.

      Btw: no need to teach me about Bremen data, Mitchell.

      – I live in Germany since over 50 years;
      – I make such graphs by my own.

      No need for showing DMI data: I did years ago already.

      What you need: the ability to correctly, accurately interpret Bremen or DMI data.

      From that you are light years away. This is probably due to the fact that you spend too much time with underestimating, discrediting and insulting others.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      Des, Elliott Bignell, Bindidon, barry, please stop trolling.

  54. Regarding the discussion of trend analysis, I would point out that a common approach is actually to discard “outlying” points caused by special circumstances. Arguably ENSO peaks constitute just such non-trend outliers and should not even be included in trend analysis, but at any rate they should not be cherry-picked to try and strangle a desired result out of the data.

    As far as the least-squares fitting method is concerned, I would note that even quite unspecialised software, such as spreadsheet software, can compute a fit deterministically. I actually studied the method a long time ago, but just use software these days. The idea of trend-analysis is to build a model that predicts that part of variation that is systematic, such that when subtracted from the data the remaining variation is “random”, which for purposes of climate physics means events coming from outside the climate system and/or chaotic behaviour. A volcanic eruption would be a good example.

    Linear regression, the simplest method, seeks to compute a trend line for which the sum of squares of the variation of the data away from the line is minimal. This basically means it goes through the y-middle of the data across its-range, as nearly as possible. if you have only two y-values 1 and 2, at one x-value, it can be appreciated that 1.5 is the middle AND the point of least-squares deviation: 2 *(0.5 ^ 2) = 0.5, whereas (0 ^ 2) + (1 ^ 2) = 1. You could prove this algebraically by solving for y’ where x’ is the set of y-middle candidates, and you would see that the curve reaches its minimum halfway between the two y-values.

    If all x-values had 2 y-values equidistant around a mid-point lying along a straight line, then it can quickly be seen that the straight line is itself the line with the least-square deltas. In real data, least-squares produces a line which minimises this one way of computing deltas in a way which fits well “by eye” for highly trended data, but says less and less about the distribution of data the less it is characterised by a linear trend. How much it says about “fit” is itself quantified by the “coefficient of determination”, which basically says how much of the variation is reduced by subtracting the trend.

    That’s as mathematical as I get these days, so for pity’s sake don’t ask about multiple regression.

    • Midas says:

      Of course the other way of removing “random” variability to expose the long-term trend is to use a low-pass filter, the moving average being an example. Mr Spencer’s minimal 13-month moving average is designed to keep as much variability as possible while paying lip service to the concept of trend-seeking. “We can’t let 1998 and 2016 disappear and let everyone see the climate trend.”

  55. ren says:

    Again a large increase in galactic radiation. There is a minimum of solar activity.
    https://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/monitor.gif

  56. Bindidon says:

    Yesterday night I had some dozens of looks at Arctic sea ice, by following yearly, monthly, daily data.

    I has a look at many many trends computed for single time units, and thought: what about moving this 2007-2019 window from 1979 till 2007, by the way creating something like a time series of consecutive trends.

    In each year, the trend for the sea ice period ‘year: year + 12’ is computed.

    I had done something similar for tide gauge sea level measurements, to show that their trend is not at all uniform over time, but on the contrary very slowly increases.

    The result for the Arctic sea ice extent, measured in March resp. September, looks like this (apos: no 2 sigmas, no error bars, too much work):

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rrxatHkMzNX8MfpwiLcgQ4U9olx1ex2V/view

    I am no statistician at all, and thus I don’t know wether or not this graph has any significance.

    But one thing I know: all these ‘skeptic’s (quotes needed here) will enjoy it, they will love it. It tells them exactly what they wanted to see, even if it might be no more than an artificial construct.

    I hear them telling: “You see? I knew it all the time, I’m sure I told it to you hundred times with different words”, etc etc.

    It would be interesting to know what a professional statistician means about it.

    Yeah, Mr Mitchell: don’t underestimate the warming zealots.

    They have a much closer look at data than you think, and above all… a much closer one than yours.

    • Rob Mitchell says:

      No comment on the “relentless decline” of the winter refreezing Bindyman? Instead you just go on an emotional rant about the shooting incident at the UAH office. And then you mention two other unrelated shooting incidents for God knows what. Maybe for obfuscation purposes.

      Dr. Spencer did say that, “Given that this was Earth Day weekend, with a March for Science passing right by our building on a Saturday afternoon, I think this was more than a coincidence.”

      Do you have any idea who was in that so-called march for “science?” I will tell you who. A bunch of hysterical Green New Dealers, that’s who. Since you are a kraut, you would not know that. But Americans like Dr. Spencer, Dr. Christy, and myself sure know.

      It is so easy for you to dismiss the shooting. It wasn’t your office that got shot at.

      • Midas says:

        What sort of effwit goes around using racial slurs.

        • Rob Mitchell says:

          Oh, you think kraut is as bad as the “n” word? In America, slang words for white people is permitted. Correct?

          What about redneck? Is that OK? Any better or worse than kraut?

          By the way, you can call me a redneck if you want. I’m an old Texas boy.

        • This one really is scum, isn’t he? I particularly like the way he tries to obfuscate by introducing an alleged shooting and then tries to bluster his way out when countered with far more credible and unarguable examples of the exact same.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            You clearly need back-up. Another four of you arguing against the one guy should do it.

          • Midas says:

            I see you miss the days when that situation was reversed, when you, Mike Flynn and co used to gang up on everyone.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            Don’t be silly, Des. It’s always been an “alarmist”-dominated skeptic blog here at Dr Spencer’s. Most of the regulars here are on your “team”.

          • Midas says:

            Absolutely untrue. The vast majority of people commenting fawn after Mr Spencer. It only evens up slightly when many of you guys vanish when the anomalies are high.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            Most of the regulars here are on your “team”, Des. Wakey wakey.

          • To be fair, a lot of the deniers haven’t run off. They got banned instead. Mr. Excavated Natural Fabric and mpainter spring to mind. If there’s one thing you can say about them it’s that they do not operate well as a team. Half the deniers here over the years loathe Dr. Roy as much as they do any other scientific rationalist just for recognising that the GHE is a real, physical phenomenon, although Roy is well-known as being cautious about accepting anything that smacks of alarm.

            It’s the same in the literature. The tiny rump of researchers that reject the consensus, where they haven’t already died out or given up, simply do not agree on any alternative mechanism.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            “To be fair, a lot of the deniers haven’t run off. They got banned instead.”

            Absolutely. This site has always been unmoderated, and hence full of people arguing against the GHE, since that is what people tend to want to discuss when there is no moderation. Gradually Dr Spencer’s iron boot stamped all that out with his wildly intolerant views on the subject, and hence we are left with a blog overrun by “alarmists”. Dr Spencer’s blog is now an “alarmist” echo chamber, hilariously, and that’s all his own fault. Oh well.

          • Eben says:

            I was surprised “Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team” wasn’t banned in the last troll purge, I thought he had it coming for a long time, must have slipped by luck

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            No GPE, no GHE.

            No worries.

          • Midas says:

            DREMT
            You will continue to delude yourself that they were banned for their opinion on climate change rather than their mode of expression.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            If people were banned for their mode of expression, you would have gone a long time ago.

          • Midas says:

            And if people were banned for EITHER their opinion on the greenhouse effect OR their mode of expression, YOU would have gone long ago.

          • Scipio says:

            roy keeps deniers who he finds
            useful.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            I think Dr Spencer knows what he’s doing, really. He knows there’s no GHE, but isn’t ready to go public with that yet. My explanations regarding the Green Plate Effect were simple and clear enough that anybody could understand, so he kept me here. Also, by banning others for their opinions on it he just makes it all the more interesting and appealing to real skeptics to start investigating the “no GHE” position properly. The “alarmist” echo chamber here was an unfortunate side-effect though, I must say.

            It’s a shame for some of the more “serious” skeptics on here (the ones who are desperate for credibility, etc) that they came down on the wrong side of the GPE issue previously. No easy way for them to walk it back now it’s been so obviously and completely refuted.

          • “He knows theres no GHE, but isnt ready to go public with that yet.”

            So you’re calling him a liar.

            I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            I didn’t…you just did, on my behalf (and wrongly). I wouldn’t do that, if I were you…

          • Nate says:

            “He knows there’s no GHE, but isn’t ready to go public with that yet.”

            DREMT thinks he knows what people are thinking even when they tell him, No, actually its the opposite.

            If reality doesnt fit his weird POV he just changes it.

          • E. Swanson says:

            DRsEMT wrote:

            I think Dr Spencer knows what he’s doing, really. He knows there’s no GHE, but isn’t ready to go public with that yet.

            I think Dr. Spencer understands the basic physics of the GHE, which is the same physics as that in his work with the MSU/AMSU instruments. He doesn’t reject the GHE, but has claimed that the resulting AGW won’t be as large as the models project.

            DRsEMT continued:

            My explanations regarding the Green Plate Effect were simple and clear enough that anybody could understand, so he kept me here.

            Your “explanations” used incorrect physics and were simply wrong, like those from G. Hughes and others in the denalist camp.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            Swanson, all wrong, begone.

          • E. Swanson says:

            DRsEMT, All Wrong?? Prove it. Begone?? NYET!

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            Historically, of course, Dr Spencer does not reject the GHE, as anyone following this website is well aware. Clearly I’m talking with my tongue firmly in my cheek on that front.

            For everything else, why don’t you “prove it”, if you think I’m wrong?

        • Bindidon says:

          Midas

          this word ‘kraut’ is not an expression of racism, and doesn’t bother me at all. The word ‘kraut’ was used during WWII by British soldiers to name German ones, like under ‘frog’ they meant French people, for obvious reasons. British soldiers were named ‘Tommies’.

          People using such wording today undoubtedly love to denigrate and insult others.

          Stupidity at its best…

          • Speaking as a European citizen, at least up until two weeks ago, I am particularly fond of the term “Inselaffe”. Whoever came up with it had clearly spent time on my island of origin.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            “this word ‘kraut’ is not an expression of racism, and doesn’t bother me at all.”

            Of course not. Just more Des-peration.

  57. Adelaida says:

    Thank you a lot for your honest work Bindidon!!
    Thank you everybody for every honest work!!
    And a million thanks to Dr. Spencer for your intense and patient work, also attending and reflecting on all the opinions expressed in the forum, go beyond political-economic trends, and discover with everyone what is really happening with the climate of our planet.

  58. Rob Mitchell says:

    Here is one of my favorites. The Polar Portal.

    http://polarportal.dk/en/groenlands-indlandsis/nbsp/viden-om-groenlands-indlandsis/

    In the discussion, you can tell there is a considerable amount of concern about the gigatons of ice melt from Greenland, and the affects from climate change. But there is one little paragraph that does not seem to get a lot of attention. It is the 4th one down.

    “In total the loss of mass from the ice sheet equals a 25 mm addition to global sea level since 1840.”

    The global sea level has risen a grand total of one inch since 1840 due to Greenland ice sheet melt and calving. Now, is that anything to get real agitated about?

    • Once you factor in Antarctic and alpine melt, thermal expansion and projected future reinforcement of all these, obviously yes. At least if you are living close to sea-level or dependent on food grown anywhere near sea-level.

      • Rob Mitchell says:

        EB, isn’t Greenland the recent focus of most of the human-caused global warming zealotry? I was simply pointing out there is not a whole lot there to get hysterical about.

        • And I in turn pointing out that if one decomposes an aggregate into enough sub-components then one can always find spurious grounds for dismissing the whole. Now would you please focus on the substantive matters rather than simply trying to fit the maximum rhetorical content into each post?

          • Scipio says:

            Rankings of the last 5 months of UAH LT temperatures were, where 1=lowest, 1,2,1,1,1(tied).

          • Midas says:

            Scipio
            What does that mean??
            You seem to be claiming that September, November & December 2019 and January 2020 were the coldest (“lowest”) September, November, December and January in the UAH record.

          • Yes, I am also a little in the dark as to the context and thrust of this ranking.

    • Scipio says:

      Rob said ‘The global sea level has risen a grand total of one inch since 1840 due to Greenland ice sheet melt and calving.’

      you can’t seriously believe that, right? it’s bonkers.

      and you can’t prove it with data.

      • Rob Mitchell says:

        Scipio, the Danish Meteorological Institute said that. It is from their Polar Portal link that you failed to open. When it comes to Greenland, I will side with the Danes. Not some global warming zealot in America.

        • Great to hear that, Rob. So let’s test that: “In 2002-2011, the ice sheet lost 215 Gt per year (0.6 mm annual sea level rise).”

          This corresponds to a rate amounting to another 25mm in 42 years, so the amount of sea-level rise from 2002 to 2044 will equal all of that from 1840 to 2019. This represents a clear acceleration in trend rate, amounting to a little under 2% growth per year, which in turn extrapolates to a total of roughly 200mm by the end of the century, and the complete loss of the sheet by about 2250. As the IPCC projects about 1m of rise by century’s end, including Antarctic melt and thermal expansion, the Danish summary seems to confirm or slightly exceed IPCC projections.

          So, do you side with the Danes and thereby endorse the IPCC? There are quite a few more isolated sentences in that article to go through, so get comfortable.

          • Rob Mitchell says:

            That is one huge assumption to make that Greenland will continue to shed 200+ gigatons of ice every year through the rest of this century.

          • Well, of course sooner or later it will have to stop. There won’t be any ice left at some point, after all. But no, no assumption at all. It follows from reading THE WHOLE ARTICLE, or the basis for IPCC projections, not just the sentence that stands out because it suits you. As barry shows just below.

            It would be more correct to say that expecting anything else requires the huge assumption that much of basic physics is wrong.

          • bdgwx says:

            Elliott, agreed. Considering that ice volume declines is an expectation based on physical law it would be a huge assumption to think otherwise.

    • barry says:

      What else do the Danes say?

      “In total the loss of mass from the ice sheet equals a 25 mm addition to global sea level since 1840.

      This development seems to have accelerated within the last decades. The largest ice loss rates since 1840 have occurred in the most recent decade. The mass loss in 2012 set a new record….

      The explanation for the increasing loss of mass is the rise in temperature.

      The average annual air-temperatures measured since 2005 are the highest since measurements started in the late 1800s. The summer air-temperature in the Arctic in the last two decades is higher than at any point in time in the last 2000 years…

      How will the ice sheet respond to the even larger increase in temperatures we should expect in the future? So far, the air temperature in the Arctic has risen by approximately 1.5°C. Climate models predict an increase of up to 5-10°C within this century.”

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      Elliott Bignell, Des, bdgwx, barry, please stop trolling.

  59. ren says:

    The cyclone that is approaching the east coast of Australia generates strong storms.
    http://pl.blitzortung.org/live_lightning_maps.php?map=20

  60. ren says:

    Valentine’s Day will be very cold in the east of North America.
    https://images.tinypic.pl/i/00997/c4lve55l88st.png

    • Midas says:

      I suspect Valentine’s Day is always cold for you, ren.

      • Randy Cornwell says:

        Well Midas, based upon your disparaging comments here on Dr. Spencer’s blog, one can also concluded that Valentine’s Day is extremely cold for you as well. But that’s just me, a casual observer. If I’m wrong, please dazzle us with your swooning abilities. Otherwise, stick to science, something you do know.

  61. Scott R says:

    If you are brave enough to venture into cycle mania… I have something I want to show you guys. You have heard me mention here in this blog about the 3.6 year cycle in the UAH LT data numerous times. (1/3 of a solar cycle) Well, the rabbit hole goes deeper. Not only do we have a 3.6 year cycle, but each cycle position rotate in strength like this… weak, mid, strong, mid, weak, mid, strong following the progression of the proxy location in the last set of 3 waves. Let me know what you think please.

    https://www.facebook.com/100000276969216/posts/2972971856055351/?d=n

    • Midas says:

      So you are claiming that each of those red lines are precisely 3.6 years apart?

      • Scott R says:

        Midas… thanks for looking. The chart with the red lines is comparing UAH Global to HADSTT3 ENSO 3.4 region to show that ocean temperatures are leading atmosphere and the significance of the ENSO 3.4 region. Those are NOT 3.6 years apart. That one simply was made to show how well they line up peak to peak.

        The 1st chart I wanted you to look at actually was the comparison of UAH Ocean tropics to the global temperature. Not surprising it is a match as the tropics dominate the globe. Now if you take a look at the tropics at the top, I’ve divided it into solar cycles, and from there 3 3.6 year cycles each. Obviously there are other forcers as well which offset the beat slightly, we are interested in the highest amplitude forcers.

        Let’s call the 1st 3.6 cycle out of 3 the RED cycle. The 2nd the GREEN cycle, the 3rd the BLUE cycle. The 3rd cycle should be the strongest in general, and the 1st the weakest because of where the solar minimum is. That lines up. Then we see that these cycles in themselves appear to have a 44 year cycle. So in the first solar cycle, the red cycle is low, the 2nd is mid, 3rd is high, 4th is mid. The next one should be red low.

        • Midas says:

          When you use a low-pass filter to remove any “cycles” of period less than 10 years, what does the data show you about the trend?

          • Scott R says:

            Midas,

            If you apply a 5 year moving average to the ENSO 3.4 region, or the Antarctic to suppress the 3.6 harmonic, you do indeed see the solar cycle on a delay.

            We do not have enough data collected in the UAH dataset to draw definitive conclusions about long term trends over 10 years. We therefore do not know for sure if low, mid, high is enough. Maybe I have to add lower, low, mid, high, higher. Know what I mean?

            I will look at a longer dataset and see if I can find that relationship there for the 3.6 cycle in the tropics.

            Taking the HADSST3 north Atlantic data which goes back to 1850 as proxy, we know there is a 60 year cycle. There is also most likely a cycle around 84 years. How the 2 cycles combine or interfere creates the GSM cycle. (barycenter movement causing activity on the sun)

  62. Rob Mitchell says:

    That certainly looks more plausible than the human caused atmospheric CO2 driving sea surface temperatures.

  63. Snape says:

    [Once you factor in Antarctic and alpine melt, thermal expansion and projected future reinforcement of all these, obviously yes.]

    You left out my favorite…….sedimentation from cosmic dust. Explained to us a few years ago by the poster ger*an. Whatever happened to that guy?

  64. Snape says:

    Scipio wrote:

    [Rob said The global sea level has risen a grand total of one inch since 1840 due to Greenland ice sheet melt and calving.

    you cant seriously believe that, right? its bonkers.

    and you cant prove it with data.]

    *******

    The figure comes from polar portal, a reputable source.

    http://polarportal.dk/en/about-polar-portal/

    Why do you think they are wrong?

    • Be careful that you are not speaking at crossed-purposes. One source gives a total SL rise from 1870 to 2009 of 250mm. The Greenland contribution would then be 10% of that, which is a bit high but reasonable when you consider thermal expansion and Antarctic/alpine melt. Scipio may consider the value too low for TOTAL rise and believe that Rob is treating this one inch as the total. To wit, he may consider the Danes right but Rob mistaken. Some clarification of positions might be helpful.

      • Rob Mitchell says:

        Well, all you have to do is open the link and look at paragraph 4 like I mentioned in my previous post. There is nothing confusing about it. And is straight-forward.

        http://polarportal.dk/en/groenlands-indlandsis/nbsp/viden-om-groenlands-indlandsis/

        The one inch sea level rise comes from Greenland since 1840. It didn’t say total sea level rise from all sources. I mentioned Greenland because this has been the focus of concern by global warming zealots in recent times. They think Greenland is the primary contributor to sea level rise. And I just simply pointed out that there was no need to get hysterical about Greenland.

        The Polar Portal most certainly addresses the concerns of CC. They have to if they want to continue their research funding. But there are some honest geo-scientists over there who quietly slipped that paragraph in to quantify what is actually happening. Dr. John Christy has testified that science is all about numbers. And the numbers from Greenland are not that much. Even though they make some verbal noise about it to appease government officials.

        • bdgwx says:

          Whoa…up to +10C change in Arctic air temperatures by the end of this century. I’m curious…what is the threshold of warming to be considered zealotry and alarmist? And are you okay with Polar Portal using the IPCC as a source?

          • Bindidon says:

            bdgwx

            The best is that these ‘no warming’ agenda specialists
            – on the one hand fire red bullets on anything having a bit to do with models,
            but
            – on the other hand are never tired to show us entirely model-based temperature series, e.g.
            – DMI Arctic data above 80N;
            – WeatherBELL.

            Great.

        • “They think Greenland is the primary contributor to sea level rise.”

          Name one person who thinks this.

          “And I just simply pointed out that there was no need to get hysterical about Greenland.”

          It’s one of several contributors to sea-level rise. Putting aside your use of prejudicial language, they are all going roughly the same way – apart from perhaps one of the Antarctic sheets – and are all therefore equally grounds for concern. Even a denier should be able to understand that it is little comfort that a smaller contributor was even smaller in the past when all are accelerating in synchrony right now. It’ll be even smaller consolation when your crops are under a metre of water to know that “only” 10% of it came from Greenland.

          Since the contribution of Greenland is consistent with IPCC projections, as I outlined, there is no comfort in that page for anyone seeking to reject the IPCC’s overall findings. Which is all that need ultimately be said.

          “Dr. John Christy has testified that science is all about numbers.”

          Well, one can see how he earned his doctorate, then. I am awestruck by this intellectual Brobdingnagian.

          “The Polar Portal most certainly addresses the concerns of CC. They have to if they want to continue their research funding.”

          Oh, grow up. As if no-one might be interested in exploiting the Arctic in any other state than following global warming.

          “Even though they make some verbal noise about it to appease government officials.”

          I said GROW UP

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          bdgwx, Bindidon, Elliott Bignell, please stop trolling.

  65. Speaking of news, the Horn of Africa is currently being eaten by locusts. Kenya is allegedly facing the biggest outbreak in 70 years, and it is getting perilously close to planting season in a region already threatened by food insecurity. At this point it is hard to say if any meaningful response will emerge in time.

    I have seen only one commentary linking this to climate change, and we already know which way the deniers will jump, but they need the exercise so I thought I’d mention it.

    • Bindidon says:

      Elliott Bignell

      Northern and central parts of East Africa were many times visited by these monsters in the past.

      There are actually four giant clouds, the biggest one being over 2500 km2.

      They move by up to 150 km a day, and have reached Uganda as well.

      Sure we have climate change. But blame climate change for this phenomenon? Was it climate change in earlier times as well?

      I would rather see the problem in the inactivity of both politicians inside, and of sponsors outside. It is known since months; maybe right now it has become too late to eradicate.

      • Plagues of locusts have been recorded since Biblical times, of course, and linking any single event to a global climate trend is either a exercise in probability with very low certainty or a fools’ game, according to inclination. However, climate change must presumably have an impact on these as much as on any other invertebrate or pest species, just as it will on crop production. You’d need a specialist even to say whether the idea is plausible; for all I know AW could make locust plagues less frequent.

        I mainly mentioned it just to wind up the fruitbats.

  66. ren says:

    Excess ozone over North America indicates a strong stratospheric intrusion and an unusual drop in temperature.
    https://files.tinypic.pl/i/00997/byhwij4p6b03.png

  67. Interesting that the fires in Indonesia have not been in the news so much recently. According to at least one source (see below), the burn area for 2019 was greater than for 2018. The 2018 burn, if I remember correctly, was for a time producing more CO2e emissions than the entire US economy. This is a potential tipping-point agency, therefore, that deserves closer attention.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southeast-asia-haze/area-burned-in-2019-forest-fires-in-indonesia-exceeds-2018-official-idUSKBN1X00VU

    On the positive side, “Science” reports that efforts to limit the burn have had some effect: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/indonesias-fires-are-bad-new-measures-prevented-them-becoming-worse

  68. Bindidon says:

    I have zero interest in any kind of panic, but this corona virus stuff is now going harsh up.

    It is today Feb 13, at 1360 death toll, and has bypassed the quadratic fit computed by my spreadsheet guy a week ago (prediction: 1111 at Feb 5 for Feb 12/13); it is still below last week’s cubic fit (1516), but for how long time?

    Until yesterday, the number plot was kept ‘nicely’ inside of the two polynomials… duh:

    https://tinyurl.com/uw8qq3h

    This site informs very good (graphs not updated with today’s data yet):

    https://tinyurl.com/ub9gvyc

    I hope for all these dozens of millions of confined persons that it will come to a good end, but…

    • Eben says:

      This is not your web site take your shitposting somewhere else

    • I haven’t tried graphing the cases, but I had perceived from the numbers that a real epidemic seems to be taking off. It was only a matter of time, of course. People consistently underestimate the power of logarithmic growth curves, and there are so many animals in contact with people these days that zoonoses must be crossing over every year.

      The good news is that in its current state the virus does not appear to have a very high mortality rate, and we seem to be getting better able to respond. It’s all practice. (At least until it’s you!) I am more worried about the economic impact right now than I am about the risk of getting it.

    • Nate says:

      More reason to put a price on carbon and commoditize carbon storage.

  69. Svante says:

    Those pesky scientists are cooking the books Bindidon. There’s a new method of diagnosis. It’s a conspiracy. To go on more conferences.

    • Indeed. Some of the flights cost a grand. The scientists are getting a cool million in expenses when you lay on a do for 1,000 of them.

    • Bindidon says:

      Svante

      Thanks for the hint, understood. I’ll soon adapt my graph to this cooking.

    • Bindidon says:

      Svante

      Today I understand a posteriori that the Chinese Gov did not only come back to WHO’s evaluation procedure for infections; they manifestly had tried to lower the death toll as well.

      Nice try.

  70. Svante says:

    This is why we need homogenization!

  71. Apparently there is no need to cook books any more. You can just leave them lying in the open in the Antarctic.

    “The Antarctic has registered a temperature of more than 20C (68F) for the first time in history, prompting fears of climate instability in the world’s greatest repository of ice.

    “The 20.75C logged by Brazilian scientists at Seymour Island on 9 February was almost a full degree higher than the previous record of 19.8C, taken on Signy Island in January 1982.

    “It follows another recent temperature record: on 7 February an Argentinian research station at Esperanza measured 18.3C, which was the highest reading on the continental Antarctic peninsula.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/13/antarctic-temperature-rises-above-20c-first-time-record

  72. The polar regions are just SO uncool these days.

  73. Nate says:

    The meme that models are failing seems to have been wrong.

    https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/tbp/inp_Hausfather_ha08910q.pdf

    • bdgwx says:

      Hausfather shows that when given the correct inputs Hansen’s 1988 model was almost spot on.

    • Bindidon says:

      Nate

      Yeah. That’s due to John Christy’s very, very accurate, totally impartial comparison of models vs. (UAH) sat & sonde observations.

      And when we compare radiosonde data with UAH’s, we see a big big gap, with the exception of

      – a set of 31 radiosondes intercalibrated with UAH [sic] around 2006;
      – RAOBCORE and RICH model-based (!) postprocessing of raw radiosonde data by Haimberger in Wien / Austria;
      – RATPAC A/B postprocessed radiosonde data as well.

      I never managed to extract data out of KNMI’s model corner, but a regular commenter named Olof Reimer (Olof R) did, and Tamino did as well. Both used RCP4.5 instead of the desperado blind-alley named RCP8.5.

      https://tamino.wordpress.com/2019/11/25/climate-models/

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      bdgwx, Bindidon, please stop trolling.

  74. Snape says:

    I used a conveyor belt as an analogy for the flow of energy from surface to tropopause. The slower the conveyor belt, the more energy accumulates. Faster, less energy accumulates.

    Same idea can be applied to any sort of flow, including the flow of ice (glaciers). Given a constant rate of input, a glacier will lose mass if it starts to flow faster. This seems to be happening at both poles:

    https://www.egu.eu/news/100/greenlands-fastest-glacier-reaches-record-speeds/

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      snape…”Given a constant rate of input, a glacier will lose mass if it starts to flow faster. This seems to be happening at both poles:”

      I fail to grasp your analogy between a glacier flowing downhill due to the force of gravity and the atmosphere behaving in the same manner.

      A glacier also loses mass if the pre.c.i.p.i.tation feeding it is reduced. As polar expert, Duncan Wingham claimed, it’s far too cold in Antarctica for glaciers to melt and the only factor affecting their mass is precipitation.

      A given glacier will not flow faster unless you change the friction factor under it, or increase the gradient of the slope on which it descends. Even at that, glaciers flow on a pla.st.i.c.i.zed ice layer that changes state due to the immense pressure of the ice above.

  75. Snape says:

    Some climate trivia:
    [The average temperature of the Nio3.4 region has increased by more than 0.5C since 1950.]

    https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/ENSO-Blog_2_12_2020_Fig3_El-nino-3.4-Temps-1950-through-2020_620.png

    • Bindidon says:

      Snape

      Here we see how important it is not to solely rely on Nino3+4’s SSTs when trying to evaluate ENSO events.

      MEI’s graph:

      https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/img/meiv2.timeseries.png

      speaks a well different language…

      While the SSTs for 1982/83, 1997/98 and 2015/16 are increasing, MEI’s values for these years clearly decrease; so does the index as a whole, with -0.15 +- 0.03.

      ENSO is much more than the 3 month-smoothed average of SSTs within the rectangle 5N-5S–170W-120W.

  76. Scott R says:

    Folks I checked the HADSTT3 tropics data back to 1850 and found the same 1/3 solar cycle harmonic found in the UAH database. I confirmed the low / mid / high / mid / low pattern for each proxy data location goes back as well. Other forcers suppress or add to that baseline. So there is another 42-44 year cycle here I would say.

    See for yourself.

    https://www.facebook.com/100000276969216/posts/2978030755549461/?d=n

  77. Snape says:

    Bin,
    I was interested to see the trend in an area we normally see detrended (I know you have shown the same thing but I had forgotten).

    I agree that MEI gives a much better picture of whats going on. More on that later.

    • Bindidon says:

      Snape

      “I know you have shown the same thing…”

      No, it was the AMO I guess. I have no knowledge of a detrended Nino3+4 series.

      What I probably have shown recently (but not here) in relation to Nino3+4 is a plot of UAH6.0 grid data for exactly that region, compared with UAH6.0 Tropics ocean:

      https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-OoPIp2jzs3G7ti7W761iZsjYo2GNyev/view

      The bigger blue spikes are due to much less data (80 cells vs. 2304) and hence less stuff averaged out.

      *
      “I agree that MEI gives a much better picture…”

      Sure. But more interesting imho is the contradiction between MEI and UAH data: ‘skeptic’s always pretend that warming is due to El Nino only.

      But if that was the case: why then is El Nino for 97/98 stronger than for 15/16, while UAH’s LT and JMA’s surface data clearly shows the inverse?

  78. Snape says:

    [I have no knowledge of a detrended Nino3+4 series.]

    ??
    I was interested to see a series where the trend is visible, just like you have shown above.

    Here is a detrended version, which I had already seen many times:

    https://ggweather.com/enso/oni.png

    • Bindidon says:

      Snape

      Do you have some explaining context? I don’t see what is detrended here when compared with ‘normal’, undetrended data.

  79. Snape says:

    @ScottR

    You should show your work to Willis, at WUWT. He has been trying for years to find a correlation between sunspots and temperature/climate, and says he has so far been unable to:

    [Undaunted, I continued to look for correlations, and Ive done so from time to time ever since. At this point Ive looked in more than 20 places, and found no correlation. I append these studies at the end of this post.]

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/02/04/sunspots-verse-25/

    ******

    I argued with him in the comments section, saying the solar cycle MUST have at least a small effect, even if that effect is not visible.

  80. Scott R says:

    Snape,

    I just posted my study over there. The solar cycle does indeed impact the tropics, very much so. At least the 3.6 year cycle, 11 year cycle, 42-44 year cycle is solar forced.

    My opinion is obviously that the 60 year is also solar forced (caused by 3 different Jupiter / Saturn conjunction types). I’m currently pondering this 42-44 year cycle I found in the data and wondering if the earth responds to that 84-88 year cycle in 2 waves.

    I also found the 11 year solar cycle in the ENSO, southern ocean data by applying a 5 year moving average but I only went back to 1980 with that one.

  81. Gordon Robertson says:

    This is the problem when you lack skeptics to counter the pseudo-science of alarmists like Bindidon, Barry, etc. Conversations above between hardened alarmists are not being adequately rebutted. Reminds me of nature, when you cull the predators, the vermin spread like wildfire.

    Above, in a comment, Bindidon claimed John Christy’s appraisal of the UAH record in comparison to radiosonde data is wrong. As a source, he quoted the alarmist twit Tamino. Tamino has no scientific training in climate science, or any other science as far as I know, and he is a failed musician, along the lines of his compatriot at skepticalscience who is a cartoonist.

    https://motls.blogspot.com/2008/09/who-is-tamino-grant-foster-identity.html

    This is the reason I refer to Bindidon as an idiot, he cannot think for himself and he insults genuine climate scientists like John Christy (who has a degree in climate science) on this blog. He doesn’t get the simple fact, admitted freely by NOAA, that Bindidon’s database at NOAA has been long since discarded by NOAA, who now use less than 1500 surface stations globally as their database.

    Again, where is JC and Mike Flynn? They were the one’s who could regularly keep twits like Bindidon in place. I don’t bother with him anymore since an exchange with him reduces my IQ several points, to about 180. ☺

    • Bindidon says:

      Robertson

      “He doesn’t get the simple fact, admitted freely by NOAA, that Bindidon’s database at NOAA has been long since discarded by NOAA, who now use less than 1500 surface stations globally as their database.”

      How is it possible to behave so stupid, and repeat the same, absolute nonsense all the time?

      You rant all the time like an aggressive, headless bull in a Spanish corrida and pounce on every red cloth that moves anywhere.

      I repeat: you are an ignorant boaster, who does not understand anything, was never, is not, and will never be able to process existing data of any kind, and tries to hide that by discrediting, denigrating… and lying.

      Only people visiting this site who are as ignorant as you are, and love to insult like you do, will read your desperate comments.

      Poor Robertson!

    • barry says:

      How low can Gordon go? A link to a muckraking blog entry, apparently, to denigrate someone. How turgidly typical.

      Grant Foster (Tamino) is a statistician who teaches the subject, writes books on it, and spent at least some of his career at the American Association of Variable Star Observers, providing statistics and analysis to astronomers aroud the world.

      https://www.aavso.org/new-stats-book-grant-foster
      https://www.aavso.org/services

      He has 39 published papers on the topics of climate and stars with respect to statical analysis, his field of expertise.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        barry…”A link to a muckraking blog entry…”

        Hardly, Lubos Motl is a highly regarded physicist, which was the point of my post. You alarmists could not tell physics from basket-weaving. Motl recognizes scientific drivel when he sees it, the kind put forward by the mathematician Grant Foster, aka Tamino.

        Don’t you alarmists have any sites run by legitimate scientists? You have:

        1)realclimate…run by a mathematician and a geologist, the latter, Michael Mann, who is better known for interfering with peer review and fudging statistics than claiming unprecedented warming.
        2)skepticalscience…run by a cartoonist with an undergraduate degree who claims to be a solar physicist.
        3)Tamino…a statistician and wannabee musician whose understanding of physics is null and void.
        4)Eli Rabbett…a physicist who teaches chemistry and who had to be schooled on thermodynamics by physicists, Gerlich and Tsceuchner, who teach and research thermodynamics.
        5)Desmogblog…run by a public relations manager who sits on the board of the David Suzuki Foundation, climate alarm central. BTW…the site was funded at one time by a convicted criminal.

        You alarmists have the temerity to criticize John Christy, a scientist with high integrity, based on propaganda from garbage sites like those just listed.

        • E. Swanson says:

          Gordo wrote:

          You alarmists have the temerity to criticize John Christy…

          Yes and I’ve actually published 3 papers (2 peer reviewed) on the MSU/AMSU data from Christy and Spencer documenting what I found to be discrepancies in their data. The first one in 2003 may be the reason that the group at RSS decided to eliminate data over the Antarctic from their version of the TLT, which S&C have long warned about but still include in their latest v6. In the second one (2017), I found what appeared to be a bias in the UAH data, as compared with that from RSS and NOAA STAR. The third, a presentation at the AGU 2017 meeting, was an update to the second with more recent versions of the three data sets.

          I suppose that you will also label me as an alarmist, even as you have failed to exhibit any understanding of what S&C are doing. I’d bet that you can’t describe how the latest UAH v6 data is calculated, let alone offer a critique of that process.

        • barry says:

          This is childishly obvious BS. Whoever’s views you like are automatically intellectual giants, and those you don’t are automatically denigrated.

          Here’s an alternative view of Lubs Motl.

          “1) Motl has been out of the physics community for more than ten years, and this is reflected in his writing. His understanding of post-2006 work is often superficial, and his observations, which he seems to produce more or less off the top of his head, are often incorrect. This is especially the case when he is talking about things which are not related to his previous work. Looking at him as an “expert authority” is a mistake, and anyone with access to more reliable sources who does so is being intellectually lazy and irresponsible.

          2) The unprofessional style in which the blog is written, with many personal attacks and repeated use of coarse language, is not appropriate for any kind of intellectual exchange. Many people seem to think that they can view this stuff as a mere distraction, which they can tolerate (or maybe even enjoy) and then screen out to focus on the physics content, but I do not think this is correct. It is not possible to repeatedly read such things without some of it rubbing off on you, at least subconsciously, and moreover the cost inflicted on those who are the targets of such ranting is substantial and anyone who reads it “for fun” is adding to that cost.

          3) In particular many readers seem to think that they can separate his hateful political views, which include constant misogyny and racism, from his physics content. Again, this is false. First of all, whenever the target of one of his physics rants is a woman the unprofessional language is far more vitriolic. Words he has applied on the blog to women he disagrees with include “b–ch”, “wh–e”, “sl-t”, and “vermin”. I am sorry to reproduce such words here, but I think it is important to be clear about how severe the problem is. Use of such terms is more than unacceptable, it is fundamentally disqualifying.”

          https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lubo%C5%A1_Motl

          It makes complete sense that you admire Lubs Motl. It’s enough to say that, like Foster, he is no expert in climate science, but unlike Foster, he is not an expert in statistics. That’s the important difference. Foster doesn’t make the mistake of pontificating on string theory. Motl makes the mistake of commenting on statistical analysis. And climate science.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        barry…”Grant Foster (Tamino) is a statistician who teaches the subject, writes books on it, and spent at least some of his career at the American Association of Variable Star Observers, providing statistics and analysis to astronomers aroud the world”.

        There are other statisticians who have made a far more important contribution to climate science than Tamino. In fact, Tamino has contributed nothing, all he has done is misapply statistics to pseudo-science with a typical result of garbage in – garbage out.

        Steve McIntyre at climateaudit is a statistician and along with fellow statistician, Ross Mckitrick, brought down the house of cards known as the hockey stick. They had such a good case against MBB98 that the US government was forced to appoint the National Academy of Science, along with expert statistician Wegmann, who agreed fully with McIntyre and McKitrick.

        Unfortunately, the NAS representation was full of people who had agreed with MBH98 in the first place. Even at that, they moved the 1000 year warming claimed by Mann et al up to 1600 and removed the tree ring proxies from the 20th century. The IPCC responded by moving the starting point of the warming to 1850 and discarding the hockey stick as presented by MBH. The IPCC replaced the Little Ice Agr and the Medieval Warm Period which MBH had removed to get a straighter shaft on the hockey stick.

        Tamino is a lightweight for the simple reason he has allowed himself to be blinded by his devotion to ‘the cause’, as Mann put it in the Climategate emails. Tamino is an alarmist, and that means both Barry and Binny are alarmists, since both blindly accept alarmist propaganda without question.

        • barry says:

          What do you think the word “alarmist” means? It doesn’t apply to me or Bindidon, or pretty much anyone else here.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            barry…”What do you think the word alarmist means? It doesnt apply to me or Bindidon, or pretty much anyone else here”.

            To me, it means someone who buys into the sci-fi that increasing CO2 is warming the planet in a dangerous manner. Or, someone who supports the sites I listed as having any scientific merit.

          • barry says:

            I have never said the planet is warming in a dangerous manner.

            I said Tamino’s site has statistical merit. His expertise in that field is not in doubt. Most of his published work is on statistical analysis of stars and his books in that field are reference material for astronomers.

            There is nothing “alarming” about the above.

            Your use of the term is reflexive. Mindless.

        • barry says:

          An d the same BS on the value of someone or the their work, based only on the results you prefer. You’re working backwards.

          Are you really so dull you can’t see that this is what you do?

    • barry says:

      “alarmists like Bindidon, Barry”

      The usual brainless rhetoric.

      Neither Bididon nor I are alarmists, and you would be very hard pressed indeed to find anyone at this blog making ‘alarming’ comments about climate change. A feckless slur suits a feeble mind.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      “…both Barry and Binny are alarmists, since both blindly accept alarmist propaganda without question.”

      Rationalwiki!

      Oh dear.

  82. Snape says:

    I have often wondered who would win in an IQ contest, Flynn or Gordon? Hard to tell from the photo:

    https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ab/7d/84/ab7d8471c60587d39826292d6b798438.jpg

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      snape…”I have often wondered who would win in an IQ contest, Flynn or Gordon?”

      Snape is sore because I keep pointing out the pseudo-science in his many hair-brained thought experiments.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      “Again, where is JC and Mike Flynn?”

      I thought Mike Flynn was banned. But since we have both been able to write his name out OK, I guess the ban is lifted. So Mike can start commenting again, if he wants to.

  83. Snape says:

    @Bindidon

    ONI values, as in the time series I linked to earlier today….

    https://ggweather.com/enso/oni.png

    ….are mostly detrended.

    *********

    Explained here:
    [When computing Nio3.4 anomalies, we use an averaging period of the most recent 30-year period, updated every five years, to adjust to some of this warming trend. Right now, that averaging period is 19862015. Next year, well update to 19912020. Im running out of space to get into the hows and whys of this, but Climate.gov has a nice description here. Overall, though, the climate is warming rapidly, and that can have some effect on ENSO, particularly when we are getting close to updating the averaging period.]

    https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/february-2020-enso-update-mind-reading

  84. Snape says:

    Bin,
    Emily Becker has a new post, 2nd Thursday of each month. Always interesting.

    https://www.climate.gov/author/emily-becker

  85. barry says:

    Gordon, the refuting going on upthread isn’t gping to be any better with Flynn and his ilk joining in. they don’t answer on point, they insult and denigrate – like you.

    When someone upthread says the Summertime temps in the Arctic haven’t changed, pointing out that they are cherrypicking 18% oh the region to make that claim, and showing that the whole Arctic has a warming trend in Summer (and using UAH data to prove it), is not sommething anyone can arguue against. That is simple facts, using data that ‘skeptics’ prefer.

    When someone upthread claims Gore’s movie said Arctic would be ice free in a few years, quoting the film saying 50-70 years is merely correcting their error. That’s not a fact up for discussion once you see the actual text.

    Reminding the hundredth drive-by commenter that just because they are experiencing cold weather in their part of the world doesn’t mean that the globe is getting cooler is not really debatable.

    The sad thing is that these sorts of interactions are low-grade. ‘skeptics’ aren’t bringing interesting arguments very often. Just the same old “no greenhouse effect” BS and condenscension to a real scientist, Roy Spencer, who knows these views are crazy.

    And you are part of that low-grade round of BS, continually lying about NOAA “deliberately deleting” data from weather stations in the latter part of the record. You’ve been told umpteen time what happened, and been given the actual 1997 research paper that explains it with the original station count graph included. Data was added, not deliberately dropped – added historically, growing the station count in the earlier part of the record, even while the original 1200 stations kept on updating in near real-time.

    ‘Skeptics’ have to do better than this.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      barry…”When someone upthread says the Summertime temps in the Arctic haven’t changed, pointing out that they are cherrypicking 18% oh the region to make that claim….”

      According to the UAH global temperature contour maps, that statement has merit. If you look at where the warming is in the Arctic, it is localized to hot spots that move around month to month. Not trying to speak for Roy, but I recall him explaining that as a result of the AMO.

      I am not arguing that some warming has taken place in the Arctic since 1850 I am only claiming the propaganda about significant Arctic warming, that is slowly eroding Arctic ice, is just that, propaganda.

      Here’s January 2020 for example:

      https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/

      And here’s August 2019:

      https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/2019/august2019/201908_map.png

      On the latter, I am seeing a range of -2.3C to +2.3C between Greenland and Alaska. If you look a month later, the contours will have moved. Global warming is not as depicted, it is not a blanket increase right across the planet. There are +5C hot spots at times in the Arctic and those have to be countered by at least a -4C cooling elsewhere to get a global average warming of less than 1C.

      As far as NOAA is concerned, the IPCC announced in AR5 that a ‘warming hiatus’ had occured over the 15 years from 1998 – 2012. NOAA showed that hiatus in their own data over that period then they retroactively fudged the SST to show a warming.No satisfied with that, they continued to fudge the entire planet.

      Why you continue to back these cheaters is the question. Wake up, and smell the coffee. It would not surprise me in the least if they were not intercepting the sat data sent to UAH, then running it through an algorithm to increase the UAH signal. I simply cannot accept that the planet has suddenly re-warmed after the 2016 EN just as it was showing a steady cooling.

      • barry says:

        The warming ‘hiatus’ in the IPCC report was based on Had.CRU4 data, not NOAA. The actual trend, as reported by the 2013 IPCC Report in the very same paragraph you have cited was 0.05 C/decade from 1998 – 2012. It’s still the same.

        The old NOAA trend for that period, which the IPCC didn’t report, was 0.04 C/decade. It is now 0.08 C/decade after revising the data sets. The people working on it call this an improvement on the quality. You call it a conspiracy.

        If you think that there methods are unsound, explain why. Their work is freely available for auditing.

        Hot air is not an argument.

      • barry says:

        BTW, here are the trends for the US, from UAH and NOAA, for 1979 to 2019.

        NOAA | 0.08 C/decade
        UAH | 0.17 C/decade

        How do you explain that, if NOAA are fudging the data.

    • barry says:

      The contour maps are showing you monthly weather averages. Of course the temperatures aren’t constant for any given location. But just because a day in Winter can be warmer than a cold day in Summer – that doesn’t mean the Summer is suddenly colder than Winter. That’s the difference between weather and climate.

      That’s why you take all the data to determine if a region or hemisphere or globe has warmed.

      https://i.imgur.com/P6m9bM5.png

      Point is, the ‘skeptic’ upthread didn’t know that the data he was relying on only covered 18% of the Arctic. He thought it was the whole Arctic.

      That’s not unusual of the level of ignorance ‘skeptics’ that drop in here bring to the table, and Mike Flynn can’t rescue that ‘argument’.

      • Bindidon says:

        barry

        If we want to keep at UAH data when looking above one single month, we just need to look at their trend map for 1979-2018:

        https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/2018/december2018/Trend_to_201812.PNG

        And when I generate, out of UAH’s LT 2.5 degree grid, the trends for each cell, we see that apart from 19 cells in the Antarctic and one in Tibet, all cells with a trend higher than 0.4 C / decade are located in the Arctic, all above 70N.

        Top 10 trends for Dec 1978 – Dec 2019:

        80.0N-82.5N 52.5W-50.0W 0.50
        80.0N-82.5N 50.0W-47.5W 0.50
        75.0S-77.5S 37.5E-40.0E 0.49
        75.0S-77.5S 35.0E-37.5E 0.49
        80.0N-82.5N 47.5W-45.0W 0.48
        80.0N-82.5N 180.0W-177.5W 0.48
        80.0N-82.5N 177.5W-175.0W 0.48
        80.0N-82.5N 177.5E-180.0E 0.48
        80.0N-82.5N 175.0W-172.5W 0.48
        80.0N-82.5N 175.0E-177.5E 0.48

        Even during UAH’s absolutely flat trend period (1998-2015), chosen by ‘skeptic’s because of the so pretty favorable start year, the Northern Arctic regions were at 0.15 C / decade.

        Thus yes: the Arctic is warming, even if BC’s weather sometimes gets a bit fresher through cold Arctic blasts (those coming down to eastern Canadian Provinces or to Northern CONUS, especially MN and ND, are way, way worse).

        Nowhere better than in the Arctic you experience the difference between weather and… climate.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      barry, please stop trolling.

  86. Gordon Robertson says:

    swannie…”Yes and Ive actually published 3 papers (2 peer reviewed) on the MSU/AMSU data from Christy and Spencer documenting what I found to be discrepancies in their data”.

    Having already witnessed the erroneous conclusions you postulated from your experiments I can only imagine how ridiculous your critique of papers by John and Roy might be. I forgot to include you in the alarmist list and you are a special kind.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      ps. the fact you got published, when the likes of Lindzen, Spencer, and Christy struggle to get published shows clearly that the peer review process is corrupt.

      • E. Swanson says:

        Gordo, You are unaware how tough it is to get thru peer review. My J-Tech paper took nearly a year to get done and I didn’t attempt to publish my later one, giving it as a poster paper, because it was going to take lots more effort (and money). I had to pay the page charges myself, which was another reason I didn’t want to put the last one thru peer review.

        Get off your damned high horse, moron…

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          swannie…”I had to pay the page charges myself, which was another reason I didn’t want to put the last one thru peer review”.

          swannie, old boy, why don’t you just confer with Roy or John to get their modus operandi in their own field. Why are you so determined to prove them wrong? Why can’t you look out the window, so to speak, and see that the UAH record better represents what we are experiencing?

          And why are you so determined to re-write the 2nd law when it’s so blatantly obvious that heat can never be transferred by its own means from cold to hot. Why do you read the current drivel from people who have misunderstood the Stefan-Boltzmann equation?

          • barry says:

            ‘Why cant you look out the window, so to speak, and see that the UAH record better represents what we are experiencing?”

            “…look out the window, so to speak…”?

            This is the depth of your insight.

            Your fallacy is Appeal to Common Sense.

            “…common sense relies on the vague notion of ‘obviousness’, which means something like ‘what we perceive from personal experience’ or ‘what we should know without having had to learn.’ In other words, common sense is not necessarily supported by evidence or reasoning. As such, beliefs based on common sense are unreliable.”

          • E. Swanson says:

            Gordo’s often repeated claim that the GPS (and Global Warming) violate the 2nd Law completely ignores what happens to the thermal IR EM which leaves the Green plate in the direction of the Blue one. He apparently can not understand that the radiant energy doesn’t vanish, it must go somewhere, else the First Law of Thermo would be violated. The surface of the Blue plate doesn’t magically change from an emitter to a reflector, based on the temperature of the Green plate. The Blue plate’s absorp_tion depends only on the wavelength of the photons, not the temperature of the source.

    • E. Swanson says:

      Gordo, reverts to his denialist stance, ignoring what I found in my Green Plate Demo because of his failure to understand the well accepted physics of thermal radiation heat transfer. The GPE doesn’t violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

      Allow me to repeat my point that you have so far demonstrated no clue about what S&C have/are doing with the MSU/AMSU data. As usual, you change the subject to avoid your obvious lack of understanding.

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          d…”Let’s see what Gordon makes of these…”

          I agree but it’s a shame people like the author have to go to so much trouble to disprove this pseudo-science. There are two proofs already available:

          1)heat can never, BY ITS OWN MEANS, be transferred from a cooler object to a warmer object.

          2)energy can never be transferred, BY ITS OWN MEANS, from a lower potential energy source to a higher potential energy source.

        • barry says:

          1) – correct

          2) – that’s the point of contention, which is frankly unconvincing from the ‘skeptic’ point of view.

          Clausius agrees thst there is a two-way exchange of energy, as has been quoted here many times. No one to my knowledge has adequately explained how a photon from a cooler source cannot be absorbed by a blackbody with a higher temperature. Clausius, the fathter of the 2nd Law, certainly does not forbid it.

          And any infrared camera can differentiate objects much colder than the instrument itself. According to the notion that photons from colder objects cannot be absorbed by warmer ones, the infrared camera should see nothing but blackness wherever the environment is colder than itself.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO-pcBeupmI

          FLIR cameras operate at room temp by the way – they’re not cooled. When the ambient room temperature is in above 20C, nothing in the freezer or fridge should be visible, and it shoiuldn’t be able to produce different temperature grades beneath the temperature of the instrument. The freezer should be black, and the fridge compartment should have no colour variation. Not if photons from a cooler object cannot be absorbed by a warmer one.

        • E. Swanson says:

          DRsEMT, G. Hughes’ two exercises only prove that he doesn’t understand the problem. The first is hopelessly flawed and the second isn’t much better.

          In the second version, he limited his run times to 10 minutes and in all cases, his measurements never reach steady state, i.e., stop increasingg. His thermometer is simply standing inside a brass pipe fitting, with contact only on the probe’s tip and a the sharp edge of the top of the fitting. He doesn’t attempt to measure the temperature of the top plate, i.e. the green plate, so we have no clue what’s happening there. His vacuum gauge is a mechanical one, which can not indicate whether the low vacuum needed to minimize convection is achieved. He also doesn’t measure the temperature of the tube, so again, he can not claim that his apparatus has reached steady state. Thus, all his work is trash.

          Of course, you also have no clue, which is clear because you have pointed to Hughes’ work as if those results are proof of something other than Hughes’ incompetence.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            No, barry, it would have to involve a transfer of heat from cold to hot, which is why the GPE is impossible. Heat, not energy.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            I asked Gordon, Emotional Swansong. We already know you are deeply upset by the experimental debunk of your ideas. Since you have decided to be obnoxious, however…

            “In the second version, he limited his run times to 10 minutes and in all cases, his measurements never reach steady state, i.e., stop increasingg.”

            And? So what? They did in his first version.

            His thermometer is simply standing inside a brass pipe fitting, with contact only on the probe’s tip and a the sharp edge of the top of the fitting. He doesn’t attempt to measure the temperature of the top plate, i.e. the green plate, so we have no clue what’s happening there.”

            Obviously wrong…as he explains in the opening text, the thermometer is going right through a hole in the second plate.

            “His vacuum gauge is a mechanical one, which can not indicate whether the low vacuum needed to minimize convection is achieved.”

            Wrong again, as he explains in the comments; he knows exactly what his vacuum is, and it is low enough.

            “He also doesn’t measure the temperature of the tube, so again, he can not claim that his apparatus has reached steady state. Thus, all his work is trash.”

            Tube temperature is an uncontrolled and unknown variable in your experiments, too.

          • E. Swanson says:

            DRsEMT noted, referring to the thermometer:

            Obviously wrongas he explains in the opening text, the thermometer is going right through a hole in the second plate.

            Look at the video and notice that the thermometer ,moves quite a bit without the top plate. When the top plate is in position, the probe rests against the side of the hole.

            DRsEMT continues:

            Obviously wrongas he explains in the opening text, the thermometer is going right through a hole in the second plate.

            You (and Hughes) don’t understand a vacuum system and the limits of a mechanical gauge. Here’s the newest gauge from the company which made the one I used, which was similar to this one. There are others and used ones may be found on eBay, etc.

            Finally, DRsEMT ignores the fact that I measured the temperature of my bell jar with a thermocouple attached at one location. My graph included a trace of that measurement.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            “Look at the video and notice that the thermometer ,moves quite a bit without the top plate. When the top plate is in position, the probe rests against the side of the hole.”

            Point?

            “You (and Hughes) don’t understand a vacuum system and the limits of a mechanical gauge. Here’s the newest gauge from the company which made the one I used, which was similar to this one. There are others and used ones may be found on eBay, etc.”

            So you think he should have used an electronic gauge. I suppose he might, in future experiments, given all the desperate denigration over the mechanical gauge. Talk about clutching at straws.

            “Finally, DRsEMT ignores the fact that I measured the temperature of my bell jar with a thermocouple attached at one location. My graph included a trace of that measurement.”

            So you know the temperature of the bell jar made no difference. Good for you, good for us.

          • E. Swanson says:

            DRsEMT wrote: “…Talk about clutching at straws.”

            No, it’s just part of the normal process of critiquing some results from a scientific point of view.

            Also, without knowing the temperature history of the main elements of Hughes’ device, one can not conclude that his results represent anything even close to steady state, which invalidates his results. If the top plate (the Green equivalent) isn’t at steady state, it’s thermal IR EM will be less and therefore the effect on the lower (Blue) plate will be lessened…

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            You’re clutching at straws…easy to tell, because I’m calling you on specific things and you’re coming back with nothing.

            Not being at steady state does not invalidate his results. Why would it? You believe the results would be different if there was more time? The temperatures are recorded continuously over the ten minute intervals and there is just no evidence that the second plate makes any difference. You think a difference will suddenly start to show up after 10 minutes? It didn’t during the first version of his experiments, in which he left things significantly longer.

          • E. Swanson says:

            DRsEMT, G. Hughes’ results don’t “prove” anything. The back radiation from the second plate has minimal impact until the second plate has had enough time to reach maximum temperature, as the emissions are a function of T^4. Since it’s impossible to know the temperatures of both plates from Hughes’ work, it’s also impossible to reach any valid conclusion from his results…

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            That’s right, they don’t prove anything…they disprove the GPE…

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        swannie…”The GPE doesnt violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics”.

        Of course it does, it allows a transfer of HEAT … repeat … HEAT…from a colder source to a warmer source by its own means.

        • barry says:

          Nope, it is a transfer of energy. A transfer of heat from a cold object to a hot object is not allowed – under the strict definition of heat in classical physics, which only pertains to NET transfers between two bodies and the different equilibrium states.

          Uncooled infrared cameras can see objects much cooler than the instrument.

          https://www.flir.com/products/t1010/

          FLIR T1010 HD Thermal Imaging Camera

          Detector Type : Focal plane array (FPA), uncooled microbolometer
          Object Temperature Range : -40°C to 650°C (-40°F to 1202°F)

          This should not be possible according to you – because you think that radiation from a cold object cannot be absorbed by a warmer object. This is barking mad wrong. This is where ‘skeptics’ become lunatics.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            Nope, it is a transfer of heat from cold to hot that makes the GPE impossible, not energy. Infrared cameras have their own power source so of course we are not talking “by its own means” any more. Straw man.

          • barry says:

            An infrared camera is not a heat pump. Your fallacy is red herring.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            Another straw man.

          • Nate says:

            No point in debating someone trollish like DREMT who wont debate honestly and wont acknowledge facts presented to him.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            #2

            Another straw man.

  87. Snape says:

    Where the hell is Nurse Ratched?

  88. Eben says:

    The latest on climate from Australia
    https://youtu.be/HAwbW3K9C8o

  89. Gordon Robertson says:

    Could not get this to post in original position.

    barry…”The actual trend, as reported by the 2013 IPCC Report in the very same paragraph you have cited was 0.05 C/decade from 1998 2012. Its still the same”.

    As usual, you obfuscated the error margin provided by the IPCC by reporting only the possible +ve error in the range. There was a negative part to that error margin which indicated a possible cooling.

    The point is, the IPCC did not know but they stated in words that the flat trend over 15 years was a ‘warming hiatus’.

    BTW had-crut gets a lot of it’s data from the fudged NOAA data.

    ****

    Placeholder to test link…will post later of a problem exists.

    ****

    As we learned in the Climategate email scandal, the head of had-crut at the time was a focal point in the scandal. Phil Jones claimed to have employed Mike’s trick of hiding declining temperatures, he threatened to block papers from skeptics from reaching the IPCC review, he applauded the death of skeptic John Daly, and he refused to release Had-crut data to Steve McIntyre for an independent audit.

    After all that chicanery, the had-crut data showed no warming for 15 years. NOAA did show a trend AFTER THE FACT. Once it was learned that no warming had occurred, NOAA went back and fudged the SST to show a trend.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      There are problems with the link…remove * in link, copy and paste to browser.

      https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/c*r*u/data/temperature/crutem4/station-data.htm

    • barry says:

      Had.CRU get a third of the land station data from NOAA (nearly a fifth is all from the US), and zero NOAA data for sea surface temperatures.

      The result from 1998 to 2012 remains 0.05C for Had.CRU. The result is statistically non-significant. I’ve quoted you the full numbers with uncertainties many times – every time that I’ve quoted the IPCC directly on this.

      Why do you suppose that the results don’t change for Had.CRU for that period, even though some of their data is from NOAA and NOAA have revised their data?

      “There was a negative part to that error margin which indicated a possible cooling.”

      The result for NOAA was statistically non-significant with their data in 2013, and is still statistically non-significant with their revised data set. Check it out for yoursewlf.

      http://www.ysbl.york.ac.uk/~cowtan/applets/trend/trend.html

      There is still a possible negative trend in both data sets for that period. So according to your own argument, nothing has substantially changed.

      Which you obviously did not know. As usual.

  90. Gordon Robertson says:

    It’s plain from the following link that had-crut pa.r.a.llel’s NOAA with their fudging techniques:

    It’s plain from the following link that had-crut pa.r.a.llel’s NOAA with their fudging techniques:

    https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/

    1)they fab.r..icate temperatures for the c.e.lls into which they have subdivided the planet. Where there are no temperature measuring devices, they inte.r.p.olate temperatures from cells farther away which have measuring devices.

    They have only 4800 re.p.or.ting stations covering the surface and they admit most are in the US and Canada.

    2)They ‘ca.l.c.u.late’ temperatures based on some kind of alg.o.r.ithm.

    All in all a perfectly fudged record.

    1)they fab.r..icate temperatures for the cells into which they have subdivided the planet. Where there are no temperature measuring devices, they in.te.r.p.olate temperatures from cells farther away which have measuring devices.

    They have only 4800 re.p.or.ting stations covering the surface and they admit most are in the US and Canada.

    2)They ‘c.a.l.c.u.late’ temperatures based on some kind of algorithm.

    All in all a pe.r.f.ectly fudged record.

  91. Gordon Robertson says:

    it’s odd that c*r*u posts some times without the asterisks and not at others.

  92. Bindidon says:

    It is really amazing to read that some people still try to pretend that ‘it is a transfer of heat from cold to hot that makes the GPE impossible, not energy’.

    1. The GHE is nothing else than an energy imbalance due to the fact that IR-sensitive molecules like H2O, CO2, CH4, N2O and some (much more powerful) CFCs
    – absorb LW radiation produced by Earth in response to Sun’s SW radiation
    AND
    – reemit it in all directions.

    2. This imbalance moreover is growing tiny bit by tiny bit, as more CO2 becomes resident in higher atmospheric layers up to 50 km (H2O, by far the main GHE actor, begins to precipitate above the tropopause).

    Due to radiation released to outer space from higher, thus cooler locations, the energy radiated out lowers.

    *
    No heat transfer from cold to hot.
    Only lack of radiative energy transfer to outer space.

    Try to translate the stuff linked to below. I’m sad of spending half a week in translating documents which are then intentionally misinterpreted.

    https://tinyurl.com/uqgxgpt

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      GPE. The “P” is for “Plate”…and it most definitely does indeed necessitate heat flowing from cold to hot. Not possible. Sorry, Bindidon.

      • Bindidon says:

        “… …and it most definitely does indeed necessitate heat flowing from cold to hot.”

        No. Swanson’s experiment is based on radiative transfer, a matter definitely ignored by those ‘skeptic’s who think Clausius’ work was all about heat, work and nothing else.

        Almost all Anglo-Saxon Physics teachers who taught all those engineers 50 years ago, who are now about 70, knew nothing else than Clausius’ knowledge from 1854.

        What he wrote in 1887 about radiative transfer was unknown to them and was therefore kept invisible to all those they taught.

        Believe what you want … I don’t really care.

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          “Swanson’s experiment…”

          …has been experimentally debunked.

          https://principia-scientific.org/greenplate-effect-it-doesnt-happen/

          https://principia-scientific.org/greenplate-effect-it-does-not-happen-proof-no-2/

          Believe what you want … I don’t really care.

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          binny…”Swansons experiment is based on radiative transfer, a matter definitely ignored by those skeptics who think Clausius work was all about heat, work and nothing else”.

          Clausius stated in one of his papers on the mechanical theory of heat that radiative transfer must obey the 2nd law. I think you alluded to the fact that scientists of his times knew nothing about the properties of electrons and electromagnetic radiation, which is correct. Till at least the times of Planck, in the 1890s, no one even knew about electrons because they were just discovered in the 1890’s.

          Even Planck referred to EM from a heat source as heat rays, the implication being that heat could be transferred through space via some kind of aether. It was not till 1913, that Bohr/Rutherford put it together and got it that electrons absorb and radiate EM. It was Bohr who applied Planck’s quantum theory to the single electron in the hydrogen atom and postulated that electrons lived in quantum level orbits around the single proton that makes up the hydrogen nucleus.

          Still, it was another 10 years before Schrodinger tied it all together mathematically, describing the electron/nucleus interaction using the Newtonian wave equation. There was a lot of work to do following his equation but it was mainly about tinkering with and explaining the intricacies of atoms with multiple protons/electrons.

          Nothing has changed much since those days even though those dabbling in sci-fi have drawn inferences from quantum theory that don’t exist. Clausius had it right, radiative transfer of heat between bodies of different temperatures must obey the 2nd law. That makes the guy even more impressive.

          It’s not a matter of the old-style teacher being wrong as it is modern scientists misinterpreting the 2nd law as well as the Stefan-Boltzmann equation that covers radiation. Swannie has gotten himself caught up in the misinterpretation of S-B which has nothing to do with a two-way transfer of radiation. And, yes, any text book teaching that drivel is plain wrong.

          S-B is about the relationship between the temperature of a body and the EM intensity radiated. That’s it. However, the rate of heat dissipation can be affected by the environment in which a body is found. That has nothing to do with S-B although S-B can be used in situation to account for variance in the rate of heat dissipation, provided the direction of heat transfer is from hot to cold.

          Nowhere in the works of Clausius, Planck, or S-B do they talk about a two-way transfer of heat, or radiation, between bodies of different temperatures. S-B obeys the 2nd law, it was derived in Tyndall’s experiment from a very hot body radiating to a cooler environment.

        • Nate says:

          “experimentally debunked” in the same way all those videos have debunked perpetual motion and the spherical Earth.

          For those who go for that sort of thing..

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          #2

          “Swanson’s experiment…”

          …has been experimentally debunked.

          https://principia-scientific.org/greenplate-effect-it-doesnt-happen/

          https://principia-scientific.org/greenplate-effect-it-does-not-happen-proof-no-2/

          Believe what you want … I don’t really care.

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          #3

          “Swanson’s experiment…”

          …has been experimentally debunked.

          https://principia-scientific.org/greenplate-effect-it-doesnt-happen/

          https://principia-scientific.org/greenplate-effect-it-does-not-happen-proof-no-2/

          Believe what you want … I don’t really care.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      binny…”It is really amazing to read that some people still try to pretend that it is a transfer of heat from cold to hot that makes the GPE impossible, not energy”.

      There are two energies involved in the transfer, thermal energy, aka heat, and electromagnetic energy. What is being transferred? Heat!!! How is it being transferred? By EM. There is no mysterious generic energy involved which is required to be balanced.

      There are no other energies involved in the transfer!!! However, we are focused on the heating of one plate by the other. There are only three sources of this heat: one from the external source that heats the blue plate, the blue plate itself, and the other from a theoretical source, the green plate.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        part 2…

        Since this processes is theoretically taking place in a vacuum, the only means of transferring heat is radiative transfer. Both conduction and convection require mass as atoms and in a pure vacuum there are no atoms for such a transfer. So the question arises as to how EM can transfer heat from one body to another.

        The short answer is that it cannot transfer heat per se since that would mean transferring atoms from one body to another. A heat transfer via radiation requires the loss of heat in a hotter body as it emits EM and the gain in heat in a cooler body when it absorbs that EM.

        There is no mythical ‘balance of energy’ that can offset the 2nd law in this case. There is no requirement that EM energies from each body be balanced, neither knows about the other. There is no system between the bodies that requires a balance of energy.

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          part 3…

          One body emits EM while losing heat. It radiates isotropically and its radiation is subject to the inverse square law. The body is not radiating as part of a system, it is just radiating. If a cooler body should intercept that EM, it will absorb it, forcing the absorbing electrons to a higher orbital energy levels, which translates to an increase in kinetic energy, hence heat.

          That process is not reversible for the same reason that water cannot spontaneously flow uphill nor can a bolder spontaneously raise itself onto a cliff. External forces are required to move mass against a potential energy gradient and the same applies to radiative energy.

          When EM from a cooler source is intercepted by a mass at a higher temperature than the source, it lacks both the intensity and the frequency to affect electrons in the hotter source. Electrons are the only particles in an atom that can generate or absorb EM. In order to be absorbed by an electron, EM must have a minimal energy/frequency to raise the electron to a higher energy level.

          The reason it is called quantum theory is that electrons in atoms live at a theorized quantum orbital energy level. There are no in-between energy levels, it is one level or the other. Therefore, EM lacking the E = hf to raise an electron one complete quantum level has no effect on the electron. It cannot raise it a little bit, or quite a bit, it must raise the electron one orbital energy level or more. EM from a cooler source lacks the required energy and frequency to be absorbed.

          That’s why EM from the green plate has no effect on the blue plate.

          • studentb says:

            “When EM from a cooler source is intercepted by a mass at a higher temperature than the source, it lacks both the intensity and the frequency to affect electrons in the hotter source. Electrons are the only particles in an atom that can generate or absorb EM. In order to be absorbed by an electron, EM must have a minimal energy/frequency to raise the electron to a higher energy level”

            Wrong…wrong…and…wrong again.!
            You have no idea what you are talking about.
            You obviously do not understand that black bodies emit and absorb over a range of frequencies. Nothing to stop radiation from a cooler object being absorbed by a warmer object. The net effect though, is still a transfer from warm to cool.
            Please stop posting rubbish.

          • bdgwx says:

            GR,

            That is wrong. Radiation from a cooler body emitted towards a warmer body is absorbed by the warmer body.

            If you look at the spectral irradiance curve from Planck’s Law what you’ll see is that at every point on the curve the intensity of the radiation of a cooler body is less than a warmer body. What this means is that a warmer body is emitting more photons per spectral line than it is absorbing. Therefore it continues to cool. However, it cools at a slower rate than it would have otherwise. The net flow of energy away from the body has been reduced.

            What you describe, however, is a violation of the 1LOT.

          • E. Swanson says:

            Gordo wrote:

            Thats why EM from the green plate has no effect on the blue plate.

            Your latest rant repeats your magic physics, ignoring what happens to the photons from the Green plate on the side facing the warmer Blue plate. Where do they go, as it were? Your explanation violates the First Law of Thermo. Let us know when you’ve figured it out

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            swannie…”Your latest rant repeats your magic physics, ignoring what happens to the photons from the Green plate on the side facing the warmer Blue plate. Where do they go, as it were? Your explanation violates the First Law of Thermo. Let us know when youve figured it out…”

            For one, there is no such entity as a photon, it is a human invention trying to particalize EM. Einstein claimed before his death that no one knows whether EM is a wave or a series of particles. It’s not helpful to think in terms of single photons since even if there is such a thing they have to behave like waves anyway.

            Where does the EM go? Who knows? Why does it have to go anywhere? All I know is what Bohr’s theory and Schrodinger’s equation claims, that an electron in an atom absorbing EM can only absorb EM of a frequency that matches it frequency and an intensity that can move it to a higher energy level. That’s basic quantum theory, argue with it at your peril.

            The 1st law has nothing to do with EM. Some claim that the 1st law is a conservation of energy theory but that’s true only for heat and work. Where do you see a reference to EM in:

            delta U = Q – W

            It tells you the change in internal energy of a system equals the heat added to the system minus the work done. If you have a mass of iron atoms and you add Q calories of heat, there is more work done in the vibration of the atoms (the iron expands). Therefore the change in internal energy equals the heat added minus the work done causing the atoms to vibrate harder.

            Of course, you could irradiate the iron with infrared and that will cause it to heat. However, the heating is caused by the electrons absorbing the IR and moving to higher energy levels. The heating is due to the electrons having a higher kinetic energy in the higher energy orbital.

            Makes better sense, Swannie, than heat being transferred from a cooler body to a warmer body. My explanation respects the 2nd law, yours seeks to change it.

          • bdgwx says:

            GR: For one, there is no such entity as a photon, it is a human invention trying to particalize EM.

            Seriously?

            GR: Where does the EM go? Who knows? Why does it have to go anywhere?

            Seriously?

            GR: The 1st law has nothing to do with EM.

            Seriously?

            GR: My explanation respects the 2nd law, yours seeks to change it.

            Says the guy who is challenging the existence of photons, says that energy can disappear, and that the law of conservation of energy does not apply to EM.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            “JD’s separated version would have the middle (blue) plate increasing in temperature with no change in incoming or outgoing energy, which IS a clear violation of 1LOT law of physics, typical for JD as an entertainment specialist:

            244K…290…244K”

            Oh dear. That is the answer that you people support for the 3-plate GPE. 244 K…290 K…244 K. So, studentb, bdgwx, E. Swanson, barry and Svante…Ball4 must be wrong. Right?

          • E. Swanson says:

            Gordo continues his magic physics delusion, writing:

            Where does the EM go? Who knows? Why does it have to go anywhere?

            We know that the Green plate(s) emit thermal IR EM radiation from both sides. The energy represented by those photons must go somewhere, else it violates the First Law. You have no case until you can answer your own questions…

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            OK, Swanson is one. Who else disagrees with Ball4?

    • JP66 says:

      Hi Again B,

      Quick question.

      If the Earth’s atmosphere had no GHG, would the temperature of the atmosphere increase or decrease and why?

      • Svante says:

        To achieve radiation balance with space, Earth’s effective radiative temperature has to be 252 K, so that’s the surface temperature with an IR transparent sky (disregarding ice albedo feedbacks etc.).

        Convection leads to cooling with altitude, and no heat accumulation since an equal amount of falling air will be cooled at the surface elsewhere (poles, night side, sea side …).

        What did I miss?

      • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

        “To achieve radiation balance with space…”

        I assume you mean, “…with the sun…”

  93. Snape says:

    Bin

    [2. This imbalance moreover is growing tiny bit by tiny bit, as more CO2 becomes resident in higher atmospheric layers up to 50 km (H2O, by far the main GHE actor, begins to precipitate above the tropopause).]

    ******

    CO2 molecules are increasing at lower levels of the troposphere as well. These molecules also absorb LWIR and reemit in every direction.

    I think it is very misleading to suggest that the GHE is altitude dependent.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      snape…”CO2 molecules are increasing at lower levels of the troposphere as well. These molecules also absorb LWIR and reemit in every direction”.

      Which raises interesting questions. Since a CO2 molecule is surrounded by 2500 molecules of nitrogen and oxygen, how much do you expect that single CO2 molecule to raise the temperature of the 2500 surrounding molecules?

      If you were in a park, surrounded by 2500 people with the ambient temperature at 15C, and you were wearing a heated suit capable of transferring heat, could you heat the other 2500 even if you were allowed to mingle?

      Supposing you were in a cooler suit, internally air conditioned, to keep your body at 14C. Could you radiate enough IR to heat the other 2500 people around you, even if tightly packed?

      Don’t go away the GHE theory gets even sillier. After immediately giving up its acquired heat via collisions with neighbouring N2/O2 molecules, the CO2 molecule is supposed to back-radiate a fraction of its energy to raise the temperature of the surface BEYOND the temperature it is heated by solar energy.

      There is a fly in the ointment, however. CO2 molecules get cooler the farther they are above the surface. By 30,000 feet, they are at least -20C. How, pray tell, can colder masses like that transfer heat via radiation to the surface? And how much can radiation from the surface warm them?

      None of this has been thought out, the GHE is sheer conjecture in its current form.

    • Bindidon says:

      Snape

      You should better read what others write:

      2. This imbalance moreover is growing tiny bit by tiny bit , as more CO2 becomes resident in higher atmospheric layers up to 50 km (H2O, by far the main GHE actor, begins to precipitate above the tropopause).

      Due to radiation released to outer space from higher, thus cooler locations, the energy radiated out lowers.

      *
      Nobody wrote here that ‘the GHE is altitude dependent’.

      What I meant is that the uniform repartition of CO2 lets it play a role at altitudes where H2O no longer is able to.

  94. Bindidon says:

    The blog again gets infested by miserably long ‘comments’.
    This is sooo boring!

    Why can that not STOP ?????

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      That was a short comment, Bindidon. See, you can do it if you put your mind to it.

    • Svante says:

      Bindidon says: “Why can that not STOP ?????”

      Because Gordon likes gish gallops.
      DREMT will also never give clear answers to key questions, so the sum total is similar.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      DREMT gets bored repeating clear answers to key questions asked 100 times already.

  95. Snape says:

    [Nobody wrote here that the GHE is altitude dependent.]

    I disagree. You wrote:

    [Due to radiation released to outer space from higher, thus cooler locations, the energy radiated out lowers.]

    • Bindidon says:

      Snape

      Sorry Snape: it should be clear that I did not mean here not this GHE as a whole, but its small increment due to… CO2 increments.

      Please don’t tell me that you believe CO2 would be the main GHE factor…

  96. Snape says:

    Bin

    What you described is accepted at RealClimate, Skeptical Science, Moyhu – just to name a few. I disagree, but probably lack the background to fully understand the argument.

  97. Snape says:

    [Please dont tell me that you believe CO2 would be the main GHE factor]

    No, of course not. But I argued at a blog called andthentheresphysics that even in the lower troposphere, water vapor and Co2 could produce warmIng via the GHE.

    The regulars there are very knowledgeable and they all disagreed.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      student b…”You obviously do not understand that black bodies emit and absorb over a range of frequencies. Nothing to stop radiation from a cooler object being absorbed by a warmer object”.

      Do you have even the slightest idea that a black body is a theoretical entity invented by Kircheoff in an application to bodies in thermal equilibrium? The 2nd law does not apply to blackbodies which theoretically absorb and emit all frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. I said theoretically because they can’t. They don’t exist.

      If you have two theoretical black bodies side by side you cannot talk about an interaction between them outside of thermal equilibrium. You’ve had your head filled with nonsense either by someone teaching you who is out to lunch or due to a misinterpretation of blackbody theory.

      Let’s get back to reality and talk about real bodies and their properties with regard to heat transfer via radiation. Have you ever heard Bohr or Schrodinger talking about blackbodies? No!! They talked about real protons and real electrons and quantum theory is based on that reality, not on the hocus pocus of blackbody theory.

      Do yourself a favour and get out of your head and into reality. Do some real observations rather than swilling incorrect garbage in your mind.

  98. Gordon Robertson says:

    Sorry this got posted in the wrong place.

    student bYou obviously do not understand that black bodies emit and absorb over a range of frequencies. Nothing to stop radiation from a cooler object being absorbed by a warmer object.

    Do you have even the slightest idea that a black body is a theoretical entity invented by Kircheoff in an application to bodies in thermal equilibrium? The 2nd law does not apply to blackbodies which theoretically absorb and emit all frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. I said theoretically because they cant. They dont exist.

    If you have two theoretical black bodies side by side you cannot talk about an interaction between them outside of thermal equilibrium. Youve had your head filled with nonsense either by someone teaching you who is out to lunch or due to a misinterpretation of blackbody theory.

    Lets get back to reality and talk about real bodies and their properties with regard to heat transfer via radiation. Have you ever heard Bohr or Schrodinger talking about blackbodies? No!! They talked about real protons and real electrons and quantum theory is based on that reality, not on the hocus pocus of blackbody theory.

    Do yourself a favour and get out of your head and into reality. Do some real observations rather than swilling incorrect garbage in your mind.

  99. Gordon Robertson says:

    bdg…”If you look at the spectral irradiance curve from Plancks Law what youll see is that at every point on the curve the intensity of the radiation of a cooler body is less than a warmer body. What this means is that a warmer body is emitting more photons per spectral line than it is absorbing”.

    Planck’s curve has nothing to do with absorp-tion and neither does the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. In fact, Planck admitted to fudging the math to get his curve. It worried him for years that there might not have been a physical explanation for it.

    There still is no physical explanation, it’s just the way the universe works. Prior to Planck’s curve, scientists worried about the ultraviolet catastrophe. As temperatures rise, bodies emit more intense radiation at higher frequencies. The relationship is described by E = hf and based on that equation, intensity, E, should rise toward infinity as frequency increases.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      Planck reasoned that as frequency increased the amount of energy available should drop off. In other words, he applied an exponential factor to his equation to ensure it did. It turned out that he was right. You can see the natural logarithm e in the equation, causing the intensity to drop off as f increases.

      Prove your claim that radiation from a cooler body is absorbed by a warmer body. Explain how EM can transfer heat from a cooler body to a warmer body in a contradiction of the 2nd law.

      Before he expressed the 2nd law mathematically with entropy, Clausius stated it in words. He stated that heat can never be transferred by it’s own means from a colder body to a warmer body. Prove he was wrong.

      Conversely, the results in Swannie’s experiment can easily be explained by the effect of raising the green plate in front of the BP on heat dissipation of the blue plate. The BP’s temperature is dependent on it’s ability to radiate IR. When the IR is blocked by the GP, the BP warms up.

      No need to question the 2nd law.

      • E. Swanson says:

        Gordo wrote:

        Prove your claim that radiation from a cooler body is absorbed by a warmer body. Explain how EM can transfer heat from a cooler body to a warmer body in a contradiction of the 2nd law.

        I’m sure that you would agree that if the emissivity of the cooler body was zero, then the warmer body would absorb the reflected energy. Now, if the emissivity of the cooler body were increased toward 1, the cooler body would also warm and then both reflect and emit thermal IR EM. The warmer body would absorb that energy, which is the basis of radiation shields and multi-layer insulation. That’s the basis of engineering applications of radiation heat transfer theory and practice. If it didn’t work, it would be obvious by now, after more than 100 years of success.

        Gordo continues:

        …the results in Swannie’s experiment can easily be explained by the effect of raising the green plate in front of the BP on heat dissipation of the blue plate. The BP’s temperature is dependent on it’s ability to radiate IR. When the IR is blocked by the GP, the BP warms up.

        Your magic physics appears again. Please provide some published references to support such a dubious claim.

    • bdgwx says:

      My point was that a warm body can absorb photons and thus energy from a cool body. That does not mean the warm body gets warmer. But it does mean that the warm body is now cooling at a slower rate. I thought visualizing this with the spectral irradiance curves of the two bodies would help you see why the warm body still cools just at a slower rate despite absorbing energy from the cool body.

      And I never claimed that heat could transfer from a cool body to warm body. I did claim that energy could transfer from a cool body to a warm body though.

      I am also claiming that in a configuration with a warmer body (surface) shielded by a cool thermal barrier body (GHGs) from an even colder background body (space) will achieve a higher equilibrium temperature when that system is receiving an external injection of energy (Sun).

      This is consistent with the 2LOT because…

      1) The Earth system of bodies is not isolated. It is receiving energy from the outside. Thus it is not allowed to evolve by its own means. Entropy can decrease in this system. This is consistent with both the 1LOT and 2LOT.

      2) The combined Sun-Earth system of bodies is isolated (mostly anyway). It is not receiving energy from the outside. Thus it is allowed to evolve by its own means. Entropy increases in this system. This is consistent with both the 1LOT and 2LOT.

      • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

        “That does not mean the warm body gets warmer”

        Contradicted by

        “…will achieve a higher equilibrium temperature.”

        You will not acknowledge this contradiction.

        • bdgwx says:

          There is no contradiction.

          The first statement is in reference to a configuration without an external energy injection and only 2 bodies in play: warm and cool.

          The second statement is in reference to a configuration with an external energy injection and 3 bodies in play: warm (surface), cool (GHGs), cold (space). You can also model this as a configuration without an external energy injection but 4 bodies instead: warm (surface), cool (GHGs), cold (space), hot (Sun).

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          See?

        • bdgwx says:

          No. I don’t see.

          Scenario 1: Heat is transferred from the warm body to the cool body.

          Scenario 2: Heat is transferred from the hot body (Sun) to the warm body (surface).

          What’s the problem?

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          Quote from a radiative heat transfer text book approving the “energy injection” clause you all so frequently invoke, please.

        • bdgwx says:

          It comes from the 2LOT. Phrases often used include “by its own means”, “spontaneously”, “isolated system”, “without external stimuli”, “uncompensated”, etc. I happen to use “external energy injection” in this case to mean the same thing as all of the phrases above just with more descriptive language to better convey how the Earth system is being stimulated from the outside. Afterall the Sun is injecting energy into the Earth system. Therefore the Earth system is not isolated, it is being compensated, and not allowed to evolve by its own means.

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          Couldn’t find a reference, huh? Quelle surprise.

        • bdgwx says:

          I gave you a variety of different wordings.

          Do you want to know who is responsible for these wording choices?

          Is your challenge here with the clause itself or with the wording of the clause?

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          Same sort of thing I’m asking barry for, here:

          http://www.drroyspencer.com/2020/02/uah-global-temperature-update-for-january-2020-0-56-deg-c/#comment-435934

          Only barry is limited to Clausius. You are allowed any radiative heat transfer textbook, so your task should be much easier. No more BS please, just find the reference. Thanks.

        • barry says:

          I brought up Clausius to respond to Gordon’s inane proposition that EM radiaitonh from cold objects cannot be absorbed by warmer objects. Nothing of what Clausius says explicitly forbids the ‘green plate effect’. Indeed, we all agree that there must be a NET flow of hot to cold, but where we seem to trip up is that there is a “simultaneous double heat ecxhange” that can result in warmer objects becoming warmer when colder objects are introduced – if the heat loss of warm to cold is “compensated” by an extarnal source.

          Clausius words support the GPE (simultaneous double heat exchange), and do not explicitly forbid it.

        • bdgwx says:

          That looks like a different question. No?

          Can we focus on the 2LOT for a moment since that was the topic in this branch of the thread?

          And if you’re wanting to focus on a single source/reference would it be okay to use Clausius’ statement “an uncompensated transmission of heat from a colder to a warmer body can never occur”?

          Are you challenging the word choice?

          Are you challenging the underlying concept?

          Are you challenging the fact that an injection of energy into a system is “compensation”?

        • barry says:

          “That looks like a different question. No?”

          Yep, it’s a differet question under the same topic.

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          No, it’s exactly the same question, only giving bdgwx a broader range of reference material to work from. Here’s a place to start, bdgwx: respond to me with a link, and a quote.

          Both of you are avoiding doing so, because you cannot find anything.

        • bdgwx says:

          DREMT,

          The Clausius statement comes from his 1879 Mechanical Theory of Heat.

          A large portion of this work is devoted to what he calls the “Second Main Principal”. The actual quote from which the more succinct statement is derived is:

          This proposition, laid down as a Fundamental Principle
          by the author, has met with much opposition; but, having
          repeatedly had occasion to defend it, he has always been able
          to show that the objections raised were due to the fact that
          the phenomena, in which it was believed that an uncompensated passage of heat from a colder to a hotter body was to
          be found, had not been correctly understood.

          https://tinyurl.com/rpo6gmm

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          Presumably you believe this supports you, somehow?

  100. Bindidon says:

    “For one, there is no such entity as a photon, it is a human invention trying to particalize EM.”

    This is currently the scientific level of this blog… it is less than pseudoscience, it is antiscience.

    Good grief!

    • JP66 says:

      Hi Again B,

      Quick questions.

      If the Earths atmosphere had no GHG, would the temperature of the atmosphere increase or decrease and why?

      The top of our atmosphere is hotter than the surface obviously because it absorbs UV. Why can’t it cool off?

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      binny…”“For one, there is no such entity as a photon, it is a human invention trying to particalize EM.”

      This is currently the scientific level of this blog… it is less than pseudoscience, it is antiscienc”.

      You should stick to stuff you understand, which doesn’t leave a lot of room for you to comment.

      A photon is DEFINED as having momentum and no mass. Since conventional physics defines momentum as mass x velocity, that means the photon has no momentum. Either someone is lying or someone is playing with thought-experiments. A photon is classified as a particle yet it has no mass. Not possible.

      I grew up studying electromagnetic energy as part of my training in electrons then applied it in the field. Without EM, we could have no electric motors, no transformers, and no communications systems. We know for a fact that electric charges, related to electrons, create a magnetic field around a conductor as the electrons/charges move through the circuit. If we arrange the conductors into a coil, with a metal core, we can amplify the magnetic field to make it do serious work.

      The combination of an electric field with the magnetic field it creates is referred to as a ‘near-field’. In electric motors, the field stays close to the conductors. If we increase the alternating frequency of the electric current beyond a certain point, the electromagnetic field can be radiated through space and become a ‘far-field’.

      In my day, EM was considered a wave since it is made up of an electric field with a magnetic field at 90 degrees to it. That’s how it propagates through space, as a field, not a series of particles.

      In the audio field, sound is known to propagate as a wave through air molecules. Sound energy compresses and rarefies the molecules causing wavefronts of energy at a specific frequency. There was a need to do that in the study of EM at the atomic level so the concept of a photon as a particle of energy was defined.

      Ask yourself this: if EM is a parcel of photons, how does it have a frequency and wavelength that can be propagated isotropically from a source? This is far more complex than you are willing to envision so you resort to insults and ad home.

      I did not claim the concept of a photon is not useful, it can be, In the photoelectric effect, it is useful to visualize photons as packets of energy causing electrons to be freed from a metal surface. All I am doing is agreeing with Einstein, that no one knows if photons exist or not.

      I use the concept myself in a ridiculous example of how an electron absorbs a quantum of energy. I have no idea how it works and neither does anyone else.

  101. barry says:

    Clausius on the 2nd Law: https://archive.org/details/mechanicaltheor03claugoog/page/n9/mode/2up

    Page 295….

    THE MECHANICAL THEORY OF HEAT

    SECTION XII

    The concentration of heat and light beams and the limits of their effect.

    1. Subject of the investigation.

    Again as regards the ordinary radiation of heat, it is of course well known that not only do hot bodies radiate to cold but also cold bodies conversely to hot; nevertheless, the general result of this simultaneous double heat exchange always consists, as is established, in an increase of the heat in the colder body at the expense of the hotter.

    ——————————–

    Note the phrase “as regards the ordinary radiation of heat.” This is not a special condition or about heat pumps. That’s clear.

    (I would not use the term ‘heat’, which is really a hangover from Kristian’s strident adherence to physics as he learned it (I suppose), and which would absolutely reject Clausius’ terminology here.)

    The result of this ‘simultaneous double heat exchange’ between a cold and warm object is that the NET flow of heat (radiative energy in our context) is from hot to cold.

    As has been said from the very beginning of this looooong debate.

    An infrared camera is not a heat pump either, and uncooled infrared cameras can detect temperature variation as low as -40C when the measuring instrument itself is at room temp. This should not be possible if a warm object cannot absorb radiation from a cooler one. But that’s exactly what happens to the bolometer.

    • Bindidon says:

      barry

      Thanks, exactly.

      { This Clausius corner has been detected years ago by my Pangolina girlie, who despite some claims of sockpuppetry, ha ha, still is alive, but got sad of Robertson & Co. }

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      Yes, barry, cold bodies do radiate to hot bodies. They just don’t make them warmer still, as Clausius makes clear; the colder body gets warmer at the expense of the hotter. He does not state anything in your quote about how much energy is actually absorbed by the warmer body. You just infer that which you wish to believe.

      Now, please find where Clausius mentions your oft-repeated magic “but when a warm body has a constant source of energy, the presence of a cooler body can make it warmer than it would otherwise be” clause.

    • barry says:

      “the general result of this simultaneous double heat exchange always consists, as is established, in an increase of the heat in the colder body at the expense of the hotter.”

      Clausius’ words are clear without any interpretation.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      No response to my points. Understood.

    • barry says:

      To answer the thrust of your argument instead of the bit I focussed on which pertains to what I’m pointing out for Gordon’s benefit, we need to introduce an external heat source continuously providing energy.

      But before we proceed with that, I want you to confirm that you agree energy is imparted and received by both warmer and cooler bodies (with the result being that cooler bodies receive the bulk of the transfer at the expense of the warmer body).

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      Now, please find where Clausius mentions your oft-repeated magic “but when a warm body has a constant source of energy, the presence of a cooler body can make it warmer than it would otherwise be” clause. I have set bdgwx a similar challenge. Off you pop, little one.

      • E. Swanson says:

        ERsEMT, Most every text book I’ve seen has a discussion of the energy transfer between two parallel plates. The calculations usually begin with measured temperatures of the two plates and ask the student how much energy is being transferred between the two. Obviously, the hotter plate is being supplied continuously with energy at a some fixed rate in order for this exercise to have any meaning. One such text is Craig Bohren’s “Fundamentals of Atmospheric Radiation” (2006), Figure 1.6.

    • barry says:

      Confirm what I asked for or reject it. Don’t ignore it. Last chance.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      I acknowledge your concession.

    • bdgwx says:

      DREMT,

      I presented you with a variety of different wordings for that crucial “by its own means” clause in the 2LOT already above.

      And in regard to “but when a warm body has a constant source of energy, the presence of a cooler body can make it warmer than it would otherwise be” I want to make sure you understand exactly what that means. The absence of this cooler body implies that the warm body is surrounded by nothing or more realistically the cosmic microwave background. The presence of this cooler body presents an interface to the warmer body that is still warmer than the CMB. It is shielding the warmer body from an even colder body. Both the CMB and cooler body radiate toward the warmer body. Its just that the cooler body is radiating more energy than the CMB. That is why the warmer body has a lower net energy flux with the cooler body present than with just that CMB. And if that warmer body has a constant energy source it WILL achieve a higher equilibrium temperature with the cooler body present than with just the CMB. If you take away the energy source the warmer body will equilibriate with the cooler body (if present) or the CMB (if not present).

      Note that this explanation is consistent with both the 1LOT and 2LOT. So what specifically are you challenging here?

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      ☺️

      You people are unbelievable. Am I talking a different language!? No.

      I made it perfectly clear what I’m asking for. It is perfectly clear that you cannot provide it, because it does not exist.

      • barry says:

        The inventors of uncooled microbolometers have already done that. Give the prize to them.

        https://www.flir.com/products/t1010/

        FLIR T1010 HD Thermal Imaging Camera

        Detector Type: Focal plane array (FPA), uncooled microbolometer
        Object Temperature Range: -40°C to 650°C (-40°F to 1202°F)

        These devices operate at room temperature, and read the temperature of very cold objects from the radiation they give off. They even gradate the temperature spectrum from -40°C to room temperature (and higher).

        If radiation from colder objects cannot be absorbed by warmer objects, this should not be possible – according to you.

        Will you alert the Nobel Committee?

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          Not what I’m asking for, barry.

          barry, why don’t you and bdgwx just admit it? All of you people frequently comment along the lines of: when there is a constant input of energy to a warmer object, the presence of a cooler object can make that object warmer.

          Yet you cannot support that statement with quotes from either Clausius, or radiative heat transfer textbooks. It is just made up.

          • bdgwx says:

            DREMT,

            I think we’re confused by the question because all text books contain verbiage concerning the “by its own means” or “uncompensated” clause of the 2LOT albeit with different levels of thoroughness and wording.

            I didn’t realize that you where challenging its very existence until now.

            I did provide the link to Clausius’ Mechanical Theory of Heat above for your review. Here it is again.

            https://tinyurl.com/rpo6gmm

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            The “uncompensated” clause is not the same thing as “a constant input of energy”. Please stop lying.

          • bdgwx says:

            DREMT,

            It most certainly is. A compensated transformation of the system occurs when work has been performed on the system. A system receiving an input of energy is being compensated.

            More modern wordings of the 2LOT use entropy and isolation as the key verbiage. An isolated system is one in which there is no passage of mass or energy into or out of the system.

            The statement…

            – Entropy increases in an isolated system.

            …is equivalent to…

            – Heat flows from a warm to a cool body in an uncompensated system.

            …is also equivalent to…

            – Heat flows from a warm to a cool body in a system left to evolve by its own means.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            It most certainly is not. You make a lot of unsupported claims. Back it up.

          • bdgwx says:

            DREMT,

            What specifically are you challenging?

            – The wording of the 2LOT?

            – The “by its own means”, “uncompensated”, or “isolated” clause itself?

            – The fact that an input of energy necessarily means the system is compensated, not isolated, and not evolving by its own means?

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            You know what I’m asking you to support, because I have written it out a few times now, in plain English. The best you’ve done so far is to post a link to a document of several hundred pages, and not even point me so much as towards the direction of a specific chapter, let alone a page.

            You’re not impressing anyone with your ability to support your claims.

          • bdgwx says:

            I picked that specific link because it was an English translation and because it is digitized/searchable. Did you not think to search the document?

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            Still got nothing, then.

          • bdgwx says:

            DREMT,

            The chapter labeled “Second Main Principle of the Mechanical Theory of Heat” is on text pg. 69 or pdf pg. 83.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      barry…”gain as regards the ordinary radiation of heat, it is of course well known that not only do hot bodies radiate to cold but also cold bodies conversely to hot; nevertheless, the general result of this simultaneous double heat exchange always consists, as is established, in an increase of the heat in the colder body at the expense of the hotter”.

      I have tried many times to offer an explanation for what Clausius meant in that statement. Your buddy, Binny, even alluded to the fact that scientists in those days lacked a full understanding radiation.

      Heat cannot be radiated and neither Clausius not his peers knew that at the time. They envisioned heat moving as ‘rays’ through space via an aether. He was talking unknowingly about electromagnetic radiation. Neither did he have the means to measure a heat transfer from cold to hot and that is still true today. If you have the means, there is a Nobel awaiting you.

      Clausius is not talking about a mutual heat exchange, he is talking about electromagnetic energy and calling it heat. If you read him more closely he talks about heat being radiated, and one of his peer group, Planck, referred to EM as heat rays.

      Clausius had no idea how heat was converted to EM at the source by electrons, then converted back at the target. He was in good company, neither did Stefan, Boltzmann, Maxwell, Planck, Kircheoff, or even Einstein in the early days.

      Clausius does mention in the statement above that heat in the colder body increases at the expense of the hotter body. If you read him further on the same subject, he claims that heat transfer by radiation must obey the 2nd law. It does. Heat is converted to EM as the source radiates and that heat is lost. The EM can be intercepted by a colder body, which can absorb the EM, and the colder body warms.

      What he had no way of knowing is that the process is not reversible due to the requirements of the electrons that radiate and absorb the EM. The truth behind that did not come till at least 1913 when Bohr got it that electrons in discrete quantum orbits were radiating and absorbing EM only at a specific frequency and intensity.

      The frequency and intensity of radiated EM by an electron is proportional to the quantum energy level (orbital kinetic energy) in which the electron resides. There are stringent rules and conditions for moving an electron to a higher energy level and EM from a colder source lacks both.

  102. Bindidon says:

    Snape

    You wrote upthread

    “No, of course not. But I argued at a blog called andthentheresphysics that even in the lower troposphere, water vapor and Co2 could produce warmIng via the GHE. ”

    *
    Of course: CO2 is present near surface as is WV. { Hum… they don’t produce warming, but rather inhibit cooling, even it superficially might appear as the same thing. }

    But we should consider that WV is most present where there is the most heat: that is in the Tropics, where its abundance near surface is up to 4 % of all gases present there, i.e. 100 % more than CO2.

    This is easy to understand, as the Sun’s irradiance is highest in the Tropics: it decreases with the square of the cosine of the incidence angle, what means that the Sun hits surfaces between 20N and 20S 16 times stronger than between 70-90 N or S.

    Moreover, a spherical ‘square’ of 5×5 degree is 308716 km2 at latitudes 0-5 degree, whereas it is only 40334 km2 at latitudes 80-85 (the top triangle at the Poles has only 13479 km2).

    The Tropics between 20 S and 20 N thus represent 33 % of Earth’s surface, and there, WV is with 4 % of the atmosphere 100 % more present at surface than is CO2 (the polar regions where WV is much less present are way, way smaller, about 10 % of the Tropics’ surface per Pole).

    Combining all that lets me think that CO2’s influence near Earth’s surface is not very high: WV’s LW interception in the Tropics seems to be about 100 * 16 * 5 = 8000 times higher than that of CO2 at the Poles.

    That’s only a layman’s opinion, of course.

  103. Bindidon says:

    I’m not a fan of Willis Eschenbach when he unscientifically rants on satellite-based altimetry, but that doesn’t mean at all that he is an ignorant, as opposed to some writing here.

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/24/can-a-cold-object-warm-a-hot-object/

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      Great to see an ugly-souled, continent-sized-ego’d argument-loser like Willis getting torn to shreds in the comments by his superiors.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      binny…”Im not a fan of Willis Eschenbach when he unscientifically rants on satellite-based altimetry, but that doesnt mean at all that he is an ignorant, as opposed to some writing here”.

      The definition of heat by Willis is just plain wrong. The notion of heat as a net flow of energy is sheer nonsense. Heat is the kinetic energy of atoms and its relative level is measured by the human invention of temperature.

      You can’t mess with the 2nd law, it is both intuitively and scientifically correct. As defined by Clausius, who wrote the 2nd law, heat can never, by its own means, be transferred from a colder body to a warmer body.

      Those who try to get around that by using mysterious energies in a net balance of energy are living in a universe other than ours. There can only be two energies in a transfer of heat, heat itself, and electromagnetic energy as a transporting agent. EM has nothing to do with the direction of transfer that is determined by the potential energy difference between bodies of different temperatures.

  104. Snape says:

    @Bindidon

    [Of course: CO2 is present near surface as is WV. { Hum they dont produce warming, but rather inhibit cooling, even it superficially might appear as the same thing. }]

    That is not what they meant. They asserted that only GHGs located in the ERL (effective radiating layer) or higher (roughly 5 KM and higher) would create a radiative imbalance. No warming or slower cooling from GHGs located at lower altitudes.

  105. Gordon Robertson says:

    bdg…”And in regard to “but when a warm body has a constant source of energy, the presence of a cooler body can make it warmer than it would otherwise be” ”

    I don’t know why this point is so misunderstood.

    The temperature of a body, whether it is heated or not, depends on the ability of the body to dissipate heat.

    If you heat a body electrically with 100 watts of electrical power, it will warm to a certain temperature commensurate with the size of the body, the material, etc., but also to a level which is dependent on its ability to dissipate heat. So, it becomes a balance of heat in = heat out.

    If you stifle it’s ability to dissipate heat by interfering with its ability to conduct heat to air, interfere with convective currents to carry the conducted heat away, or interfere in it’s ability to radiate heat, the body will rise to a temperature natural to the amount of heat supplied electrically. It may even burn out or explode in that case.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      part 2…

      Simply placing a colder body anywhere in the vicinity of a hotter body will not cause it to warm. Placing a hotter body near it will definitely cause it to warm. If the colder body interferes with convection or radiation to a significant degree, the body will warm but only because it is being heated electrically. It will warm toward the temperature the electrical heating creates but no higher.

      If the body is not independently heated, it will not warm. The nearby cooler body may reduce the rate of dissipation, allowing the body to remain warm longer but that has nothing to do with a transfer of heat from the colder body to the warmer body.

      The argument among alarmists is that 0.04% CO2 in the atmosphere can slow the dissipation of heat from the surface. Highly unlikely, as the IPCC likes to claim. The rate of dissipation of the surface is controlled by the temperature of the air adjacent to the surface and that air is 99% nitrogen and oxygen.

      As I see it, as the surface is warmed by solar energy, the air adjacent to the surface warms and rises, being replaced by cooler air from above. That cooler air increases the dissipation rate. On hot summer days, where the warmed atmospheric air extends further above the surface, the rate should be lowered due to a decreased temperature differential.

      Put in a nutshell, the larger the temperature gradient between a body and it’s surroundings the faster it will cool. That is, it will cool to the point where heat out = heat in.

    • bdgwx says:

      GR: The temperature of a body, whether it is heated or not, depends on the ability of the body to dissipate heat.

      Yep. That’s what we’re trying to say.

      GR: Simply placing a colder body anywhere in the vicinity of a hotter body will not cause it to warm.

      It will if that colder body is directing more energy towards the hotter body than the alternative and if the system is compensated by a constant source of energy.

      My home is the perfect counter example to your claim…

      Right now the windows are cold; colder than the inside in fact. If I open the windows my house WILL cool. If I close the windows my house WILL warm as long as the inside is being compensated by the furnace and its source of energy. This is an example of a cool body (windows) being placed in the vicinity of a warm body (inside) which necessarily results in the warm body (inside) achieving a higher equilibrium temperature than it would have otherwise. All of this because the warm body (inside) is being shielded (thermal barrier) by a cool body (windows) from an even colder body (outside) while the flow of heat comes from an even hotter body (furnace) being compensated by a constant source of energy (electricity).

      …in perfect accordance with the 1LOT and 2LOT.

    • barry says:

      This is as everyday example of what the GPE is exemplifying – how a cold object can cause a warmer object or environment to become warmer, when there is an source of energy supplying the system, conpensating the heat loss from the 2 bodies. I cannot fathom how, when presented with this every day example, something that everyone has experienced, ‘skeptics’ can’t see that a colder object causes a warmer object to get even warmer in this scenario, just by moving the position of the cold object.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      Yes, bdgwx…keeping your windows closed will result in your house being warmer than it would otherwise be. By limiting convection. Just like how a greenhouse actually works.

      Now, anyway, back to the GPE…

      • bdgwx says:

        Just to clarify…

        You agree that a cool body placed in proximity to a warm body can indeed result in an increase in temperature of the warm body in the presence of a constant supply of compensating energy?

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          I wrote what I wrote.

        • barry says:

          Yes bdgwx, that’s what he just said. He clearly agreed with you on your house example. He just couldn’t bring himself to admiot it when you pressed him.

          And it seems he was about to suggest that the laws of thermodynamics apply differently to radiation than they do to convection, but he bailed out of further clarification.

          Gordon has also made the connection:

          “If the colder body interferes with convection or radiation to a significant degree, the body will warm but only because it is being heated electrically. It will warm toward the temperature the electrical heating creates but no higher.”

          Groan. That’s what we’ve been saying all along.

          The sticking point now is “back radiation.” Gordon doesn’t think warmer objects abosrb the radiation of cooler ones, so it is a puzzle how he imagines cooler objects “interfere” with the radiative dissipation of warmer objects.

          DREMT agrees that warmer objects absorb the energy of cooler ones, but seems to be hanging his denial on a question of degree:

          “Yes, barry, cold bodies do radiate to hot bodies. They just dont make them warmer still, as Clausius makes clear; the colder body gets warmer at the expense of the hotter. He does not state anything in your quote about how much energy is actually absorbed by the warmer body.”

          That’s in reference to Clausius’ “siultaneous double heat exchange.” So DREMT doesn’t disagree with Clausius that it happens, he has some as yet unclarified objection to the GPE, where the energy absorbed by blue plate from green has zero effect. In contravention of the 1st LoT.

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          barry, I leave the games to you guys.

          Object A has a constant, internally-generated source of energy.

          Object A has a temperature x where its only means of cooling is via radiation (i.e the object is in a vacuum). Object A now has an atmosphere around it – it can now cool via radiation and conduction/convection. It now has temperature y.

          Temperature y is lower than temperature x.

          If you reduce the rate of convection, Object A can move closer from temperature y to temperature x.

          You people effectively argue that Object A can get above temperature x, radiatively. That is where we part ways.

        • barry says:

          “You people effectively argue that Object A can get above temperature x, radiatively.”

          You understand that in the GPE, the temperature of the blue plate will never rise above that of the input – the sun?

          Object A is not an Earth-like planet in your set up there. In the real Earth system, the vast bulk of the energy isn’t internally generated, it comes from the Sun.

          The effective temperature of the spherical Earth (no atmosphere) is -18 C. That’s a product of distance from the sun and albedo.

          What is your calculation of temperaturew X for the real Earth if not this?

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            No, barry…

            In the 2-plate scenario, we are not told the temperature of the sun.
            In the 3-plate scenario, your blue plate does indeed go above temperature x.

            It’s not that the blue plate temperature is fixed. It’s the constant input of energy from the electrical source that is fixed. However, as I was describing, exactly like Object A – in the 3-plate scenario, on its own, the temperature of the blue plate in vacuum is 244 K. You add the two green plates either side, and the temperature increases to 290 K (according to your Green Plate Effect logic). That is above x by 46 degrees.

          • barry says:

            What is your calculation of X for planet Earth? How do you derive it?

            I’m curious, because I think your conception of what X should be (temperature of the whole surface of the earth without an atmosphere) is already being eclipsed by the actual average temperature of the surface.

            So what is X for our planet, DREMT? How do you calculate it?

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            Trying to take it down this track is a good way to deliberately avoid the point I made, barry.

  106. Snape says:

    [Put in a nutshell, the larger the temperature gradient between a body and its surroundings the faster it will cool. That is, it will cool to the point where heat out = heat in.]

    Well said, Gordon. Maybe you could ask Roy to leave this paragraph, delete the 24 volumes of gibberish that preceded it?

    We could pretend youre playing with a full deck!

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      snape…”We could pretend youre playing with a full deck!”

      It would be nice if you had the slightest idea what I have been talking about. You are one of the alarmists who thinks putting a cooler body in the vicinity of a hotter body causes the hotter body to warm due to a transfer of “energy’ from the colder body to the warmer.

      Your superior attitude is unwarranted, you are yet another legend, in his own mind. Or are you a thought experiment in the minds of others?

    • barry says:

      “You are one of the alarmists who thinks putting a cooler body in the vicinity of a hotter body causes the hotter body to warm due to a transfer of energy from the colder body to the warmer.”

      Nobody is saying that.

      As sure as the sun rises every day, ‘septics’ misconstrue the point, omitting the compensating force.

      The system starts with a heat source and a body receiving heat from it. Then a cooler body is brought into the system beyond the warmer body.

      If you’re going to argue the point, get the point right to begin with.

    • bdgwx says:

      GR: You are one of the alarmists who thinks putting a cooler body in the vicinity of a hotter body causes the hotter body to warm due to a transfer of energy from the colder body to the warmer.

      Not quite right.

      What we are saying is that in a system with a warm body and which is being compensated by a constant supply of energy the warm body will exhibit an increase in temperature if a cooler body is placed between the warm body and the even colder body that it was originally interfaced with.

      Make sure you understand exactly what is being said before challenging it.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      bdgwx…you just basically repeated barry’s comment. In which case, I repeat mine.

  107. Snape says:

    Behave, and they might let you watch Wapner again.

    https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/e9aa222f-e830-4d6e-a494-c0389fa1dbf4

  108. Gordon Robertson says:

    barry…”Answered you here:

    http://www.drroyspencer.com/2020/02/uah-global-temperature-update-for-january-2020-0-56-deg-c/#comment-436070

    ***

    Sorry…you did not. You are still claiming, based on a FLIR IR camera having a range from -40C to 600C that heat must be able to transfer naturally from a colder body to a warmer body, otherwise the FLIR camera would not work.

    Here’s what FLIR had to say at the link below:

    1)IR cameras inherently measure irradiance not temperature…

    2)Entry level IR cameras with microbolometer detectors operate according to non-quantum principles. The detectors respond to radiant energy in a way that causes a change of state in the bulk material (e.g., resistance or capacitance)….

    3)the calibrated cameras electronics convert radiance values to temperature using the known or measured emissivity of the target object.

    4)The calibration curves are stored in the camera systems memory as a series of numeric curve-fit tables that relate radiance values to blackbody temperatures. When the system makes a measurement, it takes the digital value of the signal at a given moment, goes into the appropriate calibration table, and calculates temperature.

    NOTE: the the temperature is CALCULATED from lookup tables in the camera’s memory.

    ***placeholder to see if link in preventing posting****

    • Ball4 says:

      Gordon, you have completely missed that article is all about IR Cameras “thermal imaging” NOT IR thermometers. Find an article on uncooled IR thermometers to learn how they work by absorbing radiation from cooler bodies.

    • barry says:

      Gordon, what I am showing you with the IR cameras is that warm bodies DO absorb radiation from colder bodies. That’s it.

      That’s the point of bringing up IR cameras with uncooled bolometers.

      YOU don’t believe radiation from cold bodies can be absorbed by warm ones. Well, they can, otherwise these cameras could not detect temperatures below their own.

      Forget everything else and just learn that you are wrong on this specific point. It’s a starting point to wisdom. Don’t overleap it.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      Ball4, barry, please stop trolling.

  109. Gordon Robertson says:

    yep…it was something in the link. I’ll try again by inserting * in parts of the link. Remove any *, copy/paste to browser.

    BTW…it’s worth the effort. Very good article on the theory of IR detectors.

    https://www.hoskin.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/flir_thermal_camera_guide_for_research_pro*f*essionals.pdf

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      BTW..Barry…you are confusing the transfer of heat to the effect of IR radiation on semiconductor material. IR radiation in certain frequency bands can affect the ability of semiconductors to conduct free electrons and it does it without heating the semiconductor. This is more about quantum theory than thermodynamics.

      In the article at the link above, they distinguish between IR detectors, called quantum detectors, that operate based on electron’s ability in atoms to transition between energy levels. They distinguish between free electrons, that have escaped the forces of the nucleus and electrons still bound to the nucleus.

      In order for quantum detectors to work, the detection device has to be cooled to a very low temperature using liquid nitrogen. Otherwise, it would never respond to a target with a cooler temperature.

      The other detector, the less expensive one, they incorrectly call a thermal detector. They have already claimed it detects IR then succumb to the incorrect visualization of heat as an entity that can flow through air. In that sense, they are still mired in the mid 19th century.

      So called handheld thermal detectors, are actually optical detectors, although even that is not right. IR is not in the optical band but it can be collected by lenses. Once collected, it is focused on a semiconductor cell where the materials of the cell are chosen due to their ability to respond to IR in a narrow IR band.

      IR does not heat the semiconductor it affects it’s ability to conduct an electrical current. The current through a semiconductor devices is factory calibrated to a known IR frequency band. That factory data is stored in the camera memory and can be used to convert the current through the semiconductor device to a known blackbody temperature.

      • barry says:

        Ypou’re missing the point. Focus.

        You’ve stated that radiation from a cooler body canot be absorbed by a warmer one. That’s the statement from you I’m addressing, not any other – yet.

        That’s why I’ve introduced you to uncooled microbolometers, which can detect temperatures much colder than the instrument – because they absorb radiation from colder bodies.

        Forget about heating or cooling, and just admit that you’ve been wrong about this. An uncooled microbolometer detects temperature by absorbing radiation from objects it is pointed at, and differentiating between them. It could not possibly detect temperatures lower than itself, if your statement were true. it could not possibly absorb radiation from cooler bodies and ‘see’ them, much less gradate them down to -40 C.

        but they do that, and this means you are wrong about warmer bodies being unable to absorb radiation from cooler bodies.

        Please respond to that and not some other idea or extension of it.

      • barry says:

        Gordon,

        “IR does not heat the semiconductor it affects its ability to conduct an electrical current.”

        But according to you IR from cold obects cannot possibly be absorbed by warmer objects. If the semiconductor is warmer than the source IR, the semiconductor cannot absorb it, and uncooled IR devices cannot measure temperatures lower than themselves.

        And yet they do. Because the warmer semiconductor is not impervious to IR from lower wavelengths.

        This isn’t about heating anything. This is about whether IR from cold objects can be absorbed by warmer ones. If you’ve changed your mind on this, let us know.

  110. barry says:

    DREMT, though it took you a while, you’ve basically confirmed you agree energy is transferred and absorbed between warmer and cooler bodies.

    Clausius never considers, as far as I am aware, the particular description of the GPE or similar. He also never dealt with the mechanics of time in his calculus of the laws of thermodynamics. He mostly dealt with the end points of equilibrium states, and rarely the intricacies of the mechanics of transmission.

    But you asked for a quote, so, keeping in mind his words of a simultaneous double heat exchange, here is Clausius on the equilibrium state achieved with a cold body, a warm body, and a compensating factor – in our GPE example, the sun.

    “On considering the results of such processes more closely, we find that in one and the same process heat may be carried from a colder to warmer body and another quantity of heat transferred from a warmer to a colder body without any other permanent change occurring.”

    IOW, they both remain at different temperatures. How?

    “In this case we have not a simple transmission of heat from a colder to a warmer body, or an ascending transmission of heat, as it may be called, but two connected transmission of opposite characters, one ascending and the other descending, which compensate each other.”

    (Once again affirmng that cold and warm bodies receive energy from each other)

    “It may, moreover, happen that instead of a descending transmission of heat accompanying, in the one and the same process, the ascending transmission, another permanent change may occur which has the peculiarity of not being reversible without either becoming replaced by a new permanent change of a similar kind, or producing a descending transmission of heat. In this case the ascending transmission of heat may be said to be accompanied, not immediately, but mediately, by a descending one, and the permanent change which replaces the latter may be regarded as a compensation for the ascending transmission.”

    A permanent change replaces the descending transmission from the warmer object. That is a continuous replenishment of heat energy to the warmer object. That is the sun in our GPE example.

    “Now it is to these compensations that our principle refers; and with the aid of this conception the principle may be also expressed thus: an uncompensated transmission of heat from a colder to a warmer body can never occur. The term uncompensated here expresses the same idea that was intended to be conveyed by the words “by itself” in the previous enunciation of the principle, and by he expression “without some other change connected therewith, occurring at the same time” in the original text.”

    Clausius gives us the final equilibrium state of the GPE, but does not discuss the transition from no-green-plate to green plate.

    But the green plate must have an effect because when it appears in the GPE thought expewriment, there is a simultaneous double heat exchange between the green plate and the blue plate, energy can’t be created or destroyed, so it must have an effect on the blue plate, which is receiving continous energy from the sun.

    The only way radiation from green plate to blue could not have an effect is if it was totally reflected by the blue plate: but then you’d have to deny Clausius’ “simultaneous double heat exchange.”

    The only way radiation from the green plate absorbed by the blue (continuously replenished by the sun) could not have an effect is if the enrgy absorbed from the green plate by the blue was destroyed upon being absorbed by the blue plate.

    What actually happens is that both plates emit and absorb radiation, and they both warm, but at all time the green plate warms less than the blue – more radiation always flows from blue plate to green, the NET flow of heat is from hot to cold, and 2nd Law is in no way violated in this “simultaneous double heat exchange.”

  111. barry says:

    If that’s too long, try this: Clausius says,

    “an uncompensated transmission of heat from a colder to a warmer body can never occur.”

    In the GPE the transmission of heat between the two bodies is compensated by an external source – the sun. 2nd Law as Clausius states it, is not broken by the GPE.

    bdgwx has been using the same language as Clausius.

    Now if you can find a Clausius quote where he affirms:

    “when a warm body is continuously warmed by an external heat source, the presence of a cooler body can NOT make it warmer than it would otherwise be”

    That would reallhy help your argument.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      It’s not my argument that needs helping, barry.

      You (and bdgwx) are trying your very hardest to claim the “compensation” clause relates to the “continuous input of energy”. You have not succeeded.

      Instead, it relates to e.g. the workings of a refrigerator.

    • bdgwx says:

      And all of this comes from Clausius’ 1879 Mechanical Theory of Heat treatise.

      https://tinyurl.com/rpo6gmm

      Here is another great gem contained within.

      Heat cannot, of itself, pass from a colder to a hotter body.

      and…

      This simultaneous passage of heat in the opposite direction, or this special change entailing an opposite passage of heat, is then
      to be treated as a compensation for the passage of heat from
      the colder to the warmer body; and if we apply this conception we may replace the words” of itself” by “without compensation”

      and…

      A passage of heat from a colder to a hotter body cannot
      take place without compensation.

      and…

      This proposition, laid down as a Fundamental Principle
      by the author, has met with much opposition; but, having
      repeatedly had occasion to defend it, he has always been able
      to shew that the objections raised were due to the fact that
      the phenomena, in which it was believed that an uncompensated passage of heat from a colder to a hotter body was to
      be found, had not been correctly understood.

      It’s all right there in the document. The document is searchable. Have it!

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        bdg…”Here is another great gem contained within”.

        You are making fool of yourself by cherry-picking statements from Clausius without having carefully read his entire book. It is essential to understand his description of heat engines to get it why heat, by itself, cannot flow from cold to hot.

        “Heat cannot, of itself, pass from a colder to a hotter body”.

        This essentially the 2nd law as stated by Clausius.

        “This simultaneous passage of heat in the opposite direction, or this special change entailing an opposite passage of heat, is then to be treated as a compensation for the passage of heat from the colder to the warmer body; and if we apply this conception we may replace the words of itself by without compensation”

        This is part of his explanation of ‘of itself, or ‘by its own means’, as stated elsewhere. He is trying to explain that an uncompensated transfer of heat from a colder body to a warmer body is not possible.

        He does not say anywhere in your quote that heat flows spontaneously from cold to hot. Please read the entire chapter, at least.

        We all know that. An air conditioner cannot cause heat to be transferred from a colder region to a hotter region without the compensation supplied by electrical power, a compressor, a special compressible gas, etc. That’s what he is talking about.

        I have claimed there is no such compensation in the atmosphere, ergo, heat cannot be transferred from cooler GHGs in the atmosphere to a hotter surface that warmed them in the first place.

        “…he has always been able to shew that the objections raised were due to the fact that the phenomena, in which it was believed that an uncompensated passage of heat from a colder to a hotter body was to be found, had not been correctly understood”.

        He is saying essentially there are dumb-a**es in the world who cannot read and comprehend.

        • barry says:

          “An air conditioner cannot cause heat to be transferred from a colder region to a hotter region without the compensation supplied by electrical power, a compressor, a special compressible gas, etc. Thats what he is talking about.’

          No – he was not talking about any of that because those things had not been invented. He was speaking purely theoretically, and not about electrical heat pumps.

          The compensating power in the Green plate scenario is the sun. This is the thing that you continually ignore.

          It is not the green plate that heats the blue – it is the sun.

          All the green plate does is interfere with the rate of radiative loss from the blue plate. It is the sun providing power to the 2-plate system that causes the temperature rises of both plates when the green plate is introduced.

          As the green plate is shaded from the sun by the blue plate, it receives its energy from the blue plate, which is less than what the blue plate receives from the sun. The system eventually achieves a steady state condition with a temperature gradient of hottest (sun) 2nd hottest (blue plate) 3rd hottest (green plate). This holds steady as long as the sun continues to shine. Remove the sun and both plates cool to the temp of the universe eventually, always with the blue plate shedding more radiation to the green than the reverse. The NET flow of heat is always hot to cold.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            …and all of that is debunked by the 3-plate scenario.

            Plus Hughes’ experiments (shhh, we mustn’t mention them).

          • E. Swanson says:

            DRsEMT, The results from Hughes’ don’t prove anything, since his efforts are so obviously flawed. His second is a bit better than his first, but then he doesn’t allow enough time for things to reach steady state and he doesn’t provide a measurement of the temperature of the top plate (aka., the Green one). All of his runs stop at 10 minutes, thus he hasn’t achieved steady state.

            Worse, he can not prove that his device reaches a vacuum high enough to stop convection, since his mechanical gauge can’t measure really low pressures. For example, the HVAC gauge I used in my Green Plate demo indicates 9 pressure ranges in microns, 25, 50, 100, 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 5000, and lastly, atmospheric down to 29″ hg. The mechanical gauge Hughes used stops at around 29″ hg, so he has no clue about the actual vacuum his device achieves.

          • E. Swanson says:

            DRsEMT, Since you haven’t the slightest interest in truth, allow me to point out that my comment was not a repeat, as I added the information about the vacuum gauge I used. As you might surmise from the list of ranges, 29 inches of vacuum is just the starting point for a vacuum low enough to suppress convection within Hughes’ vertical tube.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            If you had the slightest interest in truth, you would admit that your point about the vacuum gauge had already been brought up in the set of comments under the first article. It is not new.

            https://principia-scientific.org/greenplate-effect-it-doesnt-happen/

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      Have what?

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      “bdg…”What we are saying is that in a system with a warm body and which is being compensated by a constant supply of energy the warm body will exhibit an increase in temperature if a cooler body is placed between the warm body and the even colder body that it was originally interfaced with.

      Make sure you understand exactly what is being said before challenging it”.

      I understood you very clearly it is you who still fails to understand why the body warms. A radiating body does not care whether a body is placed between it and a colder environment, it simply depends on radiation, conduction, and convection to dissipate heat. If you interfere with any one of those three means of heat dissipation it’s temperature will rise toward a natural temperature it would reach with the heating source alone.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        This is a test post, there is a word or words being blocked and I’m trying to find which one.

        bdg…part 2…a r.eal-world example

        I have worked with those pri.nc.i.ples most of my life in the electrical/electronics/computer fields. A typical power tran.s.i.s.tor was the 2N3055 a tran.s.i.s.tor rated to dis.s.ipate power of 115 watts at 25C. The tran.s.i.s.tor is claimed to allow a current through it of 15A but I would not want to try that without a heat sink and maybe a fan blowing on it.

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          test part 2…

          The specs for this trans.i.s.tor claims it can take a maximum of 60 volts from col.l.ector to em.i..tter. So, P = EI and with P = 115 watts, the max current it can take at max power di.s.s.ipation is 1.9 amps, say 2 amps. A more typical voltage across the tran.s.i.s.tor, like in a pu.sh/pu.ll au.dio amp.l.i.fier, might be 15 volts. I = P/E = 115/15 = 7.7 amps. say 8 amps.

          If you ex.c.eed the rec.o.m.mended temperature, the ability of the tran.s.i.s.tor to dis.s.ipate heat drops lin.e.a.rly till it is 0 watts at 200C. Of course, that’s silly, the tran.s.i.stor would blow up from the.r.m.al run.a.way by then and the circuit board would fry.

          Are you getting my point, this is a r.eal-world example? If we take that same tran.s.i.s.tor and attach it to a good heat s.ink, which is thick alu.m.i.num with fi.ns that enhance convective and radiative co.ol.ing, the tran.s.i.stor can dissipate heat much more efficiently and carry about twice the current. If you add a fan to en.hance convection, things get even better, up to the rated collector current of 15 amps.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            Makes no sense, you split a post in two and it posts with the same material. Sigh!!

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            The transistor is normally mounted with a layer of heat conducting compound between it and 1/4″ aluminum, which has several fins protruding from it about 1/2″ to 1″. The thickness of the aluminum and its overall size, plus the fact it is a good conductor of heat, aids in the conduction of heat from the transistor to the environment. The fins also aid in conduction while at the same time increasing the surface area at which the heat is dissipated to the environment.

            Under load, say the transistor is now carrying 10 amps with a continuous power rating of 200 watts, well in excess of it’s rated power due to the heat sink carrying off the heat faster.

            Suddenly, you detach it from the heat sink, and you’d better not touch it and get out of the way. It will heat instantly to the point where it will burn your flesh and it will likely blow the metal top of the transistor, all due to a dramatic rise in temperature.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            Where did that heat come from? Not from the envi.r.o.nment or an object placed near it. It came from the power supply driving the current through the transistor. I have seen this kind of heating burn holes in circuit boards and bl.ow the tops off transistors. It happened because the transistor could not longer dissipate the heat created by a higher current than it could handle.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            I am trying to tell you that a heated body, like the transistor in question, heats to a na.t.u.ral temperature based on the current through it.

            Nothing whatsoever to do with external objects or a heat transfer from a cooler object to the heated object.

          • E. Swanson says:

            Gordo again posts more or his magic physics lunacy. There’s no such thing as a “natural temperature” of a body, only the temperature of the body when the energy entering it matches that leaving it, i.e., the equilibrium temperature. Of course, if one adds too much energy to said body, such as a transistor, it will self destruct.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            E. Swanson, please stop trolling.

  112. bdgwx says:

    It looks like we’re making progress.

    Do we all agree that a warmer body can indeed get warmer by placing a cool body which acts as a thermal barrier and in proximity to the warm body when a continuous supply of energy is available to compensate the system as a whole.

    The challenge being made now is in regard to what “isolated”, “by its own means”, “uncompensated”, “spontaneously”, and the various other phrasings of that crucial clause mean and imply. Is this correct?

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      ☺️

      • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

        I have to laugh, because bdgwx is clearly listening to what barry is saying I am saying, rather than what I am actually saying myself.

        …and people accuse me of arguing dishonestly!?

    • bdgwx says:

      GR: I have claimed there is no such compensation in the atmosphere, ergo, heat cannot be transferred from cooler GHGs in the atmosphere to a hotter surface that warmed them in the first place.

      The Earth is NOT an isolated system. There is a passage of energy both out of and into the Earth system. The Earth system is being compensated by this energy. The Earth system is NOT allowed to evolve by its own means.

      Therefore the Earth system can and does experience local decreases in entropy. Warm bodies can get warmer and cool bodies can get cooler.

      It is the same scenario for a refrigerator. The cool body (evaporator/inside) gets cooler and the warm body (condenser/outside) gets warmer. It works because the refrigerator is being compensated by a continuous feed of energy. Remove the compensation and entropy within the boundaries of the refrigerator system increases and the cool body (evaporator/inside) begins to warm while the warm body (condenser/outside) begins to cool.

      • Ball4 says:

        bdgwx: “The Earth is NOT an isolated system.”

        Right, the universe is the one and only natural isolated system.

        “Warm bodies can get warmer and cool bodies can get cooler.”

        An atm. ideal gas cooling process increases universe entropy as does similar warming process which attests to the peculiarity of entropy. That beginning thermo. textbook realization ought to shock Gordon.

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          ball4…”An atm. ideal gas cooling process increases universe entropy as does similar warming process which attests to the peculiarity of entropy”.

          You are confusing entropy with randomness and entropy is not a measure of randomness, it’s about heat transfer. Randomness is a result of an irreversible process in which heat is released. It is not about a reversible process in which entropy averages to zero.

          Entropy is not peculiar. Clausius defined it clearly as the sum of infinitesimal changes in heat at the temperature T at which they changes take place. It is you and other modernists who have made it peculiar through your misunderstanding of what it is. It is a summation of heat changes during a process.

          In the same manner, you and your crowd have obfuscated heat to be a measure of energy transfer. You fail to understand that the energy being transferred is thermal energy, otherwise known as heat. Therefore your obfuscated definition states that heat is a measure of heat.

          Some of us think temperature is a measure of heat.

          • Ball4 says:

            “Clausius defined it clearly as the sum of infinitesimal changes in heat at the temperature T at which they changes take place.”

            Yes, the solution of which shows universe entropy increases for both heating and cooling processes of an atm. ideal gas. To learn about that which you are writing, consult a basic thermo. textbook; I always suggest Bohren 1998.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        bdg…”The Earth is NOT an isolated system”.

        That is a red herring argument. Forget isolated/non-isolated, the difference is so minimal it’s not worth mentioning.

        Clausius did not mention an isolated system because it doesn’t matter. If you have a heat transfer between bodies of different temperature, the 2nd law applies.

        The distinction between isolated and non-isolated is a barrier through which heat can pass but not matter. There are no barriers in the atmosphere just as their are no greenhouse walls or roofs.

        Why do you introduce these concepts? It’s like claiming a vertical column of air in the atmosphere is adiabatic. Where are the insulated walls to prevent heat moving in and out of that column?

        • Ball4 says:

          “If you have a heat transfer between bodies of different temperature, the 2nd law applies.”

          How can any heat transfer exist between solids of different temperature, Gordon, when you correctly write “heat is the kinetic energy of atoms” and no atoms transfer between the solids?

          The answer is heat does not physically transfer Gordon, thermal kinetic energy physically transfers. Which is why IR thermometers and the atm. can work by absorbing radiation from cooler bodies.

          “There are no barriers in the atmosphere just as their (sic) are no greenhouse walls or roofs.”

          The tropopause is a decent barrier to convection Gordon, you just don’t know what you are writing about.

  113. barry says:

    “Forget isolated/non-isolated, the difference is so minimal its not worth mentioning.”

    What?? Goodness me!

    The difference of these conditions is profound. One condition is where no energy enters or leaves a system, and in the other energy (in the green plate set up) is continually passing through it.

    A non adiabatic (non-isolated) system can maintain a temperature gradient, like the GPE. This is a steady-state scenario where there are constant temperature differentials when the system achieves balance with the input (eg, the sun).

    An adiabatic (isolated) system can never result a steady-state condition, because there is no energy passing through it. It can only come to equilibrium – where everything in the environment ultimately ends up at the same temperature.

    Analogy by conduction:

    A metal rod in heated at one end. As long as the heat source remains continuous in a non-isolated system, the rod will be hotter at one end than the other. As long as the heat source is constant the rod will have a temperature gradient along its length – this is a steady-state condition. The rod will never have a uniform temperature in this non-adiabatic system.

    Now place the rod in an adiabatic container. No energy is entering or leaving this isolagted system. The heat source is no longer replenishing the heat loss of one end of the rod. The rod will ultimately come to equilibrium – an even temperature along its whole length.

    If you do not understand the fundamental difference between an isolated system and a non-isolated one, then you cannot posibly understand the GPE. Or how Earth’s atmosphere keeps the average (day/night) surface temp warmer than it would be with no atmosphere at all.

    Minimal difference between an adiabatic and non-adiabatic system?! Jeez, Robertson.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      You are effectively arguing that equilibrium cannot exist in nature, only ever “steady state”.

      Disagree? Show me a real-world situation where there is no energy entering or leaving a system (other than, as Ball4 would have it, “the Universe”).

      You are re-defining the whole concept of “equilibrium” out of existence.

      • bdgwx says:

        The Earth-Sun system is close enough to isolation that we can effectively model it as isolated. It is very close to evolving by its own means. Very little compensation is occurring.

        The Earth-only system is so far away from isolation that it cannot reasonably be modeled as such. It is no where close to evolving my its own means. A lot of compensation is occurring.

        BTW…The GHE isn’t the only mechanism by which localized decreases in entropy (increasing warm/cool gradients) are occurring. The build up of convective available potential energy for deep moist convection, frontogenesis, thermal wind, etc. are but a limited sampling of other processes that are occurring as a result of the compensation that is ultimately traced back to the influx of energy from the Sun. The GHE is but one among many mechanisms that reduce entropy. Why are contrarians not challenging all of these other mechanisms?

        • Ball4 says:

          “The GHE is but one among many mechanisms that reduce entropy.”

          No. The GHE is a real atm. process and all real processes increase universe entropy.

          • bdgwx says:

            I did not say or mean to imply that universe entropy descreased. In fact I made it a point to use the word “localized” to limit the boundary of the system I was referring to.

            Within the boundaries of your refrigerator (non-isolated) entropy is decreased. But within the boundaries of the universe (isolated) entropy is increased.

            This is perfectly consistent with the 1LOT and 2LOT.

          • Ball4 says:

            “Within the boundaries of your refrigerator (non-isolated) entropy is decreased.”

            The planetary atm. GHE is not a refrigerator since pistons and cylinders do not inhabit that atmosphere. Your analogy is not constructive, better to discuss an actual atm. process.

          • bdgwx says:

            I’m not saying the atmosphere is a refrigerator. I’m saying it is a system just like the refrigerator is a system. I use the refrigerator as analogy because (presumably) everybody understands it. They implicitly understand the boundaries. They understand that the electricity that is feeding it comes from a power plant outside the refrigerator. I don’t (or shouldn’t) have to dedicate an entire post to describing the system boundaries and other nuances of the refrigerator system. And the analogy is valid precisely because the 2LOT applies to all systems regardless of whether they have pistons and cyclinders or not.

            And the GHE does lower entropy within the locality in which operates just like the refrigerator lowers the entropy within the locality in which it operates. The GHE makes the atmosphere warmer down low and cooler up high. That is a lower entropy state than equilibrium. It is the same with frontogenesis, thermal wind, the build up of convective available potential energy, or refrigerators. But all of these processes, despite lowering entropy on a small scale, always come at the expense of raising entropy on the large scale.

            …and all of this is perfectly consistent with both the 1LOT and 2LOT.

          • Ball4 says:

            “And the GHE does lower entropy within the locality in which operates..”

            Describe a natural planetary GHE process that does so in the atm. ideal gas on which it operates with no pistons, no cylinders, no refrigeration being allowed in the description.

          • bdgwx says:

            On Earth when the effectiveness of the IR thermal barrier (CO2, CH4, etc.) increases the lower part of the atmosphere and surface warm while the upper part of the atmosphere cools. This occurs because the compensating energy entering the Earth system from the outside is converted into heat and is more effectively trapped. This warmer at the bottom and cooler at the top is a low entropy configuration. If you remove the compensating energy then the GHE stops and entropy in this locality begins increasing again. The 2LOT is perfectly happy with either configuration.

          • Ball4 says:

            “This warmer at the bottom and cooler at the top is a low entropy configuration.”

            No. Both the gaseous lower warming regions and the upper cooling regions due added CO2 ppm (et.al. IR active gas ppm) always increase local gas entropy. These are real natural processes thus 2LOT says they must do so & this is proven by first principle theory in beginning atm. thermo. text books.

            If you dream up a totally isolated (universe to itself) say 1m^2 layer of the atm., the layer initial entropy can be shown to increase until entropy reaches a maximum for that layer.

          • bdgwx says:

            I guess I’m not understanding your point.

            Warm over here and cool over there is a lower entropy state than the same temperature everywhere.

            If in your 1 m^2 cross section it gets warmer on one side and cooler on another then that is an example of a decrease in entropy.

            One clue that the GHE yields a lower entropy configuration is that the fact that the removal of the compensating energy (from the Sun which is outside the boundaries of the atmosphere) that contributed to its occurrence will necessarily result in a movement towards thermal equilibrium…an increase in entropy.

            It’s the same concept for a refrigerator. If you pull the electrical connection the evaporator and condenser will move towards thermal equilibrium…an increase in entropy.

          • Ball4 says:

            bdgwx, my point is for an ideal gas in the atm. a natural process to lower its temperature results in an increase in its entropy. Your comments seem not to allow for that.

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          “The Earth-Sun system is close enough to isolation that we can effectively model it as isolated”

          That’s it? That’s your example? You might just as well have stuck with “the Universe”.

          So…”equilibrium” cannot exist in any Earth-bound system, it’s always “steady state”, apparently.

          • bdgwx says:

            In the context of the GHE the Earth-only system contains 3 bodies. These include space (cold), atmosphere/GHGs (cool), and surface (warm). That’s pretty manageable, but it is not even remotely close to isolated.

            Expanding our system to include the Sun (hot) we only add 1 extra body for a total of 4 so it is both manageable and nearly isolated. The amount of mass/energy entering/leaving this system is small so the compensation is small. It is small enough that it can be effectively ignored.

            We could expand our system to the universe. It would be completely isolated, but it is also unmanageable since there are orders of magnitude many more bodies to consider.

            Don’t you think the Earth-Sun system is isolated enough? If no then where do you propose to draw the boundaries of our system?

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          Except…that’s wrong:

          https://tll.mit.edu/help/equilibrium-vs-steady-state

    • barry says:

      The entire universe could be said to be the most perfect isolated system.

      Equilibrium will occur at the end of the universe. Until then, everything has been in transiton and will continue to be so for as long as theory X Y or Z. No, as yet, equilibrium doesn’t exist in nature, unless you ignore miniscule effects. On a coarse level, one coud say the solar system is in thermal equilibrium. But then we are quibbling over which degree of thermal transference we are willing to ignore.

      The Blue plate/Green plate system is most certainly not isolated (as is the Earth’s atmosphere and surface). There is an external energy source constantly supplying energy to that 2-body system. Amd the rest of the universe provides the outlet for the externally provided energy.

      • barry says:

        “On a coarse level, one coud say the solar system is in thermal equilibrium.”

        Well that’s completely wrong. Never write and edit while drunk.

      • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

        “No, as yet, equilibrium doesn’t exist in nature, unless you ignore miniscule effects.”

        http://www.drroyspencer.com/2020/02/uah-global-temperature-update-for-january-2020-0-56-deg-c/#comment-436446

      • barry says:

        “You are effectively arguing that equilibrium cannot exist in “nature, only ever steady state”.”

        I’m not arguing that at all, but I agree with the statement.

        “You are re-defining the whole concept of ‘equilibrium’ out of existence.”

        A perfect equilibrium is as extant in nature as a perfect black body.

        Classical physics uses these concepts as fundamental building blocks to explain the laws of thermodynamkics.

        We don’t have perfect equilibria. but we have plety of coarse equlibria that we speak about well enough colloqiinally. When we refer to the equilibrium level of a dam, say, there are tiny fluctuations in pressure, humidity of the air and temperature that affect it, but when we speak of an inlflux matching an outflux, a passing familiarity with the fundamentals of physics roots us in the physics being discussed.

        This conversation is easily bpogged down in semantics and the quibbles of degree. Those that trade in these quibbles aren’t proceeding in the discussion in good faith.

      • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

        Watch the video.

      • barry says:

        It describes the difference between steady state and equilibrium just as I did. The narrator also mentions that there is no such thing as a perfect insulator. There is always some residual heat transference.

        Theoretically, it takes an infinite amount of time for an object to achieve equilibrium with its environment, and practically, there are no perfectly closed systems, except, perhaps, for the universe itself. There is always heat transference in real life. We ignore the tiny residuals for almost all practical purposes, and we ignore them for theoretical purposes when we use blackbodies and perfectly adiabatic systems to explain the laws of physics.

      • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

        “It describes the difference between steady state and equilibrium just as I did.”

        OK, barry.

      • barry says:

        You don’t think so?

        He isolates the pan from the room and it achieves equilibrium because the pan/system is receiving nor emitting any further heat. The handle and the pan comeinto thermal equilibrium with eachother.

        In contact with the room – a non-isolated system – the handle has a temperature gradient to the pan, because the pan is receiving heat directly from source, but the handle is not – it’s receiving energy from the pan and emitting it to the room. This is the steeady-state situation.

        This is the analogy to the GPE. The green plate is the handle. It doesn’t get energy directly from the source (the sun), but the blue plate does. The blue plate is the pan, giving heat to the handle.

        There is a temperature gradient (steady state) because of the continuous flow of energy through the pan/system. this gradient resolves to equilibrium when the pan is isolated from the room and no energy is flowing, as the video says and diagrams.

        But in the GPE, the energy never stops flowing – the sun is always there giving energy to the system. There is a temperature gradient because the blue plate is receiving energy directly from source but the green plate isn’t. Just like the pan and the handle in the room.

        I see no difference between his explanation and mine, other than that he adds that equilibrium (all temps the same) is a special version of steady state but steady state (continuous temp gradient) can never be called equilibrium.

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          There are no temperature gradients through the plates, because in the thought experiments they are perfect conductors.

  114. bdgwx says:

    GR: Forget isolated/non-isolated, the difference is so minimal its not worth mentioning.

    The difference is huge. The Earth system is receiving a very large influx of energy. The amount of compensation the Earth system is receiving relative to its own internal evolution is astonishing. The internal geothermal and tidal sources of energy are on the order of 0.1 W/m^2. The compensating energy from the outside is 240 W/m^2. The Earth system is so far away from isolation it is laughable that anyone would suggest that we ignore it.

    GR: The distinction between isolated and non-isolated is a barrier through which heat can pass but not matter.

    That is not correct. An isolated system is one in which no passage of matter or energy (including in the form of heat) occurs through the boundary.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      Let’s take the 3-plate scenario, as that generally debunks the whole thing in the simplest way possible.

      In the real world, it would be a steady state problem. It is the simplifications that are made in the thought experiment/s that make it an equilibrium problem.

      In the real world, the central, heated blue plate would not be isothermal, the middle part (closest to the heat source) would be hottest, and the edges of the plate slightly cooler. There would be a continuation of this gradient across the green plates, whilst pressed against the blue, such that they were hottest on the side next to the blue plate, and then cooler as you get to the other side, further away from the blue. Using realistic materials, such as aluminium, this might only be a slight temperature gradient overall, of 1 K variation or less, but it would be there. Separate the plates, and due to radiative losses past the edges of the plates, the temperatures of the green plates would decrease further, whilst still having a gradient across them.

      In the thought experiment/s, the simplifying assumptions are:

      1) The plates are perfect conductors. So, temperature variations within and across the plates themselves disappear. 2) The plates are treated as infinite in height and width (not breadth) such that you can ignore radiative losses past the edges of the plates, on separation. So, there is no green plate temperature loss on separation.

      Effectively, due to those simplifying assumptions, there is no reason for there to be any difference in temperature when the plates are pushed together, and reach equilibrium:

      244 K…244 K…244 K.

      And when they are pulled apart, and reach equilibrium:

      244 K…244 K…244 K.

      You people agree on the temperatures when pushed together, but disagree on the temperatures when separated, erroneously thinking it should be:

      244 K…290 K…244 K.

      It’s an equilibrium problem because there are no fixed temperature gradients. You don’t include the background “temperature” of space (3 K) into your reasoning, since the plates are simply radiating out into the vacuum of space as per their temperature and emissivity. The tiny amount of CMBR they are receiving needn’t be considered.

      • Ball4 says:

        “So, there is no green plate temperature loss on separation.”

        This is an unsupported & incorrect assertion. DREMT has never supported his assertion with the same principles used by Eli. If DREMT could do so, then DREMT would have shown his work long ago.

      • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

        #4

        You don’t include the background “temperature” of space (3 K) into your reasoning, since the plates are simply radiating out into the vacuum of space as per their temperature and emissivity. The tiny amount of CMBR they are receiving needn’t be considered.

    • Nate says:

      “Its an equilibrium problem because there are no fixed temperature gradients.’

      FALSE.

      As explained ad-nauseum to you: heat transfer problems can have different boundary conditions (BC)

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxO9NGWIxk4

      such as:

      a. Fixed temperatures

      b Fixed heat flows

      c. mixed

      This one is c.

      On one side we have Fixed heat flow 400 W. On the other side we have fixed temperature, space @ 3 K.

      These BC can only be satisfied with the BP temperature >> 3 K.

      Hence there IS a temperature gradient in this problem from BP to space.

      Because we have

      -Temperature gradients

      and

      -Non-zero heat flows

      we CANNOT be in equilibrium.

      Sorry, you cannot change what equilibrium means to make it fit your erroneous beliefs.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      #2

      You don’t include the background “temperature” of space (3 K) into your reasoning, since the plates are simply radiating out into the vacuum of space as per their temperature and emissivity. The tiny amount of CMBR they are receiving needn’t be considered.

      • Nate says:

        “You don’t include the background ‘temperature’ of space (3 K) into your reasoning”

        Riiight.

        I do get to include it because I understand that physics doesnt obey your arbitrary made-up rules.

        To the point, heat is flowing from the plates to space, therefore the plates are connected thermally to space.

        “Two physical systems are in thermal equilibrium if there is no net flow of thermal energy between them when they are connected by a path permeable to heat. Wikipedia”

        Sorry but that means the plates are also not in equilibrium with each other.

        The plates can only reach equilibrium when the supply of heat is turned off and they cool to 3 K.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      #3

      You don’t include the background “temperature” of space (3 K) into your reasoning, since the plates are simply radiating out into the vacuum of space as per their temperature and emissivity. The tiny amount of CMBR they are receiving needn’t be considered.

      • Nate says:

        “Two physical systems are in thermal equilibrium if there is no net flow of thermal energy between them when they are connected by a path permeable to heat. Wikipedia”

        So lets see, the BP and GP are connected by a path permeable to heat (via radiation). And there is a net flow of thermal energy between them.

        The GP and space are connected by a path permeable to heat (via radiation). And there is a net flow of thermal energy between them.

        And thus, per the standard definition above, this system is NOT in thermal equilibrium, is it?

        Yet you somehow declare this system is still in ‘equilibrium’?

        Pls explain how. And Just Cuz, is not an explanation.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      #4

      You don’t include the background “temperature” of space (3 K) into your reasoning, since the plates are simply radiating out into the vacuum of space as per their temperature and emissivity. The tiny amount of CMBR they are receiving needn’t be considered.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      #5

      You don’t include the background “temperature” of space (3 K) into your reasoning, since the plates are simply radiating out into the vacuum of space as per their temperature and emissivity. The tiny amount of CMBR they are receiving needn’t be considered.

  115. Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

    bdgwx, would it be possible for you to argue against what I am actually saying, rather than what you seem to think I am saying? You exhaust me.

  116. barry says:

    “You people agree on the temperatures when [plates are] pushed together, but disagree on the temperatures when separated”

    Because you now have twice the emissive surface area.

    If you keep the power constant but double the emissive area, the power emitted per unit area is halved.

    In the GPE, 2 surfaces are emitting to each other, the other 2 to space.

    A square meter blackbody plate receiving 400W/m2 from the sun will radiate 200 W/m2 from each of its 2 surfaces (ignoring edge effects, assuming perfect conduction). It can’t emit 400 W/m2 from each of its 2 surfaces, because that would mean it’s total energy rate is 800W. Can’t break the 1st LoT by creating energy.

    It can’t emit 400W/m2 in only one direction, because that would make it transparent or a perfect reflector, and not a black body absorbing and reemitting all incident energy. Can’t disprove the experiment by changing it.

    If we want to increase the temperature of this plate, there are 2 ways to do it. Either increase the energy it receives, or slow its rate of energy loss while maintaining the energy input.

    When we introduce the green plate in the old thought experiment, it is receiving half the energy from the blue plate that the blue plate is receiving from the sun. And the green plate is losing energy from both of its 2 surfaces as is the blue plate.

    We know from Clausius, that regarding the ordinary transfer of heat, there is a “simultaneous double heat exchange” going on between the cooler and warmer body.

    The green plate “interferes with the rate of heat loss” as Gordon puts it. The blue plate is now receiving energy from the sun AND the green plate (simultaneous double heat echange). Its rate of energy loss is now slower than its gain, so it MUST heat up until the blue plate is losing energy at the same rate as it gains.

    Because it heats up, so does the GP until the flow of energy into the 2 plate system stabilises with the solar input.

    Those who think the blue plate can’t heat up further when the when the green plate slows its rate of heat loss must disagree with Clausius that there is a “simultaneous double heat exchange” between cold and hot bodies in the ordinary transfer of heat. They must think that the energy is reflected.

    Or else they must think that in this exchange, the energy from the cooler body is destroyed upon being absorbed by the warmer body.

    In either case, they don’t understand physics as Clausius does.

    Notice, at no time did I say that the green plate heats the blue. The green plate is not an energy source. It’s function is to slow the rate of heat loss of the blue plate. It is the sun that heats them both. At all times, the net flow of heat is from hot to cold.

    • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

      As we already saw further upthread, barry particularly struggles with the 3-plate scenario. So, he switches back to the 2-plate scenario, sets his comment down thread a bit, and then waffles at length, claiming people are “creating energy”, and all sorts, when in fact that’s exactly what the 244 K…290 K…244 K gang do. Even Ball4 agreed with that…

    • barry says:

      I haven’t read the 3 plate scenario, I’m talking about the original GPE.

    • barry says:

      Ok, I’ve read your post in full, and yes, you would have a temperature gradient for the exact same reasons as I described for the GPE.

      W/m2 is derived from dividing Watts by surface area in square meters. Once you pull the 3 plates apart you have tripled the emissive surface area. W/m2 cannot remain a constant value when you pull the plates apart – or you have just created energy.

      4 surfaces are now emitting to eachother in a “simultaneous double heat exchange,” while 2 faces are emitting to the void. The 2 external plates are losing heat more efficiently than the central, heated plate, which is losing heat less efficiently than them.

      Therefore, the 2 external plates will be cooler than the central plate.

    • barry says:

      I think what you’re forgetting, DREMT, is the RATE of energy. I’m guessing that’s what is up, because you are talking in terms of temperature rather than power.

      In your set up we had perfect conduction with the 3 plates pushed together, so we didn’t worry about those effects. Nothing was impeding heat loss from the central plate. Essentially, it was one plate.

      But once you pull them apart, the outer plates are no longer receiving the full Wattage of perfect conduction, they are each receiving half the power from each side of the central plate. Thus they should cool when pulled apart. But as they are the only means by which the incoming energy powering the blue plate can be lost from the system, they must heat back up to the temp required to shed heat at the matching rate.

      We’ve seen that the green plates must be cooler than the blue plate, because the green plates are losing energy to space, while the blue plate is not. The heat loss of the blue is impeded more than the heat loss of the greens. The blue must always be warmer than the greens.

      Therefore, in order for the 2 green plates to shed the energy of the whole system at the correct rate, they have to be the temperature of the blue plate. The blue plate, as we’ve seen, must be warmer than them to achieve this. It can’t possibly be the same temperature. Not if we’re talking about blackbodies (or greybodies).

      The amount of power is the same – but the RATE of energy loss from the central plate changes. And that change in rate changes its temperature.

      • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

        The 3-plate scenario uses exactly the same logic as the original GPE. I’m astonished that you have somehow missed the months of discussion of it. In fact, I simply don’t believe you.

        I’m well aware of the difference between flux, power and temperature, barry. It’s you that’s getting it wrong, e.g:

        “A square meter blackbody plate receiving 400W/m2 from the sun will radiate 200 W/m2 from each of its 2 surfaces (ignoring edge effects, assuming perfect conduction). It can’t emit 400 W/m2 from each of its 2 surfaces, because that would mean it’s total energy rate is 800W. Can’t break the 1st LoT by creating energy.

        It can’t emit 400W/m2 in only one direction, because that would make it transparent or a perfect reflector, and not a black body absorbing and reemitting all incident energy. Can’t disprove the experiment by changing it.”

        The blue plate, at 290 K (which is what your team believes is the correct answer to the 3-plate scenario) is emitting 400 W/m^2…x 2 surfaces means it is emitting 800 W total (if we assume a 1 m^2 surface area for simplicity. The blue plate at 244 K is emitting 200 W/m^2, so 400 W total. In other words, you are the ones “creating energy”.

        For a refresher on the discussion, you can start with this comment from Ball4, then read both up and down through many of the prior conversations about it. It has been discussed even further during the months since:

        https://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/03/uah-global-temperature-update-for-february-2019-0-36-deg-c/#comment-345722

      • barry says:

        I’d rather start fresh with you than read through reams of blog comments. I really haven’t followed the 3-plate discussion.

        You can have the same amount of power passing through a system, but if you provide a reistace to the flow you can get rise in temperature. Gprdon describes it well enough above in his comments about resistors.

        This is also abundantly clear in the many daily examples that have been mentioned on this blog. The sweater is not a heat source but the air next to your skin warms up (radiating at a higher RATE). Is your body producing more energy? No, the rate at which it yields its energy to the ambient air has been reduced. Same with house insulation, same with overheating cars on hot days, and old laptops doing the same (an experience I have quite regularly).

        We’re not changing the amount of energy, we’re changing the RATE of its passage through a system. Power and temperature are different properties. A skin of a light bulb with 3 cm radius receiving 100W will be much hotter than a light bulb of 3 meters radius with the same filament and power input. Power is equal, temperature changes with surface area and/or distance. It also changes with resistance – slowing the unit time it takes for the energy to pass through.

        In none of these examples is energy increased – it is always that the fow of energy is changed, causing some part or all of a system to change temperature, so that the system can once again shed energy at a sufficient RATE to match the input.

        In the 3-plate setup, we KNOW that the outer plates must be cooler than the central plate.

        The central plate’s RATE of energy loss is impeded by the green plates, but the green plates rate of eergy loss is impeded only by the blue plate on one side. The void permits more rapid energy loss to one side of the green plates.

        But you disagree. So I ask for some clarity on the actual physical processes you think are happening.

        As Clausius says, there is a “simultaneous double heat exchange” in the ordinary transfer of heat.

        If all 3 plates are exchanging “heat” (I prefer to call it energy), how do you arrive at the conclusion the central plate is at the same temperature as the green ones when it is exhanging “heat” on both sides when the green plates exchange “heat” on only one side? What physical mechanism is preventing a temperature gradient? I don’t understand how you picture the real-world physics here.

      • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

        If all 3 plates are exchanging “heat” (I prefer to call it energy) via conduction when pressed together, how do you arrive at the conclusion the central plate is at the same temperature as the green ones when it is exhanging “heat” on both sides when the green plates exchange “heat” on only one side? What physical mechanism is preventing a temperature gradient? I don’t understand how you picture the real-world physics here.

      • barry says:

        In the real world there is a temperature gradient in the compressed plate system.

        YOU made the system perfectly coducting, thin plates to achieve a theoretical equal temp throughout. That’s fine for the purposes of our thought experiemnt. I acept the premise to simplify.

        When you separate the plates, there is now 3 times the emissive surface area. If the power remains the same it is physically (and mathematically) impossible for the power rate per unit area in the system to remain the same.

        And yet your version of this system triples its emissive area while maintaining the original rate of energy flow from all surfaces.

        Numbers.

        400W / 2 square meters = 200 W/m2
        400W / 6 square meters = 66.66 W/m2

        Right?

        But this is your version.

        400W / 6 square meters = 200 W/m2

        Please explain.

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          barry, when the plates are pressed together, at 244 K…244 K…244 K:

          There is 400 W entering the system from the electrical supply to the blue plate, and 400 W leaving to space from the green plates.

          With the plates separated, at 244 K…244 K…244 K:

          There is 400 W entering the system from the electrical supply to the blue plate, and 400 W leaving to space from the green plates.

          The only thing that has changed is the intermediary mode of energy transfer.

        • barry says:

          No, the system has changed as well.

          Whereas you had 2 surfaces only emitting to empty space, you now have 4 surfaces emitting towards each other as well.

          Some energy is being returned to the blue plate when it wasn’t before (because we had perfect conduction).

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          No, barry, nothing has changed but the intermediary mode of energy transfer (unless you believe in back-radiation, but not back-conduction?).

        • barry says:

          As I said, there would be a temperature gradient from conduction in the real world. but even if we forgo that for the purposes of simplification in the conductive structure, that doesn’t mean it automatically translates to the radiative structure.

          What if we agreed that there was a temperature gradient when the plates were pressed together, as it would be in real life? Would that mean you could now accept a temperature gradient for the 3 plates split apart?

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          If you said it was 244 K…290 K…244 K with the plates pressed together as well as separated I would at least applaud your consistency…but you would still be wrong.

        • Nate says:

          DREMT forever returns to his plates pressed together and conduction as if the plates separated situation must, inexplicably, behave exactly the same way.

          While we have explained over and over and over thst conduction and radiation do not give the same results, to no avail.

          Why should they, given that they have different laws?

          Why should they, given common experience that contact produces much greater heat transfer (hence the OUCH on the touched pan).

          On this key point DREMT has never explained his logic.

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          …and don’t forget your comment from further upthread, barry:

          http://www.drroyspencer.com/2020/02/uah-global-temperature-update-for-january-2020-0-56-deg-c/#comment-436206

          “And it seems he was about to suggest that the laws of thermodynamics apply differently to radiation than they do to convection, but he bailed out of further clarification.”

          No reason for the laws of thermodynamics to apply differently to radiation than they do to conduction.

        • bdgwx says:

          Good. We can all agree then that the 1LOT and 2LOT apply equally to both conduction and radiation. Specifically that energy transferred via radiation does not disappear and that a system that is radiation dominated can have warm/cool components that get warmer/cooler when a supply of compensating energy is utilized by that system to make it happen. Therefore the GHE is consistent with the laws of thermodynamics.

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          bdgwx, please stop trolling.

        • Nate says:

          Thermo is constant. Yet heat transfer differs for conduction and radiation.

          But DREMT will continue to evade the question of why plates in contact and conducting, must behave identically to plates separated and not conducting. He has no logical answer.

        • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

          …it’s also important to remember, barry (the commenter I am actually trying to converse with, alone), there are a lot of dishonest commenters out there. Some of them even try to take advantage of the fact I’m no longer responding to them, if you can believe it…!

          …and some of them (like Svante, for instance) have tried to make points before about how conduction and radiation have different equations for heat transfer, and have tried to compare results from these equations to show differences relating to our good old 3-plate GPE. Be careful, though, barry…these people tend to conveniently forget that the equation for conduction relates back to temperature differences across or through objects, whereas the equation for radiation relates back to temperature differences between objects.

          That’s a crucial difference when you’re considering something as silly as your position on the GPE…which is effectively such that if you split a solid bar of aluminium, heated in the middle, into three pieces…you think the middle piece would magically heat up some more, as a result, due to radiation from the other bits!

          Give it all a good think over before responding.

          • Nate says:

            Ha! Im DREMT and I will use every trick to evade uncomfortable truths.

            Such as the very annoying truth that plates separated in vacuum cannot transfer 400 W by radiation without a large temperature difference between them.

            No matter, I will just declare that they can.

          • Svante says:

            Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:
            “That’s a crucial difference”.
            And yet you told us that plates pressed together (conduction) would be the same as plates with a small vacuum gap (radiation).

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            That’s right, Svante. There are times when you people ignore the similarities between conduction and radiation, that might (for instance) result in the plates being the same temperatures pushed together, or pulled apart. Then there are other times, when you people ignore the differences between conduction and radiation, to suit your arguments. It just depends who you are trying to con, and on which point.

          • Svante says:

            Very nice semantic argument there.
            Unfortunately it got stuck in my BS filter.

            Perhaps if you could provide the physical formulas and math that show net energy transfer between plates of the same temperature.

            Or ask barry to put me right, I trust him completely.

          • Dr Roys Emergency Moderation Team says:

            Huh?

          • barry says:

            DREMT,

            “If you said it was 244 K… 290 K…244 K with the plates pressed together as well as separated I would at least applaud your consistency… but you would still be wrong.’

            Can’t tell if you are answering my question or the one you made up there. I’ll ask it again…

            What if we agreed that there was a temperature gradient when the plates were pressed together, as it would be in real life? Would that mean you could now accept a temperature gradient for the 3 plates split apart?