Climate sceptic fail...

Hahaha! Yet another demonstration of the cluelessness and lack of scientific literacy of many climate 'sceptics'.

Saw a post at Climate Realists (h/t Skeptical Science daily article summary) claiming "Greenhouse Gas Theory Trashed by Groundbreaking Experiment"

Here's some quotes from the article summary, with my comments after.

Assumption One: Gases that absorb infrared light thereby block infrared light.

Reality: Such gases radiate, i.e., “scatter” or spread out the light they absorb, thus releasing light in all directions rather than blocking it.

Real Reality: Well, no. They absorb the IR. They do then re-radiate it in all directions, but that's a different physical process to scattering. Look it up sometime...

Assumption Two: Blocking the exit of light while allowing free entry will increase the temperature of an irradiated object.

Reality: The light an object emits is a function of its temperature; its temperature is not a function of the light it emits. Accordingly, if incoming light raises an object to a certain temperature, the object will remain at that temperature whether it emits light to its surroundings or not. Any temperature increase in a confined condition is only due to reduced convective cooling.

Real Reality: Um, are you perhaps familiar with the law of conservation of energy? You're effectively stating that Same energy in + less energy out = No Change in Temperature. Claiming that the only reason temperature increases is because convection is blocked, is like claiming the Titanic wouldn't have sunk if it wasn't for all that water in the ocean.

The obvious next question - what makes a sceptic think that climate scientists don't consider convective heat transfer when figuring out the response of the Earth's atmosphere to greenhouse heating? And if convection can 'carry away' all that heat, where does it go, other than into the Earth's atmosphere?

This is easily answered by actually looking at what climate science says. Oh, look, amazing, climate scientists include a convective heat transfer term... just look at the figure showing the heat balance in this article. Here's a link to just the figure. Here's the figure itself:



17 W/m2 from thermals. That's convection, right there.

Like I said at the top.

Climate sceptic fail.

A taste of the future?

Headline from a news story this morning:

"Morgues fill as deaths double in sweltering Moscow"

Now, some of you will say "that's weather, it's got nothing to do with climate change". And you'd be right, mostly.

The difference is that, in a warming world, we can expect that extreme heat waves (and the forest fires that go along with them) will become more common. Already, record high temperatures are more than twice as likely to be broken as record lows. The last winter in Europe & the eastern US brought very heavy snowfalls & low temperatures. It was the coldest January in the UK for 23 years, according to the UK Met Office. At the same time, it was unseasonably warm over much of the Arctic, & the northwest US & western Canada (remember the problems they had with not enough snow for the winter olympics? They had to truck it in to some venues!).

Since then, it's been a pretty warm year. This Wikipedia page, listing all-time record temperatures for various countries, shows no less than ten new records have been set so far in 2010. Another 12 have been set in the last decade. That's all-time records, folks. 22 out of 58 have been broken in the last ten years.

The NOAA says that the January to June 2010 period was the warmest 6-month period on record. June 2010 is the warmest June on record, and is the fourth month in a row to set an all-time record.

Indications of a warming trend? Well, not in isolation, no - there's too much variability in weather for climatic trends to be statistically significant for anything less than about 15 years worth of records. However, it's certainly consistent with a warming trend. And if we go back far enough to get that statistical significance, there is quite a definite trend, so it's more appropriate to ask: "are current temperatures indicating any change from the previously established warming trend?" The answer is a categorical no. If anything, the current temps are tending toward an increased warming trend. There's definitely no evidence whatsoever that global warming is showing any sign of slowing down, more the opposite.

Back to heatwaves, the more serious implications are raised by this post on Skeptical Science. There comes a point where the human body is unable to shed heat, and body temperature starts to rise. At that point, you'd better have somewhere cool & air-conditioned to hide, or heat stroke is just a matter of time (just look at that Russian contestant in the Finnish sauna competition - 6 minutes in a 110º sauna, and he keeled over and died).

So we're looking at some nasty consequences for our high-carbon diet over the past few centuries. (And those forest fires & peat fires are releasing even more carbon!)

A nice analogy I saw on another post on Skeptical Science: if you crash your car into a concrete wall at 80km/h, there's a small chance you'll walk away with just a few bruises. But is that any reason to drive straight at it?

Quote of the week

"But [scientific] journals have lots of big words, and lots of small print, and very few illustrations to make it easy for me. You can see why climate deniers don’t like them."

From the enlightening Climate Denial Crock of the Week.

I thought Viscount Christopher Monckton was getting it wrong, I just didn't know *how* wrong...

Things that can kill you

Here's a nice summary of some of the wildlife here in Oz...



Found on the artist's site, via How To Spot A Psychopath

Ho-ly shit...

This story on the Herald Sun website tells it all.

84 confirmed dead. So far.

This picture from the ABC News website gives you an idea of what happened.


More photos here.

And some video.

Beach volleyball in the rain...

Ok, so the previous post pretty much summed up my Sunday.

Now, here's Saturday for ya! Or some of it, at least. Some of the folks from ERM were playing in the Corporate Games at the Uni of Qld, beach volleyball, as the title says.

The first couple of games were ok - they lost one narrowly, won the second convincingly. Then the heavens opened...

The calm before the storm...


Freaky sunset cloudage. This photo is straight from the camera. Around about this time, the temperature dropped from about 22-23ºC down to about 15ºC in about five minutes. We were not prepared...


There were about 30 people crammed under our tent, most of us holding on to the roof to try to stop it blowing away... the Cardno one partially collapsed just after this photo.


The game must go on! Crazy people...


The ERM team in action after the storm had passed... (yes, that is a lightning bolt in the background)


BTW, this storm hit after the "severe weather warning" had been cancelled, as there were no more severe thunderstorms around. Good to know it wasn't "severe". I guess then we would have gotten wet on both sides, rather than just our backs.

Some more photos...

This is a shark - there were half a dozen of these swimming around.


This is an Australian Hobby, otherwise known as a Little Falcon. It was nesting on the cliff-face beneath the lighthouse.


A view of Byron Bay


Just in case you didn't know...


And, of course, the lighthouse...

Work has some perks...

...today's example being a trip to Byron Bay for a meeting, which allowed me to take the following photos, from Cape Byron (up near the lighthouse).

A pair of dolphins:




The darkish blots are all turtles...


...like this one!


Another view

Global temperatures 'to decrease'

Hey, just saw an interesting article on the BBC News website.

In short, global average temperatures for 2008 are expected to be cooler than 1999-2007 inclusive.

This is because of the 'La Nina' phenomenon, which causes cooler temperatures across the Pacific, and increased rainfall in Australia (which we're very thankful for!).

As such, it's part of the natural variability of the Earth's climate from year to year. It is not, I repeat, NOT an indicator that 'global warming' doesn't exist, because the long term trend is still sharply upward.

Interestingly, the article ends with this:

Experts at the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre for forecasting in Exeter said the world could expect another record temperature within five years or less, probably associated with another episode of El Nino.

I'm sure the naysayers will still pretend that this means we can continue dumping millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere...