4 ms·

> As to your aquarium example, some years back a "skeptic" once very publicly tried to replicate a similar experiment - one that was claimed to have been done m

> As to your aquarium example, some years back a "skeptic" once very publicly tried to replicate a similar experiment - one that was claimed to have been done many times and which clearly showed the greenhouse effect of CO2. Only it didn't replicate as described, as I recall, implying that the example itself may very well be bogus. Assuming it's true, it merely means that a pedagogical science-class-level experiment to demonstrate the effect of global warming doesn't quite work as well as expected. It has very little bearing on the actual effect CO2 has on atmosphere and how much we know about it. There used to be also a popular middle school physics experiment, where children are asked to roll small stuff (say, a metal marble) down a slope, measure its velocity, and verify the conservation of energy, by computing mgh = 1/2 mv^2. Only that it does not work---it should not work, because if you roll a metal ball then a big portion of the kinetic energy is in the form of its rotational motion! So, just computing its transitional velocity will never work. So, now what? Does this show that the Newtonian physics is flawed? Of course not. It just shows that this particular experiment is poorly thought out. > This includes water vapor, perhaps the most powerful and important of all the greenhouse gases on Earth. Yet for some reason this is almost completely ignored by the anti-CO2 crowd. That's because water vapor is in equilibrium with 70% of the Earth's surface, so any "addition" or "subtraction" we can do to the water vapor is immaterial. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/ http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-... It's not ignored: it's been thoroughly investigated and understood. It's just that you haven't heard about it.

southern_cross 8y ago
Yes indeed I have heard about it! The numbers that I've read vary, but (IIRC) the one that sticks in my mind is that there is currently estimated to be something like 15% more water vapor in the air now than in the past (not sure about the timeline here), or some such, and that this is growing, but I don't remember all of the details. So not quite in equilibrium after all, at least no more than CO2 itself is. (If you check my post history you may find more discussion on this matter, but I'm not going to rehash all of that here.) Perhaps you should ask yourself why you haven't heard about that. The reference you provided is from 2005, so maybe it's just well out of date by now or something. As to that experiment, it was being held up as a simple enough experiment that anyone could do proving basic things related to the greenhouse effect. Only it didn't quite seem to pan out that way. As to Newtonian physics and such, didn't someone named Einstein once come along and stir up the pot and show that Newton was kind of wrong about some things? And aren't folks today still doing experiments testing Einstein's claims, and still pointing out that some of the things currently believed about gravity might yet need correcting? (No need for me to go into further detail here because I'm sure you will recognize what I'm talking about.) So even in the well-established field of physics it's still OK to question things like long-held beliefs about gravity. But for some reason in the relatively new field of climate science you DARE not question any of the status-quo. No sir!
- kaybe 8y ago
  Newtonian mechanics is the approximation of Einstein's work to the speeds and masses that are accessible on Earth, it is not wrong and usually still sufficient unless you need insane precision or want to research large masses or speeds. Warmer air can hold more water vapor. This effect is of course included in the research.
  - southern_cross 8y ago
    The whole thing with Mercury was readily visible and had been observed for a long time, but Newton and others never came up with an acceptable explanation for it while Einstein did. This didn't involve insane precision or high speeds or anything like that. (I guess the Sun counts as a pretty large mass, though.) And the basic rules of Newtonian gravity have been repeatedly questioned lately (beyond Einstein's revisions), but I don't know if any of that has stuck. > Warmer air can hold more water vapor. Yes indeed it can, and said water vapor (being a greenhouse gas) can induce more greenhouse gas effects. But this appears to be routinely glossed over, as if it's just a non-issue; not everyone agrees with that assessment, though. As to the warmer air thing, lots of people make statements to the effect that warmer air holding more water vapor will lead to much heavier rainfall and such. Which certainly MIGHT be true, but it doesn't HAVE to be true. Why? Because there's nothing that says that all of that additional water vapor has to fall out of the sky in one fell swoop; a lot of it may just stick around as higher humidity. Plus it is well-known that rain sometimes falls from the clouds only to evaporate again in the warmer, drier air underneath those clouds, so it never actually makes it to the ground, and generally warmer air may lead to more of that. You almost never hear these facts mentioned, though. Funny story: Some years back I was listening to a science podcast where a climatologist and an oceanographer were guests, and the subject of sea and air temperatures came up. The climatologist made a statement about "warming temperatures leads to more storms" and such, but the oceanographer corrected him, saying that while that used to be the thinking, further research had shown that if sea and air temperatures would changing more or less in tandem (both warming up together, in this case), then surprisingly the overall effect on storms actually appeared to be pretty inconsequential. And I thought the climatologist was going to blow a gasket over this; I mean, how DARE the oceanographer go "off message" like that!

southern_cross 8y ago

Yes indeed I have heard about it! The numbers that I've read vary, but (IIRC) the one that sticks in my mind is that there is currently estimated to be something like 15% more water vapor in the air now than in the past (not sure about the timeline here), or some such, and that this is growing, but I don't remember all of the details. So not quite in equilibrium after all, at least no more than CO2 itself is. (If you check my post history you may find more discussion on this matter, but I'm not going to rehash all of that here.) Perhaps you should ask yourself why you haven't heard about that. The reference you provided is from 2005, so maybe it's just well out of date by now or something. As to that experiment, it was being held up as a simple enough experiment that anyone could do proving basic things related to the greenhouse effect. Only it didn't quite seem to pan out that way. As to Newtonian physics and such, didn't someone named Einstein once come along and stir up the pot and show that Newton was kind of wrong about some things? And aren't folks today still doing experiments testing Einstein's claims, and still pointing out that some of the things currently believed about gravity might yet need correcting? (No need for me to go into further detail here because I'm sure you will recognize what I'm talking about.) So even in the well-established field of physics it's still OK to question things like long-held beliefs about gravity. But for some reason in the relatively new field of climate science you DARE not question any of the status-quo. No sir!

kaybe 8y ago
Newtonian mechanics is the approximation of Einstein's work to the speeds and masses that are accessible on Earth, it is not wrong and usually still sufficient unless you need insane precision or want to research large masses or speeds. Warmer air can hold more water vapor. This effect is of course included in the research.
- southern_cross 8y ago
  The whole thing with Mercury was readily visible and had been observed for a long time, but Newton and others never came up with an acceptable explanation for it while Einstein did. This didn't involve insane precision or high speeds or anything like that. (I guess the Sun counts as a pretty large mass, though.) And the basic rules of Newtonian gravity have been repeatedly questioned lately (beyond Einstein's revisions), but I don't know if any of that has stuck. > Warmer air can hold more water vapor. Yes indeed it can, and said water vapor (being a greenhouse gas) can induce more greenhouse gas effects. But this appears to be routinely glossed over, as if it's just a non-issue; not everyone agrees with that assessment, though. As to the warmer air thing, lots of people make statements to the effect that warmer air holding more water vapor will lead to much heavier rainfall and such. Which certainly MIGHT be true, but it doesn't HAVE to be true. Why? Because there's nothing that says that all of that additional water vapor has to fall out of the sky in one fell swoop; a lot of it may just stick around as higher humidity. Plus it is well-known that rain sometimes falls from the clouds only to evaporate again in the warmer, drier air underneath those clouds, so it never actually makes it to the ground, and generally warmer air may lead to more of that. You almost never hear these facts mentioned, though. Funny story: Some years back I was listening to a science podcast where a climatologist and an oceanographer were guests, and the subject of sea and air temperatures came up. The climatologist made a statement about "warming temperatures leads to more storms" and such, but the oceanographer corrected him, saying that while that used to be the thinking, further research had shown that if sea and air temperatures would changing more or less in tandem (both warming up together, in this case), then surprisingly the overall effect on storms actually appeared to be pretty inconsequential. And I thought the climatologist was going to blow a gasket over this; I mean, how DARE the oceanographer go "off message" like that!