Re: [Geology2] Re: your opinions

---

From: fossrme responded:

 

I like a lot of the detail here, especially on the sequence of absorption, emission and reabsorption that takes place when air warms.

That is not what I said regarding sequences. Are you restating or asking for more detail?  If it is the latter, then Goggle and YouTube are your friends--  Many college-level professors upload their lectures to YouTube.

As for me continuing this thread here, I am retired from lecturing  and only do local geology, meteorites/ catastrophes and ultraviolet minerals once or twice a year, plus lots of field time. I think I'll become a first person geotravel writer--yeah that's the ticket!  Like Richard, I've spent a life time building up a lot of scientific knowledge and while I don't plan on digging back into the world of  climatology as a fourth career, I have enough knowledge to know when something smells fishy.  As we seem to be covering facts which have already been stated, it is getting time to pack it up.

Regarding the lab tests, it has been my impression that they were set up so the light beam did not have to pass through any glass between the emitter and the receiver, and that instantaneous readings by the receiver of the transmitted wavelengths are used to calculate absorption of the IR.

Please explain how you would do that without involving at least a partial glass containment vessel...  e.g How would you contain the CO2 and exclude variables of concentration, particulates, etc.  Smells a bit fishy. Where did you get this experimental set up and where can I review it?

AT any rate, you recognize that CO2 does absorb IR and becomes warmer as a result, which is the starting point for the relationship between CO2 concentration and atmospheric warming. That is the only point I was making. Beyond that relationship a lot of other things begin to happen but I didn't go into that, and didn't intend to. If I were to write this again I would omit the last sentence.

I didn't say that--I said it re-emits different wave lengths of IR.  I also went into great detail explaining the mechanism.  Where do you get that CO2 gets "hot" when it absorbs and promptly re-emits various wavelengths?  The only heating is via the overall atmospheric gases via convective heating regardless of composition under laws of thermal dynamics.

So, what would be the mechanisms for this "full blown ice age in a few decades"?

Freshwater runoff from Greenland's melting icecap shutting down the Gulf Stream Conveyor current for one.  Triggering long, snowy, lingering winters in Northern Europe/Scandinavia and Russia-Asia which rapidly changes the hemisphere's albedo, which accelerates a cooling cycle, where permafrost formation and snow not thawing adds up to thicker ice caps which start flowing southward.  This chills the northern hemisphere atmosphere and finds England, Canada and Greenland refreezing and... soon the ice sheets creep back into the US and are back down to below where they were in the Wisconsonian Ice Sheet reversal interrupted 12900 years ago at the onset of the Younger-Dryas.

Mankind demands heroic efforts to supper pump the atmosphere with fossil based CO2 generation but wind and solar energy had advanced so far under massive subsidies that coal-fired plants had been dismantled.  The fatcat wind and solar energy industry resists all efforts for emergency construction right before the ice sheets plows their array fields into scrap and much of the industrial countries into oblivion.  ( Ok the last part is satire)

Eman

 PS:  I don't think the average reader understands the life-long collection of information and the dangers we have in relying on information beyond fundamental science such that somethings rarely change and other things are changing daily. We risk being snipped if we say anything casually inaccurate and spending all our earned retirement time trying to answer lengthy threads that weren't budgeted.  Ergo my constant admonition to go find out for one's self.  I can discuss principles and suggest areas to read further onto and I do welcome corrections but:

1) I can't keep everything I've ever read in my head with absolute accuracy. and currency. Hence the strong urgency to go read up on the topic and self education on one's on such that we can have detailed discussions.  I can't explain the detail engineering of an internal combustion engine if the other member lacks basic knowledge of combustion, Venturi Effect, heat transfer  etc. OR if there is an interjected discussion about miracle water burning engines read about in the National Enquirer.   I don't have the inclination or need to convince everyone what I am comfortable with myself.  I don't mind sharing but I also don't make it a full time activity.  I do feel an obligation for the sake of science to step in when something I know to be inaccurate gets posted.  Otherwise I am here to read through current geo-science--Which this lists is best known for.  THAT is my agenda and it isn't hidden, for the record.

2) I sometime sense that what I have shared is ignored when there is a private agenda that is seeking validation.  Remember a few weeks ago in spite of all steering in the right direction for suggested reading the author kept coming back stating the same mistaken arguments regarding plate tectonics being driven by asteroid impact and how supper continents arose from the mantle?  I didn't get feedback then that the poster was taking advantage of all the benefit of some very experienced members of this list and what they were sharing.  And it became clear that the poster never followed up on an iota on concepts we kept having to go back to over and over.   I don't mind sharing and I enjoy helping others come to an understanding of geo-science but this list can't take the place of acquiring a good foundation in all the sciences, such that one can understand the general principles of geo-science such that the occasional detailed discussion makes sense.

Scientific knowledge is in constant change.  For example, in my lifetime we've seen the acceptance of plate tectonic theory which was embryonic when I was an undergrad.  Now it is well mapped and common knowledge.  I am old enough to remember a few short term cycles of heavy snow falls and hot summers 11 years apart.  So I don't run about reacting to every snow storm or every hurricane as some hidden message about climate.  By its nature we are having to look back 20-50 years-- almost before the invention of the transistor to get an unemotional but, very accurate understanding of climate cycles.  And one final thought, by definition climate is constantly changing whether or not mankind was focused on it.  It was changing long before mankind existed and will be changing long after we are gone.

PSS: BREAKING NEWS:  CNN is reporting that the IPCC is now 95% certain that mankind is responsible for the preponderance of heating( up from 90% in the last report)  All this without a valid prediction model. Citing data of Greenland's ice sheet melting.  You know the same icesheet we just read about mantle plume heating contributing to accelerated melting.  I've never been skeptical that there wasn't an impact but they still can't tell us what proportion of change can be assigned to each forcer--especially AGW.  I guarantee that the mantle heating was NOT a considered in their conclusion. I await their report. One of those "have to be published" so we can see whats in it.