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Post by eclipse on Apr 24, 2013 9:30:40 GMT 9.5
Hi all, I never did physics and was 'blessed' with a humanities brain instead. Can someone run me through the basics of the terminology used in describing the energy content trapped by Co2? This is how aDenialist spanked me recently. A watt is not a unit of energy. It is a unit of energy flow. It is a Joule per second. So it is physically impossible to "trap" a watt of "energy."
This is elementary beginning physics, not some elevated scientific theory.
Don't even try to argue physical facts until you learn at least a few of the basics.
Anpther example of your total lack of understanding of what you are reading is that you keep saying watts per cubic metre, when the data you are quoting is in watts per square meter, not watts per cubic metre. |
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Post by anonposter on Apr 24, 2013 23:39:15 GMT 9.5
I'm tempted to try to come up with a long answer but wikipedia probably has a better overview of energy and power. |
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Post by eclipse on Apr 25, 2013 9:13:36 GMT 9.5
I'm tempted to try to come up with a long answer but wikipedia probably has a better overview of energy and power. Thanks. I found a lot of the information I needed just in the watts wiki, which had this line... Based on the average total solar irradiance[12] of 1.366 kW/m2, the total power of sunlight striking Earth's atmosphere is estimated at 174 PW (cf. Solar Constant). This over-educated buffoon with an engineering degree (yet maintaining 7 day Creationism, yes, one of those) then said: I would like to see one of your peer-reviewed articles that says such a thing, for that would be a nail in the coffin for their fraud. Anyone who speaks of "trapping" a "watt" of energy does not understand enough to calculate how long it would take a cup of coffee to cool, much less how hot the earth will be a hundred years from now. Whether he calls himself a scientist or not, such a person is a total ignoramus when it comes to heat.
Your argument about this is only digging yourself deeper into the hole you have already dug. The only thing you are proving is that you do not even understand the data you are quoting. And by the way, the wikipedia article uses the term correctly. I have used the solar irradiance, which is measured in watts per square meter, in calculations many times. For I design solar heating systems. So I replied by quoting the IPCC... FAQ 2.1, Box 1: What is Radiative Forcing?
What is radiative forcing? The influence of a factor that can cause climate change, such as a greenhouse gas, is often evaluated in terms of its radiative forcing. Radiative forcing is a measure of how the energy balance of the Earth-atmosphere system is influenced when factors that affect climate are altered. The word radiative arises because these factors change the balance between incoming solar radiation and outgoing infrared radiation within the Earth’s atmosphere. This radiative balance controls the Earth’s surface temperature. The term forcing is used to indicate that Earth’s radiative balance is being pushed away from its normal state.
Radiative forcing is usually quantified as the ‘rate of energy change per unit area of the globe as measured at the top of the atmosphere’, and is expressed in units of ‘Watts per square metre’ (see Figure 2). When radiative forcing from a factor or group of factors is evaluated as positive, the energy of the Earth-atmosphere system will ultimately increase, leading to a warming of the system. In contrast, for a negative radiative forcing, the energy will ultimately decrease, leading to a cooling of the system. Important challenges for climate scientists are to identify all the factors that affect climate and the mechanisms by which they exert a forcing, to quantify the radiative forcing of each factor and to evaluate the total radiative forcing from the group of factors. www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-2-1.htmlHe's just attacking the easily debunked straw-man of my own layman's use of the terms. There's actually nothing of substance in this discussion, and I'm bored of it already. He was going on about ancient maps disproving global warming according to some ancient mariner's viewing of Antarctica pre-ice, so his Creationist worldview has precluded climate change being correct because many of the presuppositions in climate science include an old, old earth. Roy Spencer seems to be similarly effected. |
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Post by anonposter on Apr 26, 2013 2:18:06 GMT 9.5
This over-educated buffoon with an engineering degree (yet maintaining 7 day Creationism, yes, one of those) Engineering degree, thought as much. Anyone who speaks of "trapping" a "watt" of energy does not understand enough to calculate how long it would take a cup of coffee to cool, much less how hot the earth will be a hundred years from now. Whether he calls himself a scientist or not, such a person is a total ignoramus when it comes to heat. We're not talking about an extra Watt though, we're talking a lot of them. How anyone could expect to change the composition of the atmosphere in the way we're changing it and not affect the global mean temperature *shakes head*. |
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Post by Roger Clifton on Apr 26, 2013 7:58:16 GMT 9.5
Heat comes in as photons and leaves as photons. Their exit is delayed by the CO2 etc in a component of the atmosphere we have come to call the greenhouse. But that is a misleading name.
Using analogies instead of reasoning makes for wrong extrapolations. The "greenhouse" is an ageing analogy with those glass-roofed buildings of early 1900's Europe, whose heating was ascribed to glass being more transparent to visible light than infrared. It turned out later that when the walls absorbed sunlight, the adjacent air warmed and could not escape. The heat was "trapped".
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Post by eclipse on Apr 26, 2013 11:24:57 GMT 9.5
Heat comes in as photons and leaves as photons. Their exit is delayed by the CO2 etc in a component of the atmosphere we have come to call the greenhouse. But that is a misleading name. Using analogies instead of reasoning makes for wrong extrapolations. The "greenhouse" is an ageing analogy with those glass-roofed buildings of early 1900's Europe, whose heating was ascribed to glass being more transparent to visible light than infrared. It turned out later that when the walls absorbed sunlight, the adjacent air warmed and could not escape. The heat was "trapped". Yes, it does appear his whole argument evaporated the moment I called him on attacking a layman's analogy rather than anything substantial in the science itself. The whole thing was a semantic game. But the whole thing has taken a more peer-reviewed turn with him raising issues over NASA's satellite reliability, and this is from NASA's own website. If we are to believe NASA's website it sounds rather serious. If you actually think all this has been proven with such compelling reason, explain this chart, which was published by the NASA Earth Observatory, which shows the radical differences between solar radiance measurements taken by different satellites. The vertical scale is in watts per square meter and the horizontal scale is years.
You will notice that this chart shows drastic variations between observations of the same phenomena by different satellites. Which one is the correct one? This is just one example of the many problems we real scientists see.
You can see the original at:
earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Fea...E/sorce_05.php |
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Post by anonposter on Apr 26, 2013 12:34:46 GMT 9.5
Would be easier to figure out what he was saying if it weren't 404. |
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Post by eclipse on Apr 26, 2013 12:44:50 GMT 9.5
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Post by anonposter on Apr 26, 2013 13:11:40 GMT 9.5
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peterc
Thermal Neutron
Posts: 30
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Post by peterc on Apr 29, 2013 17:11:53 GMT 9.5
eclipse : A watt is not a unit of energy. On watts or joules (or BTU) : it is in fact a nuisance sometimes, the different ways of expressing output, and the ensuing conversions between watts and kWh/year (or hour, day) for example. I think it's correct to say, that where watts are used, it's almost always an average, often over 1 year, and often (in the case of solar and wind), only for a specific location. MacKay often expresses estimated solar and wind output as w/m², and this sometimes makes comparison easier. Especially when he expresses consumption as watts : it's understood as the average per person/p.a. Sometimes the misunderstandings between power and energy can be exploited to manipulate the public, as when a German newspaper last week trumpeted (on a particularly favourable day for renewables) that their output was the same as that of so many (8 as I remember it) NPP's. It was clear from the article that they based their claim on the wattage of renewables at a certain time on that day. |
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Post by eclipse on Apr 29, 2013 17:31:18 GMT 9.5
eclipse : A watt is not a unit of energy. On watts or joules (or BTU) : it is in fact a nuisance sometimes, the different ways of expressing output, and the ensuing conversions between watts and kWh/year (or hour, day) for example. I think it's correct to say, that where watts are used, it's almost always an average, often over 1 year, and often (in the case of solar and wind), only for a specific location. MacKay often expresses estimated solar and wind output as w/m�, and this sometimes makes comparison easier. Especially when he expresses consumption as watts : it's understood as the average per person/p.a. Sometimes the misunderstandings between power and energy can be exploited to manipulate the public, as when a German newspaper last week trumpeted (on a particularly favourable day for renewables) that their output was the same as that of so many (8 as I remember it) NPP's. It was clear from the article that they based their claim on the wattage of renewables at a certain time on that day. Yes, uniform consistent use of the language would be so helpful in this conversation. Only trained science reporters should be allowed to write about such things. Even as a layperson who didn't even do Year 11 & 12 High School science (but did humanities instead) I'm just so sick and tired of asking basic questions like:- - what time of day were the measurements taken,
- what time of year,
- how long a time period are they discussing, etc.
Reporting on all these matters drives me nuts... and as I mentioned, I'm not even a science graduate! |
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