Water, water, everywhere...

Water, water everywhere…
It is a constant surprise and delight to me to find how much Physics I and every other common non-scientist human being knows. I have already written about the 2nd law of thermodynamics, by which law we know that everything that is hot gradually cools, and everything that is cold never spontaneously gets hotter. If we watch the truly awe-inspiring pictures of volcanoes erupting, and bright red-hot lava spilling down the mountainsides, we do so in the certain knowledge that that red molten river will in a short time turn black and cool.
In India there is a vast area called the Deccan Traps, an area of black basalt now covered in green vegetation, yet the series of eruptions that produced this vast area lasted over a period of some 30,000 years some 60 million years ago. With such a huge series of eruptions one might wonder, has the area got hotter and hotter? Of course not! It cooled and erosion and weathering gradually formed sufficient soil for green vegetation to grow.
Now what is another thing that I learn from lighting a bonfire in my garden? Well, it is obvious, isn’t it? In a gas or a liquid heat goes upwards, never downwards - convection. Sure, there is radiant heat, as from that great boiler in the sky, the sun. Sure heat can be conducted as along a metal, but in a gas or a liquid heat always goes upwards. Now that it is Spring, one can watch the dew evaporate and move skywards. Gliders rely on thermals, warm or hot air rising. Do you have to be a scientist to know that? No, not at all. Even little Susie knows that.
So it was particularly interesting for me to read in Climate Basics something that must be obvious even to the most fanatical Anthropogenic Global Warmer.

"The claim that an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is causing Arctic ice to melt is a contempt for every element of the science.
Air has low heat capacity. The oceans have a thousand times as much heat capacity as the atmosphere.
Ocean currents melt Arctic ice, because water has the heat capacity. And heat moves upward, not downward. The slightly warmed air would rapidly loose its heat and sit on the surface of the ice at the same temperature as the ice and do nothing significant."
http://www.climatebasics.com/icecause.html


This last paragraph reflects the themes of Stephen Wilde, a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, in his articles ‘The Hot Water Bottle Effect’ and others.

The Earth therefore accumulates or loses heat to and from, primarily, the oceans. The land and the atmosphere are largely an irrelevance. That heat then has to find it’s way out into Space over time. Before it can be radiated out into Space heat has to pass through the atmosphere.

The planet cannot maintain and does not maintain a constant temperature. It is not even possible to identify a specific current temperature for the whole planet and for present purposes there is no need to do so.

All I need to assert at this point is that whatever the Earth’s temperature is at any given moment it will always be in the process of warming or cooling and, of course, the rate of that warming or cooling is highly variable.

http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1041


How does that popular song go? Night and Day!!! What Stephen Wilde here asserts must be obvious to anyone and everyone who is able to distinguish between Mammy and Pappy. The Earth’s temperature is always warming and cooling. Yes, it happens every single day. It is a fact of your and my experience.

(Note from Stephen Wilde: - by warming and cooling I meant that the Earth's temperature naturally always drifts up and down around an equilibrium set by oceans sun and air. I wasn't referring to the regional diurnal range, which results from the Earth's rotation.)

This last correction corresponds I believe to what the Geophysicist Dr David Deming has written, namely: - The difference is equilibrium. Temperatures equilibrate. This means heat outflow causes cooling, which in turn reduces rate of outflow to the same rate as heat inflow from the sun. It's easy for nature to achieve the steady state, even with half the infrared spectrum.

Now we know that water, primarily the oceans, cover 71% of the Earths’ surface, and we know that the sun heats the atmosphere and the seas, and that water takes longer to heat and retains heat for longer. Heat is always moving upwards even in water. So we see that water can warm the atmosphere, but not the other way round.

So if we look again at my first quotation we can see at once the great fallacy about Arctic Ice. If Arctic Ice melts it cannot possibly be as the result of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, it has to be as the result of warm currents of water.

As Professor Ian Plimer points out in his book ‘Heaven + Earth’ some 85% of the world’s volcanoes are sub-marine, under the waves. There are also a colossal number of vents that produce hot water, sometimes as hot as 420 degrees centigrade. So that, in addition to solar heat, there is also geothermal activity. The combination of the two nails the current lie fostered by the Global Warmers and their High Priests!

The trace gas Carbon Dioxide is an irrelevance in the equation. Professor Plimer is even more forthright Page 411, ‘Heaven + Earth’. “To call for lowering the carbon footprint is asinine. To refer to ‘carbon pollution’ is ascientific political spin.”

Carbon Dioxide is a gas and therefore subject to the laws of Physics regarding convection. Heat always rises in a liquid or gas. In a greenhouse the glass roof inhibits this convection, but in the real world there is no ‘greenhouse’, there is a continuum into outer space. Once we realise this, there is no way that a gas could cause warming; there is simply no mechanism. All the warming that we receive is from the sun’s radiation. The atmosphere warms and cools rapidly, and this is a fact of our every day experience. Water takes longer to heat and longer to cool.
We have to thank God, or Great Nature or the Powers that Be, that water is able to retain heat, for that heat makes life possible on Earth. We also have to thank the Good Lord for rain. As my old teacher, J.G.Bennett said many moons ago, ‘Rain is a cosmic miracle’. As far as we know it is a phenomenon unique to our planet. Professor Plimer avers that the first rain on Earth occurred some 3,800 million years ago!

So, my good friend, where do you stand?

Anthony Bright-Paul

Sunday, 11 April 2010