[Bored chemist]

The waveform of the neon oscillator - indeed any relaxation oscillator - is the inverse of the observed behaviour of the climate,

Here's a picture from wiki
Which waveform are you saying is wrong?

[Bored chemist]

It's impossible to convince a denier,

Yep.

[Bored chemist]

The Milankovich cycles do not produce sudden spikes of heat

If you look carefully, you will see that I already said that.

There are "slow" drivers of climate change. Things like Milankovitch cycles.

Why are you trying to frame it as if I said otherwise?


And you will also see the other thing that you keep ignoring.
here it is again.

From time to time, they drive the temperature of the earth past the tipping points and we get increased concentrations of CO2, methane and water vapour in the air.
Because those are positive feedback mechanisms, they produce quite rapid increases in temperature and the concentrations of those GH gases.
The temperatures rise for a while until those same slow drivers overcome the effects of the GH gases.

I already explained this to you, and provided an analogy (the neon oscillator) in a field you are familiar with,
https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=83465.msg659192;topicseen#msg659192

[Petrochemicals]

So far, nobody has answered the questions in any sensible way.

because water is a refrigerant and therefore cannot be the driver, the driver must be an increace in energy somehow, because water reaches an equilibrium  it cannot be the driver. Co2 cannot be the driver, only increaced energy can be so.

[Bored chemist]

because water is a refrigerant

So is dry ice, but that doesn't stop CO2 being a greenhouse gas.

[alancalverd (OP)]

Which waveform are you saying is wrong?

The one that shows the voltage rising with no current flow. That's somewhat inconsistent with the laws of physics. Problem is that you are showing two different things - voltage across the neon and current through it.That's not a good analogy of global temperature at all.

You could invert the waveforms and reverse the time line, then the "voltage" waveform would look a bit like the temperature of a planet on which the sun suddenly decided to shine, then switched off, and would at least explain the temperature graph. Possible, but not this solar system, and it still doesn't explain why the CO2 graph follows the temperature, nor why the maxima and minima are so consistent.

I always prefer to look at the data itself rather than dream up superficial analogies.

[alancalverd (OP)]

It's impossible to convince a denier,

Yep.

So I won't bother to continue this correspondence. If you continually ignore the evidence, you won't learn.

[Bored chemist]

Quote from: Bored chemist on Yesterday at 20:39:10
Which waveform are you saying is wrong?
The one that shows the voltage rising with no current flow.

And yet, the diagrams are correct.

.That's not a good analogy of global temperature at all.

It's not a good analogy, but it is the answer to your question about how a slow change in input can give rise to a fast change in output.

I always prefer to look at the data itself

And then you say things like

The CO2 concentration has risen very quickly in the past

even though we are raising it a hundred times faster than ever it ever changed before.

So I won't bother to continue this correspondence. If you continually ignore the evidence, you won't learn.

That's ironic from the guy who asked for something to be explained 4 or 5 times.

So I won't bother to continue this correspondence.

Good.

[alancalverd (OP)]

It's not a good analogy, but it is the answer to your question about how a slow change in input can give rise to a fast change in output.

No. The characteristic of all relaxation oscillators is tripping rapidly from a high-energy state to a low-energy state. The earth's atmosphere has done almost exactly the opposite throughout recent geological history, including the present. 

[Bored chemist]

Quote from: alancalverd on Yesterday at 23:10:57
So I won't bother to continue this correspondence.
Good.

I knew it was too good to last.

[mikewonders]

Seems like the topic continually migrates into controversial OT.  The notion of increased water volume due to increased vapor amounts to roughly 1/3 the ocean volume increase not accounted for as thermal expansion and glacial contribution.

The formula for water vapor emissions due to octane combustion over decades of fossil fuel consumption (from below ground) + deforestation accounts for this volume easily.  This is "NEW" water, a byproduct of combustion of fuels from BELOW ground.  Where trees are concerned this was water above ground but stored previously in a stable state before deforestation released it to evaporation adding to the total precipitation return volume.

Deforestation amounts to some three trillion or roughly half the trees being counted today to remain before non-sustainable farming practices took hold, which also contributes to losses of CO2 by exposure and decomposition of otherwise stable soil constituents.

All water vapor condenses mostly in the troposphere which is now on average 11 kilometers taller around the globe, retaining the additional vapor and it's additional pressure contribution before becoming precipitation falling back to the surface of the earth. 

Since the majority of contribution occurs over the oceans (70% of the earth's surface) the net effect is a frank increase in oceanic volume over time, i.e. greater heat sink relative to barren reflective soils losing gross water storage, leaf area index cooling and transpiration on a regional basis.  A two fold factor of regional redistribution and greenhouse reflection, re-reflection, ...

Water vapor is the most potent greenhouse gas there is, (and 11 kilometers thicker now).  That plus the force amplification factor water vapor provides to CO2 greenhouse effect, it's not hard to picture how the volume of NEW water emitted from fossil fuel combustion previously below ground, and released water from deforestation has contributed a major factor, if not even more so than CO2 itself above ground.

The premise is that BOTH volumes of new water AND new CO2 from deforestation + combustion of fossil fuel over nearly a century cannot be taken to account individually where the dynamic of global warming is in question. 

Currently, increased water volume from these effects is not being taken into account at all, as if the extraordinary volume increase has no effect, especially when combined in multiple causes / effects and amplification.

So far I haven't seen any contributions which make a quantifiable assessment to this full set of conditions, (myself included).

Bottom line the rate of increase in warming is the concern.  The rate of change for CO2 is relevant, whether as a cause or following effect of some other cause or closely coupled in duality.  Unless the increased effects of water volume and water vapor density / force amplification and redistribution are accounted for, the current models of prediction based on CO2 as the main premise alone, might as well be a dart board in the local pub.  THAT's a real concern for all the cost we're incurring to gamble on CO2 alone for a 20% solution in energy production solar and wind might provide. 

Bear in mind, solar and wind are NOT truly sustainable without new and potentially destructive waste streams and support costs.  While elimination of combustion by EV conversion makes for a cleaner vehicle, the majority of charging power they will utilize is still heavily if not primarily sourced from inadequate infrastructures connected to .... fossil fuel combustion driving powered turbine generators.

Just saying

[Bored chemist]

The notion of increased water volume due to increased vapor amounts to roughly 1/3 the ocean volume increase not accounted for as thermal expansion and glacial contribution.

Please show your working.

For reference
https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/how-much-water-there-earth
tells us
Oceans, Seas, & Bays   321,000,000 cubic miles
Atmosphere                  3,095 cubic miles

he formula for water vapor emissions due to octane combustion over decades of fossil fuel consumption (from below ground) + deforestation accounts for this volume easily.

I did the maths on that.
https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=83465.msg661680#msg661680
The water derived from fossil fuel is a trivial quantity compared to the amount already there.

All water vapor condenses mostly in the troposphere which is now on average 11 kilometers taller around the globe,

Or not...
"A warmer upper troposphere and cooler lower stratosphere cause their border, the tropopause, to rise. A new paper, published online Nov. 5 in the journal Science Advances, found that the tropopause rose about 50 meters per decade due to human activity between 1980 and 2000 and at a similar rate between 2000 and 2020. "
from
https://www.insidescience.org/news/climate-change-raising-top-troposphere
50 metres per decade; 4 decades about 200 metres all told.

So far I haven't seen any contributions which make a quantifiable assessment to this full set of conditions, (myself included).

Indeed, you keep posting silly numbers.
Please stop.

[wolfekeeper]

NGL it's painful that we have a climate change denier as an admin on the forum of the naked scientists website.

The scientific consensus of climate change scientists is around 99-100%, and this position is accepted by all major scientific organizations now:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change

[Petrochemicals]

NGL it's painful that we have a climate change denier as an admin on the forum of the naked scientists website.

The scientific consensus of climate change scientists is around 99-100%, and this position is accepted by all major scientific organizations now:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change

Good to know that tolerance and factual debate have not fallen to bigoted cancel culture, vilification and facetious comments.

Take that as you like.

[alancalverd (OP)]

The scientific consensus of climate change scientists is around 99-100%, and this position is accepted by all major scientific organizations now:

Along with the geocentric universe, the flat earth, phlogiston, spontaneous fermentation, Aristotelian mechanics, Adam and Eve ......

.......and just in case you think our ancestors were particularly ignorant, the 20th  century (where "climate science" veered off the runway and got stuck in the mud)  also produced such gems as the American Academy of Sciences "There is no conceivable military use for the airplane" and the British Association for the Advancement of Science "The UK needs about four or five computers". All solemnly signed and sealed by an overwhelming consensus.

The one thing we know about consensus is that it is a poor substitute for investigation. Modelling is extrapolation of effects, not investigation of causes. 

I haven't seen much evidence of denial in this forum: the symptoms are too obvious and in tune with historic precedent. But I do see a lot of unsupported belief in the cause.

[mikewonders]

The one thing we know about consensus is that it is a poor substitute for investigation. Modelling is extrapolation of effects, not investigation of causes. 

I haven't seen much evidence of denial in this forum: the symptoms are too obvious and in tune with historic precedent. But I do see a lot of unsupported belief in the cause.

There's a few reasons why unsupported "belief" filters into many forums, especially when there is inevitably at least one troll that shows up in almost all topics on a board and seeks to fragment other's considerations in order to elevate their own post ranking as a means to compensate their own internal inadequacies and fears.  They generally decorate replies as disparaging remarks to others, based on other published but unsubstantiated web articles, "because after all, "It it was found on the web, it must be true".  Their goal is to inject negativity into the thread to drive others away, fracture the topical integrity and leave themselves to be the supposed net correct posting having sought to impeach every other comment with divisive statements and personally disparaging comments if nothing else. 

In other words the quality of responses degrades as a result such that those with wisdom fall away to leave those of assumption to their ways.  Simply asking a question for a reasonable hypothesis becomes targeted as ignorant because the poster asking the question responded to the troll's unqualified responses dredged up from unqualified articles posted as a "supposed" response in fact.  The troll then comes back and wants to defend their prior unqualified answer with yet another unqualified answer and says "I already answered that", yes, with yet another unqualified answer.

If one wants to truly contribute something of value to the purpose of the thread, it might be to reflect a means by which to actually quantify just how much increased real volume of atmospheric water vapor has evolved due to given causes effecting atmospheric expansion but more critically what is the net outcome of warming from water vapor itself as a greenhouse effect and again (critically so) how to determine the extent of force amplification it causes on CO2, assessing a net warming effect valuable to other modeling.  Then and ONLY then, does the question of volumetric change provide additional value to overall net effect over time. 

Modelling is useful from a standpoint of assessing probabilities but only to the degree the model has integrity with every contributing factor.  I have not yet found a model that provides this integral question on the effect of increased water volume or vapor reliably which means the model's have a gaping uncertainty which has merit of concern.

Some apparently can't understand that a very small change in volume of one variable constituent can have a massive effect of net change as a sum total of other constituents affected, hence the total effect overall.

By attempting to minimize a volumetric ratio or change by ignoring the elephant in the room as the much bigger dynamic net change in non-linear amplification, the value of the actual question asked becomes diluted by intent to thwart the poster's question among the respondent's inability to answer the actual question, (or destroy the topic otherwise).

As humans we're subject to wanting others to lead on some 80/20 fraction in nature.  When one becomes elevated to a consideration of leading by any means, good or bad, a majority of others less in fact are inclined to "follow", even in the absence of truly qualified suppositions or well established leadership.  This contributes to increasing "belief" mechanisms which are unfounded even if they may "sound" reasonable and a group becomes deluded into acceptance.

This is why science is supposed to seek empirical evidence and not buy into a well meaning suggestion as fact (or trolls that seek to discredit).  When Einstein was posed with the question of quantum entanglement, he didn't seek to discredit those who proposed it as a "belief".  In wisdom he studied it as empirically as he could mathematically and admitted there seemed to be some "spooky action at a distance" he could not fully dispute from within his own definitions of relativity or those provided by his colleagues.  He attempted to provide a valuable measure of affirmation even outside his own theories.  Today, quantum physics helps explain this even if we still can't fully prove the underlying quantum dynamics just yet.  Gravity is a weaker "relative" force, but doubtful anyone disputes its value or significant effect nor does its relative weakness diminish its importance.

That said, despite the troll effects in this thread, the original question "Why can't water vapor be the driver of today's climate change?" remains unanswered.  Simply reducing the question to one of relative volume or change in relative volume alone does not address this question.  That should be obvious to anyone who actually cares about empirical science, and by definition avoids the conceptual aspects of "consensus" as well.

If it were as simple as gross volume, I wouldn't have come here to ask the question, but for hope there is enough collective wisdom here to gain real perspective to the question.  It is a legitimate question and a concern I think most will admit may be much more difficult to accurately resolve and even more difficult to compensate for in time, than CO2 will be.  That returns me to a prior statement regarding the temporal window of change necessary to effect sufficient correction in time, if the concern is found to be valid by empirical evaluation.

Thank you Alan and "no" I was not referring to you as a troll.

[Bored chemist]

Along with the geocentric universe, the flat earth, phlogiston, spontaneous fermentation, Aristotelian mechanics, Adam and Eve ......

With one exception, those ideas are all "pre-scientific" so they are irrelevant.
Spontaneous fermentation is a real thing- it just doesn't mean what you think it does.
https://www.craftbeer.com/craft-beer-muses/immaculate-fermentation-science-not-sorcery

just in case you think our ancestors were particularly ignorant, the 20th  century (where "climate science" veered off the runway and got stuck in the mud)  also produced such gems as the American Academy of Sciences "There is no conceivable military use for the airplane" and the British Association for the Advancement of Science "The UK needs about four or five computers". All solemnly signed and sealed by an overwhelming consensus.

Those are a couple of stories about very new technology; they are barely relevant to a discussion of a massively well researched topic like climate science, are they?
"The UK needs about four or five computers"
may well have been true at  the time.
If you think about the sort of computers they had in mind (with valves and relays), I doubt there are more than about 5 running today.
More interestingly, I can't find any evidence that British Association for the Advancement of Science actually said it.
Please provide a reference.

The one thing we know about consensus is that it is a poor substitute for investigation.

And lots of investigations have been done- though, of course, they still continue.

Why can't water vapor be the driver of today's climate change?" remains unanswered. 

It was answered.

But to get back to the topic,
"Why can't water vapor be the driver of today's climate change?""
Because something that stays the same can't cause a change.
Unless the Earth's temperature rises, the water levels are pretty much fixed because any excess rains out.

[Petrochemicals]

That said, despite the troll effects in this thread, the original question "Why can't water vapor be the driver of today's climate change?" remains unanswered. 

I already answered it in reply 163, water vapours not the driver due to it being a side effect, a passive reaction, the driver must be something else.

[Bored chemist]

It's a Christmas Miracle!
Mikewonders has got Petrochemicals and me to agree on something.

[alancalverd (OP)]

If one wants to truly contribute something of value to the purpose of the thread, it might be to reflect a means by which to actually quantify just how much increased real volume of atmospheric water vapor has evolved

The problem is wider than merely the total water content of the atmosphere, but its distribution with altitude and state, including surface cover of ice (in various phases), clear water, adsorbed, and subsurface moisture. The thermal and optical properties of water are extremely complex in the simplest static manifestation, never mind the dynamics of an inherently unstable climate and a continuously shifting pattern of vegetation.

My father often referred to the error of "ignoring the weight of the elephant", which he claims he found in an Indian physics exam paper. To my  mind, the currently fashionable consensus only discusses (at considerable expense to the taxpayer) the color of the mahout's turban.