[MarkPawelek (OP)]

In chemistry the term acid test means a basic test which gives one precise information. A bit like a flame test tells you whether a substance contains calcium, sodium, copper or iron. Hoping you did flame tests at high school, so you know what I'm on about!

I've had much difficulty communicating with the climate faithful (those poor souls who've lost their minds to climate hysteria). Over very basic things. For example, when I talk about basic climate models I mean, for example, the model of Manabe and Wetherald, 1967, or one of Jim Hansen's models. Most of them published in science journals. I don't mean computer code from a General Circulation Model. Because I'm a computer programmer and I know it's senseless to reverse engineer computer code to try to work out the coder's intention.

I going to deal with this ambiguity about what basic climate models mean by proposing the climate model acid test™. It's not really trade marked, you, too, can do it. I will propose to the climate faithful, that we go online, find one of these basic climate models, and we do a textual analysis  looking all basic assumptions and predictions made. Then look for the science behind those basic assumptions. For eample, when they say "more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes the atmosphere more opaque to infrared". Let's look for the basic scientific studies showing this. If the climate modeler says: "more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere results in less out-going longwave radiation energy emitted to space", then this too is a clear, simple, assumption which must be verified and quantified by basic experiment. Eventually, by finding all these basic experiments, we can figure out what assumptions, and predictions, made by climate models are rock solid, and which may not be quite right.

The point of the climate model acid test is not to win believers to my side. It is to show naive people how science should be done; how genuine skeptics should think.

[alancalverd]

Hold on! An acid test can't be a basic test! (Chemistry joke - not bad for a physicist). Anyway, an acid test is intentionally potentially destructive: if a substance is pure gold, or an article is covered with contiguous gold plating, it will not dissolve in hydrochloric acid, but pretty well anything else will be destroyed.

Whilst the assumptions of a model must be unequivocal and testable, that doesn't guarantee the validity of the model. They must also be complete (everyone knows water is a far more important climate driver than CO2, but its behaviour is too complex to model) and robust (probably OK for CO2, but the behavior of water is anomalous be cause ice floats and reflects sunlight). But more significant is the stability of the model itself: does it back-project to zero, infinity, or what we actually know - a long-period oscillation? And does it predict the observed phase lag between temperature and CO2 level? I'm not aware of any that meet those criteria. 

[Bored chemist]

If the climate modeler says: "more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere results in less out-going longwave radiation energy emitted to space", then this too is a clear, simple, assumption which must be verified and quantified by basic experiment.

I presume that you know  that it has been verified.

nyway, an acid test is intentionally potentially destructive: if a substance is pure gold, or an article is covered with contiguous gold plating, it will not dissolve in hydrochloric acid, but pretty well anything else will be destroyed.

I have some gold I want to sell you.

Here are some things we know.
The Earth loses some heat by radiation of IR
Carbon dioxide absorbs IR which "traps" heat.
There is about a third more CO2 in the air than there was.
We are responsible for that additional CO2
The climate is getting more extreme.

So, how detailed  does the model need to be?

[alancalverd]

Sufficiently detailed to demonstrate causality, using the criteria set out in my second paragraph.

There's no doubt that (a) the climate is changing, and there are plenty of reasons for reducing (b) the amount of CO2 we emit. The problem is that nobody is doing anything to mitigate the effect of  (a), nor has there been any net progress on reducing (b), but an awful lot of people are making a living, disrupting traffic, driving teenagers to despair, and generally wasting their lives and taxpayers' money  trying to produce a model that shows that b causes a. 

[evan_au]

If you think that predicting the long-term future of climate is hard (or retroactively explaining the climate we have now)...
Have a listen to this podcast, interviewing staff at the European Center for Medium-term Weather Forecasting.

A majority of their processing power goes into finding out what the weather is right now.
- The size of the code that finds out the current weather is mind-boggling
- They have adopted some learnings from the climate modelers, and can show that this makes their predictions more accurate

Listen: https://omegataupodcast.net/326-weather-forecasting-at-the-ecmwf/

[alancalverd]

Years ago, when they had  just installed their first supercomputer (probably no more powerful than this desktop, but it was a watercooled Cray "Dogsnuts" prototype) I had the task of retrieving a pilot who had completely misread the actual and forecast weather, and landed his glider in a field less than 10 miles from our base.

Having quaffed the traditional modicum of ale in recognition of my efforts, I said "Aren't you a director of the ECMWF?" "Yes. But only the finance director."     

[Petrochemicals]

Hold on! An acid test can't be a basic test!

Caustic wit  appeals only to those with a more base sense of humour.

What we could do is study what happens next time there is a sudden slowdown in the world economy.

[alancalverd]

Immediately after 9/11 there  was an absence of vapor trails over the USA. These tend to nucleate high-level clouds, so for several days there was much less cloud cover than forecast over much of the arid southwest, leading to a measurable change in  mean surface temperature.

[MarkPawelek (OP)]

I presume that you know  that it has been verified.

You want me to take that on trust and you think you can sell me some gold?  You must think me very gullible. In my OP, I implied I wanted to see the studies you read which convinced you of this. The data. The studies. Can you really not remember a study you read showing what you claim?

Carbon dioxide absorbs IR which "traps" heat.

If so, that can be demonstrated by publishing a scientific study, can't it?  Please cite the study so that we can read it, and see precisely what was measured.

My studies indicate:

CO2 absorbs IR, and emits IR; more or less at the same frequency and intensity.
Absorption and emission vary depending on temperature. Using Planck's Law, one can calculate the equilibrium temperature for CO2 main band (15µm). It is -77.8C. Which is very cold. At, or below, -77.8C CO2 absorbs IR. Above that temperature it emits IR. There are very few places on Earth or in the atmosphere which get that cold. So it looks to me that the equilibrium position (w.r.t. temperature) for this CO2 'absorption band' is to emit. It, no doubt depends on the temperature of the molecule. An energised molecule should emit a photon, taking the activated electron back to a minimal energy orbital. (is that a 'ground state').  No IR photons will be trapped. No trapped heat.

Other people, say that CO2 makes the atmosphere more opaque to IR. Can anyone show me a citation from the people who measured that?

[chiralSPO]

My studies indicate:

CO2 absorbs IR, and emits IR; more or less at the same frequency and intensity.
Absorption and emission vary depending on temperature. Using Planck's Law, one can calculate the equilibrium temperature for CO2 main band (15µm). It is -77.8C. Which is very cold. At, or below, -77.8C CO2 absorbs IR. Above that temperature it emits IR. There are very few places on Earth or in the atmosphere which get that cold. So it looks to me that the equilibrium position (w.r.t. temperature) for this CO2 'absorption band' is to emit. It, no doubt depends on the temperature of the molecule. An energised molecule should emit a photon, taking the activated electron back to a minimal energy orbital. (is that a 'ground state').  No IR photons will be trapped. No trapped heat.

Other people, say that CO2 makes the atmosphere more opaque to IR. Can anyone show me a citation from the people who measured that?

Yes. You are correct that the excited molecule relaxes again, re-emitting the IR photon (with roughly the same frequency), so the photon is not "trapped" in a single molecule. BUT......

The direction that the photon is traveling in after it is re-emitted is not the same that it was initially going--it is effectively randomized.

If the atmosphere is transparent, then the photon can leave at the speed of light (disappearing in a fraction of a second, never to return).

But if the atmosphere is NOT transparent to the photons, then they must do a "random walk," effectively bouncing from absorbing/emitting molecule to absorbing/emitting molecule until it finally escapes. The extreme version of this is what happens to light in a star: it can take tens of thousands of years for photons initially generated in the core to make it out to the corona (non-interacting neutrinos moving at subluminal speeds make it out much sooner)

So the question is, what is the mean free path of a 15 µm photon in an atmosphere with 400 ppm of CO₂ vs that with only 350 ppm? And how does that translate into time required to exit the atmosphere? (according to the paper linked below, the mean free path is on the order of a meter at 300 ppm, which means that the photon would have to be absorbed an re-emitted at least 50,000 times before getting from the ground to an altitude of 50 km--and this small number would only occur if every re-emission were up (highly unlikely)

This is nicely done here: https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/joc.1803

[MarkPawelek (OP)]

Keatings paper, cited by you, is more speculation. Itself citing speculation in its support. That speculation then cites even more speculation. In my OP I asked,

Then look for the science behind those basic assumptions.

In addition, Keatings speculative paper isn't a key modeling paper; so I don't want to waste time on it; pointing out its assumptions and guesses. I'd much rather ask (again) "What is the science (as opposed to the speculation) behind anthropogenic climate change?"

I should clarify what I mean by science. I mean those things we know for sure as opposed to the things we're guessing (speculating) about. For example: scientific laws. They are laws because we know for sure; as they can be clearly demonstrated, in a replicable way.

[Bored chemist]

you think you can sell me some gold?

For a start, I think I can sell Alan some "gold".
He doesn't understand that "The acid test" was used to distinguish real gold from pyrites.
It uses nitric acid (not hydrochloric).
And it might be better if he stuck to physics.
But  the glitch in his joke hardly matters.

You want me to take that on trust ?

No, you don't need to take it on trust.
You can buy the kit on eBay and check it yourself.
Or you could consider the fact that, if it wasn't true, people would have noticed before now.
So I'm not expecting you to trust me; I expect you to trust the scientific consensus.

At, or below, -77.8C CO2 absorbs IR. Above that temperature it emits IR.

That's just not really the way it works.

So it looks to me that the equilibrium position (w.r.t. temperature) for this CO2 'absorption band' is to emit.

Again, that's based on your misunderstanding.

Other people, say that CO2 makes the atmosphere more opaque to IR. Can anyone show me a citation from the people who measured that?

Messers Beer and Lambert.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer%E2%80%93Lambert_law

Doesn't it trouble you that you are unaware of science that has been known for about 300 years?

[Petrochemicals]

So the question is, what is the mean free path of a 15 µm photon in an atmosphere with 400 ppm of CO₂ vs that with only 350 ppm? And how does that translate into time required to exit the atmosphere? (according to the paper linked below, the mean free path is on the order of a meter at 300 ppm, which means that the photon would have to be absorbed an re-emitted at least 50,000 times before getting from the ground to an altitude of 50 km--and this small number would only occur if every re-emission were up (highly unlikely)

What sort of time scale though is this ? I amp retty sure that it goes cold at night (average 12 hours).  The heat (residual) is stored in deep ground sources and water, remembering newtons law of cooling, everything seeks to be the same temperature, at night the heat is drawn from hot sources, and the hotter they are the faster thay cool. In waters case it would rather liberate itsel from its earthly bonds and become gaseous that emit radiation, thus leading to greater inter gaseous radiation during the day.

Basically the atmosphere becomes denser and thicker (higher)  meaning greater energy content and greater gaseous interaparticle emmisivity, meaning 5he temperature at ground level increaces.

[alancalverd]

He doesn't understand that "The acid test" was used to distinguish real gold from pyrites.

None of the components I tested was likely to be plated with FeS2, but porous gold plating showed up pretty quickly as the underlying copper or steel bubbled away. Whilst pure gold won't dissolve in HNO3, several perfectly acceptable alloys will, so we didn't use it.

[Bored chemist]

None of the components I tested was likely to be plated with FeS2, but porous gold plating showed up pretty quickly as the underlying copper or steel bubbled away. Whilst pure gold won't dissolve in HNO3, several perfectly acceptable alloys will, so we didn't use it.

Fine, I'm delighted to know that you had a test that suited your purposes. Not sure how the copper bubbled away in HCl since they don't react but... whatever.
But that's not "The acid test" to which the phrase refers- which relates to gold mining where "Fools gold" was a big deal.

In waters case it would rather liberate itsel from its earthly bonds and become gaseous that emit radiation,

No
Ice still emits IR.

But the fundamental point is that the timescale doesn't matter- sure it get's cold at night.
But only here.
On the other side of the world, it's daytime and getting warm.

The essence of it is that CO2 acts as a better "insulator" in one direction than it does in the other.
It does  better job of retarding loss of heat from the (cool) Earth than of retarding heating from the (hot) Sun because the Sun's emitted radiation is largely at wavelengths where CO2 is transparent. but the Earth's emitted radiation is in the IR where CO2 isn't transparent.

[MarkPawelek (OP)]

When radiosonde data (atmospheric balloons), is analysed from the point of view of density, the lower atmosphere can be explained by up to 3 equations of state (only 2 at night & early morning; 3rd one merges into 2nd) corresponding to 3 regions:

• Tropopause/Stratosphere
• Troposphere
• Boundary Layer (water dominated). Nearest surface.

When we compare this reality with the radiative model of Manabe and Strickler, we see one is real. The other is fantasy.


Balloons in the Air: Understanding weather and climate, Dr. Ronan Connolly & Dr. Michael Connolly; CERES.

The moral of this tale is Do not confuse your model of the world with reality - if in doubt - look at the data.

[Bored chemist]

the lower atmosphere can be explained by up to 3 equations of state

What do you consider the phrase "equation of state" means?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_of_state

[MarkPawelek (OP)]

You can find their equations here at the Open Peer Review Journal - where you can submit your peer review of their article.

[alancalverd]

The model inversion at 10 km actually corresponds to the balloon data graph - 20 kPa being around 10,000 m pressure altitude. However it does seem absurd to create a theoretical model of something which is observed in great detail every day, and the fact that the curvature of the model below 10km is in the opposite sense to the observed behaviour suggests that the model falls into the category of "crap". This is further supported by the sea level temperature point of 340K, way above any recorded surface temperature on this planet. The International Standard Atmosphere is 288 K at sea level.

It comes as no surprise to see a less ridiculous "adjusted" graph. This is typical of all climate models. But it still shows the wrong curvature.

[MarkPawelek (OP)]

Immediately after 9/11 there  was an absence of vapor trails over the USA

None of the components I tested was likely to be plated with FeS2

Would you consider changing your name to Naked Science Forum TROLL!, or perhaps Naked Science Forum Red Herring merchant?

I posted this to discuss climate models. Every post you make is designed to derail the thread with pointless red herrings. Please stop acting like a child.