Re: OT Gas Prices and the Blame Game

In <ae670cce-8dfd-4e89-a58d-32fdd8c9011a@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx wrote:

On 18 mei, 04:45, Jeff Liebermann <je...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Sea level rise calculator"
<http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/sea_level_calc.html>

Check out the original version of the calculation

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/will_the_ice_caps_melt.html

Jerome J. Schmitt starts off talking about the power coming in from
the sun, but rapidly switches to talking about the energy stored in
the atmosphere and the energy required to melt the ice caps.

If it were a serious calculation, he'd work out how much extra solar
power was being retained by the greenhouse effect, and how long it
would take for this power to heat the atmosphere by a given number of
degrees or to melt a given volume of the polar ice caps. In fact he
just talks about the energy stored in the atmosphere at some arbitrary
moment, and goes on from there to a fallacious conclusion.

The whole thing is straightforward fallacious anti-warmingist
propaganda, dressed up to look like elementary physics. It depends for
its rhetorical force on a sleigh of hand that ignores pretty much all
the interesting and complicated issues about heat transfer that the
IPCC does address.

As it turns out, I can toss in some numbers for amount of solar power
being retained by increase of greenhouse effect. Of course, these are
first order calculations and oversimplified.

The "solar constant" is about 1366 watts per square meter. The earth's
mean radius is about 6,371 km. So that works out to about 1.742E17 watts,
about half of which is absorbed, meaning 8.71E16 watts absorbed.

The "sample calculation" in the American Free Thinker article is for a 5
degree C rise. The 1930-1980 average surface temp. of the Earth was 15
degrees C, 288 degrees K.

If a blackbody surface is at 288 degrees K but receiving enough radiation
to maintain a temperature of 293 degrees K, then outgoing radiation is
..93347 times incoming radiation. This is an oversimplification since we
are talking about an increase in greenhouse effect, and greenhouse effect
muddies up blackbody radiation calculations.

But if one uses that .93357 figure, this means that heat is being gained
at a rate of 6.653% of the rate of incoming radiation being absorbed if
the earth's atmosphere and surface changes to accomplish a radiation
imbalance that will warm the earth up by 5 degrees C.

This is 5.79E15 watts.

Another, higher figure can be worked from assuming the surface is a
blackbody, which it is not far from at "room temperature thermal infrared"
wavelengths, and figuring how much radiation it needs to get from sun, plus
reflection-back from clouds and re-radiation towards surface of radiation
from surface absorbed by the atmosphere.

288 K blackbody is radiating 390.05 watts per square meter. 293 K
blackbody in equilibrium is receiving 417.85 watts per square meter. The
difference is 18.8 watts per square meter. That times 4, pi and square of
earth's radius is 9.59E15 watts. This would be multiplied by the actual
emissivity of earth's surface for thermal radiation at the temperatures
involved. My non-contact thermometer is hard-coded to use .95 as a "one
size fits all" for nonmetallic materials.

The American Free Thinker article claims 2.5E22 joules to warm up the
atmosphere by 5 degrees C and 7.4E24 joules to melt sufficient ice to
raise sea level 6 meters.

Using the lower 5.79E15 watt radiation imbalance figure, this works out
to about 50 days to warm the atmosphere by 5 degrees C, and about 40.5
years if all of that power goes into melting icecap ice to raise sea level
by 6 meters. Of course, it will take quite a bit of time to achieve
surface and atmopsphere conditions that would achieve radiation balance at
5 degrees C warmer than the 1930-1980 average, and also a lot of the
energy that the earth will gain during such warming will go into warming
up the oceans which will take time.

- Don Klipstein (don@xxxxxxxxx)
.

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