[LINK] In Retirement on this thread - Was - The meaning of

[Gordon Keith]

On Thu, 28 Jun 2012 09:11:15 PM TKoltai wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: stephen at melbpc.org.au [mailto:stephen at melbpc.org.au]

> > "Climate Models Should Include Waves"
> > 
> > Swinburne University of Technology,  Monday, 18 June 2012 (snip)
> > 
> > A new field study by researchers suggests that the effect of wave
> > activity on oceans should be incorporated in long term climate and
> > weather prediction models.
> > 
> > "Large waves that occur in tropical storms and cyclones, can
> > contribute
> > in mixing a wider layer of the upper ocean with the cooler
> > deeper parts,
> > exchanging heat and carbon dioxide with the atmosphere, which affects
> > weather and climate," said lead researcher Dr Alessandro Toffoli from
> > Swinburne's Centre for Ocean Engineering, Science and Technology.
> 
> <SNIP>
> 
> 
> My golly gosh.
> 
> You chaps are all absolutely right.
> 
> As a layman I would never have guessed that a fast moving large wave
> would have a cooling effect on the atmosphere around it.
> 
> Holy Hannah Batman, this requires real expertise... And at least thirty
> million dollars to try and measure all the waves in the world...
> Imagine how much it would cost to map every thermal and subsequent wind
> change, each and every undersea seismic activity just so you could
> measure all the waves....
> 
> Wow! We could be on this project for at least three generations. Yeah...
> Nudge nudge wink wink.
> Bet ya we could write the code in less than 240K of Fortran...
> 
> What a load of bollocks!

Tom

You are demonstrating your complete lack of understanding of the whole field 
of climate science.

I suspect the word "climate" is included in the above to increase the 
attractiveness of the sound bite to journalists.

If you leave out the reference to climate, the article is saying that the 
effect of large waves from major storm events has a more significant effect on 
mixing the water in the upper ocean than currently understood. This could have 
significant effects on existing oceanographic, meteorological and biological 
process models. 

This is science that is well worth pursuing in its own right. If you want more 
accurate weather predictions this is precisely the sort of science that needs 
to be pursued to improve existing models.

The effects of waves on mixing the upper layer of the ocean, the affect this 
has on sea surface temperature and hence weather are established science. 
Measuring waves from satellites is an everyday activity. Modelling every 
thermal and wind change is what weather forecasting programs do. Improving the 
models by correctly understanding the impacts of uncommon events like storm 
waves is the sort of incremental improvement that modern science is all about.

In an environment (I can't say climate) where science funding is a scarce 
commodity of course any researcher is going to push any button they can to 
increase the chance that their work gets funding, including the climate change 
button. Note that this work is likely to make climate models more accurate but 
there is nothing that suggests it would increase or decrease the measure of 
change. Surely you would support any work which corrects any errors in the 
climate change science - isn't that what you have been claiming to do all 
along?

Tom, you haven't previously come across as anti-science per se, but this rant 
is starting to look that way.

How do you think we do things like improve weather predictions if you don't 
think scientist have to compete for funding to investigate effects which might 
or might not (an awful lot of science is establishing what isn't a significant 
effect) have a significant impact on known systems?

> OK, here's one... How much heat do 3.7 million undersea volcanoes add to
> the planets atmosphere ?
> If a medium size Volcano gives of 20GT CO2 per annum, how much CO2 is
> given off by 3.7 milion undersea volcanoes ?
> Is anyone being given a grant to study either of those ?

Try using google scholar to investigate geophysical research into this area. 
You are more likely to find research on trying to establish the number and 
distribution of undersea volcanoes or investigations into the heat flux of 
individual volcanoes but these both seem to be research areas which are 
attracting funding grants (and better understanding to improve the accuracy of 
climate change science may well be in the grant proposals).

> OK, how about this one ?
> How much additional thermal energy is added to the atmosphere every time
> a shuttle/X rocket/Falcon does a re-entry ?

This is a matter of pulling out a calculator, finding out the mass and re-
entry speed of the vehicle and what proportion of the kinetic energy is 
transferred to thermal energy (or assuming 100%). This is at most an 
undergraduate physics assignment, not something that needs a research grant. 
(hint KE = 1/2 * mass * velocity * velocity)

> What about those pretty shooting stars that skip along the troposphere ?
> Do they add any heat ?

This is as above with the difference that is harder to find out the mass and 
re-entry speed. This is worth doing - if it hasn't already been done decades 
ago. I suspect there are some good estimates of the amount of meteorites that 
hit the earth in the astronomy literature (not my field). 

> Colorado was hit by 900 mm of Hail stones the size of baseballs in early
> June... How much cooling was that worth and can we claim any carbon
> credits for that one ? (On that basis that our exhaust emissions caused
> the hail in the first place...)

This is temperature mixing, moving cold objects from the upper atmosphere to 
the surface. There is no increase or decrease in overall heat and the flux 
should be appropriately handled by any meteorological model.

> And here is the biggie...
> 
> During the summer, if I open my bedroom window while the airconditioner
> is on will it help to cool the planet ?

Again this is mostly moving heat, as air conditioners only move heat around 
they don't remove it (although they do create heat from the friction of moving 
parts in the system).

> Can I claim carbon credits ?
> Hah! Trick question... I run my aircon off solar panels...

The heat absorbed by the solar panels may well offset the heat generated by 
friction in the air conditioner.

These are the sorts of questions appropriate for a discussion in a high school 
science class.

> I think I'm getting the hang of this stuff... "Google Grant application"
> +topic +silly aircon atmospheric cooling running off solar panels idea"
> +"grant value > $5 million - actually, if we built a big enough solar
> array covering most of Australia, and use zeolite heat exchange
> refrigeration, we could cool the atmosphere for the whole world - right
> here in OZ, Global Cooling, proudly made in Oz...
> 
> Better add 10K to the Grant application for that made in Oz sticker...
> Oh yeah, thanks for the tip, I would have forgotten that.

Feel free to write up the proposal and submit to the various funding agencies 
and see how successful you are.

Question: what percentage of a scientists time do you think is spent trying to 
get funding for the work they do (I mean scientists in general not just 
climate scientists)?


Regards
Gordon

[Disclaimer: I work for CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research (as a computer 
programmer) - I am NOT a climate scientist, I am NOT a modeller (climate or 
otherwise), I do NOT represent CSIRO or speak on their behalf, etc.]