Fun with climate models

I spent most of this weekend calculating solar elevations at different latitudes and different times of the day, which involved a lot of messing about with sines, cosines and tangents (and a lot of simplifications and sensible assumptions, which you have to test back and forth until you get plausible results).

The reason for this was to look into a theory expounded by climate contrarian Joseph Postma. His theory is that Alarmists wilfully understate incoming solar energy by assuming that the earth is flat and sunlight arrives smoothly over each 24-hour period at an average rate, instead of it all arriving in the day time. So I needed to have a spreadsheet that worked out incoming sunlight and outgoing radiation for every minute throughout a 24-hour period, for which I need to know solar elevation. It turns out that while the Alarmist approach is deeply flawed and misleading, the answer you get from averaging is not wildly different than if you do it properly.

Postma should know that, but he has lots of other very useful insights. So much so that Skeptical Science has a whole page dedicated to slagging him off.

After I finally got the spreadsheet to work, I did a proper 'daily radiation budget' for somewhere at latitude 45N close to sea level (which happens to be Bordeaux, France). 45N or 45S is a good place to start because at that altitude you know that solar insolation is precisely the average for the whole planet. After more tweaks, I got daily high, low and average temperatures to match up perfectly for the month of September, which is the month of the autumn solstice. Arguably, this overstates temperatures because it's still warm from the summer; but the model also overstates temperatures because I ignored the +/- 23 degree wobble of the earth, and the two effects seem to cancel each other out.

I did one tab for ground level and the boundary layer (the lowest 500m of atmosphere, where the temperature is similar to ground level) and the next tab for ground level plus the column of troposphere above it (10 km up), both as adjusted for the gravito-thermal effect. They reconcile nicely with each other.

The main lesson here is that you have to make endless assumptions for albedo and emissivity and so on (starting with traditional assumptions and tweaking) and you can only get the starting temperature by trial and error - if you set it too high, you get too much outgoing radiation, which indicates cooling as incoming solar radiation is fixed (and vice versa). If you change albedo or emissivity by one percent, you get an additional degree of warming or cooling.

You can firm up on these tweaks and assumptions, I suppose, but in doing so, you would have to make more tweaks and assumptions to resolve the uncertainty; and more tweaks and assumptions to resolve those... until you end up with a house of cards ready to collapse at the slightest peturbation.

Heads we're doomed. Tails we're doomed.

Last Tuesday I looked at the Alarmist claim that water vapour/cloud feedback is positive (not neutral or slightly negative, which is what everybody else observes or at least assumes).

Here's a nice book-end to that from phys.org:

As atmospheric scientists, we found in a recent study that thawing permafrost contains lots of microscopic ice-nucleating particles. These particles make it easier for water droplets to freeze; and if the ones in permafrost get airborne, they could affect Arctic clouds...

Without these particles, a water droplet can supercool to about negative 36 F before freezing. When ice-nucleating particles are in a cloud, water droplets freeze more easily. This can cause the cloud to rain or snow and disappear earlier, and reflect less sunlight.

To sum up:

- The first article says slight warming = more clouds = more warming.

- The second article says slight warming = fewer clouds = more warming. Of the two theories, this seems slightly more plausible if their assumptions about these particles getting 'airborne' is correct.

The Alarmists are really hedging their bets here. Can't these people talk to each other and just agree a party line. Maybe the two theories neatly cancel each other out, and it's not an issue? You can find similar sets of equal-and-opposite claims when looking at Killer Arguments Against LVT or UBI, which I find equally infuriating.

Killer arguments against LVT, Not (488)

From the LVT group on Facebook, (H/T to John David Kromkowski)

There are 2 farms next to each other. Same size. Farm A is a bit more fertile. So we can I think agree that Farm A has higher lvt. Farmer B figures out that by planting different things and how he tills he can increase the fertility. 20 later, Farm B has greater fertility than Farm A. Farm B now get a higher LVT levied than Farm A. Farmer B says hold on a second, that increased land value is due to my labor and ingenuity, why should I have to pay more LVT?

My answer to that would be, is that, just because it's land it doesn't mean that all the rent that a landlord could get from it is land rent and therefore taxable under LVT. This is the same fallacy as those who think that LVT would only apply to agricultural land, because land in built-up areas isn't commonly referred to as "land".

The value of the rent that is obtainable from agricultural land because of its ability to grow crops or graze animals is the same as the value of the rent that is obtainable from urban land because it has a house on it. It's not the value of the unimproved land.

Friday afternoon gear change

This is textbook stuff. Kygo 'remixed' a 1980s Tina Turner hit, adding little to the original (which itself was irritating enough). There's a pause and a tedious drum break after 2 mins 45 seconds, then it's up a cheeky semi-tone for the rest of the song.

Greatest motivational speech of all time

I watched the "Black Friday" episode of Superstore* on Netflix yesterday.

The staff all succumb to food poisoning and near the end of episode, half of them have already gone home sick. The survivors decamp to the break room leaving the shoppers to fight it out. The most cynical employee (Garrett) suggests - half in jest - that they just shut up shop early and go home. The normally conscientious manager (Glenn) is off his head on anti-depressants and agrees (to everybody's surprise); his bossy assistant manager (Dina) has a minor nervous breakdown and calls the "time of death" for the shop, adding "Let's just watch it all burn".

Garrett is strangely moved by Dina's reaction and launches into the greatest motivational speech ever. I'm typing this from memory, I can't be bothered to transcribe, but here's the gist:

"Wait, I was just joking. I never thought I'd feel sorry for Dina, but there's a first for everything. Now, I don't like working here. But it's my job. I will always cut corners and 'phone it in'. But nobody will ever say that Garrett did less than the bare minimum needed to not get fired. Come on, let's get back out there!"

And they do of course, classic double-swinging door shot etc. Sums me up to a tee. I watched that segment three times with tears in my eyes. (The swinging door shot has been lampooned so many times, it's difficult to imagine it ever having been meant seriously).

* It's basically Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but set in a supermarket/department store.

Because 2 + 2 = 5

I'm done with making fun of Skeptical Science, it's shooting fish in a barrel, so I dipped my toe into  Science of Doom again. That blog has scientific pretensions, which makes it  harder to spot the contradictions. But they put hard numbers on things, which makes it easier to nail down the sleight of hand once you've spotted it (which took me a couple of days this time):

Globally and annually averaged, clouds cool the planet by around 18W/m² – that’s large compared with the radiative effect of doubling CO2, a value of 3.7W/m². The net effect is made up of two larger opposite effects:
* cooling from reflecting sunlight (albedo effect) of about 46W/m²
* warming from the radiative effect of about 28W/m² – clouds absorb terrestrial radiation and reemit from near the top of the cloud where it is colder, this is like the “greenhouse” effect.

They are obsessed with 'radiation', It is merely one form of energy, which like most forms of energy, can turn into other forms of energy in an instant. Start with chemical energy in your body. You convert it to electrical energy when you throw a ball into the air. Then watch the kinetic energy of the ball turn seamlessly into potential energy and back again. Let the ball fall to the ground and you get a bit of sound and thermal energy. There is not a fixed amount of 'radiation' in the atmosphere that has to be accounted for; there is a fixed amount of total energy, a lot of which is not thermal energy or radiation.

What we care about is not 'radiation' in itself, we care about thermal energy i.e. temperature i.e. 'global warming'. In plain English, a net reduction of 18 W/m2 incoming radiation means that surface temperatures are about 3 degrees cooler then they would be if there were no clouds. Three degrees seems to be on the low side (because 46 W/m2 is on the low side, a back of theh envelope calculation says about twice as much), but let's accept it for now.

See footnotes for further musings on this fascinating topic.

By magic, they can disaggregate the 18 W/m2 (3 degrees) of cooling into minus 46 W/m2 (8 degrees) of cooling (clouds reflecting sunlight back into space and casting shadows) and plus 28 W/m2 (5 degrees) of warming due to the 'top of atmosphere' effect. While the net 18 W/m2 is probably about right, I don't see how it is possible to disaggregate without making dozens of assumptions and guesses, seeing as both things happen simultaneously and have the same cause.

Example - you leave the fridge door open. You can independently measure the normal kitchen temperature; the temperature of the radiator behind the fridge; and the temperature in front of the fridge. If behind is warmer and in front is cooler, you know that the fridge must be on (or was  turned off shortly before), if they are the same, it must be off. You know that the warming and cooling effects should (nearly) cancel out; you know the fridge's wattage and efficiency; so you can get a good estimate of each effect and a sense-check in both directions. With atmospheric water vapour/warming, you can only measure the temperature of the whole atmosphere. That one measurement gives you no clues as to what the warming and cooling effects of clouds are. If you just take one temperature measurement in our kitchen, nowhere near the fridge, you can't even work out whether the fridge is on or off.

But hey.

I explained the 'top of atmosphere' effect at point 2 here. What it boils down to is that the effective emitting altitude (in this case the upper surface of clouds) is (or would be) pushed up by about 1.5 km. That is a heck of a lot, surely airline pilots would have noticed if clouds are higher than they used to be?

The 'top of atmosphere' is an intellectually and mathematically pleasing theory, but complete nonsense nonetheless. If clouds are higher, then of course they are emitting less radiation. Not just because they are cooler (being higher up), but because the radiation energy which they would otherwise emit has been converted to potential energy (the clouds are higher). Potential energy is not thermal energy and there is no warming as a result.

Common sense tells us that water vapour and clouds must dampen temperature swings, they are largely self-cancelling. The Alarmists insist that more CO2 = higher temperature = more water vapour and clouds; water vapour in turn is a 'greenhouse gas' so this pushes up temperatures even more in a vicious circle. This is clearly nonsense, if water vapour caused more water vapour, the oceans would have boiled dry very quickly (or more likely, never formed in the first place).

The Alarmists get round this (read the article) by saying, aha, the 46 W/m2 (8 degrees) of cooling (clouds reflecting sunlight back out to space) is fixed and unaffected by how much water vapour and clouds there are (not plausible), but the 28 W/m2 (5 degrees) of warming will increase with increasing water vapour and cloud altitudes. So above a certain level of moisture; the warming effect exceeds the cooling effect. Which is of course not borne out in real life or plausible.
----------------------------------
The article also get a good kicking in the comments, well worth a visit and a read.
----------------------------------
Footnotes:

1. Just as noticeable/measurable is that day-night swings are much lower where/when it's cloudy/moist than where/when it's clear and dry. Then there is the thorny issue of distinguishing between 'reflection' and 're-radiation':

a. Clouds don't just absorb and re-emit radiation, it also just bounces off. Clouds physically reflect (i.e. like a mirror) sunlight back up by day (i.e. 46 W/m2) and reflect radiation from the earth back down (particularly noticeable by night, and the latent heat released by condensation adds to this - how do you even disaggregate these effects?). For reflection, this must mean a net cooling.

b. Then there is the lesser effect of re-radiation - clouds are warmed from above by the sun (after deducting the amount reflected) and from below by the ground (after deducting the amount reflected). They radiate equally in both directions (we assume). If the radiation absorbed by clouds from above is more than the radiation absorbed by clouds from below (seems likely), then the half of the total radiation absorbed which is re-emitted back down (28 W/m2) will be less than the radiation which would have hit the surface in the absence of clouds = cooling of surface (duh). If the reverse is true (unlikely but possible), then this is indeed a net warming of the surface. I just don't see how you can disaggregate these separate effects.

2. The 'official' figure is an extra 3.7 W/m2 radiation if CO2 doubles - somebody made up this number decades ago and it is now Alarmist Gospel. This - even if were true, which it isn't - equates to about 0.7 degree of warming at the surface (and cooling higher up). Sorry, still not scared.

Originally captioned something like - "so that's it for the master race then?"

 I am having a major elctric spring clean today, and I found this:-

This amuses me on so many levels.  And before anyone goes on about me being 'anti- German', I'm not.  I've been there and I like the German people.

This looks like good news to me - the article contradicts the headline. And itself.

From the BBC:

Lockdown looks to be having an impact on infection levels with the number of new cases starting to fall. But there are only tentative signs this has filtered through to a slowing of new admissions to hospital.

They illustrate this with a chart which seems to show that the lockdowns (starting late March and early December 2020) had no impact on hospitalisations whatsoever (although we will never know). Cases had fallen to a low level by July and even though the lockdown was then significantly loosened, they stayed that low until October.

They started falling a week before the December lockdown and started going up again after it started and continued going up until today (nearly two months). So at first glance, the chart looks like a seasonal illness like 'flu. Lots of cases when it's cold and very few when it's nice weather (which it was for most of last year).

Over the past week more than two million people have received their first dose [of the vaccine]. That puts the government on track for achieving its aim of offering a vaccine to everyone over 70, the extremely clinically vulnerable and frontline health and care workers.

The UK government and the NHS are doing really well with the vaccinations. I am impressed and 'proud to be British' for once. If they can keep this up, the 15 million most vulnerable will have had their second jab by the end of March. Daily vaccination data is here.

Even if the supply is good, there will still be lots of vulnerable people. Nearly 90% of Covid deaths have been in the groups due to get the jab by mid-February.

There's a lot that can still go wrong between now and the end of March, but this is a contradiction and the whole thing is starting to look rather positive. Out of (say) 1,000 daily deaths, 100 were people under 70 who won't even have had their first jab by then, so that's still 100 deaths a day in those groups. 900 deaths were the most vulnerable, if they are now 95% protected, that gets deaths in those groups to about 45 a day.

So total daily deaths will be down by six-sevenths (give or take a large margin of error) by April, at which stage the various effects will kick in:
- more natural immunity (huge numbers of people have had it. Those were presumably the more vulnerable - whether for health reasons or lifestyle reasons makes no difference - who are now immune for the time being);
- more people being vaccinated every day;
- nicer weather;
Their combined effects will mean that daily deaths are down to the dozens and declining. By next autumn/winter, it will all be over. Hopefully.

A couple of experts hit the nail on the head at the end of the article:

UK chief medical adviser Prof Chris Whitty has spoken about "de-risking" Covid. His point is that we will reach a situation at which the level of death and illness caused by Covid is at a level society can "tolerate" - just as we tolerate 7,000 to 20,000 people dying from flu every year.

It appears that 'flu deaths were unusually low last year. Those who would have died of 'flu died of Covid-19 instead. Callous but true.

Sociologist Prof Robert Dingwall, who advises the government on the science of human behaviour, believes that point will be reached sooner rather than later. "I think we will see a pretty rapid lifting of restrictions in the spring and summer. There are some sections of the science community that want to pursue an elimination strategy - but once you start seeing fatality levels down at the level of flu I think the public will accept that."

Yup. People can get used to anything except constant change.

Things with a certain poetry

 ITV4 Daytime sponsor - Trusted Trader

Playing - 'Minder'.

Home-schooling and the digital divide

From the BBC:

Parents say they feel "deserted" having to home school during lockdown with a lack of access to computers... Bristol mother Edwina Ogu said home schooling four children with no computer during the first lockdown had been a "nightmare". The Department for Education (Dfe) has pledged to provide one million devices for schools and colleges.

Agreed. If your kids are over (say) seven years old, have a bedroom and a laptop or PC each, home-schooling is manageable. But plenty of people are not in this happy position. Halfway decent laptops or PCs cost £500 and up; internet is patchy in some areas; not all kids have their own bedroom etc.

There's actually a cheap and simple solution to this.  You can get a new TV with Freeview and internet capability for under £150. There are plenty of channels broadcasting complete crap during the day who can be taken off air until 3 in the afternoon.

For kids up to age 14, all you need is one channel for each school year broadcasting a standard curriculum from 9 until 3 with an hour for lunch. All the kids in the UK can watch whichever channel is broadcasting for their year. The TV teacher sets the homework - kids take, email or post their homework back to their actual school once a week and it gets dished out to be marked by their actual teachers.

I accept that different schools use different textbooks, but run with it. School teachers just have to keep tabs on what was covered in their subjects that day and be ready to field questions from their pupils, online, by phone or in person.

It gets a bit more complicated for age 15 to 16 when kids are doing GSCEs. But I'm sure that 99% of GSCEs are in less than twenty different subjects. If I understand the rules correctly, there will be relatively few subject clashes and it might only need another dozen channels (i.e. half a dozen per year x two years of GSCEs).

Switching channels is no more difficult (conceputally) than switching classrooms. So after maths (which appears to be compulsory, not that you'd notice) which everybody watches on the main channel, the history pupils switch to the channel which is showing the history lesson; the geography kids pupils switch to the channel which is showing the geography lesson etc. After that, they all switch back to compulsory English Language (not that you'd notice that either) on the main channel.

Inevitably, there will still be timetable clashes for pupils doing unusual combinations (what's new) but as long as there are a couple of free periods each week and kids have halfway decent internet, they can use the 'catch up' function for that. If they don't have halfway decent internet, they'll just have to choose a workable combination of subjects.