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I had sort of an interesting read over at the Yale Forum on Climate Change and The Media and have been confronted with "real science" in the name of Nasif S. Nahle who has written learned papers claiming that atmospheric CO2 is actually a cooling agent in our atmosphere.
So I thought what the heck might as well share it here, I imagine some might get a kick out of this guy's take on science.
But of course, as one might imagine I've found issues with presenting this Nasif Nahle as a new Galileo in these trying times. Allow me to share.
It started with a challenge by Mack:
Mack says:
October 21, 2012 at 3:56 am
"citizenschallenge, To understand this you are going to have to read the science here…http://jennifermarohasy.com/author/nasif-s-nahle/ "
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OK Mack,
I followed your advice and read what you called the "science".
"Greenhouse Gases in the Atmosphere Cool the Earth!"
Robert Ashworth, Nasif Nahle and Hans Schreuder - March 2011"
Introduction
"In 2001, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced that carbon dioxide (CO2) was causing the earth to warm and developed computer models to predict how much the earth would warm in the future. Does any empirical scientific evidence exist to support this premise of the IPCC? The answer is no, in fact it is just the opposite, CO2 has a cooling effect."
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Then I surfed the internet a bit and I thought I'd read that Nasif was a professor, but upon finding his CV - I found that impression wasn't supported. In fact, his CV is quite the curious read, I sure don't know what to make of it: http://www.biocab.org/Academic_Curriculum.htm
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So then I did a Google Scholar search:
and dang if it didn't come up with an impressive 50 results in 0.03 seconds.
But upon closer inspection there was something curious about it and I decided to count up the links:
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biocab.org - IIIII III
ilovemycarbondioxide.com - II
tech-know-group.com - II
homestead.com - II
globalwarmingskeptics.info - I
climate-facts.com - I
humanthermodynamics.com - I
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Thereafter, ( that is, by the end of page 2), Google Scholar search got all sorts of flakey on me - including foreign language stuff and links to WUWT, etc. none of which seemed to feature Nasif Nahle's learned writings, (though I imagine his name was probably buried within the text of those other links) - but enough of that.
Since, I don't have the free time for those types of games... I gave up on my survey. But I did take the time to look at the seven "scientific" sites "Google Scholar" listed in the first couple pages.
Interestingly "biocab.org" ~ weighing in with seven hits ~ is a creation of Nasif Nahle's himself.
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"homestead.com" is nothing more than another branch of Nasif's "Biocab" aka Biology Cabinet.
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"I love my carbon dioxide" seems to be a product of "Principia Scientific" the creation of a fraud by the name of John O'Sullivan whom I won't even get into ~~~ But, if anyone here wants to defend that creep, or claim he is someone who can be trusted, please do - I will be glad to reply with down to earth facts.
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Then there is the "tech-know-group" Who know's what they are about, since their website is vague in the extreme, but from the authors list seems like a whos-who of questionable outliers.
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Next "human thermodynamics.com" - lordie, lordie besides all their cute computer graphics, these folks sound like they came out of the sixties rather than the nineties. Get this, it's from their own description of their origins:
"In '95, as a hobby, chemical engineer, electrical engineer, and medical student Libb Thims began theorized over the Gibbs free energy equation [see: timeline], which predicts whether or not chemical reactions will occur, as to how it relates to human life in terms of its potential application with regards to predicting human chemical reactions, as in two people falling in love, a person getting a job, three people forming a group of friends, etc. On November 15 in '01 Thims, in a moment of epiphany (while reading a Brief History of Time), finally figured how the two relate to each other, i.e. the Gibbs free energy equation and falling in love. During the fourth of July weekend in '02, Thims explained his discovery to his two friends Lynn Liss and Ira Liss; they enjoyed hearing the explanation as it related to their marriage, and from this day forth the Institute of Human Thermodynamics was born."
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"Climate Facts" had all of one post from September 2011 boasting the "Exposing of "consensus science" and one article titled "The average person is smarter than the average "climate Scientist" posted by "admin" apparently one Glenn Thompson. Needless to say the article wasn't any more insightful than the title.
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Lastly there's "Global Warming Skeptics" but that one seems to be a private club - can't find squat about them unless you're an initiate and I'm sure I wouldn't pass muster with their executive board.
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{That brings up the excellent question of what kinds of standards/practices should regular folks use to recognize the difference between claims?}
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But OK, back to the world of the living.
Having experienced an active life I know first hand that, pretty near anything can be convincingly explained; when done shielded from the rest of reality.
And that seems exactly what Nasif Nahle had achieved.
He has created a wonderful alternate reality: Crichton Science.
That is, written with fiction-writer's license.
A story that anyone -> except experts who understand the situation, could fall pray to.
Particularly if that's a thing one wants to believe to begin with.
That is, written with fiction-writer's license.
A story that anyone -> except experts who understand the situation, could fall pray to.
Particularly if that's a thing one wants to believe to begin with.
But, that isn't how the intellectually honest skeptic operates.
Remember, the honest skeptic is as skeptical of their own pet notions as those of others.
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In fact, reviewing the original article linked to - the comments section is most interesting and I must say Neutrino seems to be making many valid points Nasif simply dances around.
But OK, I'm no expert.
Instead, when my head gets to spinning over the technicalities I pull back and consider the bigger picture.
In this case, two things jump at me:
A) It seems to me that if Nasif is correct ~ that would mean that all the studies done by the USAF during the fifties and sixties while developing heat seeking air to air missiles were a wasted effort and heat seeking missiles would be science fiction bs. But, instead heat-seeking-missiles that must navigate miles worth of atmospheric GHG interference - are accurate to within cm's.
B) If Nasif were actually onto something, why can't he present it to the greater community of experts for their learned evaluation, rather than creating his own isolated stage and presenting his vision to a closed community of folks who are openly committed to denying the dangers of what society produced greenhouse gases present to our collective wellbeing?
Unfortunately, I imagine the answer to that seems to be that those who have helped create this alternate universe suspect every expert in the subject ~ you know those legions who reject Nasif's conjectures and are branded as being "in on the swindle" . . . as being enemies and/or stupid.
Which brings me to that self-destructive ability humans have for convincing anyone of anything, so long as their targets can be kept in isolation from the greater world around them.
I'd rather believe the collective community of competing scientists, than someone working off stage, utterly convinced of their own creation, so convinced that everyone who doesn't share their outlook get's written off... that is ignored, rather than answered.
11 comments:
Sorry to tell you, but you're attacking me (ad hominem argument), not the science in my investigations.
The problem is it's tough to find the science within Nahle's own copious ad hominems. But, worse is his science in a vacuum approach.
Allow me to repeat:
In this case, two things jump at me:
A) It seems to me that if Nasif is correct ~ that would mean that all the studies done by the USAF during the fifties and sixties while developing heat seeking air to air missiles were a wasted effort and heat seeking missiles would be science fiction bs. But, instead heat-seeking-missiles that must navigate miles worth of atmospheric GHG interference - are accurate to within cm's.
B) If Nasif were actually onto something, why can't he present it to the greater community of experts for their learned evaluation, rather than creating his own isolated stage and presenting his vision to a closed community of folks who are openly committed to denying the dangers of what society produced greenhouse gases present to our collective wellbeing?
I recommend you to examine the information in my papers and experiments, not my personality. Regarding the latter issue, I have nothing to hide and my work is based on scientific research. I always recommend to my readers to revise references, fórmulas, etc. After doing it you will find that I'm adhered to science.
Nahle, I was not examining your personality!
I was examining the various search results for your work… which seem to all track back to your own handy work.
Then I was pointing out how easy it is to convince anyone of anything if you control all the information sources. It's what I call "Science in a Vacuum."
Case in point, you are ignoring my points A and B.
Why not respond to them? Rather than hand waving.
And instead of inviting me to investigate the 'substance' of "Your" science - why not show me where you've summited your science to accepted experts to have them look at your work?
What do they have to say?
Nasif S. Nahle,
Why not try defending the substance of your science with someone that has a deep background and is thoroughly knowledgeable about the science:
http://scienceofdoom.com/roadmap/back-radiation/
Now that would be an interesting dialogue to watch. Are you up for it?
Science is based on evidence. Read the references, make the proper calculationd and repeat my experiments. That's the only way to falsify what I say in my articles.
Regarding my scholarity and CV, these are very clear and I can demonstrate it anytime and everywhere.
The problem as I understand it from folks who understand this field, is that it is you who ignores the weight and full spectrum of information, instead creating your own circular reality.
Besides, the weather and current global climate realities that are much more important and impressive than all the contrived calculations in the world.
It's not my own reality. Science has to do with experimentation. If you're a scientist, you could REPEAT my experiments and then report your results. As long as you don't do it, you'll be lying.
Nahle's claim that increased atmospheric CO2 cools the Earth is based on two major errors, as revealed by commenters Derek B and Neutrino:
Of course physicists have empirically and routinely demonstrated for many decades that if you have an IR absorber such as H2O and add another IR absorber such as CO2, more total IR will be absorbed by the new mixture of gases. The energy from the absorbed IR then is emitted as IR or transferred to other molecules by collision.
But that extra IR will be less than the simple total of the original from H2O plus the amount you'd get from the CO2 by itself, because those two molecules overlap in their frequencies of IR absorption. Some of what the CO2 would absorb by itself already is being absorbed by the H2O. There exist equations, graphs, and tables for figuring the total IR absorption of the mixture, and all those have been repeatedly verified by experiment. Standard physics. Uncontested, except by Nahle, who throws it all out based on his flawed calculations:
1) Nahle used the equations, graphs, and tables for a pure H2O gas, but compared that to a mixture that replaces H20 molecules with CO2 molecules in order to keep the total pressure the same as it was before the addition of CO2. That's not at all the situation in the atmosphere, where the mere act of adding CO2 does not simultaneously remove H2O. Of course the IR absorption consequence of swapping out H2O for CO2 (what Nahle calculated) is not the same as the consequence of adding CO2 (what real atmospheric physicists calculate).
2) Nahle mistook the absorption of 1 meter of atmosphere to be the absorption of the entire atmospheric column, thereby grossly underestimating the absorption.
3) Nahle made a huge number of errors in transcribing equations, copying his own numbers, placing parentheses, and basic logic. It's tempting to think Nahle did those inadvertently, but it's hard to believe he would make so many such errors that would earn him a D in an undergraduate physics class homework assignment. It is more likely that some of his errors were intentional, because that's how he could get the answers he wanted. Evidence: Another of his blog blather ("Mean Free Path...") was examined by Michael Sweet, who found several numbers that differed from their actual values, all erroneous in the direction of giving Nahle the answer he wanted.
Tom,
This is a way late thank you for your comment. Very helpful.
www://jennifermarohasy.com/2011/04/determining-the-total-emissivity-of-a-mixture-of-gases-containing-overlapping-absorption-bands/#comment-481063
Neutrino writes: My objection is with your claim not any of theirs.
Everywhere in the referenced material that I have read emissivity is plotted or calculated against a pressure.distance not just a pressure. So your claim that at 0.00039atm CO2 has an emissivity of 0.002 is unsupported by your references.
Your article is trying to assert something about the emissivity of the atmospheric CO2, as such the distance used has to be comparable to the actual height of the atmosphere. Using a value of 0.00039atm.m does not represent the atmospheric column but rather just 1m of it.
If you really do believe that one of those authors maintains that emissivity can be plotted from just pressure or that the atmospheric column of CO2 represents a very low pressure.distance then please cite that exact point.
Is the CO2 effect saturated?
michael sweet at 04:03 AM on 17 November, 2014
https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php?a=82&p=8#108001
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I read some of your cite. It contains chemistry calculations which I am familiar with. The first equation is:
"The density of the gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is obtained by the following formula:
ρCO2 = (12.187 * Molar mass of CO2 * volumetric fraction of CO2) / (276.69 K) = 756 mg/m^3. (Ref. 7)
Where 12.187 is the molar mass of elemental carbon, 44.01 is the molar mass of carbon dioxide, 390 ppmV is the volumetric fraction of CO2 and 276.69 K is its temperature."
I went to his reference 7 and got 756 mg/m3 for 390 ppmV. I found several problems with this calculation.
1) The units of Nahle's calculation are g/mol carbon*g/mol atmosphere/K. He incorrectly uses the units from reference 7 of mg/m3.
2) The textbook I teach chemistry from lists the molar mass of carbon as 12.0107 not 12.187. Nahle's number appears to have been made up to get the correct result.
3) Reference 7 uses 273.15K as the temperature not 276.69. Once again Nahle appears to have made up his number.
4) Additonal errors are smaller and not worth the text space.
Tom Dayton above links many additional basic errors.
How can you rely on a citation which has so many basic errors? Why do you think such junk is worth sharing? What websites are you reading to pick up this junk? Why do you believe what those websites say?
If you continue to rely on websites that think pseudoscience rife with basic errors can counter the IPCC report you will never understand the greenhouse effect and AGW. Perhaps you should start asking questions to become more informed, rather than citing obvious junk to support your mistaken notions.
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Tom Dayton at 01:43 AM on 17 November, 2014
MA Rodger, thanks for the link to Nasif Nahle's claim that CO2 is cooling the planet. On that thread, a commenter named Neutrino heroically corrected Nahle's "logic." After revealing many of Nahle's astonishingly sloppy transcriptions of equations, misplacing of parentheses in equations, inconsistencies in units, and more, Neutrino summarized* the crux of Nahle's error as treating the emissivity of one meter of atmosphere as if it is of the entire atmospheric column. Nahle then vanished from the discussion.
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Neutrino says
April 29, 2011 at 1:02 pm
Nasif,
"You keep saying that Hottel et al say that at 0.00039atm of CO2 the emissivity is very low. The problem is that from everything I have read so far not one of them has made that claim.
They all agree at very low pressure.distance CO2 has a very low emissivity. I have no reason to object to their findings.
My objection is with your claim not any of theirs.
Everywhere in the referenced material that I have read emissivity is plotted or calculated against a pressure.distance not just a pressure. So your claim that at 0.00039atm CO2 has an emissivity of 0.002 is unsupported by your references.
Your article is trying to assert something about the emissivity of the atmospheric CO2, as such the distance used has to be comparable to the actual height of the atmosphere. Using a value of 0.00039atm.m does not represent the atmospheric column but rather just 1m of it.
If you really do believe that one of those authors maintains that emissivity can be plotted from just pressure or that the atmospheric column of CO2 represents a very low pressure.distance then please cite that exact point."
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2011/04/determining-the-total-emissivity-of-a-mixture-of-gases-containing-overlapping-absorption-bands/#comment-481063
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