GW deniers: how does a cell phone antenna pick up a signal?

Question

In the article

http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html

cited by atmos, the author starts with the mandatory appeal to ignorance.

"Below is an example of what "real" Climate Scientists have to deal with on a daily basis. Is it any wonder that the most popular majors in college are liberal arts?" Skipping past further errors, the author tries to equate the Van der Waals size of a CO2 molecule with its absorption cross section by comparing CO2 molecules to bottle caps on a barn. Ironically, absorption cross sections are given in barns 1e-24 cm^2. For CO2 see http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/hitran/

There are about 20 g of CO2 in a 27 m^3 room, more than the mass of a cell phone antenna. Using the denier's reasoning, radio waves have very little chance of hitting the cell phone antenna. So deniers, please explain why Maxwell's equations describe a cell phone dipole antenna and not a CO2 dipole antenna. Does the appeal to ignorance argument make Maxwell wrong?

Answer 1

I think maybe you are trying to compare apples and oranges here.  I do not see how you can use electronic principle to prove or disprove global warming. The two theories work on entirely different principles. The antenna that has so little chance of working, does see the wavelengths and is able to turn a real-time modulated signal to data and voice streams. They are not random waves sent to one phone hoping to hit it, the entire area around that phone is modulated. The antenna is not heated or radiated in a way to release energy later as in global warming theories. I would have to call this a bad analogy. Also I did not see any mention of cell phones in the articles, did I miss something.

Answer 2

gcpn, who funds RealClimate.org and researchers like Hansen?  George Soros perhaps?  Nah, those "researchers" don't have any reason to cook the books.  I wonder if Soros calls in Trump to fire any of these researchers whose research doesn't prove AGW.

You'll get nothing but the party line from any of those researchers because they have so much grant money and plain ole' street cred tied up in AGW that they can't go back.  Imagine the hew and cry coming from these dupes as the Earth continues to not heat up while CO2 emmissions continue to rise...

Answer 3

There's a flaw with your reasoning.

Even though a cell phone antenna is small, it does pick up the signal from the tower.

CO2 has been increasing for the last 10 years without any increase in temperatures.  

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs...

There's more work to be done in climate research.  We don't have all the answers yet.  It's clear that co2 is not a major factor.  

C02 is the Ether of climate research.

Answer 4

Maxwell was wrong about many things not the least of which was Maxwells demon - lets not forget that great scientists work on the edge of ignorance.  All great scientists have got things wrong without exception.  

Using the physics available 100 years ago, it was estimated that increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere would significantly increase the rate of absorption of infrared radiation.  In modern times, this was found to be incorrect as the absorption of the atmosphere has been measured and the atmosphere was found to be virtually opaque to the 15 micron wavelength of infrared radiation that CO2 absorbes.  A fact that AGW researchers seem all to eager to disregard.  

Personally I'll take repeatable real world data over a 100 year old speculative theory.

I don't get your reference to cell phone antennas.  They pick up microwaves which are comparible in length to a cell phone antenna.  A CO2 molecule is around 10^20 times smaller than the wavelength of IR - I don't think there is any comparison.

(edit) d/dx we don't know everything about physics.  You can't derive the optical properties of CO2 from first principles.  The only reliable way to determine them is to measure them in a physical experiment - something which you seem to be unduely critical of.

Answer 5

At one time they were trying to correlate GW with wrist watches. But on a perspective approach I would think that.The millimeter - wave rotational emissions lines of protonated CO2 has been determine. It's just the production mechanisms of gaseous CO2 that is under discussion.

Edit: if you don't understand  they use a simplified chemical model.

Answer 6

Maxwell himself also used imperfect physical models(vortices's in aether) to help him develop his electromagnetic wave equations. once  he got the math worked out there was no longer a need for the aether.

no one takes models literally, their just a simple way to explain the mechanics of how something happens.

for example no one believes atom bombs are full of ping pong balls sitting on mouse traps.

to quote another great scientist(bob Dylan) "you don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"

help stop global whining, THINK!

Answer 7

Jello's link seems to be a string of numbers with little context or explaination.

Answer 8

There is no question that CO2 absorbes infared radiation and thus becomes warmer.  The big question is how much of an effect, if any, does an 0.000150 increase in mass fraction above previous maximums have.

Answer 9

I think you should change your terminology to something a little more accurate.  Most of us are not deniers, you should refer to us as heretics or infidels.  Because we have not accepted the human caused global warming religion.  

And we present heretical facts like.  Global warming obviously exist as the 1 mile thick layer of ice that used to cover what is now Chicago, was melted by global warming before the first SUV ever cranked over.   The warmest year on record was actually in the 1930's and the global temperature has decreased for the last three years, while the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has increased.

Yet the true believers can rationalize that chemical concentrations are equivalent to electromagnetic radiation.  Seems to me you are practicing what is called preconceptual science rather than objective observation.

Answer 10

I'm not sure this is a "I am ignorant of physics so I think that Maxwell's equations are wrong" argument so much as a "I am totally clueless about how sensitive highly nonlinear systems are to small perturbations" argument.  The longwave radiative forcing from CO2 is small compared to the total outgoing longwave radiative flux, 1.6 W/m^2 out of something like 350 W/m^2.  But the other forcings that account for climate variability are but a fraction of the CO2 forcing, showing that Earth's climate system on timescales of probably 1000 years and less is very sensitive to small changes in the net forcing.  (Oddly though, it is also relatively insensitive to these small changes in a long-term sense (which is probably as it should be) since we have recovered (apparently) from several "snowball" episodes and at the same time never entered into a runaway greenhouse effect due to the mitigating effects of clouds and water vapor.)  

That some guy writing in a community website misses these points is not surprising.  It is also not surprising that the skeptics here miss these points.  The scientists on the IPCC, RealClimate.org, and researchers like Hansen do not miss these points though.

Answer 11

I don't think GW deniers and Maxwell belong in the same thread.  There's too big of a disconnect there.

And just for Jello's information (I know how he likes to keep his facts straight) I just did a GISS monthly dataset 10-year trend line (3/1998 - 2/2008) and he'll be happy to know that it's actually still rising.  It is a small slope, but it's still going up.  Of course, climate is more interested in long-term (e.g. 20 - 30 years) trends than cherry picked data from abnormally hot years.

Answer 12

Co 2, is a natural componenet of the Atmosphere,and isnt as reflective as other particulate matter,is.Its also the componenet of which plant matter thrives.My suggestion is to look up Dr Roy Spencer,and he will show you why GW is a myth and why the natural world is unpredictacle,as a bogus consensus claims.