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May 31 Global Warming vs EntropyThe introduction to Earth’s Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications begins: Our climate model, driven mainly by increasing human-made greenhouse gases and aerosols, among other forcings, calculates that Earth is now absorbing 0.85 T 0.15 watts per square meter more energy from the Sun than it is emitting to space. This imbalance is confirmed by precise measurements of increasing ocean heat content over the past 10 years.
From there, a number of conclusions and observations are made about the implications on climate change, including this colossal leap of logic: The present planetary energy imbalance is large by standards of Earth’s history. For example, an imbalance of 1 W/m2 maintained
for the last 10,000 years of the Holocene is sufficient to melt ice equivalent to 1 km of sea level (if there were that much ice) or raise the temperature of the ocean above the thermocline by more than 100-C (table S1). Clearly, on long time scales, the planet has been in energy balance to within a small fraction of 1 W/m2. Now, I had started to write this massive blog post picking at numerous issues I had with the supposed validity of the supposed energy balance value, when it struck me that this paper seems to totally forget about one of the most powerful forces in the universe: entropy. That is, the tendency of matter to tend towards a state of inert uniformity. And if it weren't for the complex chemical, weather, geological, and biological mechanisms at work on our planet, it would be just a hunk of rock with nothing happening, same as it was yesterday and the day before. But that's not the case here on the third rock from the sun! Lots is going on, and it takes energy for that to happen, for mountains to push up, for water to rise and fall, for trees to grow, you name it. Energy is stored chemically in proteins built by every living cell, as potential energy every time something is place on a shelf, and these are all forms of "usable" energy that allow our world to be such a dynamic place. All of these things reduce the entropy of the system, and it takes energy to do that! So when he figured that an "energy balance" retaining one watt per square meter from the 1350 that come our way from the sun would boil away the oceans, did anyone first try to figure out what the "energy budget" of the planet might be? May 28 Godzilla can't be far behind Giant jellyfish weighing up to 450 pounds are causing problems for the Japanese fishing fleet! No, it's not a Japanese horror movie, it's for real: National Geographic Article http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0119_060119_jellyfish.html  Another site with some pics of these beasties |
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