It's an older article, but relevant to present conversations:
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Tim
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC
Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com
Bistability
May 17, 2016
2 Replies
is-inherently-unstable/
The take-away message is more or less correct, but the discussion of the gr eenhouse effect is dire.
He needed to introduce the concept of the effective radiating altitude, at which 50% of a particular infra-red wavelength can escape to space.
It's a complicated idea because it's wavelength dependent.
The point is that whiel the average temperature of the effective radiating altitudes averages out to -18C all the time, in ice ages this altitude is c loser to the ground, so the surface ends up cooler than it does during inte rglacials when it's higher.
70% of that cooler surface is ocean, so there's less water vapour in the at mosphere during ice ages. More CO2 means a warmer surface, and a warmer sur face means more water vapour, so there's positive feedback. Not enough to e xplain all the bistability - the other difference between ice-ages and inte rglacials is the ice cover over - and thus the albedo of - the more norther n reaches of the northern hemisphere, and if you throw that in you can mode l what has been going on.Current CO2 levels are higher than they have been for 20 million years, so we are moving into less familiar territory.
Bill Sloman, Sydney
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