Guest post by Joe Bastardi, WeatherBell
With the coming Gorathon to save the planet around the corner ( Sept 14) , my stance on the AGW issue has been drawing more ire from those seeking to silence people like me that question their issue and plans. In response, I want the objective reader to hear more about my arguments made in a a brief interview on FOX News as to why I conclude CO2 is not causing changes of climate and the recent flurry of extremes of our planet. I brought up the First Law of Thermodynamics and LeChateliers principle.
The first law of thermodynamics is often called the Law of Conservation of Energy. This law suggests that energy can be transferred in many forms but can not be created or destroyed.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume those that believe CO2 is adding energy to the system are correct. Okay, how much? We have a gas that is .04% of the atmosphere that increases 1.5 ppm yearly and humans contribute 3-5% of that total yearly, which means the increase by humans is 1 part per 20 million. In a debate, someone argued just because it is small doesn’t mean it is not important. After all even a drop with 0.042 gm of arsenic could kill an adult. Yes but put the same drop in the ocean or a reservoir and no one dies or gets ill.
Then there is the energy budget. The amount of heat energy in the atmosphere is dwarfed by the energy in y the oceans. Trying to measure the changes from a trace gas in the atmosphere, if it were shown to definitively play a role in change (and it never has), is a daunting task.
NASA satellites suggest that the heat the models say is trapped, is really escaping to space, that the ‘sensitivity’ of the atmosphere to CO2 is low and the model assumed positive feedbacks of water vapor and clouds are really negative. Even IPCC Lead Author Kevin Trenberth said “Climatologists are nowhere near knowing where the energy goes or what the effect of clouds is…the fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
We are told that the warming in the period of warming from 1800 was evidence of man-made global warming. They especially point to the warming from 1977 to 1998 which was shown by all measures and the fact that CO2 rose during those two decades. And we hear that this warming has to be man-made with statements like “what else could it be?”
However, correlation does not mean causation. Indeed inconveniently despite efforts to minimize or ignore it, the earth cooled from the 1940s to the late 1970s and warming ceased after 1998, even as CO2 rose at a steady pace. Some have been forced to admit some natural factors may play a role in this periodic cooling. If that is the case, why could these same natural factors play a key role in the warming periods too.
Ah, but here is where the 1st law works just fine. After a prolonged period of LACK OF SUNSPOT ACTIVITY, the world was quite cold around 1800. The ramping up of solar activity after 1800 to the grand maximum in the late twentieth century could be argued as the ultimate cause of any warming through the introduction of extra energy into the oceans, land and then the atmosphere.
The model projections that the warming would be accelerating due to CO2 build up are failing since the earth’s temps have leveled off the past 15 years while CO2 has continued to rise.
Then there is a little matter of real world observation of how work done affects the system it is being done on. When one pushes an empty cart and then stops pushing, the cart keeps moving until the work done on it is dissipated. How is it, that the earth’s temperature has leveled off, if CO2, the alleged warming driver continues to rise?
The answer is obvious. They have it backwards. It is the earth’s temperature (largely the ocean) which is driving the CO2 release into the atmosphere. That is what the ice cores tell us and recently that Salby showed using isotopes in an important peer review paper. These use real world observations not tinker toy models nor an 186 year old theory that has never been validated.
Finally, as to the matter of LeChateliers principle. The earth is always in a state of imbalance and weather is the way the imbalances are corrected in the atmosphere. Extreme weather occurs when factors that increase imbalances are occurring. The extremes represent an attempt to return to a state of equilibrium.
The recent flurry of severe weather – for instance, record cold and snow, floods, tornadoes,, is much more likely to be a sign of cooling rather than warming. The observational data shows the earth’s mid levels have cooled dramatically and ocean heat content and atmospheric temperatures have been stable or declined. Cooling atmospheres are more unstable and produce greater contrasts and these contrasts drive storms, storms drive severe weather. A warmer earth produces a climate optimum with less extremes as we enjoyed in the late 20th century and other time in history when the great civilizations flourished.
Time will provide the answer. Over the next few decades, with the solar cycles and now the oceanic cycles changing towards states that favor cooling, there should be a drop in global temperatures as measured by objective satellite measurement, at least back to the levels they were in the 1970s, when we first started measuring them via an objective source. If temperatures warm despite these natural cycles, you carry the day. We won’t have to wait the full 20-30 year period. I believe we will have our answer before this decade is done.
UPDATE: I’m told that a follow up post – more technically oriented will follow sometime next week. Readers please note that the opinion expressed here is that of Mr. Bastardi, at his request. While you may or may not agree with it, discuss it without resorting to personal attacks as we so often see from the Romm’s and Tamino’s of the nether climate world. Also, about 3 hours after the original post, I added 3 graphics from Joe which should have been in the original, apologies. – Anthony
Great observations Joe!
Also, the tropospheric changes that occur with increased and decreased particle & energy obsorbtion into the vanallen belts presents options that haven’t been well studied. As you may know, during periods of solar inactivity, the belts can and do subside to near zero. The migration of energies through the magnetosphere and all the spheres held within it, are also not well studied.
As the earth moves through its magnetospheric polarization changes (675 to1.1 million years), many geophysical properties are altered and like the weather and climate, the geomagnetic configuration of our planet is never static.
Cheers:)
Thanks Joe. It has long been my belief that the quickest way to make someone angry is to be right, especially when you challenge their beliefs or money.
I can’t take credit for this idea, someone else posted this in the comments here at WUWT some time ago. (Whoever originally had this idea, feel free to call me out.) You might can use this in your arguments. When you turn the oven to 350 degrees (F for us Americans), is the oven instantly at 350? When you put a frozen turkey in the oven, does it immediately unthaw and cook all the way through? When you turn the oven off, does it immediately return to room temperature even if you have the oven door open when you turn it off? Suppose the oven is already at 350, if you turn the temperature down to 275, does the oven immediately drop to 275? A less active sun doesn’t immediately lower earth’s temperature just like lower the oven temperature does not immediately lower the oven temperature.
That has all been patently obvious from the very beginning.
Any other conclusion has to be either political or religious.
Then again, nobody ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
Le chatalier’s Principle is a lot more widespread than simply shifting Chemical reaction equilibria.
For example, in modern LED die, a lot of the generated radiation gets trapped inside the die by Total Internal Reflection. This trapped radiation crosses back and forth inside the die near the junction which also happens to be a good photo-detector diode, for the same general range of wavelengths, that the LED generates. So the LED acting as a photo-detector, generates a photo-current from this trapped radiation, and that photo-current is opposed in direction to the externally applied current, and acts to oppose the emission of more light. Externally, the LED is made to appear as if it has a higher internal impedance than it is supposed to have, as raising the drive Voltage, does not result in the expected increase in current.
In the case of earth’s atmosphere, more warming results in more water vapor, which traps more incoming solar energy, and stops it from reaching the ground (deep oceans) which results in a cooling response. Yes it’s the Water !!
Oh that Joe Bastardi, so crazy for thinking that reality is revealed in time, rather than a result of carefully created computer simulations. What a nutcase! Only a fool doubts the almighty computer!
/do I even need to?
its just too much simple, common scientific, current knowledge. unless a person has some hidden agenda, how can anyone with education, ignore the logic of this article ? the agw types have too much pride and ego invested now, they will not let go. if nothing else, they cling to their political agenda of getting the planet off of coal/oil/gas all the while, not allowing realistic alternatives to come forward. solar and wind will never be capable of sustaining our ( earth’s ) needs.
how can you fight the changes done to U.S. civil law that allow every eco facist group to file a complaint whenever ‘they’ think the EPA is not doing anything/enough ?
how can you stop a president who lacks a scientific bases to objectively probe those that his party have appointed ?
you know the next big push will be yet again, a shift, as they have to grudgingly acknowledge that there may be a several decades of cooling and then, global warming will fire up anew.
these are the people who cannot let go – and their ‘church’ has many disciples.
CO2 driven climate change (natural and otherwise) does not contradict the first law of thermodynamics. Warming of the earth from increased greenhouse gases is just a trapping of more thermal energy from the sun. This is not the creation of energy. It is just a change in the flow of energy. I also fail to understand your point in bringing up La Chatalier’s Principle (except to try desperately to sound like you know what you are talking about). It actually *goes against* your point. If the earth’s atmosphere traps more IR, then classical thermodynamics predicts that its *temperature will increase* until it reaches a new equilibrium. Your claim that the increase in CO2 is too small to affect such a change is easily contradicted by a simple back-of-the-envolope calculation that shows the warming from CO2 double to be about 2 deg. F. You could, of course, evoke negative feedbacks as a hypothetical mechanism to counterbalance the of a CO2 increase on temp, but then you are no longer talking about Le Chatelier’s Principle.
Please learn some physics, Mr. Bastardi.
This thread will be a good test to see how skeptical WUWT readers are of their own skepticism.
All of Bastardi’s talking points here can be traced back a long time, and they reflect severe unfamiliarity with the field and have been addressed countless times. Over at Tamino’s, he left a message full or errors at which I challenged him to an open debate on the matter.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/settled-science/#comment-53136
I would like to how well he can perform when required to scientifically address criticisms of his claims.
Matt says:
“Your claim that the increase in CO2 is too small to affect such a change is easily contradicted by a simple back-of-the-envolope calculation that shows the warming from CO2 double to be about 2 deg. F.”
There are plenty of much more educated climatologists who would reject your “back of the envelope calculation.” But at least it isn’t as preposterous as the IPCC’s number.
Matt: see my previous comment, particularly the last part.
@Chris_Colose: you have to pick your battles a little better. Joe Bastardi is not an academic researcher but a private sector meteorologist. He is an advocate for his point of view based upon the knowledge he accumulates. He is putting out his opinions for public consumption but there is no accountability implied…
REPLY: Yes, this is the same silly claim that comes up again and again, one one hand when a they lose a point in an argument they’ll claim “but he’s not a climate scientist, so his opinions don’t matter” then when they feel they have the upper hand we’ll hear, “he’s not scientifically rigorous enough, his arguments pale in comparison to our best climate scientists”. – Anthony
Forgive my ignorance, but I don’t recall anyone claiming that CO2 adds energy to the system but it traps or slows energy leaving the system.
From what I took away from Dr. Spencer in relation of the first law is that there must be a time lag for energy to be transferred within the system therefore one cannot see positive feedback with a zero, or brief time lag.
Some people are severely muddying the waters on this topic by making it appear that Spencer is claiming that AGW is premised on CO2 “creating” heat as if the glass in a greenhouse is the source of its heat! I don’t think Bastardi’s articulation on this is helping, see:
http://climaterealists.com/?id=8204
for just one example of people wiping up the floor with this logic. Someone “Dr. Spencer” has to clarify this “1st law” argument as it is getting out of hand!
The “missing” heat in the oceans that shows up when the ARGO floats pop into the database, the increasing sea-level rise that shows up when the satellite data begins, the non-random corrections that show up as progressive and directional (warmth) as time and urban populations develop, the additional Arctic heat, reduced, “unprecedented” ice cover that shows up once we focus on measuring it – all these things strike me as evidence that ACCURACY, not precision, dogs the temperature and other climate change issues. ACCURACY is never questioned. Our statisticians give us data to several decimal points on data that is largely assumed to be correct within its observational or measurement limits. But is that so?
Michael Mann’s hockey stick was about accuracy, not precision, regardless of the error bars. The tree rings did not and do not give a good indication either of actual temperatures or of variations from those temperatures. Trenberth’s global heat calculations and his “missing” 0.85 W/m2 assume that the values we derive are accurate as well as having good precision. I question the accuracy portion.
Certainty as argued looks to error bars by human, mechanical and statistical introduction. We get graphs that show linear trends to data that, by eye, show cyclic trends or the combination, at least, of several linear trends. Using one linear trend when a series exists may help you to derive a 3 decimal place equation, but it will be inaccurate or, as the layman says, “wrong”.
Certainty as per the IPCC/Gore/Hansen is a sham, a terrible, terrible sham. Inaccurate corrections for UHIE do not reduce the UHIE error bar but change it. Inaccurate accounting for the heat balance on the earth does not go away because you measured ten times every factor you could think of: it explains, instead, why you can’t reconcile the in-and-out observations.
The IPCC claims that they know things with certainty, meaning 95%, but that is all math and algorithm. The accuracy of representation of the world by the math and algorithms is not 95%. That is the true lie being told: that we know what is important and what is not, and how we measure gives us unique and true pictures of what is. Thus Hansen can ignore both satellite data and HadCru data despite the differences in what they show the only world we have. He is not called on the carpet about accuracy, only the precision with which he gives his numbers.
If this was a murder trial and Hansen/IPCC were the prosecutors, the defendant would be sipping cocktails in Las Vegas in no time. Trenberth is, in effect, arguing about a missing knife when no one has been shown that a knife ever existed to begin with.
Matt says:
August 12, 2011 at 5:28 pm
“…..a simple back-of-the-envolope calculation that shows the warming from CO2 double to be about 2 deg. F”.
Matt, it’s logarithmic against more CO2 causing more warming. Once a certain amount of CO2 absorbs all the energy from its particular specturm of wavelengths that stimulate it, more CO2 has nothing left to absorb….. Triple it or quadruple it, there is still nothing left to absorb! Sheesh!!!
I’m sorry, but I stopped reading as soon as I hit the “CO2 is a trace gas” argument.
I don’t believe the AGW BS, but that’s just not a good counter.
Matt says:
August 12, 2011 at 5:28 pm
“CO2 driven climate change (natural and otherwise) does not contradict the first law of thermodynamics. Warming of the earth from increased greenhouse gases is just a trapping of more thermal energy from the sun.”
It is not actually warming; rather, as you will surely agree, it is slower cooling. The blanket effect of CO2 might very well slow Earth’s cooling but it cannot warm Earth. So, any temperature change caused by CO2 should show up as slower cooling in the evenings. CO2 cannot cause higher high temperatures because CO2 does not add heat to Earth.
matt says :
Warming of the earth from increased greenhouse gases is just a trapping of more thermal energy from the sun ….
so, this energy just STAYS in the atmosphere, lower or upper, for ever ? day or night, across the seasons ?
if your going to try and short sight the laws of thermo to make your arg you need to go back and really learn thermodynamics and a whole lot of additional science.
Nobody claims that CO2 adds energy to the system. Energy comes from the sun and CO2 slows the loss of longwave energy into space.
Matt says:
August 12, 2011 at 5:28 pm
“You could, of course, evoke negative feedbacks as a hypothetical mechanism to counterbalance the of a CO2 increase on temp, but then you are no longer talking about Le Chatelier’s Principle.
Please learn some physics, Mr. Bastardi.”
As Arrhenius understood, for there to be more than the harmless warming that can be predicted from his equations, the only empirical science that Warmista use, there must be feedbacks which increase the effects of CO2. At present time, no one has done the research that would permit them to create physical hypotheses which could explain and predict one or more of the interesting feedbacks, such as physical hypotheses about cloud formation. Warmista have chosen to dwell within Gaia Models rather than enter the physical environment and do some empirical research. They are not scientists. And Matt, learn some physics beyond Arrhenius. Svensmark is doing excellent work at this time. Read Svensmark.
Okay, how much? We have a gas that is .04% of the atmosphere that increases 1.5 ppm yearly and humans contribute 3-5% of that total yearly, which means the increase by humans is 1 part per 20 million.
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This looks wrong to me. As far as I am aware the yearly human contribution is near double the actual yearly increase, with the deficit going into the oceans and increased plant growth.
Increases in GHGs, including CO2, may slow the loss of LW energy by absorbing surface radiation … BUT, they also increase the radiation of heat from the atmosphere. Absorbtivity = Emissivity. When will anyone who supports AGW demonstrate these do not balance out? I’m still waiting.
Then there is the energy budget. The amount of heat energy in the atmosphere is dwarfed by the energy in y the oceans.
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Seems to some potential confusion between the budget, in other words ingoings and outgoings, and the accumulated amount.
To illustrate: I could claim just as validly that the yearly solar flux is small compared to the energy stored in the oceans. But this observation does not prove that the solar flux is irrelevant
It’s true, Fox is the channel of hot blonds.
NASA satellites suggest that the heat the models say is trapped, is really escaping to space
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Lots of sloppy terminology here.
The models do not say the heat is trapped. They say the rate of heat transfer to outer space is being reduced. The NASA satellites say exactly the same thing.
The NASA satellites do not say the sensitivity is low. Spencer says the climate sensitivity is low. Spencer Bases his claim on his interpretation of of the satellite measurements combined with a very simple model he devised.
@ur momisugly Barry
I agree with you that that back-of-the-envolope calculations is not enough to describe the earth’s climate. My only point is that it contradicts Bastardi’s claims that the CO2 change is “too small” to have an effect. Also, to argue against that 2 degree warming requires one to evoke the existence of negative feedbacks and that really has nothing to do with Le Chatillier’s Principle in any general sense.
@ur momisuglySmokey
The logarithmic effect of increased CO2 is already taken into account in that calculation. The claim that the CO2 heat absorption is already saturated is just plain wrong.
@ur momisugly Theo Goodwin
I am familiar with Svensmark. And I appreciate that he at least has a scientifically informed position. Mr Bastardi does not. I don’t understand why this blog doesn’t vet its own material and why it lets people like Bastardi spew incorrect information. This kind of garbage just makes blogs like this look trashy and wrong. I would really like to see a nuanced and scientifically informed case being made here. But, this kind of stuff is just wild, misinformed attacks even on matters (like basic thermodynamics) that are not even up for debate.
Your claim that the broad science community is not in touch with physical, empirical reality is thoroughly unfair. There are countless empirical measurements of climate sensitivities and feedbacks and for a wide variety of forcing mechanisms. You can always claim that it is “not enough” and that’s fine. But, don’t say that it doesn’t exist.