From Christopher Monckton of Brenchley in Durban, South Africa
It. Ain’t. Gonna. Happen. This is the ghastly secret that almost all the delegates here in Durban are desperate to conceal. Paper after paper, result after result, shows that the “global warming” we can expect from a doubling of CO2 concentration this century is just one Celsius degree or perhaps 2 Fahrenheit degrees, not the 3-4 C° once predicted by the UN’s well-tarnished climate panel.
When a journalist with South Africa’s national broadcaster interviewed me in the conference center, I told him the climate scam was just that – a scam. He replied that that was a merely emotional argument. So I gave him the following scientific argument, and explained to him that – simple though the truth is – it is just complicated enough that the IPCC and the global-warming profiteers have thus far gotten away with confusing the general public, and the average scientifically-illiterate politician, and, with respect, the average journalist.
Take all the greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and keep the Earth’s albedo magically the same as today’s. How much cooler would it be? All are agreed that it would be around 33 Celsius degrees cooler. This is climate theory 101. So, how much radiative forcing causes the 33 C° warming that arises from the presence – as opposed to total absence – of all the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? The answer – again straight out of the usual suspects’ playbook – is around 100 Watts per square meter.
Accordingly, the equilibrium system climate sensitivity parameter is 33/100 = 0.33 Celsius per Watt per square meter, after just about all temperature feedbacks have acted. Multiply this key parameter by 3.7 Watts per square meter, which is the IPCC’s own value for the radiative forcing from a doubling of CO2 concentration, and you get a warming of just 1.2 C° per CO2 doubling. But that is just one-third of the 3.3 C° the IPCC predicts.
This theoretical value of 1.2 C° is remarkably robust: it uses the IPCC’s own data and methods, applied to the entire history of the atmosphere, to demonstrate just how low climate sensitivity really is. When I pointed out this simple but powerful result to scientists recently at the Santa Fe climate conference organized by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of them said, “Ah, yes, but what evidence do you have that today’s climate exhibits the same sensitivity as the total system sensitivity?”
The answer is that the world is now in a position to verify this theoretical result by measurement. In August this year, Dr. Blasing of the Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center in the United States quietly published a bombshell. Few noticed. His detailed estimate is that all the manmade greenhouse gases added to the air by us since 1750 have caused as much as 3 Watts per square meter of radiative forcing between them.
From this 3 Watts per square meter, in line with IPCC data, we must be fair and deduct 1 Watt per square meter to allow for manmade climate influences that cause cooling, such as soot and other particulates that act as helpful little parasols shading us from the Sun and keeping us cooler than we should otherwise be.
How much warming did this manmade net 2 Watts per square meter of forcing cause? Around 0.8 Celsius of warming has occurred since 1750, of which – if the IPCC is right – 50-100% was attributable to us. So the equilibrium climate sensitivity parameter since 1750 (again, most of the temperature feedbacks that the IPCC wrongly imagines will amplify warming hugely will have acted by now) is 0.2-0.4 Celsius per Watt per square meter.
Multiply that key parameter by 3.7 and the warming we can expect from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration is just 0.75-1.5 Celsius. Those estimates neatly bracket the equilibrium system sensitivity of 1.2 C° that we calculated earlier by well-established theory.
So the sensitivity of the climate over the most recent quarter of the millennium is very much the same as the sensitivity of the climate throughout the past 4.5 billion years – at around one-third of the IPCC’s central estimate. Frankly, one Celsius degree of warming this century will simply not be worth worrying about. It will do far more good than harm. Not a cent should be spent trying to prevent it.
As President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic pointed out at a recent climate conference in Cambridge, if we leave less wealth to our successors because we have wasted trillions on the non-problem of global warming, we harm future generations by denying them the full inheritance they would otherwise have received.
But don’t expect any of the delegates here to get the point. They are making far too much money out of the climate scam –at taxpayers’ expense – to want to do anything other than recite that The Science Is Settled. As the West goes bust, drowned under the sheer cost of the ever-expanding State, the UN, the IPCC, the UNFCCC, the UNEP and the WMO are luxuries we can no longer afford and will no longer pay for. Time to shut them all down and make their self-serving, rent-seeking bureaucrats go out into the real world and do a proper job.
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Sorry, I could only give this 5 stars, 10 would have been closer to what I wanted to give especially for this. “Time to shut them all down and make their self-serving, rent-seeking bureaucrats go out into the real world and do a proper job.“
Natural variation of insolation due to orbital and rotational changes causing changes in Earth’s relative position to the sun can cause variations of up to 120 watts/m^2. 3 watts is likely to get lost in the noise. If you look back at about 110K years ago in the graph linked below, you will see that insolation at 65N went from about 550W/m^2 to 440W/m^2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SummerSolstice65N-future.png
: )
I hope they air the complete interview.
Take all the greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and keep the Earth’s albedo magically the same as today’s. How much cooler would it be? All are agreed that it would be around 33 Celsius degrees cooler.
————————
I do not agree.
1/ That 33K is non-physical nonsense, calculating Earth without “greenhouse gases” but still considering albedo of 0.3, which is made mostly by clouds (=condensed greenhouse gas). With realistic albedo this number would shrink to half. DO NOT continue to calculate anything based on that “33K”.
2/ Second, nobody yet proved, that solely greenhouse gases are responsible for what makes Earth an Earth, compared to Mars or Moon. Tremendous thermal inertia of atmosphere and oceans, how come it is not considered when comparing Mars (or Moon) with Earth? Only “greenhouse gases” are obviously not enough, as shows Mars – 5,000 ppm of CO2 in it thin atmosphere creates zero “greenhouse effect”, ZERO. Its theoretical and practical temperature is the same – 210K.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html
Is there different physics on Mars?
3/ Any further calculations of sensitivities are therefore meaningless. Albedo and cloud cover changes, air/ocean circulation changes are real, but are those thick arrows in K-H diagrams real?
Well, he isn’t seeing the entire picture in this case. We ARE leaving MORE wealth to our successors because all of this money we are spending on “climate change” actually ends up in the pockets of thousands of different people. It actually does get spent. What we are doing is “redistributing” that wealth from billions of individual “common” citizens into the pockets of people connected to the “climate change” industry. The money isn’t disappearing, it is simply being allocated. We are giving Jones and Mann and CRU and Tyndall and Solyndra, and others and the people that work for and invest in those organizations boatloads of cash now (that they will probably pass along to their successors) which will will take from the future earnings of our children. We are giving them hamburgers today that our children will have to pay for next Tuesday (to use a Popeye analogy). I think it is time to tell Wimpy to take a hike.
This is a global fleecing.
Inhabitants (of China?) protecting themselves from dangerous CO2.
Where else but in http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/05/carbon-dioxide-emissions-biggest-jump ?
I would also bet that the 3 watts of forcing assume a completely clear sky over the entire Earth every day. A small change in the amount of clouds could completely swamp that 3 watts, particularly at the places on Earth where the sun is directly overhead. Heck, a few (relatively speaking) roofs painted white would swamp out that change!
I tend to go to sleep at night with the earphone plugged into the side of my head, listening to one or another audiobook or some news channel streaming.
Right now the BBC is a gigantic minefield, saturating their World Service coverage with Durban sales pitches and all the other usual climate pap.
Highly aggravating to wake up at 3AM listening to some mealy-mouthed Beebster flogging the greatness of the CDM.
Would be be lucky enough to see the interview streamed from the broadcaster’s Website?
So at Durban we have the finest expert talkers on earth flown around the world to gab away about a non-problem. Hmm…where do we sign up for a refund. Actually all the time and money wasted on these fools is chump-change compared to allowing them to destroy the world economy with green-schemes. I hope this silly fad passes soon.
“…and you get a warming of just 1.2 C° per CO2 doubling. But that is just one-third of the 3.3 C° the IPCC predicts.”
~1.1 to 1.2°C warming for a doubling of CO2 is exactly what the science says – prior to feedbacks! The feedbacks are what are expected to take matters to 3.3°C – and while the exact magnitude of feedbacks can be discussed, Monckton is simply ignoring them here.
As to current warming versus forcings and falsely derived low sensitivities, don’t forget that not all changes have caught up yet – oceans are big, and do take a while to warm, just for example. This particular canard (which I thought originally came from Lindzen) is just nonsense, refuted by Beck 2006 and Rahmstorf 2008, among others. Given a 3°C sensitivity to CO2 doubling, we should see a warming of around 1°C – and what we’re observing is 0.8 to 0.9°C.
This bit by Monckton is complete and utter nonsense.
crosspatch says:
“What we are doing is ‘redistributing’ that wealth from billions of individual ‘common’ citizens into the pockets of people connected to the ‘climate change’ industry.”
Brings to mind Bastiat’s Broken Window Fallacy; things seen and things not seen. What is not seen is the good that money would have done if it were efficiently allocated by the market, instead of being misallocated by politicians.
crosspatch says:
December 5, 2011 at 10:40 am
“We ARE leaving MORE wealth to our successors because all of this money we are spending on “climate change” actually ends up in the pockets of thousands of different people. It actually does get spent.”
Do not fall prey to the money myth. Money is merely a medium of wealth. It has little intrinsic value of its own (the paper on which it is printed).
Money is used to allocate resources to create wealth, in the form of goods and services people can consume. Money invested wisely facilitates the creation of wealth. Money spent poorly diminishes the amount of wealth that could have been created and bequeathed to our successors.
The Warmista retort is that those annual solar fluctuations
are averaged out over the year so they don’t count.
Ditto for the influence of water vapor, which fluctuates widely
and therefore can’t control the climate.
They absolutely know, you see, that their arithmetic temp-average
is Earth’s fever thermometer, and almighty CO2 is its sole thermostat.
According to cargo-cult science,
no fluctuations matter because their models average them out.
I kid you not. I’m practically quoting from a recent article in Science.
I read this with hope but find I do not understand. It seems like hokus-pokus, I cannot pin down any figure and relate it to any given change that makes sense.
If you remove all greenhouse gases you still get the same adiabatic lapse rate, the start of which will be defined by the temperature at the surface. That is why the tropopause is higer at the equator than at the poles. Same lapse rate, different surface temperatures. All to do with gravity, not imaginary feedback from so called greenhouse gases.
Try this question: is the Earth brighter than the sun in the near infrared? What about the far infrared? The answers will define greenhouse gases as coolants or warmants (? 🙂 )
Okay, initial solar radiation starts out from 5,800K source and is down to less than 400k at TOA. But which is brighter ? The surface at 288K ? I wonder.
Just absolutely love it Christopher – your point exactly. Well done. In a nutshell.
How much colder (or perishingly freezing) would the world be if we magically ‘eliminated’ all the greenhouse gases we’ve allegedly shoved in to the atmosphere since the industrial era. Probably not one iota of noticeable change in our temperature at all.
As you’re one of our key staunch ambassadors, please tell Durban that this warming malarky is all down to the manufacture of 2 litre bottles of fizzy carbonated drinks on a global scale since the 20’s. Just think of all that man-made CO2 injected in to drinks on a daily basis that we never had in Medieval ‘warm’ times. Maybe that should make them question whether the blame is in fact attributed to the internal combustion engine!
Politically there’s a powerful argument. Rather than the absurdity of a worldwide conspiracy we might be all victims of scheming climate change crooks ready to take advantage of the bandwagon and of its more innocent proponents
Juraj V. says: December 5, 2011 at 10:37 am
AMEN! The 33 degree number is based on a calculation that (a) uses an earth energy reception model whose albedo in part assumes an atmosphere (cloud and particulate reflection), but (b) uses an earth energy radiation model that treats the earth as a black body–i.e., no atmosphere. This is equivalent to comparing apples and oranges.
KR, the oceans are cooling.
Yes, but climate scientists assume that climate sensitivity has increased greatly over the past 40 years and will increase as warming increases.
“There’s really nothing new under the sun.”
Same old games we’ve seen for 6000 years or more. It’s one thing for willing fools to be parted from their money, But this is an out right attempt to steal.
The mention above: “scientifically-illiterate politicians”, perhaps many of them see the near unconditional transfer of power into their hands? It’s their playfield, and few in the scientific community know their game as well.
KR says:
December 5, 2011 at 10:58 am
“…and you get a warming of just 1.2 C° per CO2 doubling. But that is just one-third of the 3.3 C° the IPCC predicts.”
~1.1 to 1.2°C warming for a doubling of CO2 is exactly what the science says – prior to feedbacks!…”
KR is imagining the positive feedbacks posited by the garbage-in-garbage-out computer models. He seems not to have a clue about the real world negative feedbacks shown by empirical research and published in GRL.
@KR
“Given a 3°C sensitivity to CO2 doubling, we should see a warming of around 1°C – and what we’re observing is 0.8 to 0.9°C. ”
No, given 3C sensitivity we should see 3C of warming with a doubling of CO2 –‘by that very definition’! If we don’t see 3C of warming, then the sensitivity of the climate with all feedbacks already considered, is less than 3C per century.
How much warming have we seen over the past century? ~1C.
The oceans are cooling, their heat content has flattened, and despite the large upward increase in CO2 production in the last decade, global temperatures have largely flattened as well. What does that tell you KR?
Science is about facts, not the mythical. Saying “but we will see feedbacks, eventually!” without any evidence of what they are, or any sign of them preparing to occur (as we would see by now!), you are acting on FAITH, no science.
Two concerns:
1. Monckton is ignoring feedbacks in this calculation. Assuming the sum total of all feedbacks to be zero doesn’t make them so.
2. Monckton (like many others) is treating “climate sensitivity” as a constant across all temperature ranges. No justification is given for this… it’s simply assumed.
While I appreciate his skepticism and engagement, I fear that his argument here is overly simplistic. A better argument would focus on feedback effects (particularly relating to clouds).
KR says:
Just to clarify what KR says here: Some might argue that, for example, the calculation includes the water vapor feedback. After all, Monckton imagined removing the water vapor too. However, this point-of-view is incorrect. In order to correctly account for the water vapor feedback, you have to treat it as a feedback and not a forcing as Monckton has done. (Willis Eschenbach came up with a similar argument to Monckton’s, which had the same sort of error in it.)
To look at it another way: What the numerical modeling study of Lacis et al. ( http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6002/356.abstract? ) showed is that, in the climate models, if you remove all the non-condensable greenhouse gases from the atmosphere then the cooling causes most of the water vapor to be removed too and you get a temperature drop not much different from 33 K….perhaps even a bit more if I recall. (There is no reason why it has to be exactly 33 K because you aren’t necessarily keeping the albedo from clouds and ice the same in this simulation and you are not getting rid of the greenhouse effect due to clouds [or whatever greenhouse effect remains due to water vapor].) So, you just have to remove the non-condensable greenhouse gases and then you get approximately the full temperature drop due to losing the greenhouse effect as a consequence.
Admittedly, people can argue that the models are wrong…and this is not what is going to happen in the real world. However, if you are going to argue this, then what you are arguing is that you don’t believe in the positive feedbacks; you have not shown from real-world data that the earth’s climate system does not have such positive feedbacks (which is what Monckton is essentially claiming to have shown).
[And, of course, you would have to come up with compelling arguments about why the physics in the models is wrong and the amount of water vapor would not decrease (or that something else would compensate) when you removed the greenhouse gases.]