This article from NASA’s Earth Observatory came up in a reply prompted by one of Gore’s “presenters” who comment bombed a previous thread. I thought it interesting to present here because while Arrhenius is in fact credited with the CO2 LW trapping discovery, he also later went on to say that the end result be beneficial. This is something Gore’s “trained presenters” don’t mention in their AIT presentations. See the last paragraph. – Anthony (h/t to Tom in Florida)
A hundred years ago, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius asked the important question “Is the mean temperature of the ground in any way influenced by the presence of the heat-absorbing gases in the atmosphere?” He went on to become the first person to investigate the effect that doubling atmospheric carbon dioxide would have on global climate. The question was debated throughout the early part of the 20th century and is still a main concern of Earth scientists today.
Ironically, Arrhenius’ education and training were not in climate research, but rather electrochemistry. His doctoral thesis on the chemical theory of electrolytes in 1884 was initially regarded as mediocre by his examination committee, but later was heralded as an important work regarding the theory of affinity. In 1891, Arrhenius was a founder and the first secretary of the Stockholm Physical Society, a group of scientists whose interests included geology, meteorology, and astronomy. His association with this society would later help stimulate his interests in cosmic physics-the physics of the Earth, sea, and atmosphere. In 1903, Arrhenius was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work on the electrolytic theory of dissociation. In the years following his international recognition, Arrhenius lectured throughout Europe and was elected to numerous scientific societies.
Arrhenius did very little research in the fields of climatology and geophysics, and considered any work in these fields a hobby. His basic approach was to apply knowledge of basic scientific principles to make sense of existing observations, while hypothesizing a theory on the cause of the “Ice Age.” Later on, his geophysical work would serve as a catalyst for the work of others.
In 1895, Arrhenius presented a paper to the Stockholm Physical Society titled, “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground.” This article described an energy budget model that considered the radiative effects of carbon dioxide (carbonic acid) and water vapor on the surface temperature of the Earth, and variations in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. In order to proceed with his experiments, Arrhenius relied heavily on the experiments and observations of other scientists, including Josef Stefan, Arvid Gustaf Högbom, Samuel Langley, Leon Teisserenc de Bort, Knut Angstrom, Alexander Buchan, Luigi De Marchi, Joseph Fourier, C.S.M. Pouillet, and John Tyndall.
Arrhenius argued that variations in trace constituents—namely carbon dioxide—of the atmosphere could greatly influence the heat budget of the Earth. Using the best data available to him (and making many assumptions and estimates that were necessary), he performed a series of calculations on the temperature effects of increasing and decreasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. His calculations showed that the “temperature of the Arctic regions would rise about 8 degrees or 9 degrees Celsius, if the carbonic acid increased 2.5 to 3 times its present value. In order to get the temperature of the ice age between the 40th and 50th parallels, the carbonic acid in the air should sink to 0.62 to 0.55 of present value (lowering the temperature 4 degrees to 5 degrees Celsius).”
During the next ten years, Arrhenius continued his work on the effects of carbon dioxide on climate, and published a two-volume technical book titled Lehrbuch der kosmischen Physik in 1903; but this work was not widely read, as it was a textbook for a discipline that did not yet exist. A few years later, Arrhenius published Worlds in the Making, a non-technical book that reached a greater audience. In this book Arrhenius first describes the “hot-house theory ”of the atmosphere, stating that the Earth’s temperature is about 30 degrees warmer than it would be due to the“ heat-protection action of gases contained in the atmosphere,”a theory based on ideas developed by Fourier, Pouillet, and (especially) Tyndall. His calculations demonstrated that if the atmosphere had no carbon dioxide, the surface temperature of the Earth would fall about 21 degrees Celsius, and that this cooler atmosphere would contain less water vapor, resulting in an additional temperature decrease of approximately 10 degrees Celsius. It is important to note that Arrhenius was not very concerned with rising carbon dioxide levels at the time, but rather was attempting to find an explanation for high latitude temperature changes that could be attributed to the onset of the ice ages and interglacial periods.
By 1904, Arrhenius became concerned with rapid increases in anthropogenic carbon emissions and recognized that “the slight percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere may, by the advances of industry, be changed to a noticeable degree in the course of a few centuries.” He eventually made the suggestion that an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide due to the burning of fossil fuels could be beneficial, making the Earth’s climates “more equable,” stimulating plant growth, and providing more food for a larger population. This view differs radically from current concerns over the harmful effects of a global warming caused by industrial emissions and deforestation. Until about 1960, most scientists dismissed the notion as implausible that humans could significantly affect average global temperatures. Today, however, we know that carbon dioxide levels have risen about 25 percent—a rate much faster than Arrhenius first predicted—and average global temperatures have risen about 0.5 degrees Celsius.
Internet References
Svante August Arrhenius, The Electronic Nobel Museum
Print References
Fleming, James Rodger, 1998: Historical Perspectives on Climate Change, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 194 pp.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
From the article above:
However, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased much more quickly than he expected, but the Earth hasn’t warmed as much as he thought it would.
Because Arrhenius was wrong on his calculation of α; 5.35 W/m^2 is an over-exaggerated sensitivity. Some authors have come over the revision of Arrhenius formula for calculating ∆T and have found α is not constant, but it varies depending on partial pressure and Cp of CO2. If the incoming load of IR remains constant, doubling CO2, according to Fourier’s algorithm, would cause cooling, not warming. For a doubling of CO2 causes warming, the source of heat (Sun) must experience a constant increase of the intensity of discharged radiation.
Besides, and given that some people do reject works from creationists, mystics, etc., Arrhenius was Rosicrucian. Heh! 😉
Why is so much attention directed to a set of ideas about global air temperatures that ignore the energy storage capacity and variable energy release of the oceans ?
“His basic approach was to apply knowledge of basic scientific principles to make sense of existing observations.”
Well that is my approach too but how can anyone with a brain ignore the fact that 71% of the Earth’s surface is water ?
Roger Clague:
“The bottom of the atmosphere is warmer than the top because of gravity. The air at the bottom is therefore at higher pressure and so contains more energy per unit volume and is at a higher temperature.”
Quite true. Gravity and pressure are involved in retaining heat energy that is already there but in the case of Earth it is insufficient in itself to account for the Earth’s surface temperature variations.
In fact the bottom of the atmosphere (air) is warmer than the top primarily because of the heat energy released at variable rates by the oceans.
Without the oceans it is true that gravity and pressure would create a temperature gradient from surface upwards but in the case of the Earth the energy flow from ocean to air to space is the dominant factor in global changes in air temperature trends in my opinion.
The ocean circulations appear to disrupt the background energy flow from sun to ocean to air to space and all our observations of air temperature changes can be explained by that process without the need to involve variations in the CO2 content of the air.
Considering the scale of the oceanic influence any minor change in the composition of the air is an irrelevance.
I don’t expect others to agree with me at this stage. This post is part of my intent to put my ideas in the public domain to await rebuttal or confirmation by the real world in due course.
Reading between the lines of the above essay, I get the feeling that Arrhenius was one of the first, if not the first, to come up with theis idea of “Climate Sensitivity”; nemely the increase in global mean temperature for a doubling of CO2. You will recall that Professor Lindzen used thois term in his brief essay on the green house effect here; it is one of the staples of climatology.
I don’t know how anyone else feels about “Climate Sensitivity”, but as a physicist, I have to say I find the concept of climate sensitivity to be totally assinine; laughable.
When you consider the total extreme range of surface temperatures that occur on earth; which I put roughly at -90 C to + 60C, the total emittance of a black body source over that range is about 12:1 from hottest to coldest.
I believe that the high temperature extreme is much more common than the low temperature extreme; and in fact it’s possible the high may get even higher, while I thing the low extreme is somewhat rare.
But at the low temperature extreme, the spectral peak of BB radiation is right at 15 microns where CO2 absorption peaks. I don’t have a good number for the spectral emmissivity of snow/ice at those very low temps, but it seems that the absorptance is almost complete over that spectral range, and so the emissivity should be quite high.
But with a total emittance that is one tenth or less of the maximum value; even a huge increase in the CO2 is not going to change the surface temperature much.
At the highest desert high surface temperatures, the BB spectral peak is down in the 8.7 micron range; well below the CO2 15 micron band so the warming effect of CO2 is minimised in the very locations that also have very low water content; so there can’t be any of the fictional water vapor feedback to speak of; and then you have a total emittance (for BB source) that is about double what it would be at the global mean temperature.
Hence the radiant cooling in the hottest dryest deserts is very efficient (depending on what the spectral emissivity of the desertsands/rocks is.
The Polar lows also have low atmospheric water vapor so no water positive feedback there much either; but not enough radiation to do much wartming
So clearly any warming effect of doubling CO2 is very highly dependent on location and temperature; so it is absurd to talk about a “Climate Sensitivity” as if it is a universal constant.
This is just one of the reasons; why I consider the classical climatology methodology to be very suspect; and don’t consider it to be a very scientific discipline.
Not surprisingly you won’t find any tables of climate sensitivity, or water vapor feedback factors, or “forcings” or any of the trappings of “Climatology” in any handbook of Chemistry and Physics.
I do think the science is changing, as the satellite age and other sensor advances demonstrate that the pseudoscience launched by Arrhenius and his ilk is being shown to be rather speculative at best.
We have had plenty of time for the vartious predictions of the various UN IPCC prognosticators and their computer video game players; to come to pass in the real world; and it simply isn’t happening; so I would say the sicence is very unsettled.
George
1) Whether Arrhenius was a “eugenicist” or not is totally irrelevant to his CO2/climate theories. Ad hominem does not look any better on the “right” side.
2) There was no consensus re: eugenics in the 20s and 30s. A bunch of influential totalitarians, sure, but no consensus. If you claim consensus, provde some evidence, please.
In 1906 Arrhenius – who had by then come across the fundamental equation of radiative transfer, which greatly simplified his calculations and improved their accuracy – recalculated the effect of doubling CO2 on temperature and, in Vol. 1, no. 2 of the Journal of the Royal Nobel Institute, published his conclusion that a doubling of CO2 concentration would increase global temperatures by about 1.6 Celsius degrees (<3 Fahrenheit degrees).
Yet the Gorons continue to cite only Arrhenius’ 1896 paper, with its less accurate and more extreme conclusion. I wonder why.
Stephen:
Most would be in agreement with your statement. The AGW theories predict a big “heat bucket” effect in the seas, of a whipsaw effect from latent heat accumulated in the seas causing accelerated global warming in the coming years.
Interestingly the expected additional heat content in the seas hasn’t been found by the Argo floats. Yes the seas have warmed, but the the trend hasn’t accelerated in a manner consistent with the worst-case AGW models.
Johan i Kanada (10:53:35) :
1) Whether Arrhenius was a “eugenicist” or not is totally irrelevant to his CO2/climate theories. Ad hominem does not look any better on the “right” side.
I agree… Nevertheless, he was Rosicrucian and for a reason or another, this info was eliminated from his NP biography. I really don’t care what his personal beliefs were or not; anyway, his first deduction on a doubling of CO2 and the increase of atmospheric temperatures was wrong.
Arrhenius is an interesting fellow, but I don’t see what difference it makes if he thought a warmer planet would be good or bad. There are plenty of people today to carry on the argument that more CO2 will be beneficial. I don’t think it has been hidden, except from the extremely lazy, that he looked favorably on a more warm/CO2-rich planet.
Monckton’s comment is more interesting. I have not heard of this later calculation of his, so close to Lindzen’s. Of course, they both are in the “all things being equal” category. The real argument is about the system response/feedbacks.
alas, the CO2/warming connection persists, even when it looks like the SWPC will have to move its sunspot progression prediction again…
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/sunspot.gif
Johan wrote: . . . 2) There was no consensus re: eugenics in the 20s and 30s. A bunch of influential totalitarians, sure, but no consensus. If you claim consensus, provde some evidence, please.
I wasn’t aware that GB Shaw and HG Wells were totalitarians. Regardless, how does one define “consensus?” Certainly you can’t claim a consensus exists now on the subject of AGW but did not exist back then on the claims of eugenics. The fact is that a belief in genetic inferiority and superiority was widely held back then. It was “accepted” science in every sense of the word. There was widespread disagreement on the subject of solutions to genetic inferiority, but not on the existence of it.
Furthermore, as Anthony proves with this post, Arrhenius is taken out of context by the alarmists. He believed increased CO2 would be helpful and not catastrophic, which is what alarmists believe. They never mention that when they quote his theories on CO2. That, to my mind, is blatantly disingenuous.
Such CO2 rising graphs with baseline at 280ppm sux. It looks like it has quadrupled. It took me almost 10min to google the real one: http://www.john-daly.com/co2-2000.gif
G’day. Via another blog I found these videos of a presentation by Australia’s Prof. Ian Plimer. He is a geology professor and an outspoken AGW skeptic. He gave a talk last November and these videos have the audio of his talk and the video component is made of the slides he presented. In the first two minutes of this video (part 4) he describes a concern he has re measurement of CO2. This is beyond my sphere of knowledge but would anyone here with more scientific knowledge care to comment on this please? I don’t know if it’s a valid comment or not. I find it interesting that I’ve never heard of this before. I thought I’d read and learned a lot about AGW but this is a new one to me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWiv5QAZAJM&feature=related
Thanks in advance for any information. LilacWine 🙂
LilacWine (11:53:28):
Yeah… AGW is religion-like stuff. That video was posted by someone here yesterday.
Johan i Kanada (10:53:35) said :
2) There was no consensus re: eugenics in the 20s and 30s. A bunch of influential totalitarians, sure, but no consensus. If you claim consensus, provde some evidence, please.
I consider it strong evidence that there was “consensus” (whatever that means, precisely) that my dear departed mother was taught that Eugenics was “scientific fact” (a phrase oft-repeated at me in the 1960’s) during her schooling in the South in the ’20’s and ’30’s.
I submit that any theory considered to be “scientific fact” BOTH by my mother (an otherwise sweet little thing from Loo-si-ana) and Charles Lindbergh, bona fide American Hero, should be considered at least the POPULAR “consensus”, regardless of the motivations of the believers.
Exactly like AGW.
Oh, and I take exception to calling me mum a totalitarian.
“hareynolds (09:33:39) :
REPLY: Gut feelings are useless until quantified. – Anthony
Granted. HOWEVER, educated “gut feelings” are often the basis of hypotheses, or even fortuitous accidents (vulcanization, teflon, etc.), often quite wacky, which yield quite stunning outcomes once they are “quantified”.”
My intuition tells me that gut feelings are more often wrong than right. I could be wrong on that, though.
LilacWine
I am also uncomfortable with the fixing of a base level for CO2 at 280 ppm.
There was clearly a change in measurement method and location so the base level is unreliable.
It is quite possible that the CO2 levels for most of the globe vary much more than those at a volcano in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Other remote locations show a similar pattern but remoteness of sensing location may result in an inaccurate reflection of normal biosphere activity.
It seems likely to me that the changes observed at Mauna Loa are a result of enhanced oceanic outgassing from the warmer temperatures of the recent grand solar maximum and a long run of strong El Nino events.
If the PDO remains negative for any length of time we should see a response from the Mauna Loa readings eventually.
Recent satellite sensors also look promising for more accurate data in the future.
As regards Eugenics it was a consensus view that breeding mattered until new data came to light.
It turned out that with sexual reproduction there was always a tendency for a drift back towards the average so bright parents were just as likely to produce a dim child as dim parents were to produce a bright child.
That did for it really but a certain Adolf was a bit slow to realise it.
A consensus can only last until new data comes to light.
A quiet sun, cooler oceans and a cessation of warming should do the trick as regards climate change theory.
Stephen Wilde (10:31:17) : “[…]In fact the bottom of the atmosphere (air) is warmer than the top primarily because of the heat energy released at variable rates by the oceans.
[…]Considering the scale of the oceanic influence any minor change in the composition of the air is an irrelevance.
I don’t expect others to agree with me at this stage. This post is part of my intent to put my ideas in the public domain to await rebuttal or confirmation by the real world in due course.”
I agree. The major movement of heat appears to be (a) the oceans are warmed by the sun, (b) the oceans release heat into the atmosphere, and (c) oceans land and atmosphere radiate heat back into space. Global warming or cooling results from any imbalance but may take time to show up clearly in atmosphere and surface measurements.
In the short term land, heated by the sun, heats the atmosphere, but the timescales are short and the amount of heat retained is minimal compared with the oceans.
The Earth’s albedo was declining from the 1980s until about 2000 (from memory Enric Palle puts it at about 6Wm-2 but you can check it here: http://solar.njit.edu/preprints/palle1376.pdf), hence the oceans warmed and we saw warmer temperatures and lost Arctic ice.
From 2000 onwards, albedo has been increasing again, hence the rate of ocean warming slowed, stopped in about 2006, and if albedo keeps decreasing I believe that more reports of cooling oceans will start coming in. There is already at least one http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/home/files/Cazenave_et_al_GPC_2008.pdf.
What causes the albedo changes? Henrik Svensmark and others theorise that it is GCRs. Dr Roy W Spencer thinks it could be the PDO. I am open to all suggestions at this stage, but am certainly keen to see the CLOUD experiment at CERN go ahead. This Jasper Kirkby paper is a great read: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0804/0804.1938v1.pdf
At the moment I lean towards Svensmark. His theory has the Antarctic cooling as the rest of the world warms, and results to date support this. His theory can also provide mechanisms for ice ages etc, which I think the PDO is pressed to do.
typo : for “if albedo keeps decreasing” read “if albedo keeps increasing”.
Eugenics was hardly a minority view. It was believed by all the right people and had even the consensus of the Supreme Court. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. who was an associate justice of the court wrote the majority opinion on Buck vs. Bell that made eugenic sterilization constitutionally sanctioned.
Theodore Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, Winston Churchill and George Bernard Shaw are just a few of the luminaries who were part of that consensus. Of course anyone who wanted to do business with the government had to toe the line. Scientists like Arrhenius were on board as well as it seemed to follow so naturally from Darwin’s books. Hollywood’s celebrities, of course also toed the line. The Rockefeller Foundation funded eugenics effortsa round the world including Germany, and Germany came in for particular praise for their proactive efforts.
Richard111 (10:07:43) :
Mr Green Genes (08:47:12) :
Phil. (07:51:10) :
So important that he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for that work!
Al Gore’s got one like that. Am I supposed to be impressed?
Al Gore got a PEACE prize, NOT a science prize.
I am well aware of that. However, since the method of selecting likely candidates for either prize seems to be identical, judging by a look at the Nobel Prize website (i.e. the committee asks for nominations from “suitable” people), it would seem probable that the level of political “guidance” is similar.
Mike Jonas,
I would be persuaded by the Svensmark cosmic ray idea if it could be shown to drive the ocean cycles.
In fact the changes in global temperature trend seem to follow ocean cycles rather than solar cycles so the cosmic ray effect on the air seems likely to be a lesser player than the effect of variable ocean cycles.
Ice ages would be caused by a much larger astronomical cycle than oceanic or solar variation as per Milankovitch.
My best guess at the moment is that cooling ocean surfaces reduce the vapour carrying capacity of the overlying air so cloud increases and albedo reduces.
As I’ve said before it is a ‘chicken and egg’ issue.
Does cooling air from cooler oceans cause more cloud or does more cloud cool the air and oceans ?
The close correlation between oceanic cycles and subsequent air temperatures suggests that the oceans are in control.
The temperature fit with individual solar cycles is not good enough to support the cosmic ray idea but I remain open minded on the issue.
kurt (13:14:11) said:
My intuition tells me that gut feelings are more often wrong than right. I could be wrong on that, though.
The operative word is “educated”.
Pure intuition (that is, unfettered by logic, scientific method, experience, intelligence or education) is indeed likely more often wrong than right.
That’s because a series of wild-ass guessses is usually more incorrect than just one; tolerance stack-up if you will.
It can make a pretty convincing religion, however.
More importantly, however, especially in the AGW context, over-educated folks ginning “data” in the absence of (a) native intelligence (b) intution or (c) humility (what we used to call “fear of God”) can be far more dangerous acolytes (as they carry the imprimatur of “credentials”) than the simple, intuitive faithful.
I for one would be far less concerned if Mssrs. Hansen and Gore, upon “discovering” the imminent apocalyse that is AGW, had retired to a monastery to pray fervently for our collective salvation. It’s all the hot air being fanned about by the waving of sheepskins in high places that’s keeping me up at night.
Jeez, what a horrible picture of the man! he looks like a severely constipated Mr. Whipple!
Here’s a better one from Wiki, only slightly less constipated 😉
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arrhenius2.jpg
“Ad hominem does not look any better on the “right” side.”
“The real argument is about the system response/feedbacks.”
Who Arrhenius was is of interest. The article, the issue at hand is not,e.g., his daft argument that 33 degrees C of warming is owed GHGs, or that “this will be true until proven otherwise” from his 1896 paper.
Likewise stating the real crux of the argument over AGW lies somewhere else is a pick-pocket’s ploy; the issues are myriad and the failures of a number, would each, alone cause it to crash to earth but that is not the current interest.
The quoted texts are misdirections and not offered in good faith.