Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
A recent study by Shindell et. al, entitled Improved Attribution of Climate Forcing to Emissions, (Science Magazine, 30 October 2009, Vol. 326) reports on interactions between aerosols and methane and other greenhouse gases. It has been discussed on Watts Up With That here <http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/31/an-idea-i-can-get-behind-regulate-methane-first/>, as well as on other blogs. The Shindell study gives new values for the “radiative forcing” of various greenhouse gases. The “radiative forcing” is the increase in greenhouse radiation which is due to the increases in greenhouse gases since 1750.
UPDATE: The remainder of this article has been removed at the request of the guest author, Willis Eschenbach. During discussion, an error was discovered (see comments) and rather than leave this article with that error in place which may possibly mislead somebody in the future (if they didn’t read through comments) I’m honoring Willis’ request for removal. The comments remain intact. – Anthony
WAG (22:39:12)
Congratulations, you’ve just had your first lesson in denial 101: how to imply something without saying anything.
Nup. I had my first lesson in Denial 101 about forty years back, when Lib journos insisted the NLF had won the Tet Offensive…
This whole discussion sounds like a Rumsfeld press conference…
“there are certain uncertainties,
and we are uncertain about certainties,
but being uncertain about uncertainties, that we are certain of…”
Willis Eschenbach (23:45:14) :
Thank you for taking the time to respond. I had assumed my own incompetence in failing to find the information.
So if warmists bug me I will ask “Please explain the exact mechanism that defines the radiative forcing of CO2 on the planets surface in watts per square meter?”
I always assumed that information would be easily available in the science literature.
Willis Eschenbach (23:45:14)
”Welcome to the wonderful world of climate science. If you want more
accuracy, just add a bunch more untested models, and average the results!”
Thank you Willis, I did that, and it really seems to work, looked out the window, suns shining, raining, 48°C ice and two and a half a meters of snow.
I am more and more convinced, that the theory of “radiative forcing” is just hypothetical construction for explaining present temperature, which is caused by mere existence of bulk atmosphere. “Radiative forcing” on Mars is similar than here (no water vapor, but 15x more CO2 there) , and there is no difference between Martian blackbody and actual temperature. Hpowever, Mars has puny 600 Pa atmospheric pressure (95% CO2) compared to 100000 Pa on Earth surface.
I am curious what to do, if methane is the main villain now.
Fart.
Maurizio @ur momisugly ‘The Resilient Earth’ discusses this study nicely, too.
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I think I see your problem: You can’t speak English. Another example is the article you refer us to on your blog:
Hint: 84% is not unanimous. And above, saying that claims of a particular degree of certainty of any given value of X are false is not even remotely related to claiming that X is zero. No connection. No implication. No nothing. They are as unrelated as the concepts of 84% and unanimity.
OT, but what happened to the two other threads?
Re CO2=AGW, and measuring ‘radiative forcing’
I wonder if anyone has done the experiment using a real greenhouse?
AFAIK, commercial growers artificially increase the level of CO2 in their huge greenhouses because it boosts growth. Does it also decrease their heating bills?
Willi Eschenbach, you have made a very simple mistake. In the study by Shindell et al. you find a different attributions of the radiative forcing. The emission based values mean that the effects of secondary greenhouse gases are redistributed to the primary greenhouse gases (those which are emitted). Of course, if you want to compare IPCC radiative forcings with emission based forces you have to add a major part of radiative forcing of ozone to the forcing of methane in the abundace based picture. And in this case you will easily see, that indeed there is not much of a difference between these two approaches. You should rethink your conclusion.
Willis Eschenbach (23:45:14):
“None of these radiative forcing numbers can be calculated directly.
You have to use a climate model to calculate them. f course, since we
don’t understand the climate, to me it is somewhat circular to build a
model of a climate system we don’t understand and then use the model
to try to understand the climate system we don’t understand…”
etc. etc.
Willis, thanks for this. It’s a great relief. Now, finally, I understand why I don’t understand “climate science.” The climate model business reminds me of the Marxist claim that they have penetrated the secrets of the laws of history (i.e. “the historical science is settled”) and can therefore – what?
Tell the rest of us what to do, of course, and use force whenever we dare to object!
We know that the climate scientists have a propensity to exagerrate the impact of greenhouse forcing and downplay the impact of other factors on the climate. Anyone can come up with a hundred examples of this.
We also know now that the uncertainty ranges for the greenhouse forcings is larger than previously thought.
Let’s assume that all the greenhouse forcings are on the low end of the uncertainty ranges then (given the past propensity to exagerrate).
Now we are back to 1.0C to 1.5C per doubling. Given the past propensity to downplay the impact of other climate factors, now we are getting closer to what has actually occurred in the climate.
Willis,
Very interesting post. Thanks.
WAG,
“It’s just what Steve McIntyre did to the hockey stick – when the error he pointed out was corrected, the shape of the graph didn’t fundamentally change.”
Have you got a link to this, the MHB98 graph that doesn’t change even when corrected for a) weighting of 390 for a particular bristlecone sample and b) an algorithm that produced a hockey stick shape using red noise?
If you have such a graph, then why don’t you rush it over to IPCC headquarters? – I’m sure they would love to see it.
WAG the Liberal Southern Baptist appears to be of the Holy Roller” ilk of the Warmist religion. He has seen the “Consensus”,and it is Good, Praise be to Gore.
We here are all unwashed sinners and he is here to “save” us.
Please, do teach us, O Knowledgeable One!
Bill Illis,
You are still assuming only greenhouse gasses caused almost all of the rise over the last century. Even AGW supporters assume only most of the change since 1940 or so is GHG caused, and this is only 0.3C or so. There is no reason to not find almost all of the rise as natural variability, especially in light of the recent decade of leveling and even dropping level even though CO2 is still rising. This leads to a maximum value of 0.5C or less per CO2 doubling (in line with Linzen’s approximation), and it may even be lower.
supercritical (04:11:01) :
“Re CO2=AGW, and measuring ‘radiative forcing’
I wonder if anyone has done the experiment using a real greenhouse?
AFAIK, commercial growers artificially increase the level of CO2 in their huge greenhouses because it boosts growth. Does it also decrease their heating bills?”
Not sure what you ask would prove too much about climate even if a saving in heating were made. The whole point of a greenhouse is it is an enclosed environment. The atmosphere, however is unbounded and won’t respond in the same way to extra CO2.
I just love the drive-by crowd.
Let’s try and slow you down a little. I know that over on RC anyone who questions anything is part of the sinister “industry funded denial lobby” but if you would like facts not dogma – here is a list of the members of the European Climate Exchange (pdf). I see “big oil” (BP, Shell). I see Goldman Sachs, Barclays and HSBC.
Economists have a well-known free market bias (…) the bias would be against climate legislation
Yes, I see that now. Drive-by 101: at least make an effort. (and try not insulting your host until your final post)
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WAG (21:26:32) :
Also, it’s worth repeating that the original post here makes no logical sense. Within the uncertainty ranges of the climate sensitivities presented, the warming from methane would still be massive. Just because studies disagree on the magnitude of warming does not mean the correct value is zero. Really basic stuff.
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WAG – It is just these kinds of overreaching conclusions and statements that are causing warmists to lose credibility. The guy didn’t say the effect was zero – you did. But he did adequately illustrate that the uncertainty is not being correctly quantified, which was his point. You warmists just pull stuff out of the thin atmosphere.
Ron House –
thanks for pointing out the grammatical error of 84% not being “unanimous.” I’ve corrected the entry to read “nearly unanimously.”
Incidentally, that’s also a good illustration of the point I’ve been making – the difference between what was strictly said vs. the implications/conclusions of what was said. While I was wrong in a grammatical sense to say that 84% constituted unanimity, correcting the language has no effect on the conclusion, which is that an overwhelming majority of economists believe global warming is real and its effects on the economy will be negative.
When we talk about climate science, we’re ultimately trying to decide what we should DO: pass legislation or do more of the same. The implication of this post is clear: uncertainty means we should do nothing. Models disagree as to the precise degree of warming we should expect from methane, so the “science is not settled” and we are “not certain about the climate.” Note that this is not the same as claiming that the studies prove there is zero relationship between methane and temperature. But the insinuation is there: that the studies cast doubt on the legitimacy of the climate science consensus, and that this doubt is enough to justify inaction. The author makes this abundantly clear in a comment, stating that “anyone wanting to spend billions of dollars based on their ‘consensus opinion’ is an alarmist.”
If a doctor tells a football player that he’ll die if he has 2 more concussions, and different doctor tells him that he’ll die with just 1 more concussion, the disagreement doesn’t mean the “science is not settled” as to whether continuing to play football poses a risk to the player’s life. Similarly, pointing out uncertainty on the extent of warming we’ll see is not grounds to conclude we don’t have enough certainty to take action.
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WAG (06:29:33) :
When we talk about climate science, we’re ultimately trying to decide what we should DO: pass legislation or do more of the same.
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WAG – You hit the nail on the head there. Doing something in this case carries a huge cost. It has already cost the country 150 new coal plant, an aluminum plant, and that is just a small part of the cost already. New climate-change based legislation will cost much more than that. The science has to be dead certain that we will have catastrophic warming before we take any action. We have lots better things to do with the money that is lost to climate-change initiatives like solar and wind and all the other stuff that goes with it. And we need the energy to run our economy and ensure our safety. The science MUST be certain!!
WAG (06:29:33) :
>>When we talk about climate science, we’re ultimately trying to decide what we should DO: pass legislation or do more of the same. The implication of this post is clear: uncertainty means we should do nothing.<<
I'm going to make a wild ass guess that you were indoctrinated by government schools and enjoy making and ass of U and ME.
I'm not going to speak for anyone else here, but you're assuming that I believe that "do nothing" is the only possible alternative when faced with mother Gaia's implacable changes. That couldn't be further from the truth. I believe that humans have advanced far enough in intelligence to adapt to whatever mother Gaia comes up with.
If, as is your evidenceless belief makes you hope, mother Gaia is warming due to human activities, humans can make the appropriate changes to their environment to cope with changes in temperature, sea level, and glacier melt.
If the evidence of cooling temperatures and lack of solar activity are persuasive, mother Gaia is very near to tipping into another ice age, and humans will use the energy sources they've been discovering for millennia to warm themselves in place, and/or transport themselves to more tropical climes.
"Do nothing" is a straw man option. As someone who is attempting to participate in a rational debate, WAG, you should be ashamed of assuming that your opponents all propose it as the counter to tyrannical and economically destructive legislation.
Since the greenhouse carbon dioxide generators I have read about burn either a bit of propane or natural gas to obtain the added carbon dioxide, I am quite certain that this burning increases the temperature within the greenhouse. Carbon dioxide concentrations rose, as did the temperature inside the greenhouse, so the correlation between the increased concentration of carbon dioxide gas and the temperature increase is quite clear.
WAG
If a doctor tells the player that he will die if he has 2 more concussions, and he has had none, what does his statement mean? Your problem is the assumption that the concussion existed in the first place.
Measurements not models rule physics and the hard sciences. Playing games with non-verifiable models is the scientific equivalent of playing video games with the super computers.
In Italy my brother runs a 1.6 Rover on Methane, if he fills the tank with gasoline he pays €68.00 and get about 550km if he fills with Methane he pays €10.00 and gets about the same, like millions of Italians he is a devout Methane man ( his city of 7,000 people has 2 methane distributors )