Physicist Dr. Denis Rancourt, a former professor and environmental science researcher at the University of Ottawa, has officially bailed out of the man-made global warming movement, calling it a ‘corrupt social phenomenon’.
He writes this in an essay on science trust issues plus adds this powerful closing passage about climate science:
And there is a thorough critique of the science as band wagon trumpeting and interested self-deception [4]. Climategate only confirms what should be obvious to any practicing scientist: That science is a mafia when it’s not simply a sleeping pill.
Now he thinks that fossil fuel burning isn’t a problem of significance based on the scale. Excerpts below.
Is the burning of fossil fuel a significant planetary activity?
by Denis G. Rancourt
This essay was first posted on the Activist Teacher blog.
After all, the Earth is a planet. Is even the presence of humans significant on the rough and diverse thin surface of this planet?
We certainly make every effort to see ourselves as significant on this spinning ball in space. We like to point out that the lights from our cities can be seen from our extra-atmospheric “spaceships” at night and that we have deforested continents and reduced the populations of large wild mammals and of fishes but is all this really significant in the planetary web known as the biosphere?
INSIGNIFICANCE OF FOSSIL FUEL BURNING ENERGY RELEASE
The present (2010) historic maximum of anthropogenic (caused by humans) fossil fuel burning is only 8% or so of global primary production (GPP) (both expressed as kilograms of carbon per year, kg-C/y). GPP is the rate at which new biomass (living matter) is produced on the whole planet. And of course all biomass can in principle be considered fuel that could be burned with oxygen (O2) to produce CO2 gas, H2O water, energy, and an ash residue.
This shows the extent to which anthropogenic energy production from fossil fuel burning is small in comparison to the sun’s energy delivery to Earth, since biomass primary production results from the sun’s energy via photosynthesis.
…
In summary, the total amount of post-industrial fossil fuel burned to date (and expressed as kilograms of carbon) represents less than 1% of the global bio-available carbon pools.
More importantly, bio-available carbon is a minor constituent of the Earth’s surface environment and one that is readily buffered and exchanged between compartments without significant consequences to the diversity and quantity of life on the planet. The known history of life on Earth (over the last billions of years) is unambiguous on this point.
…
This ocean acidification side show on the global warming science bandwagon, involving major nation research centers and international collaborations, is interesting to compare with the 1970s-1980s hoax of boreal forest lake acidification. [1][2]
More importantly, scientists know virtually nothing about the dynamic carbon exchange fluxes that occur on all the relevant time and lengths scales to say anything definitive about how atmospheric CO2 arises and is exchanged in interaction with the planet’s ecological systems. We are barely at the point of being able to ask intelligent questions.
…
For left progressives to collaborate with First World governments that practice global extortion and geopolitical wars in order to pass carbon schemes to undemocratically manage and control the developments of non-First-World communities and sovereign states is obscene, racist, and cruelly cynical.
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Here’s a video interview:
Tim Clark says:
September 21, 2010 at 1:15 pm
Cooler water absorbs more CO2. Hmmmm, is that your point?
Even warmer water absorbs more CO2 if you increase the CO2 (partial) pressure in the atmosphere, which is what happened by the emissions…
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
September 21, 2010 at 6:13 am
“That humans are not the only cause of the increase easely can be falsified, if the measured increase in the atmosphere was larger than the calculated emissions. As long as that is not the case, the emissions are the sole cause. It is that simple.”
Okay. Then by that logic it’s just as simple that anthropogenic CO2 emissions each year are 3% of all CO2 emissions and natural emissions & sinks which are 97% of the show could easily vary by that much or much over decadal timescales. The tail doesn’t wag the dog.
Scott Ramsdell says: September 20, 2010 at 9:51 am
Hate to disabuse you Scott but that pair of pics was cherry picked. 2002 didn’t fit the anthropogenic message. Have a look (scroll down to near the bottom). Ozone fluctuation is at least partly natural and the mechanism is IIRC largely known or at least suspected. As with CO2 “warming”, the question is how much is natural?
@Engelbeen
Law dome data shows a 20 year period, 1928-1948, with no statistical increase in CO2.
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/law/law2006.xls
Presuambly fossil fuel consumption kept right on growing during those years so what changed to account for it?
What explains that?
Ferdinand Engelbeen,
Thanks for your reply on the last thread, where I still see data disagreements especially with recent data compared with older/proxy data.
Anyway moving on to the reason why the claim by using ice core data for 1c rise in ocean temperature outgasses 8ppmv is wrong because the planet using more accurate methods show not to be. In fact using ENSO an an example shows this value is far less then the actual values of regions of the oceans warming nowadays.
The ENSO with a region about 30 times smaller than the world oceans, with just a couple of dregrees centrigrade increase causes half measured rise of 4ppmv claimed above. Therefore if this region warmed just 1c would expect a outgassing of 2ppmv.
The problem being this area is about 30 times smaller than the surface of the ocean so if all this area warmed 1c we would expect outgassing of 60ppmv. (maybe be even higher because the tropics would release the least CO2 per 1c rise) This is far higher than the first value quoted and a true accurate realistic value that the planet shows, not a inaccurate proxy that is crude and supporting it because it on the side of our beliefs.
I’m sorry scientific evidence shows the oceans should and can outgass far more then estimates from dodgy proxy values given. Hence, ignoring a lot of outgassing from the oceans.
Here’s a (serious) question for the statistician and math PhDs.
Lets say I have a lot of data relating to two different variables (that might be related). I have tons of this data maybe 150 years worth or more. So much data, that I ran out of some place to store it; if you can imagine that; so I threw a lot of it away.
Anyhow you get my point; I have a lot of data; not just a flash in the pan.
So I plot a scatter plot of these two sets of data to try and see if they are indeed related.
Then using whatever procedure you chaps think is appropriate, I try to see if these data fit a straight line of the form:-
y = m. x + c
Well that would seem to be the simplest thing to try.
So I get a straight line as described but there’s a problem. The value I get for ( m ) seems to have a range of possible values ranging from say (m1) to say (3m1). Now I don’t know why that is even possible but that’s the way it is; maybe it depends on who is using what method to get the straight line. God knows what the range of values for (c) could be; but (m) has a 3:1 range.
Now the question is very simple; given the previous information; what is the confidence level that in fact this enormous set of data is in fact properly representable by ANY straight line.
And a corollary would be; if I chose to take some definable mathematical function of either or maybe both of the variables (separate functions), and plotted a straight line graph as described; what would be my confidence level that those mathematical functions of my variables were the correct ones to describe that data ?
In case this might seem Off Topic; it’s not.
The 150 odd years of data are for global temperatures (observations) and atmospheric CO2 abundance; and the concensus of Scientific opinion is that one of these two data sets is proportional to the logarithm of the other; so I should be able to plot log of the other against one, and get a straight line; except the slope of that line is uncertain within a 3:1 range.
So how is it that people are quite convinced that the correct straight line relationship, is a logarithmic one; except the slope of that line is not known better than a 3:1 range.
And as I said earlier; with my limited math skills; I have no idea how you get a 3:1 range of slope for a best straight line fit for a scatter plot of two vaiables; but I am willing to learn how that is done.
A corollary would be; WHY DOESN’T THIS SEEM TO BOTHER ANYBODY BUT ME ?
“”” Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
September 21, 2010 at 1:40 pm
George E. Smith says:
September 21, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
Can you comment on this paper Ferdinand. I’ve been aware of it since it first appeared. Do you know of any followup information on this information.
It is possible that the increase in certain parts of the earth of vegetation growth encompasses the releases of CO2 in the same area. But I think that the time frame in this case was rather short. “””
Now I thought that CO2 had a 200 year residence time; and this paper dates from 1998.
So how could the situation have altereed very much since 1998; we certainly haven’t had any dramatic changes in emission rates over that time frame.
Bart says:
September 21, 2010 at 1:36 pm
Ferdinand,
If you filter out the variability, you will see a clear deceleration. Or, if you are not familiar with designing and implementing filters, perhaps you can just do a 2nd order polynomial curve fit. What curvature do you get?
With a second order poly: some decelleration; with a third order: an accelleration. With a 3 or 5-years moving average a small decelleration…
Hardly important, compared to the dip caused by the 1991 Pinatubo eruption and hardly important for the increase itself: still 2 ppmv/year (with emissions still around 4 ppmv/year).
“But most of the recent organics are recycled within a decade or so.”
Source? What are the error bars? Why do you trust the source?
I have read it somewhere: some 50% of all vegetation (leaves and stems) is recycled within one year, the rest within a decade, except the part that is more permanently stored. Can be deduced by the fact that almost all CO2 captured by vegetation returns within a year (quantity and d13C levels over the seasons).
“All we know is that nature as a whole is a net sink for CO2…”
You do not, in fact, know that. What you know is that your model for natural influences as a whole is a net sink.
What do you have with models? I have no model. I simply substract two knowns: emissions and increase in the atmosphere for each year, the difference is what nature did that year. The difference is calculated from inventories and observations, nothing modelled. 50 years long: a net sink. Simple mass balance, what else?
“…but in this case both are slightly exponential…”
Saying they are “slightly exponential” only sounds like it conveys more information than “they have the same curvature sign.” It’s really not as portentous as you imagine. The odds of finding two such similarly progressing signals at random are about 50/50.
I have seen a lot of cycles in nature and a lot of variability. The possibility that two curves in nature match each other with 99.66% ánd without showing much variability simply is zero. The possibility that there is a natural cause of the increase of CO2, without much variability, which follows the cumulative CO2 emissions with such an exact ratio is zero. In comparison, the temperature – CO2 increase shows a normal natural variability and a lack of causation, as a change in temperature of halve the range has little influence on CO2 levels, while the full range should give a huge influence. That contradicts each other.
Dave Springer says:
September 21, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Okay. Then by that logic it’s just as simple that anthropogenic CO2 emissions each year are 3% of all CO2 emissions and natural emissions & sinks which are 97% of the show could easily vary by that much or much over decadal timescales. The tail doesn’t wag the dog.
No, as the 97% are not “emissions” but only part of a cycle. The observed variability of this cycle is only halve what the human emissions show…
Dave Springer says:
September 21, 2010 at 3:13 pm
Law dome data shows a 20 year period, 1928-1948, with no statistical increase in CO2.
The dip is somewhat at the later side (1945-1950), but one need to take into account that the accuracy of the Law Dome ice core is around 1.2 ppmv (1 sigma), and between different ice cores about +/- 3 ppmv.
George E. Smith says:
September 21, 2010 at 3:39 pm
Now I thought that CO2 had a 200 year residence time; and this paper dates from 1998.
So how could the situation have altereed very much since 1998; we certainly haven’t had any dramatic changes in emission rates over that time frame.
It is a lot more difficult to measure CO2 fluxes over land than background CO2 levels far from sources and sinks. Flux measurements are done with tall towers (200-400 m height) with intakes at different heights. The CO2 level differences give an idea about the CO2 flow in/out the vegetation and/or other sources and sinks in a large area below the tower.
But that is partly based on models about the vertical and horizontal mixing of CO2 with different wind speeds, etc. In the begin years of the measurements, these models might have been far off, nowadays better, I don’t know. I only know that flux measurements are not easy…
Matt G says:
September 21, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Ferdinand Engelbeen,
Thanks for your reply on the last thread, where I still see data disagreements especially with recent data compared with older/proxy data.
Anyway moving on to the reason why the claim by using ice core data for 1c rise in ocean temperature outgasses 8ppmv is wrong because the planet using more accurate methods show not to be. In fact using ENSO an an example shows this value is far less then the actual values of regions of the oceans warming nowadays.
The ice core temperature – CO2 releationship of 8 ppmv/°C is based on a temperature proxy, which is the result of temperature changes of most of the SH oceans. The current 4 ppmv/°C changes around the trend are based on a good relationship between satellite based temperature changes and CO2 increase rate. Thus of most of the globe, not only the ENSO region. ENSO events indeed influence the whole global temperature, but it is the latter which shows the relationship.
Further the solubility curve of CO2 in the oceans only shows some 16 ppmv/°C change, not including changes in biolife with higher temperatures and changes in land vegetation, which are opposite to the ocean changes for CO2. All together, the 8 ppmv/°C will not be far off, even not today, for the CO2 changes as result of temperature changes.
pCO2 from different regions can be extremely divers: near the equator, pCO2(aq) is 750 microatm, thus if that regio was the leading factor, then we could have 750 ppmv in the atmosphere. But at the other end near the poles, the pCO2(aq) is only 150 microatm. The net result is a continuous flow of CO2 between the equator and poles and an average pCO2 which is slightly higher in the atmosphere at 390 ppmv than in the ocean surface.
@Engelbeen
Unless you’re looking at a different dataset than me 1928 and 1948 are almost identical as are all the years in between. While the absolute error in any one year might be off by 1% the trend should not be unless the experiment was so sloppily done it couldn’t achieve better accuracy from one test to the next. You have not explained a thing in your response.
97% certainly ARE emissions as well as “part of the cycle”. Manmade emissions are “part of the cycle” no more an no less. CO2 is CO2 no matter what source sources it or what sink sinks it. The carbon cycle is 97% natural and anthropogenic activities ostensibly adds 3% on the emission side annually without adding anything on the sink side. This is, more or less, in IPCC AR4 which has a nice diagram showing the gigatons of carbon coming and going from each source and sink.
I still have serious concerns about validity of simple Ferdinand’s model of A=B+C-D complexity. But in any case the origin of CO2 is a moot question, because the global warming signature of the alleged radiative imbalance is missing. Stratosphere cooling and polar amplification aside, there are two more “burning issues” with this signature.
Denis G. Rancourt mentions “lake acidification” hoax. I tried to look this subject up, and all I found was about acidification due to sulfur compounds and other non-CO2 related stuff. The warmists frequently hang on “CO2 leads to ocean acidification” issue. But the ocean is vast and deep, measuring means are scarce, so the “global estimate” does not look overly convincing. At the same time one might think that inner lakes have much less mass, yet their drainage basins are substantial. Therefore, if the cause of acidification in oceans is the excess CO2 in air, then lakes (say, Caspian Sea, Aral, others) must be “acidifying” like hell. I found no literature about vast acidification of lakes due to CO2.
Likewise, it is kind of accepted in climatoilogy that ocean warming must be much better indicator (integrator) of AGW, but same difficulties in measurements do exist. At the same time, inner lakes are less deep and have much less mass than deep oceans. Yet the runoff waters flowing along their basins must be exposed to the same “excess of insolation” versus “deficit of OLR”. Therefore, on average, all inner lakes must warm up much faster than deep oceans, in inverse proportion of their (smaller) water mass prorated to the area of their basin. What is this factor? 10X? 100X? Did any inner lake warm up to 10C over last century? Obviously not. Therefore, I have a very big suspicion that theoretical estimations of “radiative forcings” due to well-mixed GH gases are seriously off, and this is the root cause of the entire “climate disruption” controversy.
Once again, I am leaving aside arguments I feel will lead nowhere. I make this disclaimer because some people have suggested that, when I have moved on from previous explanations in other fora which were not making headway, they thought I was conceding the point.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
September 21, 2010 at 3:47 pm
“What do you have with models? I have no model.”
Your model is everything of which you have taken consideration.
“The possibility that two curves in nature match each other with 99.66% ánd without showing much variability simply is zero. “
Nonsense. They don’t match nearly that well. We went over this with Willis’ analysis way back when. Not only do they not match all that well over lower frequencies, but they share essentially no commonality in the higher frequency realm. You are using statistical methods which are not up to this task. You need more sophisticated tools.
Some of the text Anthony quotes is remarkable —
// Is even the presence of humans significant on the rough and diverse thin surface of this planet?
[…]
The present (2010) historic maximum of anthropogenic (caused by humans) fossil fuel burning is only 8% or so of global primary production (GPP) (both expressed as kilograms of carbon per year, kg-C/y). GPP is the rate at which new biomass (living matter) is produced on the whole planet. //
So. An environmentalist who thinks we have no significant effect on the environment.
As for the second, we are talking not just about “primary production” but the carbon cycle.
Consider this analogy ”
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.”
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1849
Or See a recent exchange on this point. [at 12:30 Ian Rivlin GP] before which the recently featured
Janet Thompson also makes an appearance.
Paul Birch – no, you can’t have it both ways. The oceans are a net sink of CO2, not a net source. And they also show a declining fraction of 13C, just as the atmosphere does. You clearly didn’t know that, or you wouldn’t have made your incorrect statements about isotope ratios. Scientists, though, have known it for several decades.
George E. Smith says:
September 21, 2010 at 3:33 pm
A corollary would be; WHY DOESN’T THIS SEEM TO BOTHER ANYBODY BUT ME ?
My question would be why do you expect to get an exact CO2/temperature log correlation. That correlation may show up if all other variables remained fixed, i.e. they didn’t change. There are also any possible lags to consider. Natural fluctuations due to e.g. ENSO, PDO, solar (~0.1 deg over a cycle) etc but these effects tend to be cyclical, i.e. there is no long term trend. If we consider the last 60-70 years (suppposedly the length of the PDO cycle) then the temperature rise peak-to peak is ~0.5 deg. CO2 has gone up frpm ~310 ppm to ~390 ppm. Using the IPCC calculation
CO2 Forcing = 5.35*ln(390/310) = ~1.2 w/m2
So 1.2 w/m2 has resulted in a 0.5 deg rise in temperature. A forcing of 3.7 w/m2 should result from a CO2 doubling which implies a warming of ~1.5 deg C, i.e. at the bottom of the range specified by the IPCC. The point is the rise will not be linear. It will be slower at some times and faster at others. It is the long term end result that counts.
The notion that the global ocean does nothing but absorb CO2 is ludicrous. Surface temperature varies by 30C in general from equator to pole and the oceanic conveyor belt transports water across the divide. As well the deep ocean due to low temperature and high pressure holds a far greater concentration of dissolved CO2. In point of fact liquid (pure) CO2 droplets have been observed at oceanic ridges where new crust emerges from underwater volcanoes (the Ring of Fire).
While in any one year the net of emission and absorption by the ocean may be a positive or negative number the difference is only a tiny amount of the whole annual exchange. When we say that anthropogenic CO2 is only a small fraction (roughly 3%) of total annual emissions that is a true statement. Moreover, total annual emission is only a tiny fraction of the total biologically available carbon. The author of the OP is quite correct in this regard.
RW says:
September 22, 2010 at 12:44 am
“Paul Birch – no, you can’t have it both ways. The oceans are a net sink of CO2, not a net source. And they also show a declining fraction of 13C, just as the atmosphere does. You clearly didn’t know that, or you wouldn’t have made your incorrect statements about isotope ratios. Scientists, though, have known it for several decades.”
The Earth does “have it both ways”. The oceans are both sources and sinks. CO2 is continually moving between air and oceans in all directions, as well as between the oceans and other reservoirs, such as carbonate and organic deposits on the sea floor. The oceans are not a single entity doing only one thing; they are a highly complex system that cannot be understood simply by looking at an assumed “net” figure.
In point of fact, it is not even known for sure that the oceans are a net sink from the atmosphere. They probably are, most of the time, since they are a continuing net source for the bottom ooze, which this material has to be come from somewhere; but it is not certain. Once one considers CO2 from sub-sea volcanoes and tectonic boundaries, as well as organics, carbonates and reduced carbon washed in from the land, it is quite possible that they are a net source to the atmosphere. There are other natural sinks, magnitude unknown, which may dominate, such as the sequestration of biomass by infilling of post-glacial lakes, and the sequestration of reduced organic carbon as finely divided particles throughout the soil and continental crust (which alone contains tens of thousands of times more carbon than the atmosphere).
“which this material has to be come from somewhere”
Sorry, fumbled edit. Read, “which material has to come from somewhere”.
“it is quite possible that they are a net source to the atmosphere”
No, it isn’t. Isotopic tracers demonstrate that over the last couple of centuries, there has been a net transfer of CO2 from the biosphere and fossil fuels to the atmosphere and oceans. You can’t choose your own facts, I’m afraid.
“In point of fact, it is not even known for sure that the oceans are a net sink from the atmosphere”
In fact, it is known for sure. Again, isotopic tracers show this. I’m afraid you’re just making stuff up.
The Rocky Mountains, eh, Jim G? Would that be the same Rocky Mountains where human farming activity destroyed the high valley micro-habitats that were used as havens by the Rocky Mountain locust, exterminating that species (as far as we know) and ending the periodic locust plagues that swept the American West in the 19th century?
Which is not a bad thing, I might add. Not all human effects on the “natural order” are bad. However, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
“”” John Finn says:
September 22, 2010 at 2:00 am
George E. Smith says:
September 21, 2010 at 3:33 pm
A corollary would be; WHY DOESN’T THIS SEEM TO BOTHER ANYBODY BUT ME ?
My question would be why do you expect to get an exact CO2/temperature log correlation. That correlation may show up if all other variables remained fixed, i.e. they didn’t change. There are also any possible lags to consider. Natural fluctuations due to e.g. ENSO, PDO, solar (~0.1 deg over a cycle) etc but these effects tend to be cyclical, i.e. there is no long term trend. If we consider the last 60-70 years (suppposedly the length of the PDO cycle) then the temperature rise peak-to peak is ~0.5 deg. CO2 has gone up frpm ~310 ppm to ~390 ppm. Using the IPCC calculation
CO2 Forcing = 5.35*ln(390/310) = ~1.2 w/m2
So 1.2 w/m2 has resulted in a 0.5 deg rise in temperature. A forcing of 3.7 w/m2 should result from a CO2 doubling which implies a warming of ~1.5 deg C, i.e. at the bottom of the range specified by the IPCC. The point is the rise will not be linear. It will be slower at some times and faster at others. It is the long term end result that counts. “””
Well John, I don’t. But then I am not the one claiming that there is such a correlation. It is embodied in the very description of
” CLIMATE SENSITIVITY ”
Apparently invented by the late Dr Stephen Schneider of Stanford University; and apparently taught to every student of “Climate Science” as being gospel truth.
I DON’T need a PhD in mathematics to understand that assigning a fixed increment (in mean global surface Temperature) to a DOUBLING of some other variable (Atmospheric CO2 abundance) , uniquely defines a logarithmic (to base 2) relationship.
No other mathematical relationship has that unique property. Countless peer reviewed climate journal papers have repeatedly claimed the relationship is logarithmic; and the IPCC seems to assign a range of 3.0 +/-50% deg C to the constant of proportionality.
Now of course I wouldn’t expect the observational data to exactly match any such formula; such physical quantities can never be measured exactly; and in the case of the earth’s global mean surface Temperature; we have no way to measure that at all; so of course I don’t expect an exact fit.
But so long as purveyors of the concensus science of climatology keep on insisting that such a logarithmically related “Climate Sensitivity” even exists; I would reasonably expect that they can prove from some sort of observational data, that such a relstionship is more likely to be true than some competing relationship; such as just for example an ordinary linear; straight line fit. Or would the data better fit an equation of the form:- y = exp (-1/x^2) for example.
The well known graphical representation going back to the Pre-Cambrian 600 million years ago; which I cited above shows absolutely no sign of any single valued continuous functional relationship between Temperature and CO2 (proxies). There are intervals of many millions of years during which totally wild changes in CO2 occur with absolutely no change in Temperature at all.
As for intervals with small changes (in Temperature / CO2) such as you gave in your example of a CO2 change from 310 to 390 ppm, common sense tells us that over such a small change (north polar CO2 changes 18 ppm in just 5 months every year) a logarithmic relationship would be quite indistingu9ishable from a linear relationship; specially given the noisiness of the data; and also a simple linear interpolation would suffice to estimate the change due to the Stafan-Boltzmann 4th power relationship between “Forcing” in Watts per square metre, and global Temperature change (roughly).
Now in your calculation based evidently on IPCC proclamations, the constant of proportionality is given as 5.35 presumably Watts per metre squared, per factor of (e) change in CO2. That 5.35 number implies somewhat better than a 3:1 knowledge of the proportionality relationship.
In any case; it is well known from satellite measures of TSI over about three complete solar sunspot cycles, that TSI changes by about 0.1% of roughly 1.3 W/m^2 peak to peak; and that can be calculated to result in about a 0.07 deg C change in the equilibrium Temperature at earth’s orbit.
So how does the IPCC justify a claim that a change of 1.2 W/m^2 should result in a 0.5 deg C increase in Temperature; that’s seven times what normal radiation laws say is physically possible.
I don’t need a PhD in Physics to understand that the (atmospheric) heating due to CO2 (or other so called green house gas) is driven as a starting point, by the radiant emittance of LWIR thermal radiation from the earth’s surface due to its Temperature and spectral radiant emissivities. And over the globe the total radiant emittance can vary more than an order of magnitude due to local surface Temperature differences; which means that one would have to perform some appropriate global sampling observational process to come up with some sort of global average for the atmospheric heating effect expected from the presence of CO2 or other GHG in the atmospehre.
No such data exists as far as I can tell. the AGW proponents don’t even acknowledge that “Climate Sensitivity” should even be a function of surface Temperatures; which are the primary source for the LWIR radiation that causes the “green house effect”.
When those folks say that the mean global surface temperature changes with the logarithm of the atmospheric CO2 abundance at a rate of 3 +/- 1.5 Deg C per doubling; that to me means going from 280 ppm to 560 ppm gives the same Temperature rise as going from 1 ppm to 2 ppm.
And if that IS NOT true; then they should quit saying that those variables are related by a logarithmic relationship; they aren’t; and that concensus science can have no credibility so long as they insist on maintaining this myth of “Climate Sensitivity”.
The 600 million years of proxy data that is so well known; shows that there is absolutely no relationship between the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and the mean global surface Temperature of planet earth.
Quite apart from the lack of experimentally observed actual data showing a logarithmic relationship; there also is no physical theoretical basis for any such relationship to exist in the first place.
So stop trying to peddle “Climate Sensitivity” as if it was a fundamental Physical constant akin to the velocity of light.