Estimated CO2 Warming Cut By 65%
Submitted by Doug L. Hoffman, Resilient Earth via ICECAP
Any competent researcher involved with the science behind climate change will admit that CO2 is far from the only influence on global climate. It has long been known that short-lived greenhouse gases and black-carbon aerosols have contributed to past climate warming. Though the IPCC and their fellow travelers have tried to place the blame for global warming on human CO2 emissions, decades of lies and erroneous predictions have discredited that notion. For anyone still clinging to the CO2 hypothesis, a short perspective article on the uncertainty surrounding climate change in Nature Geoscience has put paid to that notion. It states that not only did other factors account for 65% of the radiative forcing usually attributed to carbon dioxide, but that it is impossible to accurately determine climate sensitivity given the state of climate science.
In “Short-lived uncertainty?” Joyce E. Penner et al. note that several short-lived atmospheric pollutants – such as methane, tropospheric ozone precursors and black-carbon aerosols – contribute to atmospheric warming while others, particularly scattering aerosols, cool the climate. Figuring out exactly how great the impacts of these other forcings are can radically change the way historical climate change is interpreted. So great is the uncertainty that the IPCC’s future climate predictions, which are all based on biased assumptions about climate sensitivity, are most certainly untrustworthy. As stated in the article:
It is at present impossible to accurately determine climate sensitivity (defined as the equilibrium warming in response to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations) from past records, partly because carbon dioxide and short-lived species have increased together over the industrial era. Warming over the past 100 years is consistent with high climate sensitivity to atmospheric carbon dioxide combined with a large cooling effect from short-lived aerosol pollutants, but it could equally be attributed to a low climate sensitivity coupled with a small effect from aerosols. These two possibilities lead to very different projections for future climate change.
All truthful climate researchers know these facts, yet publicly the party line is that catastrophic changes are in the offing and CO2 emissions are to blame. The perspective authors argue that only by significantly changing the amounts of these other pollutants and carefully measuring the impact on global climate over a period of several decades will science be able to figure out what is going on. “Following this strategy, we will then be able to disentangle the warming and cooling contributions from carbon dioxide and short-lived pollutants, hence placing much tighter constraints on climate sensitivity, and therefore on future climate projections,” they state. See chart below, enlarged here.
And they said it was all carbon dioxide’s fault.
Most of the factors under discussion have relatively short lifetimes in the atmosphere, several less than two months. We do not know how the relative influences of these various substances (referred to by climate scientists as “species”) may change in a warming climate. It is also not clear how to reduce short-lived species under present conditions but the uncertainties in atmospheric chemistry and physics must be resolved if Earth’s environmental system is to be understood. Again quoting from the paper:
Of the short-lived species, methane, tropospheric ozone and black carbon are key contributors to global warming, augmenting the radiative forcing of carbon dioxide by 65%. Others – such as sulphate, nitrate and organic aerosols – cause a negative radiative forcing, offsetting a fraction of the warming owing to carbon dioxide. Yet other short-lived species, such as nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds, can modify the abundance of both the climate-warming and climate-cooling compounds, and thereby affect climate change.
Quantifying the combined impact of short-lived species on Earth’s radiative forcing is complex. Short-lived pollutants – particularly those with an atmospheric lifetime of less than two months – tend to be poorly mixed, and concentrate close to their sources. This uneven distribution, combined with physical and chemical heterogeneities in the atmosphere, means that the impact of short-lived species on radiative forcing can vary by more than a factor of ten with location or time of emission. The situation is further complicated by nonlinear chemical reactions between short-lived species in polluted areas, as well as by the interactions of clouds with aerosols and ozone. These processes add further uncertainty to the estimates of radiative forcing.
Unfortunately, climate models neither accurately deal with local effects of these pollutants nor are the complex interactions among these substances understood. That not withstanding, the report is clear – CO2 does not account for even a majority of the warming seen over the past century. If other species accounted for 65% of historical warming that leaves only 35% for carbon dioxide. This, strangely enough, is in line with calculations based strictly on known atmospheric physics, calculations not biased by the IPCC’s hypothetical and bastardized “feedbacks.”
Of course, the real reason for the feedbacks was to allow almost all global warming to be attributed to CO2. This, in turn, would open the door for radical social and economic policies, allowing them to be enacted in the name of saving the world from global warming. The plain truth is that even climate scientists know that the IPCC case was a political witch’s brew concocted by UN bureaucrats, NGOs, grant money hungry scientists and fringe activists.
Now, after three decades of sturm und drang over climate policy, the truth has emerged – scientists have no idea of how Earth’s climate will change in the future because they don’t know why it changed in the past. Furthermore, it will take decades of additional study to gain a useful understand climate change. To do this, climate scientists will need further funding. Too bad the climate science community squandered any public trust it may have had by trying to frighten people with a lie.
Be safe, enjoy the interglacial and stay skeptical. Read full post here.
Icecap Note: Whatsmore, this totally ignores the other external and internal global factors like solar, ocean multidecadal cycles related to variations in the thermohaline circulation or ocean gyres.
=============================================================
Here is the paper at Nature Geosciences:
Short-lived uncertainty?
Joyce E. Penner1, Michael J. Prather2, Ivar S. A. Isaksen3,4, Jan S. Fuglestvedt4, Zbigniew Klimont5 & David S. Stevenson6
- University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2143, USA
- University of California, Irvine, California 92697, USA
- University of Oslo, PO Box 1022, Blindern, 0315 Oslo, Norway
- Center for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO) Oslo, PO Box 1129 Blindern, 0318 Oslo, Norway
- International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Schlossplatz 1, 2361 Laxenburg, Austria
- School of Geosciences, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3JN, UK.
Correspondence to: Joyce E. Penner1 e-mail: penner@umich.edu
Abstract
Short-lived greenhouse gases and black-carbon aerosols have contributed to past climate warming. Curbing their emissions and quantifying the forcing by all short-lived components could both mitigate climate change in the short term and help to refine projections of global warming.
Earth’s climate can only be stabilized by bringing carbon dioxide emissions under control in the twenty-first century. But rolling back anthropogenic emissions of several short-lived atmospheric pollutants that lead to warming — such as methane, tropospheric ozone precursors and black-carbon aerosols — could significantly reduce the rate of climate warming over the next few decades1, 2, 3.
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Gary Pearse says:
October 12, 2010 at 2:12 pm
If CO2 has a less than “theoretical” effect, perhaps the reason is that near-ground heating causes greater convection and heat escapes the planet by air lifting to an altitude where the IR can make it out.
It would take a really big, and really tall greenhouse to test that.
OK, so CO2 causes only 35% of global warming, but it causes 100% of climate disruption, so there!
And the seas are turning to acid! Crops will wither! The atmosphere will boil! The–
(have to stop; foaming at the mouth now)
“Maybe a huge plastic greenhouse”
That is a box.
How about a circle 5 miles in radius in the middle of the Sahara desert.
During a calm week.
With a 30 three mile high tethered balloons evenly spaced around the perimeter, and connected by lateral cables.
With a temperature, wind speed and direction system every 500 feet up each of the 3 mile high tethers.
Wait and measure from when the rising thermals start till midnight.
Next day, in the morning when the rising thermals start.
Then slowly release 1/2 cubic mile of CO2 from the center of the circle.
Wait and measure till midnight.
Next day, 1 cubic miles of CO2.
Etc.
The earth is not a closed box.
This could actually be done, today, without computers.
Is this paper one more example of the body of science drifting slowly away from the AGW by CO2 settled/consensus science?
Paper by paper, blog by blog, step by step, inch by inch, slowly it turns . . . . .
(apology to the Three Stooge http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yJBhzMWJCc )
John
This Abstract
does not, to my ignorant eyes, jive with this comment from Hoffman
IOW to me, the paper looks as rabidly CO2-AGW as ever
Kate says:
October 12, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Someone believes in all this Globaloney:
Google invests in $5 billion wind farm project
That’s why they (google ) regularly visit my website and have tried to take it down ( they did for a few days recently saying the blog was withdrawn). There are powerful interests at work here and we have to defeat them.
http://www.palmerston-north.info
Gary Pearse says:
October 12, 2010 at 2:12 pm
I can’t accept that an experiment can not be done to quantify the affect of increasing CO2. Maybe a huge plastic greenhouse in which various amounts of CO2 could be added. There must be someone here that can advise on what kind 0f practical experiment might be devised. Delta T would be determined from delta P. Lack of imagination is not a healthy scientific trait.
————-Reply:
What you’d be seeing with a huge plastic greenhouse would be the effects of the plastic enclosing the structure, not the variable amounts of CO2. And while all sorts of experiments have been devised, so far they’ve done a very poor job of modeling the real world. (“Climate scientists” have pretty much given up on that and that’s why computer models have become their predictive mainstay.)
Gary Pearse says:
October 12, 2010 at 2:12 pm
I can’t accept that an experiment can not be done to quantify the affect of increasing CO2.
We’re in the midst of one such experiment….
The paper: http://xweb.geos.ed.ac.uk/~dstevens/publications/penner_ngeo10.pdf
“Maybe a huge plastic greenhouse”
and add a CO2 detector at each temperature station.
HenryP… I cannot believe that no mention is made about the increase in humidity that may have an effect and which seems to be happening on a worldwide scale (although I have no figures for this – can anyone help me out here?)
Henry – Very odd, especially as the increase in humidity has been observed, quantified and the associated feedback is as predicted by the models…
“The existence of a strong and positive water-vapor feedback means that projected business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions over the next century are virtually guaranteed to produce warming of several degrees Celsius. The only way that will not happen is if a strong, negative,
and currently unknown feedback is discovered somewhere in our climate system.”
Dessler et al 2008 GRL.
Like I said, you do not have to deny that C02 warms the earth. That position just puts you against known science. The strongest scepticism accepts the warming properties of C02, and focuses instead on the sensitivity.
This is an argument WITHIN their camp. tactically, its best to attack a position from within. just saying.
That way you do not have to appeal to speculation about about the sun, the oceans, galactic gremlins. Its simple: C02 warms, how much is the question.
“Earth’s climate can only be stabilized by…” turning Earth into a dead planet.
The only ‘stable’ climate is the climate of a dead planet.
The same goes for life. ‘Stable’ life is ex-life, life wot has shuffled off this mortal coil, life wot has f***(etc) snuffed it.
Living life is continually growing, dying off, regrowing, propagating etc. It is not ‘stable’.
It changes and changes continually.
It is only when it stops changing, can we recognise that it is dead.
From this it follows that advocates of unchanging stability are members of a death cult.
Correction:
It is only when it stops changing, that we can recognise that it is dead.
The “65%” value cited in this peer reviewed paper is attributed to:
Forster, P. et al. in IPCC Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis (eds Solomon, S. et al.) 129–234 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007).
It “augments” (or is in adition to) the established forcing values of CO2
In other words: to conclude that the value of CO2 as a climate forcing factor has been “effectively cut by 65%” or even 0.0001% for that matter, is total fiction.
Doug L. Hoffman’s “piece” does accurately reflect many valid points about the current state of climate science, but to conclude that the relative effect of CO2 as a climate forcing factor has been reduced by anything more than 0% by Penne et all is 100% without merit.
Please adjust your BS detectors accordingly.
——————-
Steven Mosher,
I do not think that is quite right. In the total picture of all processes in the Earth System, you cannot say what you just said. Only by you theoretically isolating an element (CO2 effect) can you say that. What you said does not mean the total effect of all processes in the Earth System must be the same as CO2 effect in theoretical isolation.
NOTE: Incidentally, someday soon we should delve into the Popperian realm. He wasn’t quite correct on his philosophy of science thingy; his idea of the falsifiability thing was in the wrong sequence within the broader scientific process. It is an important part but not the definable part of science and he put it in the wrong place within the scientific process. I look forward to that at a good moment in the future.
John
I don’t think “augmenting by 65%” means that 65% of the effect is due to non-CO2 factors. Mathematically, it would mean multiplying the effect of CO2 by a factor of 1.65. This would mean that CO2 still is the dominant factor.
I don’t drink the AGW koolaid, but it’s a good idea to be accurate when discussing these things.
Latimer Alder says:
October 12, 2010 at 2:47 pm
If CO2 was any good for us, why would we breathe it out – and not in?
Therefore CAGW exists. QED.
Too feed the plants, of course. And their waste (oxygen) in turn is what we need to live. It’s all a very neat little system.
Well they are certainly correct that it is impossible to measure climate sensitivity; its seems that it is almost impossible to even define it. A straight forward mathematical definition; that agrees with the climatism 101 dogma of “Climate Sensitivity” (cs) would be:-
T2 – T1 = (cs).log2(CO2,2/CO2,1)
Now isn’t that Climate Sensitivity exactly as was apparently invented by the late Dr Stephen Schneider of Stanford University; a fellow traveller of Paul Erlich and the equally enignmatic John Holdren.
The Ts of course are some rather fuzzily defined mean global temperatures (why not some real place like the surface); and we start off by realizing it is inherently impossible for us to measure that correctly; well at least not on Obama’s science budget; even with Holdren and Chu both voting for it.
And who knows where one is supposed to measure the CO2 abundance; since it is now known to be not well mixed in the atmosphere.
Well it is all somewhat moot anyhow; yes we know that GHGs even including CO2 can transfer energy from the surface to the atmosphere by way of well understood (not necessarily by me) LWIR EM radiation absorption and thermalization. The atmosphere in turn has really no knowledge of the source of that thermal energy. If you are a (serial numbered) N2 molecule of any isotopic persuasion; after you have banged around and nudged elbows with just a half dozen of your nearest neighbors; you have no earthly remembrance of just where that extra thermal energy came from and who brought it to you; nor do you care.
So ok we have the atmosphere a bit warmed. That Nitrogen molecule doesn’t even know; or care whther it was the sunlight that brought that radiant energy to the atmosphere or whether it was a GHG transaction with LWIR from the ground; or whether it was the fruits of conduction and convection from the ground itself.
But getting from a slightly warmed atmosphere; given that somewhere on earth it could be anywhere from as low as -90 deg C to as high as perhaps + 60 deg C to explaining why the sky should be falling is a totally different kettle of fish.
But no; it couldn’t possibly be clouds that control the whole thing could it.
I just got back from a week on Oahu; so flying down and back I actually did some pro bono climate research. Yes it was qualitative to be sure; mostly by eyeball, with only point and shoot camera instrumentation to log data. I took about 300 cloud and sky photographs going down and back in daylight covering about 14-15 dgrees in Latitude change; going from prevailing Westerlies around San Jose CA, to prevailing Easterlies at Oahu; so I must have interracted with one of those Hadley cell gizmos.
We flew at 36,000 feet ; which puts me in outer space just like Dr Roy Spencer’s Satellite cameras that are looking down at 14,000 feet (or izzat 14 km).
I did make one amazing discovery. The sky looks about the same looking down as it it does looking up. At night when you look up you see (scattered) clouds surrounded by space (which is black and doesn’t emit visible light) and embedded in the black space are stars.
In the day time, you can still see the clouds; but you can’t see the space since it doesn’t emit visible light; which is why we call it black. And you can’t see the stars either (naked eye) but you can see Venus, Jupiter and Saturn at times; (IF) you know where to look (exactly; more or less). The problem is the blue scattered sunlight is so bright during daylight looking up, that you can’t see space or the stars; they are simply washed out.
Well it turns out that when you look down from 36,000 feet at night you can see the clouds , but you can’t see the ocean which like space is black and doesn’t emit visible light. The ocean also has stars but they are not self luminous like out in space, so they need to be illuminated; they are wind blown whitecaps.
Well who’d a thunk it; in daylight looking down from 36,000 feet you can see the clouds; but you can’t see the ocean or the stars. The problem is the blue scattered sunlight which is so bright that it washes everything else out. You see exactly the same blue colored sky as you see looking up; and I now have photographic proof of that.
Well my lab technician (AKA the Pilot) was able to adjust our altitude; and when we got near Oahu, I had her go down to a lower level; and she expertly swept our altitiude all the way down to pretty close to zero. The very first ocean star that I saw, I thought might be an offshore fishing boat trolling form Tuna or Marlin; but eventually as the Technician brought us lower the number of stars increased to where they couldn’t possibly be fishing boats; but I still couldn’t see the ocean; the sky blue still washed it out and we maybe were down to under 10,000 feet before I could definitely say I could see the ocean; but of course I was still seeing that blue skylight partially reflected off the ocean; it never ever did go quite black like it really is.
So I can say with some degree of incontrovertibility that the deep ocean truly is black; light goes in and never comes out; but about 2% of the blue skylight reflects back so brightly that you never see the black. My digital P&S recorded this all on silicon; and as soon as I can get it into Photoshop, I can read some pixel numbers to get some highly suspect real data; since my camera has been programmed to make up its own mind about what to show. But I fully expect to beat the 3:1 ratio obligatory Climate Science fudge factor for data collection.
Now I got gazillions of cloud pictures too; but not too many varieties; i’d guess a good mixture of cumulus, and cirrus; but I’m not a Meteorologist like Anthoiny is; so I’ll have to look up the identifications of what I saw and photographed.
Short story is that the thicker the cloud layer or puff ball was; the brighter was the sunlight reflection off the tops. And the very thin diaphanous layer clouds were a dull grey; and completely obscured the blue skylight; even thoguh I could see right through them. Well the often hung just over the top of the powder puffs whcih I could see through the whispy layers; and both of them simply over rode any scattered blue skylight. Maybe I can Photoshop out some ersatz cloud brightness values to get a feeling for albedo shifts; but as I said; more seat of the pants, than precision; but I expect to get at least as good a results as Mann’s tree boring data.
Anyone know if it is possible to apply for a Government research grant post facto or do I have to eat this one by myself.
And it solidified my absolute conviction that there is no type or sort of cloud that can occur anywhere on earth at any altitude and have any kind of morphology; whereby the presence of such cloud, raised the amount of sunlight that reached the earth surface or ocean compared to the amount in the absence of that cloud. I am close to declaring that incontrovertible.
So there it is for you AGW types; given that clouds cannot increae the amount of solar energy that reaches the earth’s surface; and given that the very existence of H2O vapor that is a precursor of clouds, also absorbs a certain amount (maybe up to 20%) of the incoming solar energy (that strikes the water vapor); which then also does not reach the ground (as sunlight); your task is simple should you choose to accept it. How does that same increase in cloud coverage percentage world wide; that persists for some climatically significant period of time; result in a net (positive feedback) surface warming; while it lowers the net solar energy reaching the surface ?
That might have to be a fifth grade science question instead of a fourth grade.
That picture is stupid. On my screen the dimensions of the world are about 1.5 inches by 5.5 inches. To be more accurate, the whole earth’s land surface should be a square about 1.55 inches square and all of our human activities crammed onto half of that square.
Sun. Ocean. That’s about all you need to know and we’re a long way from parameterizing those two factors.
Anthony,
If I really did find the “paper” per my previous post, which someone else also linked to as the paper, which is labeled “Commentary” on its pages, and following the paywall link in the reposted article you find it clearly labeled as “Commentary”, then how can the headline say it is a peer-reviewed study? Is it peer-reviewed commentary which is a study?
(Just trying to get that cleared up soon in case something is off.)
REPLY: When “comments” are submitted to a journal (in lieu of a full paper) it is my understanding that they are also peer reviewed. – Anthony
From 1650 to 1700, the Sun’s output stabilized at approximately 80 Flux. This caused the Earth’s temperature to decline by about 2C. From 1700 until 2005, the Solar output increased (check the Sun Spot number peaks); this is what caused the apparent CO2 warming. Note that the warming also existed before 1850 (pre-industrial).
Note that in the article, the Sun is not mentioned; this is due to the still overall consensus that the Sun’s output is Constant.
This Solar Cycle is proving NOAA wrong. The average Flux is about 80 again. One can figure a drop in temperature (first indication is more ice at the pole) of about 0.1C/2.5 years. Since this Solar minimum has been going on for about 5 years, we have already experience a 0.2C drop in overall temperature. Of course, this has been covered up by the measurement of the Earth’s temperature in Urban Heat Islands (at airports, etc.).
How can ice in the poles increase unless there is less heat? Maybe less heat transport to the poles; not a chance, there is more transport.
Since every Class G2V Star observed is variable, we must be very fortunate that ours is not a variable Star (sarcasm).
Look -> No Sun, no heat! Too much Sun, too much heat!
Several experiments involving recording the reaction of frogs to slowly heated water took place in the 19th century. In 1869, while doing experiments searching for the location of the soul, German physiologist Friedrich Goltz demonstrated that a frog that has had its brain removed will remain in slowly heated water, but his intact frogs attempted to escape the water.[4][15] “Wikipedia”
So the real problem is brain removal!
Yuba Yollabolly says:
“You wanna roll the dice?”
The commonly employed Argumentum ad ignorantium is used to try and blame CO2 for the approaching tipping point — which has zero evidence supporting it. It is rank speculation based on pseudo-science. As Prof Feynman stated, if it doesn’t agree with experiment or observation, it is wrong. That’s why the alarmist crowd shies away from the scientific method like Dracula avoiding sunlight.
The conjecture that a rise in CO2 will cause runaway global warming has been falsified, not least by the planet itself. It should be kept in mind that the anthropogenic contribution to the planet’s natural CO2 emissions is quite small. And CO2 has been almost twenty times higher in the geologic past with no ill effects on the biosphere, and without triggering a climate catastrophe.
Instead of worrying about a harmless and beneficial trace gas, we should be preparing for an event that will happen with almost total certainty: an asteroid or large meteorite hitting the Earth. But it seems that NASA would rather squander its budget to pay for jaunts to fun vacation spots and new supercomputer toys than to prepare for an inevitable, avoidable catastrophe.
Worrying about a tiny trace gas while ignoring absolutely real threats seems more than a little crazy, no?
A paper’s abstract normally contains the gist of the research findings. That being said, this appears to be another “it’s worse than we thought” paper
_____________________________________________________
Abstract
“Short-lived greenhouse gases and black-carbon aerosols have contributed to past climate warming. Curbing their emissions and quantifying the forcing by all short-lived components could both mitigate climate change in the short term and help to refine projections of global warming.
Earth’s climate can only be stabilized by bringing carbon dioxide emissions under control in the twenty-first century. But rolling back anthropogenic emissions of several short-lived atmospheric pollutants that lead to warming — such as methane, tropospheric ozone precursors and black-carbon aerosols — could significantly reduce the rate of climate warming over the next few decades 1, 2, 3. ”
______________________________________________________
Mr. Hoffman states further:
The perspective authors argue that only by significantly changing the amounts of these other pollutants and carefully measuring the impact on global climate over a period of several decades will science be able to figure out what is going on.
“Following this strategy, we will then be able to disentangle the warming and cooling contributions from carbon dioxide and short-lived pollutants, hence placing much tighter constraints on climate sensitivity, and therefore on future climate projections,” they (the paper’s authors) state.
It’s neither worse than we thought nor better than we thought, because we never thought about it in the first place.