Below is the press release (on the web here) from the American Physical Society, responding to the resignation letter of APS fellow Dr. Hal Lewis made public last Friday, October 8th. APS Members Dr. Roger Cohen, Dr. Will Happer, and of course Dr. Hal Lewis have responded in kind, and have asked me to carry their response on WUWT. I’ve gladly obliged, and their inline comments are indented in blue italics in the document below. – Anthony
October 12, 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Tawanda W. Johnson
Press Secretary
APS Physics
529 14th St. NW, Suite 1050
Washington, DC 20045-2065
Phone: 202-662-8702
Fax: 202-662-8711
tjohnson@aps.org
APS Comments on Harold Lewis’ Resignation of his Society Membership
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a recent letter to American Physical Society (APS) President Curtis A. Callan, chair of the Princeton University Physics Department, Harold Lewis, emeritus physics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, announced that he was resigning his APS membership.
In response to numerous accusations in the letter, APS issues the following statement:
There is no truth to Dr. Lewis’ assertion that APS policy statements are driven by financial gain. To the contrary, as a membership organization of more than 48,000 physicists, APS adheres to rigorous ethical standards in developing its statements.
We know that the existing 2007 APS Statement on Climate Change was developed literally over lunch by a few people, after the duly constituted Committee had signed off on a more moderate Statement.
The Society is open to review of its statements if members petition the APS Council – the Society’s democratically elected governing body – to do so.
We have yet to receive a response to our Petition:
http://www.openletter-globalwarming.info/Site/Signatures__APS_Council_Study.html
…delivered last spring and signed by 260+ members and former members, including nearly 100 Fellows, 17 members of national academies and 2 Nobels. Driven largely by the ClimateGate revelations, the Petition asks that the Society conduct an independent study and assessment.
As for democratic membership participation in matters of science, consider the reaction to a grass roots outpouring of APS member opinion on the 2007 APS Statement http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200912/apscouncilors.cfm . “[APS Councilor] was uncomfortable with the idea of a membership-wide referendum on statements. He said that he was concerned that having a membership wide vote on controversial issues could lead to the adoption of scientifically unsound statements.” Evidently physicists should be excluded from inputting on a question of physics; only “physics monks” are entitled to do so ex cathedra .
Dr. Lewis’ specific charge that APS as an organization is benefitting financially from climate change funding is equally false. Neither the operating officers nor the elected leaders of the Society have a monetary stake in such funding.
The chair of the Panel on Public Affairs (POPA) that re-endorsed the 2007 APS Statement on Climate Change sits on the science advisory board of a large international bank http://annualreport.deutsche-bank.com/2009/ar/supplementaryinformation/advisoryboards.html The bank has a $60+ billion Green portfolio, which it wishes to assure investors is safe…not to mention their income from carbon trading. Other members of this board include current IPCC chief Pachauri and Lord Oxburgh, of Climategate exoneration fame. The viability of these banks activities depends on continued concern over CO2 emissions . Then there is the member of the Kleppner Committee (that reviewed the APS 2007 Statement prior to POPA) who served on that committee while under consideration for the position of Chief Scientist at BP. The position had been vacated when Steve Koonin left to take a post in the administration at DOE. Soon after the Kleppner Committee report in late 2009, this committee member took the BP job. BP had previously funded the new Energy Laboratory at Berkeley, which was headed by current Energy Secretary Steve Chu.
Moreover, relatively few APS members conduct climate change research, and therefore the vast majority of the Society’s members derive no personal benefit from such research support.
This does not mention the firm expectation by federal government agencies such as the NAS and the Presidential Science Advisor’s office that the APS will continue to support the huge funding machine that diverts billions of taxpayer dollars into research that must support the alarmist credo. APS has been silent on the documented practice by some climate scientists aimed at preventing opposing research from being published.
On the matter of global climate change, APS notes that virtually all reputable scientists agree with the following observations:
- Carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere due to human activity;
- Carbon dioxide is an excellent infrared absorber, and therefore, its increasing presence in the atmosphere contributes to global warming; and
This passes over the fact that carbon dioxide absorption lines are nearly saturated.
- The dwell time of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is hundreds of years.
Well, it depends on what you mean by “dwell time.” If it is the conventional half life of an impulse loading of carbon dioxide, the statement is wrong – by a lot.. The IPCC’s Bern carbon cycle model http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~joos/model_description/model_description.html gets a 16 year half life. If it is the time for the last molecule to get picked up by a sink, the statement is meaningless. At the very least, the statement is sloppy and hardly befitting a world class scientific society.
On these matters, APS judges the science to be quite clear. However, APS continues to recognize that climate models are far from adequate, and the extent of global warming and climatic disruptions produced by sustained increases in atmospheric carbon loading remain uncertain.
This is much better than the 2007 APS Statement itself. However, the phrase “climate disruptions” is noteworthy because it is the new buzzword recently introduced by Science Advisor John Holdren http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100054012/global-warming-is-dead-long-live-er-global-climate-disruption/ , evidently enabling advocates to assign any unusual weather event to human causes. It is curious that that the APS press release happens to echo this new phrase.
In light of the significant settled aspects of the science, APS totally rejects Dr. Lewis’ claim that global warming is a “scam” and a “pseudoscientific fraud.”
What we have here is a bait and switch. No one is saying that the greenhouse effect itself is a scam. This passage seeks to transfer the ‘scam’ charge from its real target to the trivial. The fraud/scam is to be found in the continual drumbeat that the science is settled; that the effects will be catastrophic; that it requires draconian economic sacrifices to avoid; and that mandates and subsidies for rent-seeking corporations are justified.
Additionally, APS notes that it has taken extraordinary steps to solicit opinions from its membership on climate change. After receiving significant commentary from APS members, the Society’s Panel on Public Affairs finalized an addendum to the APS climate change statement reaffirming the significance of the issue. The APS Council overwhelmingly endorsed the reaffirmation.
Never mind that the Panel on Public Affairs is chaired by an individual whose research funding stream (from BP) depends on continued global warming alarm. And you have to keep your eye on the pea. The dispute was not over the “significance” of the issue; it was over the alarmist nature of the statement. The addendum used more than five times the number of words to try to explain what the original statement meant. Not a good sign that they got it right the first time.
Lastly, in response to widespread interest expressed by its members, the APS is in the process of organizing a Topical Group to feature forefront research and to encourage exchange of information on the physics of climate.
Never mind that the Topical Group was proposed in a petition organized by a group of five members that included Dr. Lewis. Also, the Council has not yet approved a TG; therefore it is not in the process of being “organized.” It is being considered. No formal charter or bylaws have been set down. What we have here is the first attempt to co-opt the TG for PR purposes. This before it has even been approved by the APS Council.
Read the APS Climate Change Statement and Commentary: http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/07_1.cfm.
APS should be very reluctant to draw public attention to this Statement, with its infamous phrase, “The evidence is incontrovertible,” despite the fact that nothing in science is ever incontrovertible.
About APS: The American Physical Society (www.aps.org) is the leading physics organization, representing 48,000 members, including physicists in academia, national laboratories, and industry in the United States and internationally. APS has offices in College Park, MD (Headquarters), Ridge, NY, and Washington, DC.
Tawanda W. Johnson
Press Secretary
APS Physics
529 14th St. NW, Suite 1050
Washington, DC 20045-2065
Phone: 202-662-8702
Fax: 202-662-8711
tjohnson@aps.org
=================================================
This page is available as a PDF here: APS Press Release Deconstruction
=================================================
Dr. Roger Cohen writes in with an addedum:
I would like to clarify one technical point for your visitors. It relates to: “This passes over the fact that carbon dioxide absorption lines are nearly saturated.”
The statement is fact, but it does not by itself imply that additional amounts of atmospheric CO2 will not cause significant warming. Straightforward radiation transfer calculations have established that the effect of doubling atmospheric CO2 would be to increase global average temperature by only about 1 deg. C. — if there were no other climate effects involved. However, these other effects, generally called “feedbacks,” can amplify or attenuate the primary radiation altering effect of additional CO2. The most prominent feedback is the “cloud-water vapor feedback,” which is very difficult to calculate or determine empirically. The IPCC says these feedback effects are in aggregate large and positive, giving rise to their most recent estimate of 2 to 4.5 deg. C for doubling, with a most likely value of 3 deg. C. However, a substantial body of other research points to a much lower value, much closer to the zero feedback value of 1 deg. C, or even lower. The actual aggregated effect of feedbacks is a critical aspect of the debate.
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John Terry says:
Dear Mr Awatts
you said:
This passes over the fact that carbon dioxide absorption lines are nearly saturated.
But this is what is actually happening:
If the CO2 effect was saturated, adding more CO2 should add no additional greenhouse effect. However, satellite and surface measurements observe an enhanced greenhouse effect at the wavelengths that CO2 absorb energy. This is empirical proof that the CO2 effect is not saturated.
Can you please change your comment above? It seems such a shame to have a glaring mistake like that in your piece. I hope this helps in your quest for truth!
To which a moderator here replied:
REPLY: It would be inappropriate for Anthony to alter the indicated content. The words are not his. They are in blue italics and thus are comments of either Dr. Roger Cohen, Dr. Will Happer, or Dr. Hal Lewis. …. bl57~mod]
Sorry to inform you, ‘bl57~mod’, that the words in blue italics are in fact Anthony Watts’ own commentary. So John Terry is in fact perfectly entitled to ask Anthony to remove the obvious misinformation he inserted about the CO2 absorption of IR being saturated.
What happens in Real Life™, as opposed to the alternate reality that WUWT denizens seem to inhabit, is that as the lower layers of the atmosphere become saturated w.r.t. CO2, the altitude at which the IR that managed to escape the troposphere is reflected back earthwards by CO2 just keeps moving upwards. The net effect is more warming. The CO2 absorption *will never saturate*.
Science, folks. Reading up about it on sites which you would consider to be “propaganda” is a good way to actually learn about it.
I find it quite difficult to see the ”awakening” of M. Lewis.
If he did not agreed with all the AGW theory, science, and whatever – then beside getting a petition of 250 names (out of 45000 members), why did he never speak a word before on any of the published paper reviews for the last 30 years. Why did he always kept his beliefs silenced until today ?
Has he resigned from his research ? Has he dropped science research. As he ever published a paper stating what he’s supporting today. Beside his political point of view, what has he written to demonstrate what he’s pushing today ?
Is this simply an internal war within the APS – and he’s taking the AGW as an excuse to shoot at every one in charge within the APS.
Richard S Courtney :
October 15, 2010 at 5:26 am
I would add that GCMs concentrate on anomalies and not on real temperatures, because they cannot even match real temperatures. Are you aware of this plot from Lucia’s the Blackboard?
It is hubris, when models are off from real temperatures by the same order of magnitude as their prediction, to claim a fit to past temperatures.
FWIW, the IIP does not make mention of global warming in its mission statement. It’s a general-purpose environmental organization, not a coven of catastrophists.
It’s not a competition in which the side with the most Nobelists wins the debate. Rather, their purpose is to allow a debate to begin. Lewis’s “names” were meant merely to demonstrate that his co-petitioners aren’t fringe/cranks with no standing whose petition can be dismissed out of hand, as “Samoth” attempted to do in the previous thread on this topic. He wrote:
James Sexton says:
October 15, 2010 at 5:19 am
John Terry says:
October 15, 2010 at 1:31 am
[gentlemen, I think the argumentum ad homenim should stop now ~ac]
========================================================
Mod, that’s fine, but I really was going somewhere with that thought. He entered the thread here . I thought turn about would be fair play, and it was. Later, he’s asking that I quit calling him names. To which, I responded, “sure”, and wanted to make sure he understood why the name calling had occurred to begin with. Apparently, you decided that I’ve already had enough fun in this titillating dialogue.
Once that was behind us, I would have asked him to provide the empirical evidence he alludes to here. I would continue, later, in explaining that skeptics come in all different shapes and sizes for various reasons. For instance, personally, I don’t care one whit if the earth is warming or not, although there is plenty of evidence that shows us we haven’t a clue regarding whether we’re warming or not.
Mr. Terry,
You’ll get a much better reception here, or anywhere else for that matter if you don’t start a conversation with sweeping stereo-typical pejorative statements. And, if you refrain from such statements, the conversations would take a much more pleasant tone in which the exchange of thoughts and ideas can more easily occur. If you’d bother to read the content of this thread, I’m sure it would become apparent to you that there is much to learn regarding the climate. And, there are many here that can provide the learning opportunity. I assert there is plenty of evidence that mankind thrives better in warmer climates. Regardless if you believe warming is occurring because of “anthroupopoololgical”[sic] emitted CO2 or not. Now, that view isn’t reflected by everyone here, but it is by a few, including myself. In the interest of brevity, I’ll leave it there and await a response if you deem it necessary.
Dang, did it wrong again. First “here” is http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/13/aps-responds-deconstructing-the-aps-response-to-dr-hal-lewis-resignation/#comment-507368
Second “here” is http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/13/aps-responds-deconstructing-the-aps-response-to-dr-hal-lewis-resignation/#comment-508097
here
Rick Marshall:
At October 15, 2010 at 5:46 am you assert:
“It’s about time people started paying attention to facts instead of rhetoric.”
I agree.
But you then say;
“The record September high was set despite the continued cooling of temperatures in the tropics as an El Nino Pacific Ocean warming events fades away.”
OK, but so what?
The global temperature is still within the range that it has had in the past.
The global temperature has been rising (with fluctuations up and down) for the 300 years since the LIA, and only the last 60 years of that rise could have been affected by anthopogenic emissions. Citing the present state of that rise without stating it is part of that 300 year trend is “rhetoric”.
And a claim that the recent rise is a result of AGW would be an example of the “fraudulent science” that Hal Lewis condemns because no such claim can be substantiated by science.
Indeed, the ONLY scientific conclusion is that there has been no discernible change to global climate behaviour in recent decades. And, therefore, the null hypothesis applies: i.e. there is no scientific reason to claim there has been any change to global climate behaviour in recent decades.
Therefore, any claim that greenhouse gas emission reductions is required by the scientific evidence to halt the rise is “rhetoric” and “fraudulent science”. And the original APS statement does make that claim when it says;
“The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.”
It is that fraudulent science which Hal Lewis objects to, and the APS response to his objection has been to ignore it in their “response” and to ignore the APS’s Constitution.
Richard
Steve Metzler says:
October 15, 2010 at 5:58 am
you said, “Sorry to inform you, ‘bl57~mod’, that the words in blue italics are in fact Anthony Watts’ own commentary. So John Terry is in fact perfectly entitled to ask Anthony to remove the obvious misinformation he inserted about the CO2 absorption of IR being saturated.
What happens in Real Life™, as opposed to the alternate reality that WUWT denizens seem to inhabit, is that as the lower layers of the atmosphere become saturated w.r.t. CO2, the altitude at which the IR that managed to escape the troposphere is reflected back earthwards by CO2 just keeps moving upwards. The net effect is more warming. The CO2 absorption *will never saturate*.
Science, folks. Reading up about it on sites which you would consider to be “propaganda” is a good way to actually learn about it.”
========================================================
Steve, I’d like to extend my personal thanks to you for exemplifying the alarmists” ……….shall we say, way of perceiving things.
In the very first paragraph, second sentence, “APS Members Dr. Roger Cohen, Dr. Will Happer, and of course Dr. Hal Lewis have responded in kind, and have asked me to carry their response on WUWT. I’ve gladly obliged, and their inline comments are indented in blue italics in the document below. – Anthony”
I’ve added the bold myself, in an effort to assist your reading comprehension. It plainly states that the blue italics are Drs Cohen, Happer, and Lewis.
You see, what happens in real life, is that some people live their lives based on assumptions with out ever taking the time to challenge their own bias’ and beliefs. Others, have a more skeptical approach and endeavor to see if their beliefs conform to reality. You should try it some time. While reality is, at times, alarming, it isn’t near the doom and gloom our friends in the CAGW/Climate change/disruption camp makes it out to be.
Did you honestly believe that a moderator here would make a declarative statement regarding this thread without actually checking to see if he/she was correct or not? Is that how the alarmists threads operate? Wait, no need to answer that, I’ve already been to several alarmist/propaganda websites. Its easier to sway people in those places because the readers blindly accept what the writers assert. This particular forum at WUWT is probably a bit foreign to you. Skeptics don’t blindly believe everything we’re told. We try to get it right rather than displaying an inability to perceive fact from fiction. Please stick around and see how this site really operates, you may find it illuminating.
John Terry says: “HOT SPOT FOUND HERE! READ ALL ABOUT IT!”
Gosh – I went straight to the link to see what it had to say, but I didn’t find anything. Should we we take that as a bit of a of wind-up then?
On a more serious note, the predicted tropospheric “hot spot” is what I would consider to be an acid test of the enhanced GHE assertion. At least for me personally. If the predicted pattern can be confirmed through observations and to my reasonable satisfaction, I could easily have a change of mind on that whole AGW thang. There is enough of the hypothesis wrapped up in that particular prediction to enable me to sweep aside my doubts – if it were observed.
I know that “my reasonable satisfaction” is subjective, and may sound insincere. But there is no better way of putting it. When it comes to comparing two-dimensional patterns, my own hard-wired pattern recognition system is always going to be more persuasive than some correlation index or expression of statistical significance (and that has nothing to do with whether or not I have an understanding of stats).
Some people have said to me: “there has been cooling in the upper stratosphere, surely that confirms the predicted pattern”. But it’s just not persuasive. Those observations don’t have a “hot spot” where there is supposed to be one.
Right now, the lack of the “hot spot” is the most persuasive evidence I use to satisfy myself that the enhanced GHE (and various consequential catastrophe theories) are falsified.
I see more merit in Ferenc Miskolczi’s arguments that, incrementally, the GHE is fully saturated. As a very minimum, Miskolczi’s assertions appear to be consistent with observations.
The more genuinely curious scientists give due time to this issue, the more they will admit the trouble of giga-CO2 emmissions–as borne out by basic radiation physics, the fact that to get a model that doesn’t agree you have to make a demonstrably crappy model, the agreement of recorded temperature with most decent models, and the agreement of most conceivably constructed pre-measurement temperature with the models.
Soon enough we will be able to quantify the damage caused by the already recorded temperature change (as predicted by basic physics and every non-laughable model) in terms of damage to agricultural output and damage to standard of living for various peoples. Of course, that resulting damage was also predicted, if only by common sense and not empirically.
If a scientist is worth his salt and devotes enough time to looking at the real research, he’ll always agree. Lewis didn’t devote enough time to this study. He bought into enough of the smoke and mirrors so that his emotions would not let him continue to devote more resources to digging deeper.
Revkin did a hatchet job on Dr. Lewis. He went entirely off topic and made the story about Lewis and 20 y/o writings as opposed to the APS’ shenanigans.
Anderlan says:
October 15, 2010 at 12:42 pm
The more genuinely curious scientists give due time to this issue, the more they will admit the trouble of giga-CO2 emmissions–as borne out by basic radiation physics, the fact that to get a model that doesn’t agree you have to make a demonstrably crappy model, the agreement of recorded temperature with most decent models, and the agreement of most conceivably constructed pre-measurement temperature with the models.
“Give me four parameters and I can fit an elephant. Give me five and I can wag its tail — (The source? Variants have been attributed to C.F. Gauss, Niels Bohr, Lord Kelvin, Enrico Fermi.)”. Source:
http://wiki.xtronics.com/index.php/Ockhams_Razor
Because I did want to know what climate models do and can’t do (have some experience with models in chemical processes), I followed a one-day course at Oxford University. They had a simple EBM (energy balance model) on a spreadsheet, which btw performs as good or better than the multi-million-dollar models currently in use. That had a nice possibility to change the sensitivity to any of the four main forcings (GHGs, volcanic and human aerosols and solar). By reducing the sensitivity for human aerosols (which are quite problematic), the sensitivity for GHGs needed to be reduced too, to obtain the same (even slightly better) fit to the past temperatures. Which gives quite a difference in possible future warming. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/oxford.html
And which long-term temperature reconstruction you use makes a lot of difference too: the HS shape MBH’99 has only 0.2°C MWP-LIA difference, thus needs a lot of CO2 sensitivity for the past century uptick. But if you use Moberg or Esper with 0.8°C natural variability in the past, then the effect of increased CO2 is far less.
Anderlan:
At October 15, 2010 at 12:42 pm you make two assertions:
First, you say:
“The more genuinely curious scientists give due time to this issue, the more they will admit the trouble of giga-CO2 emmissions–as borne out by basic radiation physics, the fact that to get a model that doesn’t agree you have to make a demonstrably crappy model, the agreement of recorded temperature with most decent models, and the agreement of most conceivably constructed pre-measurement temperature with the models. ”
Absolute rubbish!
The models are all “crappy” because that is the only way they can be made to agree with past mean global temperatures. And they each model a different climate system but none of them models the climate system of the Earth. I spelled this out at October 15, 2010 at 5:26 am above.
If that explanation is a bit too technical for you, then I suggest the point added to my explanation by anna v at October 15, 2010 at 6:06 am may be easier for you to grasp. She says there:
“I would add that GCMs concentrate on anomalies and not on real temperatures, because they cannot even match real temperatures. Are you aware of this plot from Lucia’s the Blackboard?
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/fact-6a-model-simulations-dont-match-average-surface-temperature-of-the-earth/
It is hubris, when models are off from real temperatures by the same order of magnitude as their prediction, to claim a fit to past temperatures.”
Having made that horrendous howler you assert:
“If a scientist is worth his salt and devotes enough time to looking at the real research, he’ll always agree. Lewis didn’t devote enough time to this study. He bought into enough of the smoke and mirrors so that his emotions would not let him continue to devote more resources to digging deeper.”
OK. I will bite.
What is this “real research” which shows AGW is a real effect?
I and all scientists worth their salt (including the IPCC authors) would like to be told of it.
Richard
Anderlan says:
October 15, 2010 at 12:42 pm
In addition to the comment of Richard Courtney: None of the models does “predict” any natural cycle of the oceans. The oceans are the main buffer for any heat change (over 80%) due to changes of in/out radiation balance. See fig. S1 in the supplementary material of Barnett e.a. “Penetration of Human-Induced Warming into the
World’s Oceans”:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/data/1112418/DC1/1
Thus the partitioning of the warming over the past century between natural and human induced still is an open question.
Anderlan says: The more genuinely curious scientists give due time to this issue, the more they will admit the trouble of giga-CO2 emmissions–as borne out by basic radiation physics
The more genuinely curious scientists would not be satisfied with the mere coincidence of rising Co2 with a relatively short period of warming. The more genuinely curious scientists are smart enough to spot potential issues with past warm and cool periods going back hundreds or thousands of years with no apparent link to CO2.
With regard to our CO2 emissions in recent times, the more genuinely curious scientists have the benefit of a prediction of a particular pattern of warming in the atmosphere (I mentioned just a couple of posts above). You can be assured that observation of that pattern (or anything remotely like it) would immedialtely be elevated to the new poster child of the catastrophe theory by the less genuinely curious scientists and their cohort.
The more genuinely curious scientists are rational enough to accept that there is no observation to confirm that pattern. Given the failure of that prediction genuinely curious scientist would be the first to conclude the enhanced GHE hypothesis is falisifed.
Anderlan – what is it that tells me that your curiosity falls well short of the gold standard of the genuinely curious scientist you mention?
Richard Sexton, hi,
Yeah, well it’s now apparent to me that I blew right by Anthony’s lead-in paragraph there. My bad, and there’s no denying that it makes me look foolish. I just assumed those were his comments. But the majority of them are comments that I vehemently disagree with nonetheless.
OK then. Notwithstanding my blatantly unsuccessful attempt at segueing into the comments here, anyone care to address the point that both John Terry and myself were originally trying to make: that the absorption of IR by CO2 is *not saturated*, if you consider the fact that the troposphere is not where Earth’s atmosphere ends, by a long shot?
Just to head off any dismissals of the role that CO2 plays as insignificant to that of water vapour… I acknowledge that CO2 by itself accounts for (only 🙂 about 20% of the greenhouse effect.
[I think I may have submitted this comment pre-maturely by an accidental keystroke.]
Richard,
You’ve been around in this game long enough to know the actual history. When Spencer and Christy first released the satellite data, they showed the lower troposphere was supposedly cooling…and I am sure you were one of those harping on this fact. Then, the combination of a longer record and correction of errors in the data analysis turned the cooling trend into a warming trend, but still significantly lower than the warming trend at the surface…and the harping continued. Then, a still longer record and further corrections (and the competing RSS analysis) resulted in the global trends coming into alignment within error bars. But, there is still a discrepancy in the tropics; the discrepancy is actually not just between empirical data and theory but between different analyses and re-analyses of the various data sets.
What we have here is a “God of the Gaps” argument. For those, like people in the coal industry, who want to continue to believe that AGW is wrong if there are any discrepancies between data and models / theory, you will always be able to find such discrepancies because neither data nor models are foolproof.
However, the facts in this particular case are:
(1) The tropical tropospheric amplification is in fact seen in the data for fluctuations over the timescales of months to a few years. Interestingly, this is a timescale over which the data is reliable. Where there is some discrepancy is in the multidecadal trends; this is exactly where the data, both satellite and radiosondes, has artifacts…i.e., the data is subject to long term drifts due to changes in instruments, stitching together of data from different satellites, etc. It is strange that people who constantly question data when they don’t like what it shows are ready to embrace data known to have artifacts when it supports what they want to believe.
(2) Even if the data were to be correct and the amplification were absent, it still wouldn’t tell us anything about what the cause of the warming that we have seen has been because the prediction of such amplification is robust in the models, whether one is talking about radiative forcings due to greenhouse gases, solar, or simply fluctuations in temperature due to ENSO. The most direct thing it would suggest is that the models are wrong on assuming a lapse rate feedback, a negative feedback that reduces the warming predictions. (By a more indirect change of argument, one could make some claims that it would say something about the water vapor feedback possibly be wrong too…but this is more indirect and in conflict with other empirical data that supports the feedback.)
Steve Metzler says:
October 15, 2010 at 4:35 pm
“Richard Sexton, hi,
……………………………………………………………….”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Steve, Hi back from James Sexton,
Steve, I’m probably the wrong person to engage with over this subject, as I stated in one of my posts to Mr. Terry, skeptics come in all shapes and sizes, and are skeptical for many different reasons. Personally, I hold no opinion about CO2 warming or not. It simply doesn’t matter to me in that I hold that a bit of warming will be good for humanity and not worse. That said, I have great difficulty with the logic of the CO2 warming theory as I understand it.
First, this is only the second time I’ve seen the 20% number. I’m very curious as to how we arrived to that ratio given CO2 is only a trace gas, or how one even quantifies the GH effect.
Secondly, specific to the saturation issue, there may be a confusion to the exact meaning. Saturation in this case may mean how much wavelength absorption can be or how much CO2 can be put in the atmosphere. If the oil and coal reserves are anywhere near the levels presented by some, we simply lack the capacity to put much more meaningful CO2 in the atmosphere.(I don’t agree with much of that, but its been postulated.) Also, it is widely accepted that the curve is logarithmic and we’ve already achieved the most significant angle of the curve. For instance, the doubling of CO2 = 1 degree, the next 0.5…..etc. (Note, I’m only using that as an illustration and the figures aren’t to be taken literally.)
I know that CO2 has been presented as a more powerful GHG than H2O vapor, but I remain unconvinced. If the bandwidth absorptions overlap, then they overlap. Displacing H2O in favor of CO2 wouldn’t seem to make much difference in my view. Also, CO2’s absorption is specific and narrow in bandwidth, there’s only so much heat that’s going to be reflected back. As you noted, “troposphere is not where Earth’s atmosphere ends”, if CO2 is blocking it one way, it will also block it the other way. The higher up the CO2 is, the less likely the heat will be reflected back down. N’est-ce pas? I alluded to this earlier, but I fear I was too cryptic.
Now to the topic I’ve been contemplating. If the GH/CO2 theory is correct……..well here, I’ll re-post from another blog, I haven’t received a reply to yet.
Assume a baseline CO2 level. It doesn’t make any difference what it is, because the theory is emitted CO2 runs free in the atmosphere for 100s of years doing all of that blocking heat thing. Right? Man finds a lump of coal or a tree to use as fuel. He’s emitting CO2…..he’s exhaling…..he’s putting more CO2 out in the atmosphere….always. Some may get absorbed by the flora, but most (according to theory) is mucking about warming the earth. This has been occurring for thousands of years!
Now, consider, flora nor the ocean nor any other known sink absorbs/breaths/eats atmospheric CO2. Why? Because trees and the ocean are ground or sea level. They can’t! So, for this GH/CO2 theory to be correct, we must have been very, very cold when we first got here and have increased in warmth from day one. This would defy logic, seeing that early man lacked many abilities to overcome nature. (Doesn’t matter if you are a creationist or evolutionist same holds for both.) Even today, it would be very difficult for man to thrive in Arctic or Antarctic conditions. By implication of this theory, it must be so, for us to be enjoying the climate which we do today. Further, while mercury thermometers have been around only a couple hundred years, there’s plenty of evidence that the earth in man’s history has significantly warmed and cooled. It can’t under the theory, only increase.
There’s my take on CO2. Again, I’m the wrong one to be discussing this, but if you’ve answers, I’d be receptive if they don’t peg my BS meter. Which, BTW, the 20% figure does. I’m sure if you ask a couple of times, you’ll get a response that may be more scientific than what I gave you. You’ll find most to be respectful of dissenting opinions, but will vigorously defend their own. In other words, if you go there, come with it or be prepared to have your azz handed back to you.
And welcome.
@Steve Metzler
Oh, sorry, apparently, through all of my verbosity I could have just said “Beer’s law” (who knew?) for much of the saturation part of my post. Google is such a cool thing! Also, I was unclear about the curve. doubling CO2 = the temp rise of the last doubling. So if doubling raises 1 degree, then the next doubling will also. Or, if raising 200 ppm raises 1 degree, then the next 200 will only raise 0.5 degree. <—— Is what I meant to say.
Yet more on the “near saturation” of atmospheric CO2. For the technically inclined, here is a “back of the envelope calculation” of the zero feedback climate sensitivity for doubling of CO2. It is meant for instructional purposes to illustrate the basic physics.
First, for a given atmospheric loading of CO2, there exists an altitude Hs such that for all altitudes h Hs, they are not. So if Ps (a fixed parameter) is the corresponding partial pressure of CO2 at h = Hs, and Po (a variable) is the pressure at sea level, and the atmosphere is approximately isothermal, we have from Boltzmann statistics:
Ps = Po exp ( – M g Hs / k T )
This equation says that the effective radiating height moves up and down as the partial pressure of CO2 moves up and down. Now for h Hs, heat is radiated. In reality, Hs is a layer of finite thickness that characterizes the transition from heat conduction to radiation. Then if K is the effective thermal conductivity of the atmosphere for h < Hs, and taking the temperature to be T at Hs and To at sea level, we have for continuity of heat flow at Hs:
K ( To – T ) / Hs = σ ε T^4 with (To – T ) << T,
where the right hand side is just the Stephan-Boltzmann radiation law. After rearranging we see that the surface temp goes up and down logarthmically with partial pressure Po:
To = T + ( k σ ε T^5 / K M g ) x ln ( Po / Ps )
The prefactor of the logarithm is the zero feedback climate sensitivity, aside from a factor of ln 2. The big point here is that the temperature varies logarithmically with partial pressure of CO2; that is, diminishing returns. Obviously the atmosphere is not isothermal, and the temperature of the stratosphere is not constant, but the argument captures the basics.
From the above equation, one finds that the order of magnitude of the climate sensitivity for doubling of CO2 is in fact 1 degree C. To get this, take T ~ 250K; the emissivity of the earth ε ~ 0.6. Everything else is known except for K, which is estimated from T – To ~ 50 deg C for an altitude of about 10 miles ~ 2 x 10^4 meters. Taking a flux of 1000 watt/m2, this gives K ~ 4 x 10^5 watt/m-K. Then the prefactor of the logarithm is computed as ~ 2-3 deg C, and the climate sensitivity for doubling is of order 1 deg C.
So as more CO2 is added, more and more of the atmosphere is saturated, and incremental warming becomes smaller. Even in 1860 before large emissions began, the earth was already well up on the logarithmic curve.
Hope this helps.
(There are subtle distinctions between raving and cranking.)
As you describe, there is “much (implicit) ado” as to the manner of forcing.
The debate began more than a decade ago yet is still being cranked with all the coordinated effort that torquing can muster. Over the course of time, the debate turned vulgar and is now obscene.
No, not quite enough said yet. An uncoordinated multitude of cranks is ‘anarchy’.
Coordinated cranking carried out relentlessly over a long interval produces over-revving. Such forcing and grinding raises quite the stink and squeal.
Globalism is ‘Conspiracy Theory’.
Somehow the paragraph beginning “This equation” was mangled. It should be:
“This equation says that the effective radiating height moves up and down with partial pressure of CO2. Now for h Hs it is via radiation. In reality, … “
Somehow the paragraph won beginning “This equation..” won’t take. Here is the errant segment in words:
“This equation says that the effective radiating height moves up and down with partial pressure of CO2. Now for altitudes less than Hs, heat flow is predominately via thermal conduction because the mean photon mean free path is one intermolecular distance. However, for altitudes greater than Hs, heat flow is via radiation. In reality,..”
I always find it interesting that none of the alarmists will discuss Miskolczi. The theory is there, it’s supported by real data, the math has been done AND it shows that the greenhouse effect is a constant. So, it doesn’t matter whether anyone believes CO2 is saturated, it doesn’t matter if anyone believes there’s a big climate sensitivity … it is all moot.
Until the alarmists PROVE Miskolczi theory is wrong, they have NOTHING.
Roger says:
October 15, 2010 at 7:59 pm
“Yet more on the “near saturation” of atmospheric CO2. For the technically inclined, here is a “back of the envelope calculation”………..
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Lol, that’s quite a “back of the envelope calculation”! But thanks. Whether our friends Mr. Terry or Mr. Metzler appreciate it or not remains to be seen, but I liked it. Do you mind if I use that from time to time? It seems very reasoned.