Sensitivity Training: Determining the Correct Climate Sensitivity

This is amazing work, assuming that their science is coherent, this makes sense to me in “the real world” in that CO2 might have a small effect (including forcing value), but its not the thermastat so to speak. This would also seem to correspond to other views on how CO2 does most of its work in the first couple of doublings so to speak.
I applaud the science, this might help us when we try to understand the climate better.

The whole concept of a climate senstivity which is independent of temperature seems a little strange to me.
Stable systems tend to become less sensitve to an input as they get pulled from the mean. The faster a car goes the more energy it takes to get a little bit faster. Models which suggest that an input which increases into the future will continue indefinitely and would never cause an increase in the negative feedback don’t seem particularly plausible to me. The more energy a system has, the faster it tends to leak away, and relying on a computer model – even if it accurately predicted the current situation – does not demonstrate its ability to predict an environment that has never been experienced.

Since there is substantial overlap in the absorption spectra of CO2 and H2O, you cannot simply add their contributions. The net absorption will be substantially less than the absorption of the individual components.
This is just one of many mathematical non-linearities in the climate system that are traps for the unwary (see Willis’ immediately preceding post for others). Most introductory classes in various types of systems analysis work pretty exclusively with linear systems, because they are easier to handle — it is very easy to forget this very strong assumption.

I believe the models would consider water vapor a feedback instead of a forcing.

The real issue will be if our “sensitivity” will endure the chilling cold ahead. It has been demonstrated here in WUWT, “ad nauseaum”, all that issue of Global Warming/Cimate Change/Climate Disruption, was a scam aimed at making business from pouring the empty into the void: buying “carbon credits” to third world countries at a peanuts’ price and selling “carbon shares” to “polluters” at a thousand times prize. The businesmen in between thus would happily profit. But, it happened in November 2009 what was called the “Climate Gate” and the rest is history…..
All characters in this, at the beginning, horror movie on a terrible armageddon to happen to earth and the humand kind, have turned into characters of a Travesty Comedy, really painful to bear .
It’s over buddy!

Now, why not rework all those numbers but treat the oceans as part of the atmosphere for solar energy retention purposes ?

“extremely incorrect…..”
now take me for a simple geologist but you can be either wholly correct or wholly incorrect, there are no degrees of correctness (unless you’re a geophysicist)
“An engineer is asked, what is 2 +2 , Engineer replies 4
A climatologist is asked what is 2+2, climatologist replies, 5
A geophysicist is asked, what is 2+2, geophysicist replies, what would you like it to be?!
boom boom crash.

Look John, there’s no place for common sense or full-circle thinking in climate science o.k? Keep re-working your equations until you get the desired outcome (Sarc-off).

Another nail, and a rather large one at that, through the heart of the walking corpse of AGW.
I enjoyed Max H. humorous comment above.
How do we get the politicians or their aides to read so many posts that forensically destroy the theories and assumptions of the climate mainstream?

Well John, Let’s take a look at your final graph(s); specifically the ones with 3 deg C per doubling, and the one for 1 deg C per doubling. Those hapen to be within the IPCC 3:1 fudge factor range.
Well their numbers would be 4.5 deg C per doubling and 1.5 deg C per doubling; but it makes no difference.
You have plotted your curves for (near) zero to 800 ppm. But we have actual real experimental credible values that go from 315 ppm to 390 ppm for the Mauna Loa Record.
That is a ratio of 1.238. The cube of that is 1.899; slightly less than 2.0 while the 4th power is 2.350, so one would guess that 1.238 is close to 30% of one doubling. (i’m too lazy to do the real log calculation).
So for all of the credible non proxy global record of CO2 concentration since 1957/8, the IGY year we have data suggesting 30% of one doubling has occurred.
So if I take your graph and imagine your numbers were for 4.5 and 1.5 deg rather than 3 and 1, and now I scatter a bunch of observed data points; at least 52 of them for the elapsed years, in between 315 and 390 ppm and maybe centered about the middle between your two graphs but extending out to them as plausible upper and lower probably values; so I have that space shot full of at least 52 holes in a “Scatter Plot”; and the characteristics of that scatter plot of real observed data are such that your upper curve (3 deg>ersatz 4.5) and your lower curve (1 deg > ersatz 1.5) are pausible fits to that scattered data.
So there is the real data posted on top of your (and the whole house of climatists) theory of “Climate Sensitivity”.
So my question is simple:- Where do you collectively get the gall to claim that despite such a scattered data picture (of 52 spots) you know that the best fit line to that data, is in fact a logarithmic curve.
Try drawing a STRAIGHT LINE between the 315 and 390 ppm points on your two graphs; and now try to sell me that the scattered data better fits the log curves than it does the straight line linear curves.
I put it to you that your graphical curves, and the known Mauna Loa data provide NO EVIDENCE whatsoever, that in fact Temperature is related to log of CO2 abundance.
As a follow up experiment; you could take the often reported Temperature and CO2 proxy data for 600 million years dating back to the preCambrian; and encompassing Temperatures from +12 deg C to + 22 deg C, and CO2 values ranging from aorund 7000 ppm down to around 200 or so, meaning about 5 inverse doublings; and now repeat the above data plot but now over five doublings instead of 0.3 of one doubling. Try to justify your log model with that set of data.
Well i’m sure that won’t work either; neither one of those data sets will convince anyone that the relationship is in fact logarithmic.
So let’s try the theoretical approach. Styarting from basic laws of Physics; maybe we can prove that the relationship is logarithmic.
Well we know that the physics of CO2 greenhouse effect starts with LWIR thermal black body like radiation from the surface of the earth (oceans and land), directed up into the atmosphere; and Trenberth gives that a value of 390 W/m^2 corresponding to a mean global Temperature of 288 Kelvins. (+15 deg C). That radiation is selectively absorbed by CO2 which we are told is well mixed in the atmosphere so it is the same all over the earth, so it should absorb the same amount of radiation all over the earth.
Well hang on a minute; there’s a bit of a problem. You see the whole of the earth surface is NOT at 288 K TEmperature. In the Antarctic highlands around Vostok station; there are places that can get down to just 183 K or -90 C, and Vostok itself has recorded within one deg C of that. That is just 63.54 % of the global mean of 288 K, and for such a Temperature, the surface radiation limit would be just 16.3% of 390 or 63.6 W/m^2 (max). It might be less than that based on spectral emissivity.
So we have a problem that some of the earth surface emits only 1/6th of that emitted at the global mean temperature so in those regions, the climate sensitivity due to CO2 must be very much less than 1.5 to 4.5 deg C per doubling; since you have only 1/6th of the driving energy.
At the other end, you have arid desert tropical regions, where actual surface Temepratures easily reach +60 deg C; and official weather station records have come within a few F degrees of that (for the air temperature). And on some paving surfaces Temperatures of +90 deg C have been measured (the egg cooking experiments); but we’ll just take the +60 which gives us 333 Kelvins; which is 15.6% above the global mean of 288 K. So the max BB surface emission could be 1.787 times the 390 W/m^2 Trenberth gives; or 697 W/m^2. Well that is eleven times the min value for the Vostok region; and because of the seasons; both of those extremes could occur simultaneously.
So from a physical theory point of view we cannot compute the CO2 energy interception amount, without knowing the Temperature of the surface which is emitting the driving energy.
But apart from the fact that we don’t even have a starting constant energy source driver; nothin in that Temperature range information yes insists that the surface Temperature (which controls the driving source) is then logarithmically related to The very temperature which is the start of the whole sequence.
So clearly “Climate Sensitivity” has a different value over a very wide range, depending on where you are on earth. Are you aware of any global network that constantly monitors the local value of climate sensitivity ; to compute a globalk average value ? I’m not !
It would seem that we don’t have any sampled data with which to establish a physical theory of climate sensitivity; that derives a mathematically logarithmic relationship between average global surface temepratures, and average global (well mixed) atmospheric CO2 abundance. The likelihood that a complex array of interractions between parameters some of which range over more than an order of magnitude should somehow come up with a theoretical logartihmic relationship for averaged data, is rather remote.
So far, I’ve seen neither credible experimentqally observed data, nor basic physics derived theoretical relationship, that supports a logarithmic connection as a better fit than say a linear fit; or any other mathematical relationship. The experimental data doesn’t fit ANY well behaved continuous function; sometimes the two variables increase together or decrease together and sometimes they go in opposite directions. There are well known time delays between some of the physical phenomena. For example there is a delay between ocean warming, and release to the atmospehre of extra CO2 since there is more CO2 at colder deeper levels, which has to propagate to the surface to enter the atmosphere; so that would require that there be some offset time between the CO2 and Temperature data sets, to arrive at properly related values; but no possible delay of either data set, can be shown to produce a logarithmic well behaved connection as more plausible than say a linear fit.
It seems that someone; apparently the late Dr Stephen Schneider I’m told, simply invented the logarithmic relationship out of whole cloth; and climatists don’t seem to find that a problem. Well whoever dreamed up cs; and my sincere apologies to the late Dr Schneider if in fact it wasn’t him; there’s no data or theory that supports such a relationship.
So trying to do ever more arcane statistical analysis on chaotic random data, to derive on some new grounds a “better” value for Climate Sensitivity, just seems to be a total waste of the taxpayer’s money in the form of government research grants or agency funding.
Other than that John Did your inclusion of the water vapor “forcing” include the simple and incontrovertible fact that water vapor (any water vapor) ALWAYS reduces the ground level solar insolation; so in that sense it would cause a negative forcing; not a positive one.
I don’t know John whether you have ever experienced a total eclipse of the sun; I never have but I have friends who chase them; like the Druids gathering at Stonehenge; but I have observd many partial eclipses; and in a partial solar eclipse; we get an instant demonstration of what would happen if the value of the TSI should drop. The instant effect for even a 30% partial eclipse is that the daytime temperature immediately plunges given an open cloudless sky.
So what if the TSI permanently dropped by 30%. It would get colder; but presumably you would get a lot of precipitation of rain/snow/sleet/hail/wtatever, and eventually some of that cloud would disappear; so more of the reduced sunlight could eventually rach the ground. So over some short time frame, the cloud level would adjust to the new lower TSI and we would have a lower total global cloud cover; but the net ground level solar insolation would be lower than before but not 30% lower; the cloud change would recover some of that.
But it is inescapable; that if you lower the value of TSI; then the earth must get colder; and conversely if you raise TSI, the earth would get warmer; but cloud adjustments would partially compensate for the TSI change (how much I don’t know).
Well just as a partial solar eclipse lowers earth temperatures; and a lower TSI would do so too, so too would any long term increse in global cloud cover reduce temepratures since clouds ALWAYS reduce ground level solar insolation as does water vapor.
So regardless of what H2O does with LWIR (or irregardless, as the case may be); MORE H2O in the atmopshere in ANY and ALL phases ALWAYS reduces the total solar energy that is absorbed by this planet; just as a lower TSI would; and over time that must lead to a cooler planet.
So just where climatists get off claiming H2O and Clouds as a positive feedback warming mechanism; is beyond me.
Now that doesn’t mean that H2O does not warm the earth or the atmosphere. We know from the arid high desert night temperature drop, that CO2 is not capable of holding up surface temepratures; but in the presence of H2O the cooling rate is much lower at night.
But it is the three phase presence of H2O that provides the regulation via the mechanism of cloud modulation. And as Gavin Schmidt has recently made very public; H2O it the ONLY condensible GHG in earth’s atmospehre; so it is the ONLY one that is capable of providing offsetting warming and cooling effects; and it can do all of that without any assisitance from CO2; either logarithmically or linearly.

I wonder if you are lumping conduction into convection in this statement?
I will also offer this observation: If CO2 contributed 86% of the GHE (I prefer Atmospheric Effect) consider what would happen on a very clear night in contrast to a high humidity night. Say the temperature dropped 5 C. degrees with a high humidity night. With the same starting temperature but a clean and very low humidity atmosphere the temperature might drop 20 C. degrees. But the CO2 is still there with its purported 86% contribution. Thus, we’ve just gotten a 15 C. degree drop from removing just 14% of the contributing GHGs. If we could then remove all of the CO2 should not the temperature respond by a corresponding drop of about ~ 92 C? [ (86/14)*15 ] That seems unlikely.

Richard:
Please inform us as to how there would be snow cover without an atmsophere. That assumption wouled require that there was at least an atmosphere of only water vapor and that was precipitated out as snow leaving a dry vacuum. Pretty silly yes? If the iceans were never able to evaporate the ice would be a very dark color not white and would absorb heat probably better than land surface. Again this is impossible as the exposed water would indeed evaporate and create an all water vapor atmosphere how thick? I have no idea. But snow does require this and it would also require there would be a green house effect. Get rid of the water and you have the no atmosphere model.
Barry S.

bob says: at 8:59 am
After all, something has to provide the warmth to keep the water vapor in its gaseous state, and that something is CO2.
Sometimes it is cold and clear, sometimes cold and cloudy, sometimes warm and clear, and sometimes warm and cloudy. Sometimes there is CO2 in the atmosphere, and sometimes there . . . Oh, wait a minute!

Sorry, I left the i out of the . Should be . Two mistakes in just a few minutes. I’ll go outside now and get some fresh air.

Do the radiation calculation and the real Greenhouse warming should be c. 60K. The fact that it’s c. 33K is because a lot of the heat is convected upwards by weather so lower atmosphere temperatures are reduced substantially. So that is one reason why the models used in Skeptikalscience article are wrong and you can’t trust that 32W/m^2!**
**It’s because the equation derived by Hansen and Lacis in 1974 to calculate cloud albedo from optical density, used off-set high predicted CO2-AGW by the cloud part of global dimming, is plain wrong, even though it came originally from Carl Sagan. It only considers internal diffuse optical scattering and there’s a second process which can dominate in thick clouds. Thus, the ‘cloud albedo effect’ cooling [0.7 W/m^2] is imaginary and if you put in the correct physics, you should get heating, possibly another form of AGW.
Thus there is very little you can trust except experiment, and that shows global warming apparently ceased in 2003!

Thanks for all interesting feedback.
As I stated at the beginning of the article I like to compare results and models. There are many valid points about the total GHE being larger than I used.
The main take away I get from this is that the more energy is involved in the total system, the less impact a change will have. There are many estimates that put the actual climate sensitivity in the range of 0.24-0.30 °C/(W/m2), myself included.
There is so much energy involved in the current steady state system that the small proposed “forcing” by CO2 is trivial. I used the 32 W/m2 for CO2 even though I strongly disagree with that value. That is why I had to search for the warmist value because they clearly need a large value to support their theory.
Thanks for the support.
John Kehr
The Inconvenient Skeptic

John Kehr, fine article.
Your simple approach IS proper science and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Those pieces have been rattling around in many minds and comments here but you had a fantastic way to put it all together and explain it, I’ll study your style!
When I said a couple or weeks ago that co2 had NO affect on Earth’s temperature I have kicked myself for stating it so absolutely, very un-scientifically-like. That shallow curve in graph two most very likely explains Mislolczi’s IR optical thickness all of the radiosondes have recorded, the differential is then shallow enough to not register and plot as a single point within tolerences. Once again, great, great article!

richard telford says:
October 25, 2010 at 7:51 am
There was a similar post to this on WUWT a month or two back. Not surprisingly they share the same flaw.
The greenhouse effect of 30C is for a planet with an albedo of 0.3. The earth would not be cooler by more than 30C if the atmosphere was not radiatively active because the albedo would increase because of increased snow and ice cover.
#
What does a state change discontinuity at boundary have to do with the anything?

DesertYote says:
October 25, 2010 at 12:01 pm
richard telford says:
October 25, 2010 at 7:51 am
There was a similar post to this on WUWT a month or two back. Not surprisingly they share the same flaw.
The greenhouse effect of 30C is for a planet with an albedo of 0.3. The earth would not be cooler by more than 30C if the atmosphere was not radiatively active because the albedo would increase because of increased snow and ice cover.
#
What does a state change discontinuity at boundary have to do with the anything?
————————
@DesertYote: It’s the difference between walking on water and walking in water.
@Telford: I assume that he meant “all things being equal”, as in equal albedo, the earth would be 30C colder. Since it’s an analysis of formulas, that seems reasonable. Is this going to be a problem for you?

John
I read your post once. Understood it well but on the assumption that George E Smith did not make. I respect George a great deal but in this instance I think he mis-interpreted your objectives for the post. I could be wrong of course. I think you were merely demonstrating the flaws in the AGW analyses current available. Telford always pipes up with a strawman and so I ignore George on the other hand is always detailed and cannot be ignored. Your post for me was meant to be simplistic and for that it works.

Interesting.
Something on this issue is evolving.
Until last week I had frequent headache. Global temperatures in 1850 are terrible.
At the moment everything is very simple. It’s on “agenda” … new beginning in 1959 for the future.
The mathematics of AGW is simple;
Delta (T) = {[a.ln C / Co] + k [0.35 PDO + 0.87 AAO + pi AMO -sin (Niño 3.4) + 1 / 3 AMO + e (SOI)^4]} * 0 + 2.5 ° C.
= 2,5ºC
I love this blog. I have deep respect for all.
Anyone who read http://www.surfacestations.org/ and add something with 0.2 º C for UHI … … .. Nothing happens to the planet…. (they want to save).
We have satellites.
Dr Roy (phd), sorry.
At launch,
http://www.spacestations.org .xxx

Temperatures follow LOD (Length of the Day), LOD follows gravity acceleration, gravity acceleration follows electromagnetic environment.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/40075530/Unified-Field-Explained-1
http://www.scribd.com/doc/39961403/Eccentricity-Field

“It seems that the choice of wording whether to call water vapor and clouds in the atmosphere forcing or feedback is dependent on what is wanted to be proven.”
Perhaps, but it would certainly explain why they did their calculations the way they did. What isn’t explained is why the troposphere isn’t warming at the modeled rate of 1.4 times that of the surface.
Remote Sensing 2010, 2, 2148-2169; What Do Observational Datasets Say about Modeled Tropospheric Temperature Trends since 1979 John R. Christy 1,*, Benjamin Herman 2, Roger Pielke, Sr. 3, Philip Klotzbach 4, Richard T. McNider 1, Justin J. Hnilo 1, Roy W. Spencer 1, Thomas Chase 3 and David Douglass

“”””” Tim F says:
October 25, 2010 at 12:55 pm
George E. Smith says: October 25, 2010 at 9:22 am
So regardless of what H2O does with LWIR (or irregardless, as the case may be); MORE H2O in the atmopshere in ANY and ALL phases ALWAYS reduces the total solar energy that is absorbed by this planet; just as a lower TSI would; and over time that must lead to a cooler planet.
So just where climatists get off claiming H2O and Clouds as a positive feedback warming mechanism; is beyond me.
I’m not a climatologist, but I don’t think this is quite right.
Looking just at water vapor (NOT droplets as in clouds), the water absorbs some IR radiation but very little visible light. (See this previous post here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/21/a-window-on-water-vapor-and-planetary-temperature-part-2/ for a graph) “””””
Tim you need to aquaint yourself with any of the standard widely available graphs of the Solar Spectrum, outside of the earth’s atmospehre hwere it fairly closely approximates a Black body Radiation curve corresponding to about a 5800 K BB Temperature. It show that about 98% of that energy lies between about 250 nm in the UV and 4.0 microns; with the remaining as 1% left over at each end. Such graphs often have superimposed on them the actual ground level (air Mass once) spectrum; that shows the amounts of that energy taken out by primarily O2, O3, and H2O, in the case of H2O which absorbs in the visible and near IR perhaps 20% of the total solar energy is capture by water VAPOR (clear sky) clouds are an additionqal loss over and above that.
I can’td raw those graphs with my keyboard so go to wikipedia or some science source and find them.
ONE THING THAT ANTHONY COULD DO TO ASSIST HERE IS PUT THOSE SOLAR SPECTRUM GRAPHS ON THE SIDE WITH HIS OTHER CLIMATE GOODIES SO THAT EVERYBODY HAS THOSE CURVES ENGRAVED ON THEIR FOREHEAD.
You can’t talk sensibly about the physics of climate if you don’t ahve a mental picture of the solar spectrum in outer space, and at the earth surface in front of you at all times; then a 300 K (or 288 K) thermal BB spectrum corresponding to surface emission would help too.
It takes far too many words to describe the general characteristics of Black Body radiators and absorbers; and anybody who doesn’t think the earth is near black body over most of its surface (the deep oceans) just hasn’t thought about it. If it wasn’t for the blue scattering of sunlight in the atmospehre; the earth would look MOSTLY BLACK from outer space; the oceans are not green or blue; they are black (deep oceans) 97-98% goes in and never comes out; only 2% is reflected at normal incidence, and about 3% over the range of sun angles and wave tilts.

“Without the atmosphere the Earth would be around -15 °C and with the atmosphere it is currently about 15 °C. That 30 °C difference is caused by the insulative effect caused by the atmosphere.”
It would be helpful to me if you clarified what you mean by the Earth being 15 °C. I always figured that that number was just the earth’s surface *air* temperature (at sea level). Air temperature, of course, is the temperature that is most easily and commonly measured but wouldn’t the Earths true temperature (near the surface) be lower if you took ocean temperatures into consideration?

By the way, I wish people would stop assigning significant albedo contribution to snow and ice cover (mostly in te polar regions) rather than to cloud cover which averages about 61% on earth (cloud cover, not albedo)
There is a very good reason why there is snow and ice at the poles. THERE’S VERY LITTLE SOLAR IRRADIANCE THERE. So regardless of the reflectance of snow and ice; which isn’t all that great except for very fresh snow; not much solar energy is reflected from there because there isn’t much to begin with.
Yes some like to point out that in summer you get sun 24 hours a day; but it is spread out over a huge surface area because of the obliquity; so it is a small portion of earth’s albedo.
So if clouds were eliminated by removal of H2O from the atmosphere the albedo would most certainly go down drastically; it won’t go up. Yes if it got colder in mid latitudes you’d get more snow in wintertime, which would for a while have more albedo contribution; but the clouds that precipitate that snow would have a bigger albedo effect. Snow more than 72 hours old is not very reflective; because of surface melting, which makes it optically transparent (at solar spectrum wavelengths), and the sunlight once it getsinto the melted snow structure gets trapped in ther by optical Total Internal Reflection. You can wiki that for yourselves to get an explanation; I should not have to explain Total Internal Reflection to anyone with more than an 8th grade science education. (yes I DID learn it before the equivalent of 8th grade.) In those days; you were supposed to learn stuff in school; rather than just feel good about yourself. earth’s clouds are far and away the major source of its albedo; not snow and ice.

Couldn’t you derive a firm sensitivity figure from using the amount of forcing the Sun provides to a point on the day side of Earth, and comparing it to the lack of forcing on the night side of Earth? dT/dF? If you can do it this way, the figure is quite low. If not, can someone explain why not?

John Kehr
Sorry about being skeptical on your calculations, but I need you to consider this:
At first using the alamist numbers you attributed 86% of the GHE on CO2 forcing. But that is excactly what they say – they say clouds and water wapor are only feedbacks which are dominated by CO2. So what your calculations mean is that if their assumptions about CO2 as the driver and water wapor as the engine are correct, the climate sensitivity estimates are also correct.
Or am I missing something here?

It might be instructive for people wondering how the greenhouse gas process affects the atmospheric Temperature to look at a simple case of another kind; and you can get an adequate picture of this from Wikipedia.
The somewhat similar case would be the relatively simple mechanism of the Helium Neon Laser. Everybody knows that the He-Ne laser emits a red line at 632.8 nm; which results from an electron transition of the Neon atom. Well actually it can also emit a nice infrared line at 3.39 microns and another one at 1.15 microns, both of which are Neon emissions. Well these days you can also get a green He-Ne laser.
So what the hell is the Helium for. Wiki shows how this all works. To get the Neon to lase; you have to “invert the population” of electrons in certain states of the Neon atom; and the ones you play with determine which wavelength is emitted. The actual wavelength selection is done with spectrally selective mirros on the cavity mirrors; that are high reflectance for the chosen line; but poor reflectors for the wavelengths you don’t want; but that has nothing to do with the Helium.
The electric discharge in the tube is basically a discharge in ionised Helium; which requires lower energies than NEON. So you end up with Helium ions which are in some higher energy states, and they are above the energy levels that you want to populate in the Neon atom system. So this is akin to the way CO2 can absorb a photon in the 15 micron range and excite the bending mode of the CO2 molecule.
The Helium excited ions, NOW COLLIDE with neon atoms; and energy is conveyed to the Neon atom via a phonon transition which is a mechanical quantum of energy ( heat), and that phonon reaction is what transports the original electric energy to an excited inverted population of neon atoms. So that is directly analagous to the transfer of energy from the CO2 molecule (or other GHG) to the ordinary N2, O2, or Ar molecules of the atmoshpere; those too are analagous to phonon transitions; where momentum is exchanged along with energy; but no Photon is involved. This energy conveyance via phonons, results in warming the atmosphere; there really isn’t photon transport from the CO2 to the N2/O2/Ar.
Once the atmospheric gases are warmed to a higher Temperature by this energy shift from the GHG to the atmospheric gases; then the normal black body like thermal radiation of infrared Photons can take place from the atmosphere to give the downward (and upward) LWIR thermal radiation from the atmosphere; which depends only on the atmospheric Temperature.
In the lower density and cooler ionosphere, as Phil has pointed out, the mean free path between molecular collisions is now long enough that the original excited GHG molecules can and do spontaneously decay, with the emission of a photon that is characteristic of the GHG energy level structure; and not black body like dependent on the Temperature; well it will have a Doppler line broadening that depends on the square root of the Temperature (K).
And as far as I know the thermal EM radiation is explained pretty much completely in classical Maxwell’s equation electromagnetic wave theory; due to the acceleration of electric charges which in turn is a consequence of the Temperature; and the momentum changes that occur during collisions. The only quantum aspect that needs to be added is what Planck did; which was to simply insist that each mode of oscillation had only a quantized energy (multiple of kT); whereas the earlier Raleigh Jeans derivation assumed that the oscillator energy could be any continuous value; and that led to the so-called Ultra-Violet catastrophe that predicted very high spectral radiance at ever shorter wavelengths.
But Planck’s little change fixed the whole problem, in one of the crown jewels of modern Physics (BB radiation theory); and in a way largely started the whole quantum ball rolling. But the derivation of BB spectra involves NO atomic or molecular electron energy level structures; only that the energy assigned to each degree of freedom be an integer multiple of kT.
So look at the Wiki He-Ne explanation, and it will give you an idea of how a not unlkike process works in the GHG picture.
Enjoy !

George E Smith
Thank you for your contributions. This has been my thought on this subject for a while now. Though, I would certainly be less eloquent in my presentation. That is, based on the observed data climate sensitivity is neither linear nor continuous. In fact, there is no guarantee that even if we can know the climate sensitivity at a given time and place that it is repeatable.
PS: Are you THE George E Smith, Nobel Laureate in Physics?

Should we add some climate sensitivity feedback math to the discussion?
The Clausius-Clayperion equations say that specific humidity increases 7% for each 1.0C in temperature.
– CO2/GHGs doubling causes +3.7 Watts/m2 extra forcing which increases the tropopause temperature by 1.0C and the surface temperature by 0.68C so humidity levels should increase 7% at the tropopause and 4.5% at the surface.
– Given the last GISS study, we can take 75% X 150 Watts/m2 X 4.5% (water vapour feedback based on its percentage of the greenhouse effect) and we get +5.0 Watts/m2 from water vapour feedback.
Calculations from the same Clausius-Clayperion equation says that cloud cover should increase by about 2% for each 1.0C. Increased cloudiness by 2% will change the Solar forcing by about -0.4 watts/m2.
There will also be some Ice Albedo feedbacks but the temperatures have to rise by a big enough number to make alot of difference in these numbers (it is already a low number since the majority of the Ice is above 75N). Given some of the numbers from below, I would estimate a reduction in Albedo of 0.004 (I have a model for Albedo and have played around with it enough to say this is probably close) which would result in an increased Solar forcing of +1.0 Watts/m2.
So, we have GHG forcing and the feedbacks for the Surface of:
= +3.7 Watts/m2 CO2/GHG forcing;
= +5.0 Watts/m2 water vapour feedback;
= -0.4 Watts/m2 increased cloud feedback; and,
= +1.0 Watts/m2 reduced Ice Albedo feedback.
= +9.3 Watts/m2 = +1.6C per doubling.
I have ended up at about this same number using four different methods now.

“Ensemble reconstruction constraints on the global carbon cycle sensitivity to climate”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/full/nature08769.html
“Amplification of Global Warming by Carbon-Cycle Feedback Significantly Less Than Thought, Study Suggests”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100127134721.htm

@ Tim Folkerts: Got that, thanks. And he is right, over long periods that is basically the correct mean temperature of this climate system to use smoothing out weather and the decades. I see now whereDave was coming from.

“”””” Tim Folkerts says:
October 25, 2010 at 5:15 pm
………………………………
Or simply consider that the blackbody temperature of the earth (without atmosphere) in equilibrium with the sun is WAY colder than the observed temperature. As stated in this very blog: “Without the atmosphere the Earth would be around -15 °C “. Dave Springer claimed in his comment that the moon is around -35 °C. Either way, the temperature of the earth with no atmosphere would be WAY colder than it is. “””””
Well sorry to disappoint Tim; but that simply is not correct. Wthout the atmosphere; there are no clouds, and no O2/O3/H2O/Co2 absorption of of incoming sunlight so the ground level solar insolation would be 1366 W/m^2, rather than 1000 W/m^2. and the equilibrium black body Temperature would become 275.7 K instead of 255K
That is 2.5 deg C above freezing rather than -18 deg C and that is quite without any greenhouse effect whatsoever. There would be no snow deposited on either the mountains, or the antarctic continent, or the arctic ocean ice, and the reflectance of aged ice is way less than fresh snow; so you can count on the albedo contribution of the polar regions going down from its present low level; and that will further increase the result of the increased solar input; because even more of it would be absorbed by th earth than with the present amount of ice albedo which is small compared to the cloud albedo.
Laci and Scmidt seem to forget the clouds are the major part of earth’s albedo, and they ignored the fact that the 255 K BB equilibrium Temperature at earth orbit, is caluclated assuming that 0.3 total albedo which goes away if water disappears from the atmosphere, and certainly if there is no atmosphere. The total physical, and chemical properties of H2O in all its phases along with some biological effects, is the controlling factor of earth’s comfort Temperature range.
I could calculate how much it could actually change with CO2 if I had those joker’s supercomputer and a model that didn’t start with declaring H2O to be simply a positive feedback amplification of CO2 as well as clouds.
As it turns out, over at c-r just a few weeks back, Peter Humbug stated that he had in fact removed ALL of the H2O from the atmospehre on his play station; and he got it all back in just three months. that doesn’t support the laci conclusion that water would collapse irreversibly .
The paper by Wentz et al demonstrates that the temperature H2O relationship is a very large negative feedback stabilizing effect.
Interestingly; Bill Illis just posted somewheres hereabouts that Clausius-Clapeyron predicts a 7% increase in specific humidity for a one deg C surface Temperature rise. Interestingly Wentz et al found from satellite measurements that a one deg C rise results in 7% increase in evaporation, precipitation and total atmospheric water. I conjectured from that a similar increase in cloud cover to go along with the increased precipitation.
In contrast, the GCMs (according to Wentz) agreed with the 7% increase in total water; but said evap/precip (which must match) only increased by 1-3 %. That is as much as a seven x difference between actual measured real world data, and the computer models which can’t seem to get water modelling including clouds correct.
I’ve asked Lacis to explain; but so far no response; that happens a lot; I post something which just drops into a black hole.

George E Smith;
I just had a rant on another thread about the same issues. Well not exactly the same. Your included all the math anda few more points. Couple to add.
1. There’s not such thing as radiative forcing from CO2. Its like centrifigul force. Everyone uses the term, but it doesn’t exist. Centripetal force exists, and CO2 in theory resists the escape of energy to space. There’s no 3.7 watts/m2 being “forced” into the system at the top of the atmopshere. CO2 is distributed throughout the atmosphere, and an upward bound photon can be absorbed and re-emitted in a random direction, some of which is back toward earth, at any altitude. So the RESISTANCE to earth’s radiance escaping to space is distributed from surface to TOA. No force outward on a body travelling in a circle and no forcing at TOA.
2. For those jumping all over water vapour being a positive feedback, read George’s retorts on the matter, they are well founded, but add this thought experiment. At sea surface at 15 C, water vapour is 30,000 ppm or so. As you climb in altitude, it gets colder, and cold air can’t hold as much water vapour, so the concentration falls off the higher you go. Imaging a slice of atmosphere really thick with water vapour at the bottom, but really thin at the top. Now imagine CO2. Its spread pretty much evenly from top to bottom at a teeny tiny 280 ppm. POOF is suddenly doubles. What happens? Well some of those upward bound photons that made it past the water vapour at the bottom and used to escape to space clunck right into them, get absorbed, and some get re-emitted back toward earth. About 3.7 w/m2 worth of them. Now here’s the important part. They don’t start from the TOA. Some of them get absorbed and re-emitted a millimeter above the surface, and some at a meter and some at 500 meters and so on. So now there’s 3.7 w/m2 more downward photons than there were before, their “source” being spread out across the entire range of altitudes where CO2 exists. Now here’s the other important part. The earth starts to warm up, meaning more water vapour, mostly at low altitudes where most of the water vapour is in first place. Does it absorb and re-emitt upward bound photons from the earth’s surface, thus increasing the RESISTANCE to photons leaving the planet? Why yes it does. But those darn water vapour molecules don’t actually know up from down and neither do the photons. So, since most of the CO2 is distributed ABOVE most of the water vapour, some of the photons that CO2 sent back to earth wind up hitting all that water vapour instead which absorbs and re-emitts it in a random direction, sending some of it back upward. Ooops, negative feedback. Wait! All that extra water vapour doesn’t just absorb and re-emmit photons sent back down by CO2, it does the same to photons sent back down from Ozone, Methane, clouds and anything else in the atmosphere that tries to send some of the photons back. So more water vapour is a negative feedback to ALL the GHG RESISTORS.
That being the case, seems to me the concept of water vapour being nothing but a positive feedback has been torpedoed by the randomness of photon emissions. This may have practical use some day for building photon torpedoes, but that’s WAY in the future when we’ve stopped being so sensitive about climate.

I still don’t understand why you can’t use one spot on the globe as a reference point, and sort out the sensitivity from there. Use the difference in forcing from the sun between day and night. Why does this not work? It must not, or it would have been done already. Unless it falls in that range of things that are too simple, like looking for the car keys that are in your hand already. But I doubt that. Why wouldn’t this work if you used averages? That is what climate science is all about, after all.

Excellent again. Even if this wouldn’t be a scientific paper in itself, it would most certainly make a good critical reply to one, and one they would most likely have to tackle…

The author doesn’t even understand the first thing about what a doubling of CO2 actually means. Tom Kehr says in the original post:
So all other factors in the Earth’s climate account for 14% of the GHE and CO2 by itself accounts for the other 86%. This can also be compared to the number of CO2 doublings that take place from 1 ppm to 390 ppm. That is roughly 8.6 CO2 doublings (1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,390 ppm). Using 8.6 doublings from 1 ppm gives 25.8 °C. So their model is coherent, but saying that CO2 causes 86% of the GHE is extremely incorrect.
To say that CO2 ‘doubled’ when it went from 1ppm to 2ppm is a fine demonstration of his complete ignorance on the subject. When scientists refer to a doubling of CO2, they mean from the pre-industrial (ca. 1750) value of 280ppm to 560ppm (which, if we keep going the way we are now regarding the use of fossil fuels, will happen sometime around 2050). Anything below that value of 280ppm is essentially meaningless to us going forward. In fact, if you look at the CO2 levels derived from Vostok ice cores, the CO2 level has never been below 180ppm for the past 400,000 years, even during ice ages.
As Ammonite alludes to above, Tim Folkerts was spot on in his post that explains why you can’t consider CO2 in isolation. It (currently) contributes less than 20% to the greenhouse effect, but it is a very important effect in that it is one that mankind is primarily causing. And mankind is causing it because those ice core samples show that CO2 levels have never been above 280ppm for the past 400,000 years. A value of 390ppm is *unprecedented* in Earth’s recent history.
The extra warming caused by the additional CO2 allows the atmosphere to hold more water vapour, which leads to even more warming, etc. Then when (not if, but when) large areas of the permafrost start to melt as a result, this will release trapped methane into the atmosphere. And methane is an even more potent GHG than CO2 :-\

wayne says:
October 25, 2010 at 1:01 pm
“I am curious where you got the 4ºC average temperature for the oceans.”
I didn’t get it from here:
http://chalk.richmond.edu/education/projects/webunits/biomes/oclimate.html
but its calculation of 3.8C awfully close to my estimated 4C. Mine was just a back of the envelope calculation. Not sure where I got my starting numbers but I think it was here:
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Water/temp.html
90% of the water in the global ocean is below the thermocline and the temperature is a pretty consistent 3C. For the surface layer I used 16C and solved for the average ((9*3C)+16C)/10 = 4.3C and rounded down to 4C which I figured should be accurate enough since 16C is on the high side for the portion of the global ocean above the thermocline as it’s the average temperature at the air/water interface and declines from there as you go deeper.

Ian H says:
October 25, 2010 at 2:33 pm
“There is a problem in the argument here that should be pointed out. The forcing due to CO_2 cannot be exactly logarithmic, only approximately so in the region of concentrations not too different from now.”
Quite right. John Tyndall demonstrated it experimentally 150 years ago. At very low concentrations longwave absorption increases in a linear fashion. Basically the first longwave absorption is like picking the low hanging fruit – it gets progressively more difficult to capture and due to the nature of absorption and re-emission you’ll never capture all of it as some portion of the energy at the far end of your absorption column will be re-emission at the primary absorption frequency.
Everyone should really read the longwave absorption section on gases in Tyndal’s 1859 “Heat – A Mode of Motion” which is freely available in its entirety on books.google.com. Tyndal conducted thousands of experiments using different gases at different pressures with an ingenius experimental setup – for example he read the dial on his galvonometer using a telescope so that body heat didn’t muck up the energy being received by it. Another thing he did was use a second adjustable longwave energy source on the back-side of the galvonometer to keep the instrument its most sensitive linear range despite widely varying inputs on the front side of it. Just reading about his experimental setup with rock salt windows (rock salt, unlike glass, transmits longwave radiation with very little attenuation). It took a long time just to find a big enough monolithic rock salt crystal from which to cut and polish the column windows.

The last comment should read “rocks are nearly solid in comparison so you get no convection“

George E. Smith says:
October 25, 2010 at 3:46 pm
“By the way, I wish people would stop assigning significant albedo contribution to snow and ice cover (mostly in te polar regions) rather than to cloud cover which averages about 61% on earth (cloud cover, not albedo)”
Snow and ice cover is mostly near the poles, except for NH winter when it extends down quite a bit farther over the land surface. But that wasn’t my point. Interglacial periods during the last few millions years are roughly 1/10 the duration of the glacial periods. During the glacial periods snow and ice are not confined to near the poles. During that time a large fraction of the earth’s surface is covered year-round by glaciers and sea ice and there are very few clouds. At times in the earth’s history the coverage was 100% and these episodes are called “snowball earth”. Nobody quite knows what works to melt a snowball earth yet something does. My pet theory is that with most of the green plants gone and the ocean covered with ice there is no CO2 sink for the atmosphere so it remains constant. But underwater volcanoes keep right on chugging along belching CO2 into the ocean. Over the course of millions of years the pressure builds up under the ice like CO2 builds up in a bottle of homemade beer. If you put too much sugar in the bottle before you cap it the bottle will eventually explode. I think it might work like that with a snowball earth. Dissolved CO2 builds up in the ice-capped global ocean from volcanic emission until something, maybe an asteroid, comes along to break the seal then all of a sudden atmospheric CO2 level shoots up through the roof to 4000+ ppm and the greenhouse effect kicks into high gear melting the ice particularly near the equator. Green plants then recover quickly gluttonously feeding on the CO2 feast with little competition and lowering the albedo from snow level (85% reflectivity) to plant level (12% reflectivity) wherever they grow in a rapidly expanding range. And as sea ice melts that’s also a positive feedback as the ocean has single digit % reflectivity in most circumstances (high incidence angle and/or even a small amount of wave action).

R. Craigen says:
October 26, 2010 at 7:25 am
“What happens if we use the period 1940 to 1970 to determine forcing and sensitivity?”
Anthropogenic aerosols get blamed for temporarily overcoming the warming effect of CO2.
If that’s true then the easy solution to global warming would then be to stop filtering the aerosols from our emissions. The worst consequence (other than global cooling) is acid rain as I recall and that was very regional nearest the biggest sources. All we’d have to do is carefully distribute sulfate emissions to avoid regional acid rains and there you go. It would also lower the cost of industrial processes and transportation (filtering costs $$$) so it would have a positive economic impact.
I say go it for it. It’s plausible, fast acting, and worth a try since cost is less than nothing. I grew up in rural western New York 50 miles SSE from Bethlehem Steel which was supposed to be one of the worst places on earth for acid rain at the time and I didn’t notice a difference in any vegetation, wildlife, or agriculture after it largely shut down. The forest and farms and fields and river are all pretty much the same. Winters have been milder for sure which only lends more credence to the aerosol cooling hypothesis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlehem_Steel

Not being a real expert, i.e. I wasn’t around then to do real measurements, I suspect that not only the underwater volcanism played a role in the recovery to non-snowball status. Volcanos around the PacRim as well as across Europe and Africa wouldn’t have necessarily been idle. I wonder what the weight of the ice did to the stresses on the plate boundaries? I can imagine that there were some interesting tremors, if you were a seismologist.
So much that we don’t know, or can’t know, but just try to deduce. Life is interesting if you’re really curious.

Regarding Bill Illis says: October 26, 2010 at 10:00 am
Thanks for the post, now a question. So about 72% of the energy continues through the cloud cover to reach the surface. How has its wave length been affected? Is any more of it long wave?
Thanks

Regarding Tim Folkerts says:
October 25, 2010 at 5:15 pm
Ouote “I can’t see any way to escape the logic that more water vapor (and more GHG’s in general) should and do have a net affect of warming the planet.”
Tim, if I am following this correctly it is the residence time of the full spectrum of TSI in the earth system that matters. Your statement sounds true to me in regard to the atmosphere, but twenty percent less energy goes into the oceans due to the increase in water vapor. The short term effect is to heat the atmosphere, the long term is to cool the oceans.

“”” Steve Metzler says:
October 26, 2010 at 10:47 am
racookpe1978 says:
The past three year’s global recession is directly traceable to the democrat’s and liberal’s CO2 programs and energy policies.
I thought we were trying to have a grown-up discussion here about the science. That doesn’t seem possible on this site. “””
Try over at c-r for a real adult debate. It is so easy to just ignore posts; there’s so many to read. That’s why they have libraries; people like to read different books too.

“””” Steve Metzler says:
October 26, 2010 at 4:57 am
The author doesn’t even understand the first thing about what a doubling of CO2 actually means. Tom Kehr says in the original post:
So all other factors in the Earth’s climate account for 14% of the GHE and CO2 by itself accounts for the other 86%. This can also be compared to the number of CO2 doublings that take place from 1 ppm to 390 ppm. That is roughly 8.6 CO2 doublings (1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,390 ppm). Using 8.6 doublings from 1 ppm gives 25.8 °C. So their model is coherent, but saying that CO2 causes 86% of the GHE is extremely incorrect.
To say that CO2 ‘doubled’ when it went from 1ppm to 2ppm is a fine demonstration of his complete ignorance on the subject. When scientists refer to a doubling of CO2, they mean from the pre-industrial (ca. 1750) value of 280ppm to 560ppm (which, if we keep going the way we are now regarding the use of fossil fuels, will happen sometime around 2050). Anything below that value of 280ppm is essentially meaningless to us going forward. In fact, if you look at the CO2 levels derived from Vostok ice cores, the CO2 level has never been below 180ppm for the past 400,000 years, even during ice ages. “””””
Well how about a little consistency. either the global mean surface Temperature is a linear function of the log of the CO2 abundance, or it isn’t. Climatism 101 says it is; and if we accept that, then John’s numbers are correct.
Your post is the very first time I have ever seen anybody refer to Climate Sensitivity as the rise in mean global surface temperature for an increase in CO2 from 280 ppm to 560 ppm. It is almost universal to refer to the Temperature rise per doubling; and that specifies a log function; which isn’t some arbitrary non linearity.
We get these weasel words about , for very low values the change is linear with CO2, and then it gets harder to absorb more so it becomes logarithmic. It may become non-linear; but not logarithmic. Phil adds that at even higher concentrations it goes as square root of CO2 (I hope I’m not misstating what Phil has said.). The point is that in order to establish or solidify any sort of cause and effect relationship it is mandatory to be able to home in on a plausible mathematical relationship; that is traceable to basic physical laws (eventually)

JDN says:
October 25, 2010 at 1:00 pm
DesertYote says:
October 25, 2010 at 12:01 pm
richard telford says:
October 25, 2010 at 7:51 am
There was a similar post to this on WUWT a month or two back. Not surprisingly they share the same flaw.
The greenhouse effect of 30C is for a planet with an albedo of 0.3. The earth would not be cooler by more than 30C if the atmosphere was not radiatively active because the albedo would increase because of increased snow and ice cover.
#
What does a state change discontinuity at boundary have to do with the anything?
————————
@DesertYote: It’s the difference between walking on water and walking in water.
@Telford: I assume that he meant “all things being equal”, as in equal albedo, the earth would be 30C colder. Since it’s an analysis of formulas, that seems reasonable. Is this going to be a problem for you?
###
I said discontinuous state change at a boundary, as in domain boundary. Your analogy is for a discontinuity within the problem domain. Try again.

This all reminds me of some horrible experiment trying to determine the relationship between the number of pins in a cat and the volume of its screech.
How many pins will it take to get a 92db screech on a standard cat etc. etc.
Have you ever tried to hold down a cat and stick in a pin? Ask any vet with scars down their face how they got them! Likewise, the atmosphere is not some passive entity that just sits there and gets warm according to some theoretical “cat-screech” equation. Like the cat it will be running round the walls doing everything you can conceive, puffing up in clouds, pouring IR into the vast emptiness of space … all helped along by IR cooling gas!
Yes somehow sensible people still seem to be able to sit and talk about the theoretical number of pins you can stick in a cat and the “cat-screech” sensitivity!

George E. Smith,
You can’t find any legitimate problems with the science, so instead you play with words. Have at it.

[SNIP – violation of site policy – wtf@fu.com is not a valid email address. the fu.com domain is in Arlington, VA and your comment originates at The University of Reading, UK., until you use a valid email address, all of your comments will be discarded – Anthony]

Who’s playing with words ? I simply pointed out that the SCIENCE says that each of those things produces the same SCIENTIFIC results; so there isn’t any SCIENTIFIC basis for characterizing CO2 and H2O as different in their effects.
Both exhibit the characteristics of GHG forcings which is pure SCIENCE; and both cause “regenerative” sort of effects; which the climatists call FEEDBACK which is SCIENCE; so in no qualitative way are they different to where one can be called a GHG forcing, and the other a non-GHG feedback. It’s a quite arbitrary and UNSCIENTIFIC dsitinction.
But the climatists cchoose the most perjorative interpretation to make their unfounded case that H2O is not the most important GHG; which it clearly is.
Over the last 600 million years; CO2 has been all over the map; yet for hundreds of millions of years, that had absolutely no recorded influence on the Temperature which simply refused to budge. And that is from the peer reviewed Science; not any wordmanship from me.

George E. Smith says:
But the climatists cchoose the most perjorative interpretation to make their unfounded case that H2O is not the most important GHG; which it clearly is.
Please learn to read for comprehension. I’ve said up-thread several times that water vapour has more than twice the greenhouse effect of CO2. It’s hard to be logically consistent when you’re lying to yourself all the time, isn’t it?

“So then the question becomes “is water vapor better at blocking incoming solar radiation, or is it better at blocking outgoing terrestrial radiation?” Does this result in a net warming or a net cooling effect?”
That is only part of the question. The “blocked” incoming solar radiation also increases the energy in the atmosphere. The question perhaps better asked is ” How is the residence time of all incoming TSI affected by changes in various GHGs?

For those interested in meteorological data during a total eclipse of the Sun, for the eclipse of February 26 ‘98 in Venezuela, I offer the pages:
http://www.oarval.org/MeteorologiaALen.htm (Meteorology by Angel Laya)
http://www.oarval.org/seclps98en.htm (Images & Data)
http://www.oarval.org/SEclpsTechen.htm (Tech Data)
http://www.oarval.org/SEclpsen.htm (Observatorio ARVAL: Paraguaná Total Eclipse of the Sun – February 26 ’98)

@Steve Metzler
October 26, 2010 at 12:41 pm
While we’re on the subject of CO2 here’s some more inconvenient facts from physics.
The surface warming effect of CO2 comes by way of it absorbing upwelling infrared radiation and re-emitting it in all directions with approximately half going back towards the surface. That surface is in fact over 70% the surface of a body of water. You can’t heat water with infrared radiation. Infrared radiation is completely absorbed by the first layer of water molecules at the surface. You can increase the evaporation rate of water with infrared light but you can’t heat it. So for most of the earth’s surface downwelling infrared radiation doesn’t do jack diddly squat to heat the surface – all it does is increases the evaporation rate. It simply speeds up the water cycle and since the water cycle is a self-limiting process with negative feedback there’s no surface warming. Any insulation effect of CO2 over water is defeated by an increase in heat transport (evaporation, convective rise, condensation) from the surface to kilometers above the surface where it can more easily escape to the cold void of space.
CO2 over land is a different story as land surfaces readily absorb infrared radiation. There you have a real honest-to-God surface warming effect because of it. But since land surfaces are less than third of the entire surface there’s only a third of the warming from CO2 that might otherwise be expected. This handily explains why the IPCC’s dire warnings about global warming fell so far short of observed warming and why the warming that is observed is primarily in the northern hemisphere because the NH has more land surface than the southern hemisphere.
I never expect anyone who drank the CAGW kool-aid to someone who lets facts get in the way of their beliefs but these sir are the facts and they are indisputable.

“Anything in the atmosphere which is capable by any mechanism of absorbing some part of the OUTGOING RADIANT ENERGY from the EARTH; must necessarily reduce the total amount of OUTGOING RADIANT ENERGY the earth LOSES over time; and that must result in a HIGHER mean global Temperature.”
Sure, that isn’t how I’d describe it but still the end result is a higher equilibrium temperature somewhere but not necessarily near ground or sea level. On a water world you can’t ignore evaporation and convection. When water evaporates it cools the surface where it evaporated. Pretty much everyone knows that, right?
The Sahara desert has a mean temperature of 86F while tropical rain forests have mean temperatures of 81F.
You’d think with all that vapor in the rain forest it wouldn’t be cooler than a desert. Yet it is and still yet the CO2 content in the well mixed atmosphere is the same in both places.
But wait it gets worse for the case that more water vapor, a strong greenhouse gas, automatically makes it hotter.
The albedo of desert sand is 40% whereas that of a rainforest is 10%. The surface of the desert is absorbing 30% less energy from the sun than the rainforest yet the mean desert temperature is higher.
So here’s a perfect moment to ask: What’s Up With That?
The surface albedo of the desert is

Tom Folkerts;
So, in fact, water DOES block the energy differently in different directions.>>
It most certainly does not. You are conflating two issues. Water vapour blocks a given frequency or wavelength exactly the same regardless of direction. Determining how much of a given wavelength is travelling in a given direction is another matter, and yes the mix of “downward” wavelengths is different than the mix of “upward” wavelengths. May seem like a subtle difference but it isn’t.

@Steve Metzler
So now that I’ve either taught you or reminded you that deserts at tropical latitudes have a mean surface temperature 5F degrees warmer than tropical rain forests despite the fact that the surface of the rain forest is much darker than desert sand and absorbs 30% more energy from the sun let’s move on to the tropical ocean surface temperature. Oceans are almost black so they absorb nearly 100% of any insolation reaching the surface or 40% more than desert and 10% energy than a rain forest. Plus the humidity is consistently high so there’s lots of water vapor to work as a greenhouse gas.
That should REALLY get the mean surface temperature cranked up, right?
Wrong. The mean surface temperature of the tropical ocean is 68F and nearly constant year round.
So how come when we look at all these places where the incoming energy at the top of the atmosphere is the same and the concentration of CO2 is the same the cooler surfaces are always the ones where there is more water vapor?
I granted at the beginning that increased CO2 will raise land surface temperatures but the effect is primarily where there is a dearth of liquid and gaseous water. So you’ll see what little effect it has primarily in the northern hemisphere because there’s more land in the NH and more in higher northern latitudes than lower latitudes because that cool refreshing water cycle is less active the farther north you go due to falling temperatures.
Instead of ad hominem as your sole response try explaining these observations according to natural law as you understand it. You can include the ad hominem if it makes you feel better just don’t skip the science.

More food for thought.
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/oceanography-book/oceansandclimate.htm

Influence of Greenhouse Gases Especially Water Vapor
Let’s look at how greenhouse gases influence the climate system, and how they might cause climate change. The ideas below come from George Philander’s book, Our Affair With El Niño, chapter 7: Constructing a Model of Earth’s Climate, page 105.
1. Earth with no atmosphere
If earth had no atmosphere, if it had a land surface that reflected some sunlight like the real earth, and if it were in equilibrium with solar heating, the average surface temperature of earth would be -18°C (0°F), far colder than the average temperature of our earth, which is 15°C (59°F). Worse, the surface would cool down to around -160°C (-250°F) soon after the sun set because the surface would radiate heat to space very quickly, just as the moon’s surface cools rapidly as soon as the sun sets on the moon.
2. Earth with a static atmosphere and no ocean
If the earth had a static atmosphere with the same gases it has now, but with little water vapor and no ocean, the average surface temperature of earth would be 67°C (153°F). This is much warmer than our earth. The planet would be so hot because greenhouse gases in the atmosphere help keep heat near the surface, and because there is no convection, and no transport of heat by winds. Adding winds cools the planet a little, but not enough.
3. Earth with an atmosphere and ocean
Earth has an atmosphere and ocean, and the average surface temperature is a comfortable 15°C (59°F). Water evaporates from the ocean and land, cooling the surface. Winds carry the water vapor to other latitudes, and sometimes high up into the air, where heat is released when the vapor condenses to water.

There’s your feedback effect from water vapor. It cools the average surface temperature of the planet by an incredible 100 degrees F according to George Philander who holds a PhD in Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences from Harvard and is a full professor of same at Princeton. Philander was the director and/or chairman of Geoscience and Atmospheric and Oceanic Science at Princeton from 1990-2006.

racookpe1978 says:
October 27, 2010 at 11:23 am

Did you not conveniently miss the negative feedback of the clouds (er, water vapor) that is busily reflecting additonal solar energy from the earth – before it ever
(1) penetrates the atmosphere,

Yes, indeed I did and it was purposeful. My pedagogic style is to leave some deductions up to the student as a means of helping me judge how well he understands the underlying principles and ability to carry them out to the proper conclusions. The tropical rain forest, at an altitude of a kilometer or more above the canopy has an average albedo higher than that of desert sand due to all the clouds. The canopy itself (the actual surface where we and most other terrestrial life lives and breathes) still has an albedo around 10% so my statement is still true but it wasn’t the whole truth. I left the rest of the truth as an exercise for the reader. You picked up on it pretty quick. Let’s hope Steverino does too.

Tim Folkerts says:
October 27, 2010 at 4:54 am
“…The incoming light from the sun has much of its energy in the form of visible light, which passes quite easily thru the vapor and down to the earth – maybe 20% of the energy is blocked. But the outgoing radiation is almost entirely IR. I don’t have the specific numbers handy, but water vapor certainly blocks over half of the outgoing radiation…”
I trust you are aware that 54% of the sun’s radiation is in the infra-red (IR) region?
This means that over half the incoming radiation must also be blocked by water vapour. It is also interesting to note that the atmosphere is densest at ground/ocean level and has the highest humidity here. Therefore, most of the outgoing IR is absorbed by the first yards of atmosphere above the surface. In addition, over 90% of absorbed photons are not re-emitted, rather due to collisions with other molecules they are converted into kinetic energy. The heat is then dissipated in the upper atmosphere and eventually out to space.
Until climate scientists stop using computer models, and start to try and understand real world macro-physics, no insight about how our climate operates will be forthcoming. It’s a travesty that so much money has been spent to deliver so little!

“”””” Tenuc says:
October 27, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Tim Folkerts says:
October 27, 2010 at 4:54 am
“…The incoming light from the sun has much of its energy in the form of visible light, which passes quite easily thru the vapor and down to the earth – maybe 20% of the energy is blocked. But the outgoing radiation is almost entirely IR. I don’t have the specific numbers handy, but water vapor certainly blocks over half of the outgoing radiation…”
I trust you are aware that 54% of the sun’s radiation is in the infra-red (IR) region? “””
Well actually not really. A text book plot of the actual solar spectrum places the peak spectral irradiance at about 480 nm which puts the visible IR boundary of 800 nm at 1.67 times the peak wavelength. Standard Black Body radiation curves, suggest that only 40% of the total is at longer wavelengths than that. But a detailed table of actual TSI spectrum values says that 56.023% of the total is at SHORTER than 800; which means only 44% is in the IR.
That is not an inconsequential difference from 54%.
These numbers are from 20th century research; so I dare say that a 2010 review would change some of the numbers a bit; but climatists are busy trying to determine the correct R^2 value to use for their statistical research results; so they are not really interested in real physical data gathering.
It is interesting to contemplate the enormity of the supercomputer computations that Lacis et all had to go through to show that CO2 is the big control knob.
He said that the GHG (and presumably non GHG feedback gases like H2O) have absorption spectra containing “thousands” of absorption lines; each of which has to be individually calculated.
So for some arbitrary location somewhere in the atmosphere, and at some earth location at some epoch of time; you have to determine from the model what the local Temperature and Density are; and the species living there, then for each of the thousands of spectral lines you have to determine the Doppler and pressure line broadening for those circumstances; and integrate the total energy that will be absorbed from whatever EM radiation flux is passing through that sample; and you do that for each of the thousnds of lines; and then you compute the local temperature change that will result from that temperature change, and the resulting atmospheric thermal radiation that occurs, and then you have to move on to the next atmospheric layer; both up and down to compute the changes in the temperature, and pressure, and then recalculate all the line broadenings and new absorption spectrum appropriate for those conditions; and then after you are finished with the analysis for that location from the surface to outer space, you then have to go to the next spatial location and repeat the whole process, until you have a properly Nyquist sampled set of spatial data ; and then you have to repeat the whole process for the neaxt time epoch to see how it all changed ; and perhaps keep doing that until you have properly Nyquist sampled perhaps a whole year of sun orbiting changes; and meanwhile you have to deduce what phase changes will take place for non-GHG feedback mechanisms like H2O vapor and clouds; and then when finally you have figured out what the mean global surface Tempertaure is for all of this data set; you have to go and do it all over again but now with twice as much CO2, so you can compute how much the Temperature changes for the CO2 doubling; to arrive at a final value for Climate Sensitivity.
I knew there was a reason, that I didn’t go into the climatism field; it just seems like too much hard work; and I can see why you have to revamp your results from time to time; when people say you aren’t doing it properly.
But since I spent so much of my hard earned dollars in taxes to buy a supercomputer for Drs Lacis, and Schmidt it is good that they have done this pioneering work for us; so that we don’t have to.
But I still have a lot of confidence in my stick on a sandy beach; and I keep coming to the same conclusion:-
HEY !! IT’S THE WATER !!

George E. Smith says:
October 27, 2010 at 3:06 pm
re; 44% of insolation in the IR range
Keep in mind that’s almost all in the near IR spectrum where CO2 is transparent to it. CO2 is not a significant absorber of solar spectrum energy. Water vapor is opaque in the near IR however. Hardly any radiation from the sun is in the far IR where CO2 becomes opaque. The earth’s surface on the other hand radiates almost exclusively in the far IR with a couple of CO2’s sweet spots right near the peak power frequency. But it shares one of those sweet spots with water vapor so in the presence of water vapor CO2’s effectiveness is diminished to some extent.

Tim Folkerts says:
October 27, 2010 at 8:19 pm
George E. Smith says: October 27, 2010 at 3:06 pm
“Obviously this fuzzy boundary for IR means that the numbers will also be a bit fuzzy. (Of course, what we call it will not change how much is absorbed by H2O or CO2.)”
The fuzzy boundary is because the boundary is an arbitrary point set by the frequency response range of the human eyeball. Some animals see farther into the near infrared than others. Rattlesnakes can see into the far infrared. Birds and bees can see into the ultraviolet. EMR is EMR. Wavelength primarily changes the way the wave propagates through matter. For instance a microwave will go through the ionosphere but radio waves can be reflected by it. Visible and infrared light won’t penetrate a sheet of paper but the paper is almost transparent for microwaves and radio waves and semi-transparent to x-rays. There’s no particular point where nature lays down a border saying “red stops here and becomes infrared”.

George E. Smith says:
October 27, 2010 at 3:06 pm
“A text book plot of the actual solar spectrum places the peak spectral irradiance at about 480 nm which puts the visible IR boundary of 800 nm at 1.67 times the peak wavelength. Standard Black Body radiation curves, suggest that only 40% of the total is at longer wavelengths than that. But a detailed table of actual TSI spectrum values says that 56.023% of the total is at SHORTER than 800; which means only 44% is in the IR.
That is not an inconsequential difference from 54%.”
The 54% came from “Power From The Sun” -2001 – William B. Stine and Michael Geyer
Hi George, it looks like we could be falling foul of the definition of where the IR range begins. They peg IR as starting at 0.7 micrometers, while your text puts the boundary at 0.8 micrometers – enough to account for the discrepancy perhaps?

For Tim and Dave, Re water absorption.
The IR Handbook gives some good data for seawater.
Seawater is MOST absorptive at and around 3.0 Microns (solar spectrum; not thermal). The Absorption coefficient is about 9,000 cm^-1 which means attenuation to 1/e (37%) in about 1.1 microns; which would be 99% absorbed in 5.5 microns. It then drops considerably to as low as 200 cm^-1 at 4 microns; beyond which only 1% of sunlight remains, and reaches the second highest peak of maybe 2000cm^-2 at 6.3 microns, and then drops to about 900 at 700 microns from where it rises slowly to a final max of about 3200 cm^-1 at about 15-20 microns; right where the CO2 peak is and water’s best LWIR peak.
From there is drops about linearly on a log log plot to maybe 300 cm^-1 at 100 microns. So 1000 would give a 1/e depth of 10 microns so 50 microns absorbs 99%.
So definitely not a monomolecular layer by any stretch; but a very thin layer for the LWIR thermal spectral range. The linear log-log plot continues all the way out to 10 cm which is 3GHz, where the slope about doubles as water gets more transparent to radio-waves.
I think for the bulk of the 5.0 to 80 micron surface or atmospheric thermal spectrum, 2,000 cm^-1 is good number which is a 5 micron 1/e depth or 25 micron 99% absorption depth (1 mil).
That to me is a thin layer that can easily heat sufficiently to evaporate profusely.
In contrast at the sunlight peak of around 470 nm , the absorption coefficient is 0.0001 cm^-1 which is a 100 metre 1/e depth, and 500 metres for 99%.
Actually in a lot of sea waters; biologicals in the water; will cause more losses; but you get the idea that solar energy is deposited deep in the ocean; while the downwelling LWIR from the atmosphere is stopped in a mil of water.

@Tim
Yes sir. The water cycle (clouds are a part of it) is the big Kahuna when it comes to surface temperature on a water world. CO2’s only important role (other than plant food!) is keeping it warm enough for the water cycle to be active. Evidently we don’t have quite enough CO2 because warm spells like the Holocene interglacial only last about 15,000 years then there’s 100,000 years of glaciers and sea ice covering everything all year round from 40 to 90 degrees latitude. That’s been the cycle for the last several million years. I don’t think humans can possibly pump enough CO2 into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels to break that cycle. At best maybe delay the inevitable by no more than a few centuries. That might be enough time to figure out and put in place some other artificial means of preventing the next glacial period.

@george
Thanks for the IR optical depth data in seawater!
I knew it was a very thin layer. Elsewhere I read the observed action all takes place in the first millimeter even though complete absorption takes place in just a few microns.
Evaporation however is a surface event. In a boiling fluid (vaporization pressure equals environmental pressure) vaporization can occur anywhere. In evaporation where the vaporization pressure is only a fraction of environmental pressure it occurs in the top layer of molecules as they have less binding energy than molecules completely surrounded by other water molecules.
In the real world there is going to be some other processes going on due to impurities in the water which are not subject to phase change. It’s unclear to me if there are any real world conditions where IR impinging on a water surface could possibly raise its sensible temperature. It would seem that at the least this would require non-moving saturated air at the interface like in a fog bank. All I know for sure is that when evaporation is occuring it is removing sensible heat from the surface and the vapor itself doesn’t have a higher temperature than the bulk liquid it leaves behind because the heat it carries away is latent which won’t have any heating effect on the surrounding environment until the vapor changes phase back to a liquid and that usually occurs at some significant altitude so the net effect is like an express elevator mechanically carrying heat away from the surface and dumping it thousands of feet higher up in the troposphere or maybe even in the stratosphere when a convective cell gets wound up really tight.

The bottom line for “sensitivity” to CO2 concentration is not simple thing. If the water cycle is stopped due to freezing temperatures then the sensitivity is very high and extraordinarily high for the first 0-50ppm where its greenhouse efficiency increases in a more linear fashion with increasing concentration. Much less sensitive to increases above 200ppm where it efficiency increases are inversely exponential.
The earth without any greenhouse gases would have an average temperature well below freezing. CO2’s most significant role by far (excluding plants needing it) is in raising the surface temperature from below freezing to above freezing. Once that happens the water cycle is activated and as long as the temperature remains above freezing the water cycle controls the climate and CO2 does little to nothing. In the big picture then one might CO2 as a limiting factor in how far the average temperature can drop and the water cycle is a limiting factor in how far the average temperature can rise. Since the earth still periodically gets covered by glaciers for 100,000 years with brief respites lasting about 15,000 years then as far as civilization is concerned the “pre-industrial” CO2 level of 280ppm is too little as that doesn’t stop the recurring glacial epics. Maybe if we can manage one or two doublings from pre-industrial level by burning fossil fuels to get a CO2 concentration of 1000ppm (which will make green plants much happier too) it might be enough to break the glaciation cycle. What it won’t do is result in any excessive warming because the water is what limits warming. Sensitivity to CO2 doublings is essentially zero when and where the water cycle is active.
The “correct” sensitivity is thus not anywhere near a fixed number but rather varies tremendously depending on the activity level of the water cycle which in turns depends only on surface temperature being on average above freezing.