Guest Post by Barry Woods
All too often the ‘simple physics of CO2’ argument is presented to the public by the media, politicians, climate scientists and environmental advocacy groups, in a way that grossly simplifies the issue of the response in global temperature to increasing CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere.
An excellent response to the simple physics argument is to be found in the comments at Climate Etc (Professor Judith Curry’s blog)
In reality my feather blew up into a tree
“….. which is that since CO2 is a GHG it follows that increasing CO2 must increase the temperature (of something). No matter how many times we say that the climate is a system with complex non-linear feedbacks they still love this simple principle of physics.
This is because physics works by isolating simple situations from reality. That was the great discovery of physics, that if you simplified reality you could find simple laws. So far so good.
But as every engineer knows, these simple laws often do not work when reality gets messy, as it usually is. Simple physics says that if I drop a ball and a feather they will fall at the same rate.
In reality my feather blew up into a tree.
It is not that the simple law is false, just that there are a number of other simple laws opposing it. In the case of climate we don’t even know what some of these other laws are, so we can’t explain what we see. That is where we should be looking.”
The ‘do you deny the simple GHG physics’ argument is also often an attempt to portray anyone that asks reasonable scientific questions about AGW and the complexity of climate science, as some sort of an ‘anti-science’, ‘flat earther’ denier.
The realities and complexities and unknowns of climate science are described in the IPCC working Group 1 reports, but somehow get ‘lost in translation’ into the Summary for Policymakers, for example (and everyone knows very few politicians even read beyond the executive summary of anything).
IPCC (Chapter 14, 14.2.2.2, Working Group 1, The Scientific Basis)
Third Assessment Report: “In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
Time and time again the media and environment groups ignore this IPCC fact that the climate is a coupled nonlinear chaotic system and that the worst case scenarios of the computer model ‘projections’ or scenarios (because they know they cannot use the word prediction) latest example, 4C by 2060, are just one result of computer model ‘runs’ programmed with various extreme values of these assumptions.
The low-end ‘projections’ of temperature by model runs with other values and assumptions are ignored completely by CAGW advocates, the data output or projection of a computer model transmorphs into a scientific fact, the data output of a computer model becomes evidence of CAGW.
Climate Science is often portrayed to the public in simplistic terms as a mature science, narrowed down and focussed onto one primary factor – CO2, assuming all else to be equal, and not the possibilities in this type of system that varying one parameter alone, may vary other parameters in non-linear ways, even potentially flipping some from positive to negative feedback (or vice versa)
At the time of the Copenhagen Cop 15 Climate Conference, stunts on TV, rather than the discussion of uncertainties of ‘climate science’ were the order of the day.
The classic demonstration of the ‘do you deny the simple physics of CO2’ argument is a glass tube filled with CO2, heated and then the TV presenter or preferably a senior government scientist says ‘look it has warmed!’ –
As demonstrated by the BBC in their Newsnight program, Copenhagen Climate Conference time, the BBC’s apparent intellectual response to the climategate emails and documents. Watts Up With That, gave a critique of this particular type of TV experiment and CAGW PR.
I wonder what would have happened if a member of the audience had been able to question their methodology, or even ask simple questions like:
What is the percentage of CO2 in the jar?
ie total atmospheric is ~0.038%, what percentage is in the glass jar – 50% plus perhaps, or more?
[Corrected typo spotted in comments – 0.038% / 380 ppm]
If you were to mention that the CO2 effect is logarithmic, then you are likely to be labelled a ‘climate change sceptic’ or worse a ‘climate change denier’ by any passing MSM media TV presenter, environmentalist group or AGW consensus minded politician, and then they will simply stop listening, because you are obviously a fossil fuel funded denier, such has been the CAGW consensus PR.
I wonder if for a sceptical joke, someone could produce a spoof YouTube video of a feather and a cannon ball in a glass jar experiment (non evacuated) and the TV presenter could say to the audience:
“Proof – The Cannon Ball FALLS faster that the feather – Simple Physics clearly show this”
Someone in the audience could then ask, but you have air in the jar? and then get ridiculed by the group as an ‘anti-science’ denier, the scientist/presenter could even bring out the ‘No Pressure’ red button to use!
The simple and not so simple physics of a number of climate parameters, are programmed into the climate computer models. Many of these parameters, it is acknowledged, are not completely understood or that there is serious contentious debate about in the scientific literature. ie aerosols, clouds, solar pacific and atlantic oscillations, volcanoes, etc,etc
Engineers (or economists now, perhaps) will advice climate scientists, model are not reality, reality is often more complicated than any computer model. Take a step back, view with hindsight with respect to risk in the financial markets. At the trouble the cream of the last few decades of science graduates – turned computer modellers – left the world’s economy in, following the modelling of credit risk amongst many other economic assumptions.
Next time anyone starts on about the simple physics of CO2, remember the feather and a cannon ball in a very large glass jar analogy, or for the classically motivated, atop the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Politicians could lay trillion-dollar bets, and dozens of competing scientific groups (publically funded) could even attempt to write a computer models to predict when and where the feather would land…………
Thanks again to Anthony for the opportunity to write at Watts Up With That again. There is a little more about me here.
Or maybe you could stop by at my new blog, I hope that the Watts Up With That regulars like the name.
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Ric Werme
……..380 ppm of CO can’t possibly have an impact on people. (Exposure limits are 25-50 ppm, 400ppm for 4 hours can kill.)………
Measured CO2 concentration in a forest and cinema have been in excess of 600ppm and no fatalities!
Mind you two Star Trek films end to end might be more than human flesh can stand.
[Reply] CO carbon monoxide, is not co2, carbon dioxide. RT-mod
I am really pleased to live in France where electricity generation is 85% nuclear.
Future Energy Security, (thoroughly destroyed by the last UK Government and sadly with the destruction perpetuated by the current Coalition), is probably the foremost responsibility of a government to its citizens. It is arguably more important even than Military Security.
In the light of the state of the current Solar Cycle, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation etc., it seems that there is a real prospect of damaging cooling continuing in the near future for several decades as we may inexorably move towards the climate of another Little Ice Age. Piers Corbyn and many others already anticipate that eventuality.
The French long-term energy strategy with its massive commitment to nuclear power is impressive, (85% of electricity generation). And even if one is concerned about CO2, Nuclear Energy pays off, French electricity prices and CO2 emissions / head are the lowest in the developed world.
It is utterly futile to think that mankind can affect climate to any worthwhile extent. The numbers are very simple and are accepted by a renowned UK government advisor, the US Department of Energy and many other reputable scientific minds. Yes CO2 might well affect some warming but the important question is HOW MUCH or rather HOW LITTLE ? and therefore can any remedial actions worthwhile at all ?
Why cant we get to the nub of the problem ? with simple NUMBERS NOT ADJECTIVES. There is a good chance that these rough and ready numbers are in the right ballpark.
On average world temperature is ~+15 degC. This is sustained by the atmospheric Greenhouse Effect ~33 degC. Without the Greenhouse Effect the planet would be un-inhabitable at ~-18 degC.
So translating the agents causing the Greenhouse Effect into degrees centigrade:
• Water Vapour and Clouds account for as much as 95% of the Greenhouse Effect = ~ 31.35 degC
• Other Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) account for about 5% = ~1.65 degC
• CO2 is 75% of the remaining effect when accounting for the enhanced effects of Methane, Nitrous Oxide and other GHGs = ~1.24 degC
• Most CO2 in the atmosphere is natural, more than ~93%, (some authorities say 97%)
• Man-made CO2 is less than 7% of total atmospheric CO2 = ~0.087 degC being caused by the full emissions of the carbon economies of the whole world
• UK’s contribution to World CO2 emissions is ~1.8% = 1.6 thousandths degC
The maximum efforts made in the UK can only achieve an insignificant and immeasurable part of that. Even partial efforts would damage any Western economy like the UK economy irrevocably.
NASA GISS researcher Gavin Schmidt appears to state in his recent paper (October 2010) that Water Vapour and Clouds account for 75% of the Greenhouse effect. Even at this reduced level of effect that would make very little difference to the FUTILITY argument enumerated above. One is still talking in a few Thousandths of a degree for the whole world Carbon economy.
The probability is that any current global warming is not man-made and in any case such warming could be not be influenced by any remedial action taken by mankind however drastic. And whatever may be said, outside Europe, the rest of the world is not joining in. The non-joiners, (China, India, Japan, Russia, Brazil, South Africa and soon the USA as the Republican majority hopefully dismembers the Catastrophic Man-made Global Warming scam), already amount to 62% of the world CO2 emissions and 48% of the world population.
If the numbers shown above are even close to the right ballpark, the prospect should be greeted with Unmitigated Joy:
• all concern over CO2 as a man-made pollutant can be discounted.
• it is not necessary to damage the western world’s economy to no purpose.
• if warming were happening, it would lead to a more benign and healthy climate for all mankind.
• any extra CO2 is already increasing the fertility and reducing water needs of all plant life and thus enhancing world food production.
• a warmer climate, within natural variation, as has occurred over the last century, would provide a future of greater prosperity for human development and much more food for the growing world population. This has been well proven in the Roman and Medieval pasts and would now especially benefit the third world.
I am really pleased to live in France where electricity generation is 85% nuclear.
Future Energy Security, (thoroughly destroyed by the last UK Government and sadly with the destruction perpetuated by the current Coalition), is probably the foremost responsibility of a government to its citizens. It is arguably more important even than Military Security.
In the light of the state of the current Solar Cycle, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation etc., it seems that there is a real prospect of damaging cooling continuing in the near future for several decades as we may inexorably move towards the climate of another Little Ice Age. Piers Corbyn and many others already anticipate that eventuality.
The French long-term energy strategy with its massive commitment to nuclear power is impressive, (85% of electricity generation). And even if one is concerned about CO2, Nuclear Energy pays off, French electricity prices and CO2 emissions / head are the lowest in the developed world.
It is utterly futile to think that mankind can affect climate to any worthwhile extent. The numbers are very simple and are accepted by a renowned UK government advisor, the US Department of Energy and many other reputable scientific minds. Yes CO2 might well affect warming but the important question is HOW MUCH or rather HOW LITTLE ? and therefore are any remedial actions worthwhile at all.
Why cant we get to the nub of the problem ? with simple NUMBERS NOT ADJECTIVES. There is a good chance that these rough and ready numbers are in the right ballpark.
On average world temperature is ~+15 degC. This is sustained by the atmospheric Greenhouse Effect ~33 degC. Without the Greenhouse Effect the planet would be un-inhabitable at ~-18 degC.
So translating the agents causing the Greenhouse Effect into degrees centigrade:
• Water Vapour and Clouds account for as much as 95% of the Greenhouse Effect = ~ 31.35 degC
• Other Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) account for about 5% = ~1.65 degC
• CO2 is 75% of the remaining effect when accounting for the enhanced effects of Methane, Nitrous Oxide and other GHGs = ~1.24 degC
• Most CO2 in the atmosphere is natural, more than ~93%, (some authorities say 97%)
• Man-made CO2 is less than 7% of total atmospheric CO2 = ~0.087 degC being caused by the full emissions of the carbon economies of the whole world
• UK’s contribution to World CO2 emissions is ~1.8% = 1.6 thousandths degC
The maximum efforts made in the UK can only achieve an insignificant and immeasurable part of that. Even partial efforts would damage any Western economy like the UK economy irrevocably.
NASA GISS researcher Gavin Schmidt appears to state in his recent paper (October 2010) that Water Vapour and Clouds account for 75% of the Greenhouse effect. Even at this reduced level of effect that would make very little difference to the FUTILITY argument enumerated above. One is still talking in a few Thousandths of a degree for the whole world Carbon economy.
The probability is that any current global warming is not man-made and in any case such warming could be not be influenced by any remedial action taken by mankind however drastic. And whatever may be said, outside Europe the, rest of the world is not joining in. The non-joiners, (China, India, Japan, Russia, Brazil, South Africa and soon the USA as the Republican majority hopefully dismembers the Catastrophic Man-made Global Warming scam), already amount to 62% of the world CO2 emissions and 48% of the world population.
If the numbers shown above are even close to the right ballpark, the prospect should be greeted with Unmitigated Joy:
• all concern over CO2 as a man-made pollutant can be discounted.
• it is not necessary to damage the western world’s economy to no purpose.
• if warming were happening, it would lead to a more benign and healthy climate for all mankind.
• any extra CO2 is already increasing the fertility and reducing water needs of all plant life and thus enhancing world food production.
• a warmer climate, within natural variation, as has occurred over the last century, would provide a future of greater prosperity for human development and much more food for the growing world population. This has been well proven in the Roman and Medieval pasts and would now especially benefit the third world.
vukcevic says:
December 28, 2010 at 5:21 am
“However there are 40-50 years long undulations, which appear to have some similarity with the simple orbital resonance cycle of the Jovian planets.”
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETpr.htm
44.75yrs. It was mapped out long ago on the 7 circuit labyrinth.
John says:
December 28, 2010 at 6:05 am
“Simple physics says that if I drop a ball and a feather they will fall at the same rate.” It also says “in a vacuum.” This should help you- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C5_dOEyAfk
If you can’t quote simple physics correctly why should, how could, we believe the rest of the article.
John, let me help you. Aristotle (look him up on YouTube, the source of all knowledge) posited that objects fell at rates proportional to their mass. Therefore a feather should fall slower than a canon ball. Galileo (look him up too) proved that light and heavy objects fall at the same rate and demonstrated the effect at Pisa. However, to apply this simple physical fact to the feather you realize it falls slower. Critics in the 16th century would claim the theory was flawed until one realizes that the system is more complex than being driven by a single factor and needs the understanding of air resistance to fully explain what happens. Perfect analogy to the AGW argument. No single factor drives the climate.
onion says:
December 28, 2010 at 5:57 am
“Simple physics shows that CO2 has a significant warming effect. Complex physics shows that too.”
Please state the simple ( or complex) physics that demonstrates your above statement.
I read that a green-house was using levels of 1,500 ppm CO2 to achieve greater growth rates in plants without any harm to humans. But I have a feeling there may not be an upper level for CO2 that poses risks to humans, other than the effects of the dreaded AGW (such as longer winters etc).
John says:
December 28, 2010 at 6:05 am
“Simple physics says that if I drop a ball and a feather they will fall at the same rate.” It also says “in a vacuum………..”
========================================================
Yeh, well, I’m not sure it was worth your vitriol. Barry didn’t get it wrong, he just didn’t state all of the caveats. Most of us understood what he was stating, but I agree that it should be clarified, else people with more simplistic views could confuse different laws of physics. With air resistance,(a more natural setting) a feather and a ball fall at different rates.
edmh says:
December 28, 2010 at 6:34 am
It is utterly futile to think that mankind can affect climate to any worthwhile extent.
=========================================================
edmh, excellent post, thank you
But that is exactly what they are claiming, that they can control the climate.
Put in those terms, it makes them look even more ridiculous.
==========================================================
“”• Man-made CO2 is less than 7% of total atmospheric CO2 = ~0.087 degC being caused by the full emissions of the carbon economies of the whole world””
==========================================================
and they have shot themselves in foot.
By jiggling temp numbers and lying, we are already there.
You have to determine something is “broke” before you “fix” it. Please, don’t go assuming or projecting a broken earth and then be a busy-body running around “fixing” it. For pete’s sake, there are more than sufficient REAL problems facing us without inventing a bunch of hypothetical imaginary problems.
(If the color yellow makes you sad, there’s a Geico commercial you should watch on YouTube.)
I once took the evil mercury filled in glass gadgetry and hold it up a few mere inches from an indoors specific flower lamp from the netherworld of oblivion itself even (1000 Watt version.)
And lo and behold, there it was, what every green hippie had been spewing about: rising mercury!
OMG but had I not removed my hand I’d been surly burnt. And since this leettle experiment was done in a make shift greenhouse, talk about greenhouse effect.
Another mysterious thing though, which I at first attributed to the power flower lamp being to close to the poor plants, but must have been tot much CO2, because the plants suffered burns and subsequently died from prolonged heat exposure.
Sometimes the arguments here make me want to bang my head against a wall.
“Simple physics says that if I drop a ball and a feather they will fall at the same rate.”
Period.
If one adds “in a vacuum” then why can’t I add “in a non-magnetic field” or some such.
Try letting go of a steel ball and a feather in a vacuum where there is a strong magnetic field in the opposite direction (ceiling) than gravity (floor). While the feather will go “down” toward gravity, the steel ball will go “up” toward the magnetic field (assuming is is strong enough).
I’m sure some of you can relate other possibilities to add to the “simple physics” statement.
As they say, “C’mon, man”.
Ric Werme says:
“Don’t fall prey to the trace gas argument lest you forget that reducing CO2 by just a couple hundred ppm will kill plants or that 380 ppm of CO can’t possibly have an impact on people. (Exposure limits are 25-50 ppm, 400ppm for 4 hours can kill.)”
How could exposure limits be 25-50 ppm when our own atmosphere has 380 ppm? OSHA has set the upper limits for a 10 hour exposure at 10,000 ppm, and they normally tack on an uncertainty factor of 100 plus another 3-fold factor for sensitive individuals.
Josh, your needed.
Barry Woods has laid out some important work for you to do!
I liked this article until:
I’m guessing ESL had a part in the creation of this, so I didn’t want to make fun. But can this be translated/made to sound less awkward?
Sam Hall writes:
“There is also no basis to argue that a rise in CO2 is dangerous.”
There is. What we do know establishes a threat (CO2 rising, beyond levels seen for hundreds of thousands of years, greenhouse gas, ocean acidifification, etc). It’s a bit like taking a drug that hasn’t been tested. Sure I have no basis to claim with certainty that it will be harmful, but I don’t need that to know that the act of taking the untested drug is dangerous.
Rick Werme:
“Don’t fall prey to the trace gas argument lest you forget that reducing CO2 by just a couple hundred ppm will kill plants or that 380 ppm of CO can’t possibly have an impact on people. (Exposure limits are 25-50 ppm, 400ppm for 4 hours can kill.)”
Some sort of confusion here between CO and CO2?
I don’t think CO, a very chemically reactive compound, versus CO2, a rather “inert” compound, should be confused.
As to the “trace gas effect”, I’d recommend Dr. Walter Elsasser’s “On the Infra-red Heat Balance of the Atmosphere”. (Harvard Meteorological Series, 1942) On page 23 he explains exclusion of the CO2 contribution to the exchange in the “tropopshere” (to about 40,000 feet) due to the fact that 0 to 40,000 feet it’s an equal exchange agent…outflux and influx. (Above 40,000 feet it’s a cooling agent, has to due with “view angle”.)
That tretise also does a good job of explaining how WATER acts as the primary “Greenhouse Gas”.
Last, if we are trying to “clear up misconceptions” I suggest locating Dr. Robert Wood’s 1909 experiment which demonstrates with two solar collecting boxes that greenhouses DO NOT WORK because the glass acts as a one way energy valve (i.e., visible in and no longwave IR out), but rather they work because they are “closed convective boundaries”… SO the PROPER TERM is “the ATMOSPHERIC EFFECT..”
Max
onion says:
December 28, 2010 at 5:57 am
You talk of understanding of the more complex physics of CO². I am waiting for it but I know for certain you will never deliver it. It is not basic physics you speak (yet another piece of evidence for your lack of it) it is the limit of physics you choose to adopt. You see all physics is actually maths based and what we physicists do is acknowledge our lack of understanding through the limiting of the value of variables within those equations. Integration and differentiation (calculus) are always performed over limits. Sometimes 0 to infinity but usually over the values about which we can be certain. In a molecule, to find Debye specific gravity, for example, the integration would be performed through the 3 dimensions and the molecular limits of the structure.
So now, Gives your knowledge of the complex physics of CO² radiative absorption and emission within a non-linear 3D, varying density gas where the partial pressures all vary within the 4 dimension of time.
The gas CO² per se will not kill you if you are in an atmosphere with 20% O² Impossible but I think it is probably true. Pure CO² kills animals and Humains and , I think, someone has shown that death has occured at above 7000ppm but the O² content was not measured. And last but not least, a number of celebs in the UK, I think, have died with bags over their heads while performing a sexual act. This occurs because the brain does not ‘see’ CO² as dangerous and you therefore drift gently off to die without suffering the distress of suffocation.
As the AGW story goes: (1) CO2 directly warms the atmosphere to some extent, possibly by as much as 1 degree C (+/-) per doubling of CO2 concentration; and (2) that initial warming enables the atmosphere to hold greater quantities of other greenhouse gases, especially water vapor, with the impact that the initial effect of the CO2 increase is multiplied through feedback processes so as to enable another 2 degrees to 4 degrees C of warming.
The question naturally arises: If indeed the initial warming effect of CO2 acts as an enabler of feedback processes which employee other greenhouse gases as warming agents — principally water vapor — why is CO2 unique in its ability as a feedback enabler, as opposed to other kinds of processes, natural or man-made, which might cause that initial atmospheric warming?
Radiative absorption and emission characteristics of gases are basic physics. “Simple” is a relative term and should probably be avoided.
Big name climate scientists trot out this “simple physics” argument all the time. They should know better. Think about earthquakes. If you take uniform materials in a lab you can predict how they will fracture under pressure, and engineers do this to evaluate building designs. But the earth is not uniform and no one can yet make any soft of precise earthquake prediction (saying California has X% chance of a big one in the next 20 yrs is just based on past frequencies and guesses, it isn’t a “prediction”). What, are you an earthquake physics denier?
Furthermore, the heterogeneity of the earth system is huge and must be approximated at the grid scale, from earth surface albedo to the behavior of clouds to winds. It is not even clear how to test these approximations.
I smell a red herring here.
I recommend reading the very straigthforward derivation of the zero feedback case of 1.2 degrees C for a CO2 doubling by Nir Shaviv, : http://www.sciencebits.com/OnClimateSensitivity
The scientific debate is about the magnitude and sign of the feedbacks, not about the basic IR physics.
A doubling of CO2 could raise the global temperature between 0.3 degrees C (Miskolczi, 2007) and 10 degrees C (Andronova and Schlesinger,2001) .
IPCC lead authors decided to ignore the peer reviewed papers that indicate a negative feedback. Hence the IPCC lead authors did not give an objective assessment of the science.
onion says:
December 28, 2010 at 7:17 am
Sam Hall writes:
“There is also no basis to argue that a rise in CO2 is dangerous.”
There is. What we do know establishes a threat (CO2 rising, beyond levels seen for hundreds of thousands of years, greenhouse gas, ocean acidifification, etc).
=======================================================
Uhmm, no. It has not been established anything that you’ve mentioned is inherently harmful. In fact, I maintain a warmer earth is a more suitable environment for mankind and the various flora and fauna. I don’t believe it has been shown that the PH balance of our ocean waters would change much with a doubling of atmospheric CO2, but then even if it were to occur, it hasn’t been shown where this would be detrimental in its totality. In fact, none of the doom and gloom predicted has been shown.
It isn’t that I believe in the contrivance that man’s CO2 emissions would even detectably raise the earths temp, but if it could, it would be a good thing. With all of the catastrophic prognostications, nothing has been demonstrated in over 30 years of alarmism.
I think it is well past time to let the climate alarmists stand on their record of accuracy, in both forecasting and backcasting.
@ur momisugly Ric Werme
[…]380 ppm of CO can’t possibly have an impact on people. (Exposure limits are 25-50 ppm, 400ppm for 4 hours can kill.) […]
What hogwash. First of all, you’re talking about CO, not CO2. Second, according to OSHA, the continuous exposure limit is 1,000 ppm, although if you work in a office you are routinely exposed to levels of 5,000 ppm (0.5%) or higher with no ill effects. At 10,000 ppm (1%) you might get a headache or feel tired, but levels as high as 30,000 ppm (3%) have been reported.
CO2 levels aren’t considered an immediately threat to health and life till they reach 4%, or 40,000 ppm. At 8% or 80,000 ppm, it will definitely kill you.
They’re more concerned with oxygen. The lowest permissible oxygen content is 19.5%. The outdoor open air percentage is 20.9%. In order for the O2 level to drop to 19.5% (a 6% decrease), CO2 levels would have to rise by 1.4%, to 14,000 ppm.