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.
OMG, Judith Curry might cause the field of “climate science” to return to science! She should be in charge of the IPCC. The sun is rising.
Scott Brim says:
It is not unique. The water vapor feedback aaplies to all warming mechanisms and, in fact, the increase in water vapor in the upper troposphere (as well as the rest of the troposphere…but it is the upper that mainly matters for the feedback) can be seen also for warming fluctuations in climate due, e.g., to ENSO (see http://www.sciencemag.org/content/310/5749/841.abstract ). The feedback also applies to the estimated forcings that brought us from the last glacial maximum (LGM) to the present interglacial (which are roughly 40% greenhouse gases, 50% changes in albedo due to land ice sheets and vegetation, and 10% changes in aerosols)
To my knowledge, the only people who are employing amplifiers or feedbacks that only apply to a specific warming mechanism are those who are claiming that solar variation can account for warming. Of course, it is not a priori wrong that there could be specific forcings that get amplified by some mechanism, but it does require a burden of proof as to why one specific warming mechanism is special.
This is why I tell my engineering students, repeatedly, that:
Theoretically, there’s no difference between theory and reality. In reality, there is.
(Forgot who said it…anyone know the citation?)
Gaylon says:
December 28, 2010 at 8:18 am
We should all agree. Unfortunately even that basic bit of botany is argued.
Actually the increased warmth isn’t just an added benefit. Plants have optimum temperatures for growth. As CO2 level rises so too does the optimum growth temperature. Simply amazing. It’s almost like plants evolved over hundreds of millions of years adapting to an environment where more CO2 went hand in hand with rising temperature. Plants also need less water per unit of growth as CO2 rises but that’s likely just a happy coincidence. Gas exchange through the stomata gets more efficient as CO2 level rises and water loss is dependent on how wide the stomata must open and for how long to get the gas exchange accomplished.
When I try to explain (to people who don’t follow the debate) how trace CO2 causes global warming when so many other factors contribute to climate I like to use the following example:
CO2 is like a candle in a house with central air conditioning. The heat from one candle is indeed measurable, but it’s not going to overpower the AC.
Unless the candle is too close to the drapes.
The global warming wingnuts believe the candle is too close to the drapes so we need to bring the garden hose into living room and wet everything down just to be safe. Think of carbon taxes being the hose and all of your wet, soggy belongings as the economy.
(and of course even if the wingnuts are right, the candle is probably in another room so their efforts are wasted anyway)
Mr. Onion says:
“The analogy would hold that a lot of skeptics would argue that scientists cannot possibly know what an Earthquake will do to a particular tower because that is just based on computer models of what will happen. We’d get to hear revelations like “garbage in garbage out”, “you can make a computer say anything”. “computers aren’t real science”. “the model doesn’t include X so is absolutely useless and junk”. Or various other dismissals skeptics use.”
Hey, Mr. Onion, did you know that all of those revelations are TRUE?
I hereby dub them the ONION LAWS OF COMPUTER MODELING:
(1) Garbage in = Garbage out
(2) You can make a computer say anything
(3) Computer’s aren’t real science
(4) The model doesn’t include X so is absolutely useless and junk
A great example of Onion’s fourth law is D’Alembert’s Paradox, whereby the solution of the incompressible, potential flow equations leads to the conclusion that the drag due to fluid flow over an object is zero! Clearly, ignoring viscosity in the momentum equations leads to an “absolutely useless” model for predicting drag. So it is with GCMs and the prediction of climate…there are many physical processes that are not being modeled (or are being modeled poorly), and therefore you get a manifestation of Onion’s First and Third Laws in the IPCC reports…
By the way, Onion’s Second Law is also known as “modeling tuning” which is how the modelers get highly accurate “hindcasts” from their models.
latitude says: December 28, 2010 at 6:30 amonion says:
December 28, 2010 at 5:57 am
“Simple physics shows that CO2 has a significant warming effect. Complex physics shows that too.
=========================================================
I thought CO2 had an insignificant warming effect. That the warming would come from feedbacks like humidity and clouds.
And that the small amount of warming from CO2 was logarithmic.”
The real issue is that the complexity includes too many exogenous variables for which we do not know all of the interactions and therefore cause and effect cannot be predicted at this time.
@Stephen Fisher richards
> 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.
The concentration of CO2 in your lungs right now is 40,000ppm (i.e. ~4% CO2). You’re not feeling dead, or a bit woozy now are you?
http://www.biotopics.co.uk/humans/inhaledexhaled.html
:-]
This is only a joke analogy, to make a point.
a bird catching the feather could represent – life on earth..
big bird? small bird?
is it a hot/dry day with thermals..?
is it cold..?
what type of feather?
is the feather wet/sodden (will fall faster)?… etc..
The simple point is debate is closed down by using ‘the simple physics of CO2’
If it were just the simple physics, the sensitivity/feedback of co2 in the atmosphere would be known (some even argu it could be negative) the climate system is complex and anyone who has actually read the content of the WG1 IPCC reports, very uncertain in a number of areas..
the mention of economists, was just a quick dig at other experts, that despite skepticism (weapons of mass financial destruction) also fell in love with their computer models), no more no less.
Joel, I would like to see the day when a jet stream storm track isn’t loaded with Pacific Ocean or Gulf moisture, the air is warm and dry, but yet it rains buckets and snows nonetheless. Now that would be special.
It is rather convenient that these so-called special CO2 related weather events and trends occur during natural cycles that have their own very similar weather events and trends.
What makes these times special in light of the fact that they have occurred before? They aren’t significantly bigger or smaller than before. It isn’t significantly warmer or colder than before. In fact, natural noisy unfiltered data (not the trended stuff) hides whatever makes these times “special” quite well.
So what makes these times different? And please don’t refer to models predicting anything. The models used in the IPCC reports were not predictive. In fact they couldn’t be predictive. They were forced scenarios with purposefully manipulated “what ifs” as input. IE, they were developed to create the desired output scenario.
A literature review of more recent work is beginning to report on models designed to simulate natural forcings, in addition to those models designed to simulate anthropogenic forcings. Have you reviewed those and what are your comments?
I find a better analogy to be that of double glazing. Simple physics says that the wider the gap, the better the double glazing. So why don’t we see 100mm (4″) double glazing?
Because simple physics doesn’t work and when the gap between the glass becomes too big, the air begins to circulate reducing the efficiency of the double glazing. Paradoxically, the way to improve the double glazing is to put a thermally conductive layer in the middle (i.e. triple glazing) and that way the gap can be doubled without reducing the thermal efficiency.
Likewise CO2 only raises temperature if you totally ignore air currents … and ignore the fact that warm air rises after which CO2 increases the rate of cooling of the air because it acts as a vector for heat to be transmitted into the cold sink of outer space.
Dave Springer says: “…It might help to equate temperature to pressure….”
Equally likely, it will just create confusion. We’ve had enough red herrings here already, including Ric Werme’s bringing up carbon monoxide totally out of context.
Dave Springer says: {December 28, 2010 at 8:55 am}
“This is horribly wrong. CO2 poisoning is quite painful. The cells in your body produce CO2 as a byproduct of metabolism. It is excreted through the lungs and the excretion relies on the concentration in the blood being greater than that in the air. As the concentration in the air rises there is a concommitant increase in blood concentration. To some degree this can be ameliorated by breathing faster. Indeed the first symptoms of CO2 poisoning is increased respiration and heart rate. At some point your heart and lungs can’t pump fast enough and blood CO2 inevitably rises. This causes pH to fall – your cells begin to acidify. Proper pH is critical to all sorts of metabolic chemistry and metabolism eventually halts as a result.
All the oxygen in the world won’t save you once you can’t breathe fast enough to stop rising pH in bodily fluids.”
This is why unfit people die of heart attacks during strenuous exercise. CO2 builds up in the blood and their bodies are not efficient enough to remove it causing the blood pH to fall. At pH 6.8 death may occur.
However, I wouldn’t go as far as calling an increase in breathing and heart rate a result of “CO2 poisoning”. It is indeed a result of an increase in CO2 levels in the blood but that is natural during any type of exertion. Only when the body cannot expel the CO2 efficiently and it builds up to dangerous levels would I term it poisoning.
“the excretion relies on the concentration in the blood being greater than that in the air”
I would also like to see what the atmospheric concentration of CO2 would have to be to cause this excretion to stop.
“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 is a gross misunderstanding of the situation. In a controlled experiment we may say
“if I increase the concentration of X, then Y will respond like so” Then, as experimenters we are given clear directions. Increase X, observe Y. However, in climate science and in other areas of scientific investigation we cannot control X.
For example, we have to say: “if c02 follows this emission path, and there are no volcanos, and the sun continues to shine on average like it has, and methane emissions …. These are conditional predictions. They are conditional because we cannot control them. We can can only forecast or predict a range of possibilities and then run predictive models subject to those assumptions. You will find the same approach in other areas, for example, I used to run war games ( the kind the military uses prior to a war ) While the models run in the end were based in physics the “scenarios” had to be made up by analysts. In the IPCC these scenarios are called SRES. they are specifically described as storylines. The storylines are NOT worst case. They span a range that runs from no increase in emissions, to Business as Usual, to various cases of increasing emissions. The results are not called predictions, because they are not. The IPCC is being quite accurate in its description of the results as “projections” They are predictions, subject to emission scenarios that we cannot fully control.
Finally,
“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”
First, oceanic cycles are not “programmed in” or “left out” of models of the climate. They are an emergent property of the system. If you get the physics correct, then you will see the cycles emerge. And yes, the cycles emerge when the models are run. Next, solar cycles. Modellers have two options when running their models. They can choose a constant sun ( hold TSI constant) and they can predict an 11 year cycle going forward. Both are done. The thought is that the answers from these different choice should bound the problem. Volcanoes? The runs are made assuming no volcanoes. As such they present a higher bound. Also recognize that cooling due to volcanoes is transient. so there is no point in modelling them. As for the the other parameters there are something on the order of 30 or so. Some new work is being done to explore the effect of these throughout the parameter space ( with perturbed physics and stochastic methods and emulation ) Bottom line, if I ask you what will the sea level be in 2100 you have the following choices:
1. throw up your hands and say it cant be calculated.
2. Run a bunch of GCMs and give a projection. This projection will be imperfect,
it will have a wide range of values. None of them will forecast a cooling. The majority project a future that has an increased risk to life and property as we know it.
It’s limited science, but the best we happen to have.
We can complain that climate science is not like experimental science. That’s trivially true. For my own part, living on an earthquake fault, I know one thing. I know that predicting an earthquake exactly is impossible to date. That does not mean I reject the science that says I’m more likely to see a earthquake in my lifetime than my sister living in michigan. And that uncertainty in when I will get hit does not mean I should do nothing. It means I make preparations. My sister who lives in tornado land, likewise does not distrust the science of tornados simply because the “predictions” are uncertain. She does not ignore the “watches” because watches are usually wrong. And she certainly doesnt ignore the “warnings” even though they are often false alarms. Some however feel that they can wait till they actually see a tornado before they do something. People judge risk differently. With warming some people see a bigger risk, others see less risk or no risk. And those who see a bigger risk think changing our behavior can mitigate the risk. That’s a tough problem. It’s not helped by mischaracterizing the science ( by either side )
IF water vapor is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 (as everyone seems to agree), and IF a warmer planet would be such a colossal bummer (a proposition that many disagree with, including me), THEN why all the hubbub about limiting CO2 emissions when water vapor is the chief “culprit”?
Why not limit the emission of water vapor?
Yes, climate fans. It is time to ban the brewing of tea, coffee, and chicken soup. No more hot showers for you! Steam kills! OABTW, no more breathing either. That sort of anti-Gaia behavior produces both catastrophic GHG pollutants.
onion:
The uncertainty is in how much warming effect. But uncertainty works both ways. If you want to tug out the uncertainty to claim there might not be any warming, then the same added slack also means there could be horrific amount of warming.
Aha, the “Climate Science” CAGW Propaganda Operation’s main “[corrupt] ends justifies [corrupt] means” means, the fearmongering, self-contradictory Precautionary Principle: “we should commit a nearly certain regressive, de-evolutionary suicide as soon as possible, ‘before it’s too late’, when we all could conceiveably die” from an “horrific amount of warming” – but which has strangely never happened before with much higher atmospheric concentrations of CO2, which, if anything, are still known to follow temperature moves up and down, not preceed them, CAGW’s current, resolutely self-imposed “travesty” notwithstanding.
Meanwhile the dogmatic, backwardly programmed anti-scientific GCM’s ~”can’t explain the past temperature course without CO2″, while they can’t make any successful temperature predictions with CO2.
Therefore, there’s actually not much uncertainty about what we shouldn’t do: we shouldn’t undertake nearly certain regressively suicidal measures merely to allegedly prevent a just barely conceiveable – because anything coherently imaginable is always still possible – yet CAGW GCM mandated, “horrific amount of warming”, especially when GW has also never been shown to be a net disease by any empirical or hypothetically equal consideration, that is, one which would also take into account the probable benefits of GW all the way up to the wildly speculative possible ones, just like the “Climate Science” CAGW Propaganda Operation has done by instead demonizing fossil fuel CO2 and disasterizing Global Warming.
An odd fact for Mr. Woods
-As one of your fellow guest column writers I have to admit that I don’t even understand what I don’t know about climate.. however
I do know a little bit about computing and packaged risk simulation.
In particular you mention the financial market chaos that resulted when reality revealed the risk assessments on repackaged financials (mainly 3rd party mortgages) to have been far too optimistic.
These assessments are based on well understood models whose values are estimated using some form of simulation (usually monte carlo). As it turned out.. an unknown degree of error had been introduced into the computations used by many financial houses because the randomization function on Intel processors turned out not to produce results sufficiently close to random to meet theoretical requirements.
One of the fun things about this was that everyone involved knew the risks, many knew that valuations produced on SPARC and PPC equipment were lower than those produced on Intel boxes, but nobody (significant in the industry) did anything about it. The explanation I have from someone directly involved, who claims to have tried to speak up, is the obvious one: his bosses liked the higher values much better – but the bottom line is that no one really knows whether the differences mattered (in terms of triggering the defaults) or what drove senior management’s indifference to warnings from techies.
Bravo. That is the most simple and brilliant analogy I have ever read to show the difference between a simple, and chaotic system. Where will the feather land indeed!!
You are right Anthony, someone needs to make a simple video for this, and make it go viral on YouTube.
Steven, I actually agree with your post. I think natural forcing GCMs work should continue and these dynamical models improved. Until then, work on models used to generate anthropogenic forcing is a step ahead of its time, if indeed the results will be used in making policy.
vukcevic says:
December 28, 2010 at 8:15 am
“It looks like as you and your long gone astro friends may have been right but for wrong reason.
I am astonished.”
Must be the right reason as they would not know where Uranus was.
{89.5yr is good for the AO} http://jisao.washington.edu/ao/
“Carbon dioxide is regulated for diverse purposes but not as a toxic substance.
The U.S. EPA CO2 exposure limits: The U.S. EPA recommends a maximum concentration of Carbon dioxide CO2 of 1000 ppm (0.1%) for continuous exposure.
ASHRAE standard 62-1989 recommends an indoor air ventilation standard of 20 cfm per person of outdoor air or a CO2 level which is below 1000ppm.
NIOSH CO2 exposure limits: NIOSH recommends a maximum concentration of carbon dioxide of 10,000 ppm or 1% (for the workplace, for a 10-hr work shift with a ceiling of 3.0% or 30,000 ppm for any 10-minute period). These are the highest threshold limit value (TLV) and permissible exposure limit (PEL) assigned to any material.
OSHA CO2 exposure limits: OSHA recommends a lowest oxygen concentration of 19.5% in the work place for a full work-shift exposure. As we calculated above, for the indoor workplace oxygen level to reach 19.5% (down from its normal 20.9% oxygen level in outdoor air) by displacement of oxygen by CO2, that is, to reduce the oxygen level by about 6%, the CO2 or carbon dioxide level would have to increase to about 1.4% 14,000 ppm.
In summary, OSHA, NIOSH, and ACGIH occupational exposure standards are 0.5% CO2 (5,000 ppm) averaged over a 40 hour week, 0.3% (3,000 ppm) average for a short-term (15 minute) exposure [we discuss and define “short term exposure limits” STEL below], and 4% (40,000 ppm) as the maximum instantaneous limit considered immediately dangerous to life and health. All three of these exposure limit conditions must be satisfied, always and together.
”
Bryan says:
December 28, 2010 at 6:32 am
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.)………
———
Dude,
It really gets old being called a science denier by someone so non-conversant in the facts that they get Co and CO2 confused and force a poison gas narrative and then advertise their ignorance. I mean, really old.
“Even at 0.039% concentration, the earth’s atmosphere is completely opaque to these IR wavelengths, which is radiated from the surfaces heated by the Sun’s rays. ”
I take issue with the “opaque” statement. Isn’t it really transluscent? The IR scatters but eventually finds its way out at the top.
Steve from Rockwood said:
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).
IIRC the upper limit for humans (and most other mammals) is something over 4%. Which is 40,000 ppm. Otherwise the so called “kiss of life” would be impossible. Really only an issue around certain volcanic vents or in designing systems for submarines and spacecraft.
@vukcevic says:
December 28, 2010 at 8:15 am
In fact two of the JSU synodic periods in 48.333yrs are at 2.25 and 3.25, so cannot be producing this period.
Ulric Lyons says:
December 28, 2010 at 6:41 am
…..and more than 8000 years ago in Stonehenge, “but those who can hear and hear not”…LOL!!!