By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
My commentary written for Remote Sensing on the empirical determination of climate sensitivity, published by the splendid Anthony Watts some days ago, has aroused a great deal of interest among his multitudes of readers. It is circulating among climate scientists on both sides of the debate. Several of Anthony’s readers have taken the trouble to make some helpful comments. Since some of these are buried among the usual debates between trolls on how awful I am, and others were kindly communicated privately, I have asked Anthony to allow me, first and foremost, to thank those readers who have been constructive with their comments, and to allow his readers the chance to share the comments I have received.
Joel Shore pointed out that Schwartz, whose paper of 2007 I had cited as finding climate sensitivity to be ~1 K, wrote a second paper in 2008 finding it close to 2 K. Shore assumed I had seen but suppressed the second paper. By now, most of Anthony’s readers will perhaps think less ungenerously of me than that. The new .pdf version of the commentary, available from Anthony’s website (here), omits both Schwartz papers: but they will be included in a fuller version of the argument in due course, along with other papers which use observation and measurement, rather than mere modeling, to determine climate sensitivity.
Professor Michael Asten of Monash University helpfully provided a proper reference in the reviewed literature for Christopher Scotese’s 1999 paper reconstructing mean global surface temperatures from the Cambrian Era to the present. This, too, has been incorporated into the new .pdf.
Professor Asten also supplied a copy of a paper by David Douglass and John Christy, published in that vital outlet for truth Energy & Environment in 2009, and concluding on the basis of recent temperature trends that feedbacks were not likely to be net-positive, implying climate sensitivity ~1 K. I shall certainly be including that paper and several others in the final version of the full-length paper that underlies the commentary published by Anthony. This paper is now in draft and I should be happy to send it to any interested reader who emails monckton@mail.com.
A regular critic, Lucia Liljegren was, as all too often before, eager to attack my calculations – she erred in publishing a denial that I sent her a reference that I can prove she received; and not factually accurate in blogging that “Monckton’s” Planck parameter was “pulled out of a hat” when I had shown her that in my commentary I had accepted the IPCC’s value as correct. She was misleading her readers in not telling them that the “out-of-a-hat” relationship she complains of is one which Kiehl and Trenberth (1997) had assumed, with a small variation (their implicit λ0 is 0.18 rather than the 0.15 I derived from their paper via Kimoto, 2009); and selective in not passing on that I had told her they were wrong to assume that a blackbody relationship between flux and temperature holds at the surface (if it did, as my commentary said, it would imply a climate sensitivity ~1 K).
A troll (commenter on WUWT) said I had “fabricated” the forcing function for CO2. When I pointed out that I had obtained it from Myhre et al. (1998), cited with approval in IPCC (2001, 2007), he whined at being called a troll (so don’t accuse me of “fabricating” stuff, then, particularly when I have taken care to cite multiple sources, none of which you were able to challenge) and dug himself further in by alleging that the IPCC had also “fabricated” the CO2 forcing function. No: the IPCC got it from Myhre et al., who in turn derived it by inter-comparison between three models. I didn’t and don’t warrant that the CO2 forcing function is right: that is above my pay-grade. However, Chris Essex, the lively mathematician who did some of the earliest spectral-line modeling of the CO2 forcing effect, confirms that Myhre and the IPCC are right to state that the function is a logarithmic one. Therefore, until I have evidence that it is wrong, I shall continue to use it in my calculations.
Another troll said – as usual, without providing any evidence – that I had mis-stated the result from process engineering that provides a decisive (and low) upper bound to climate sensitivity. In fact, the result came from a process engineer, Dr. David Evans, who is one of the finest intuitive mathematicians I have met. He spent much of his early career designing and building electrical circuitry and cannot, therefore, fairly be accused of not knowing what he is talking about. Since the resulting fundamental upper limit to climate sensitivity is as low as 1.2 K, I thought readers might be interested to have a fuller account of it, which is very substantially the work of David Evans. It is posted below this note.
Hereward Corley pointed out that the reference to Shaviv (2008) should have been Shaviv (2005). Nir Shaviv – another genius of a mathematician – had originally sent me the paper saying it was from 2008, but the version he sent was an undated pre-publication copy. Mr. Corley also kindly supplied half a dozen further papers that determine climate sensitivity empirically. Most of the papers find it low, and all find it below the IPCC’s estimates. The papers are Chylek & Lohman (2008); Douglass & Knox (2005); Gregory et al. (2002); Hoffert & Covey (1992); Idso (1998); and Loehle & Scafetta (2011).
I should be most grateful if readers would be kind enough to draw my attention to any further papers that determine climate sensitivity by empirical methods rather than by the use of general-circulation models. I don’t mind what answers the papers come to, but I only want those that attempted to reach the answer by measurement, observation, and the application of established theory to the results.
Many thanks again to all of you for your interest and assistance. Too many of the peer-reviewed journals are no longer professional enough or unprejudiced enough to publish anything that questions the new State religion of supposedly catastrophic manmade global warming. Remote Sensing, for instance has still not had the courtesy to acknowledge the commentary I sent. Since the editors of the learned journals seem to have abdicated their role as impartial philosopher-kings, WattsUpWithThat is now the place where (in between the whining and whiffling and waffling of the trolls) true science is done.
The fundamental constraint on climate sensitivity
A fundamental constraint rules out strongly net-positive temperature feedbacks acting to amplify warming triggered by emissions of greenhouse gases, with the startling result that climate sensitivity cannot much exceed 1.2 K.
Sensitivity to doubled CO2 concentration is the product of three parameters (Eq. 1):
- the radiative forcing ΔF2x = 5.35 ln 2 = 3.708 W m–2 at CO2 doubling (Eq. 2), from the function in Myhre et al. (1998) and IPCC (2001, 2007);
- the Planck zero-feedback climate sensitivity parameter λ0 = 0.3125 K W–1 m2 (Eq. 3), equivalent to the first differential of the fundamental equation of radiative transfer in terms of mean emission temperature TE and the corresponding flux FE at the characteristic-emission altitude (CEA, one optical depth down into the atmosphere, where incoming and outgoing fluxes are identical), augmented by approximately one-sixth to allow for latitudinal variation (IPCC, 2007, p. 631 fn.);
- the overall feedback gain factor G (Eq. 4), equivalent, where feedbacks are assumed linear as here, to (1 – g)–1, where the feedback loop gain g is the product of λ0 and the sum f of all unamplified temperature feedbacks f1, f2, … fn, such that the final or post-feedback climate sensitivity parameter λ is the product of λ0 and G.
The values of the first two of the three parameters whose product is climate sensitivity are known (Eqs. 2-3). The general-circulation models, following pioneering authors such as Hansen (1984), assume that the feedbacks acting upon the climate object are strongly net-positive (G 1: the IPCC’s implicit central estimate is G = 2.81). In practice, however, neither individual temperature feedbacks nor their sum can be directly measured; nor can feedbacks be readily distinguished from forcings (Spencer & Braswell, 2010, 2011; but see Dessler, 2010, 2011).
Temperature feedbacks – in effect, forcings that occur because a temperature change has triggered them – are the greatest of the many uncertainties that complicate the determination of climate sensitivity. The methodology that the models adopt was first considered in detail by Bode (1945) and is encapsulated at its simplest, assuming all feedbacks are linear, in Eq. (4). Models attempt to determine the value of each distinct positive (temperature-amplifying) and negative (temperature-attenuating) feedback in Watts per square meter per Kelvin of original warming. The feedbacks f1, f2, … fn are then summed and mutually amplified (Eq. 4).
Fig. 1 schematizes the feedback loop:
Figure 1. A forcing ΔF is input (top left) by multiplication to the final sensitivity parameter λ = λ0G, where g = λ0f = 0.645 is the IPCC’s implicit central estimate of the loop gain and G = (1 – g)–1 = 2.813 [not shown] is the overall gain factor: i.e., the factor by which the temperature change T0 = ΔF λ0 triggered by the original forcing is multiplied to yield the output final climate sensitivity ΔT = ΔF λ = ΔF λ0 G (top right). To generate λ = λ0 G, the feedbacks f1, f2, … fn, summing to f, are mutually amplified via Eq. (4). Stated values of λ0, f, g, G, and λare those implicit in the IPCC’s central estimate ΔT2x = 3.26 K (2007, p. 798, Box 10.2) in response to ΔF2x = 5.35 ln 2 = 3.708 W m–2. Values for individual feedbacks f1–f4 are taken from Soden & Held (2006). (Author’s diagram from a drawing by Dr. David Evans).
The modelers’ attempts to identify and aggregate individual temperature feedbacks, while understandable, do not overcome the difficulties in distinguishing feedbacks from forcings or even from each other, or in determining the effect of overlaps between them. The methodology’s chief drawback, however, is that in concentrating on individual rather than aggregate feedbacks it overlooks a fundamental physical constraint on the magnitude of the feedback loop gain g in Eq. (4).
Paleoclimate studies indicate that in the past billion years the Earth’s absolute global mean surface temperature has not varied by more than 3% (~8 K) either side of the 750-million-year mean (Fig. 2):
Figure 2. Global mean surface temperature over the past 750 million years, reconstructed by Scotese (1999), showing variations not exceeding 8 K (<3%) either side of the 291 K (18 °C) mean.
Consistent with Scotese’s result, Zachos et al. (2001), reviewing detailed evidence from deep-sea sediment cores, concluded that in the past 65 Ma the greatest departure from the long-run mean was an increase of 8 K at the Poles, and less elsewhere, during the late Paleocene thermal maximum 55 Ma BP.
While even a 3% variation either side of the long-run mean causes ice ages at one era and hothouse conditions at another, in absolute terms the temperature homeostasis of the climate object is formidable. At no point in the geologically recent history of the planet has a runaway warming occurred. The Earth’s temperature stability raises the question what is the maximum feedback loop gain consistent with the long-term maintenance of stability in an object upon which feedbacks operate.
The IPCC’s method of determining temperature feedbacks is explicitly founded on the feedback-amplification equation (Eq. 4, and see Hansen, 1984) discussed by Bode (1945) in connection with the prevention of feedback-induced failure in electronic circuits. A discussion of the methods adopted by process engineers to ensure that feedbacks are prevented in electronic circuits will, therefore, be relevant to a discussion of the role of feedbacks acting upon the climate object.
In the construction of electronic circuits, where one of the best-known instances of runaway feedback is the howling shriek when a microphone is placed too close to the loudspeaker to which it is connected, electronic engineers take considerable care to avoid positive feedback altogether, unless they wish to induce a deliberate instability or oscillation by compelling the loop gain to exceed unity, the singularity in Eq. (4), at which point the magnitude of the loop gain becomes undefined.
In electronic circuits for consumer goods, the values of components typically vary by up to 10% from specification owing to the vagaries of raw materials, manufacture, and assembly. Values may vary further over their lifetime from age and deterioration. Therefore engineers ensure long-term stability by designing in a negative feedback to ensure that vital circuit parameters stay close to the desired values.
Negative feedbacks were first posited by Harold S. Black in 1927 in New York, when he was looking for a way to cancel distortion in telephone relays. Roe (2009) writes:
“He describes a sudden flash of inspiration while on his commute into Manhattan on the Lackawanna Ferry. The original copy of the page of the New York Times on which he scribbled down the details of his brainwave a few days later still has pride of place at the Bell Labs Museum, where it is regarded with great reverence.”
One circuit parameter of great importance is the (closed) feedback loop gain inside any amplifier, which must be held at less than unity under all circumstances to avoid runaway positive feedback (g ≥ 1). The loop gain typically depends on the values of at least half a dozen components, and the actual value of each component may randomly vary. To ensure stability the design value of the feedback loop gain must be held one or two orders of magnitude below unity: g <0.1, or preferably <0.01.
Now consider the common view of the climate system as an engine for converting forcings to temperature changes – an object on which feedbacks act as in Fig. 1. The values of the parameters that determine the (closed) loop gain, as in an electronic circuit, are subject to vagaries. As the Earth evolves, continents drift, sometimes occupying polar or tropical positions, sometimes allowing important ocean currents to pass and sometimes impeding or diverting them; vegetation comes and goes, altering the reflective, radiative, and evaporative characteristics of the land and the properties of the coupled atmosphere-ocean interface; volcanoes occasionally fill the atmosphere with smoke, sulfur, or CO2; asteroids strike; orbital characteristics change slowly but radically in accordance with the Milankovich cycles; and atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse species, vary greatly.
In the Neoproterozoic, 750 Ma BP, CO2 concentration (today <0.04%) was ~30%: otherwise the ocean’s magnesium ions could not have united with the abundance of calcium ions and with CO2 itself to precipitate the dolomitic rocks laid down in that era. Yet mile-high glaciers came and went twice at sea level at the equator.
As in the electronic circuit, so in the climate object, the values of numerous key components contributing to the loop gain change radically over time. Yet for at least 2 Ga the Earth appears never to have endured the runaway greenhouse warming that would have occurred if the loop gain had reached unity. Therefore, the loop gain in the climate object cannot be close to unity, for otherwise random mutation of the feedback-relevant parameters of vital climate components over time would surely by now have driven it to unity. It is near-certain, therefore, that the value of the climatic feedback loop gain g today must be very much closer to 0 than to 1.
A loop gain of 0.1, then, is in practice the upper bound for very-long-term climate stability. Yet the loop gain values implicit in the IPCC’s global-warming projections of 3.26[2, 4.5] K warming in response to a CO2 doubling are well above this maximum, at 0.64[0.42, 0.74] (Eq. 8). Values such as these are far too close to the steeply-rising segment of the climate-sensitivity curve (Fig. 3) to have allowed the climate to remain temperature-stable for hundreds of millions of years, as Zachos (2001) and Scotese (1999) have reported.
Figure 3. The climate-sensitivity curve at loop gains –1.0 ≤ g < +1.0. The narrow shaded zone at bottom left indicates that climate sensitivity is stable at 0.5-1.3 K per CO2 doubling for loop gains –1.0 ≤ g ≤ +0.1, equivalent to overall feedback gain factors 0.5 ≤ G ≤ 1.1. However, climate sensitivities on the IPCC’s interval [2.0, 4.5] K (shaded zone at right) imply loop gains on the interval (+0.4, +0.8), well above the maximum loop gain that could obtain in a long-term-stable object such as the climate. At a loop gain of unity, the singularity in the feedback-amplification equation (Eq. 4), runaway feedback would occur. If the loop gain in the climate object were >0.1, then at any time conditions sufficient to push the loop gain towards unity might occur, but (see Fig. 2) have not occurred in close to a billion years (author’s figure based on diagrams in Roe, 2009; Paltridge, 2009; and Lindzen, 2011).
Fig. 3 shows the climate-sensitivity curve for loop gains g on the interval [–1, 1). It is precisely because the IPCC’s implicit interval of feedback loop gains so closely approaches unity, which is the singularity in the feedback-amplification equation (Eq. 4), that attempts to determine climate sensitivity on the basis that feedbacks are strongly net-positive can generate very high (but physically unrealistic) climate sensitivities, such as the >10 K that Murphy et al. (2009) say they cannot rule out.
If, however, the loop gain in the climate object is no greater than the theoretical maximum value g = 0.1, then, by Eq. (4), the corresponding overall feedback gain factor G is 1.11, and, by Eq. (1), climate sensitivity in response to a CO2 doubling cannot much exceed 1.2 K. No surprise, then, that the dozen or more empirical methods of deriving climate sensitivity that I included in my commentary cohered at just 1 K. If that is indeed the answer to the climate sensitivity question, it is also a mortal blow to climate extremists worldwide – but good news for everyone else.
References
Bode, H.W., 1945, Network analysis and feedback amplifier design, Van Nostrand, New York, USA, 551 pp.
Chylek, P., and U. Lohman, 2008, Aerosol radiative forcing and climate sensitivity deduced from the last glacial maximum to Holocene transition, Geophys. Res. Lett. 35, doi:10.1029/2007GL032759.
Dessler, A.E., 2010, A determination of the cloud feedback from climate variations over the past decade, Science 220, 1523-1527.
Dessler, A.E., 2011, Cloud Variations and the Earth’s Energy Budget, Geophys. Res. Lett. [in press].
Douglass, D.H., and R.S. Knox, 2005, Climate forcing by the volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo, Geophys. Res. Lett. 32, doi:10.1029/2004GL022119.
Douglass, D.H., and J.R. Christy, 2009, Limits on CO2 climate forcing from recent temperature data of Earth, Energy & Environment 20:1-2, 177-189.
Gregory, J.M., R.J. Stouffer, S.C. Raper, P.A. Stott, and N.A. Rayner, 2002, An observationally-based estimate of the climate sensitivity, J. Clim. 15, 3117-3121.
Hansen, J., A., Lacis, D. Rind, G. Russell, P. Stone, I. Fung, R. Ruedy, and J. Lerner, 1984, Climate sensitivity: analysis of feedback mechanisms, Meteorological Monographs 29, 130-163.
Hoffert, M.I., and C. Covey, 1992, Deriving global climate sensitivity from paloeclimate reconstructions, Nature 360, 573-576.
Idso, S.B., 1998, CO2-induced global warming: a skeptic’s view of potential climate change, Clim. Res. 10, 69-82.
IPCC, 2001, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Houghton, J.T., Y. Ding, D.J. Griggs, M. Noguer, P.J. van der Linden, X. Dai, K. Maskell and C.A. Johnson (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and New York, NY, USA.
IPCC, 2007, Climate Change 2007: the Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007 [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Avery, M. Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)], Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and New York, NY, USA.
Kimoto, K., 2009, On the confusion of Planck feedback parameters, Energy & Environment 20:7, 1057-1066.
Lindzen, R.S., 2011, Lecture to the American Chemical Society, Aug. 28.
Loehle, C., and Scafetta, N., 2011, Climate change attribution using empirical decomposition of climatic data, Open Atmos. Sci. J. 5, 74-86.
Murphy, D. M., S. Solomon, R. W. Portmann, K. H. Rosenlof, P. M. Forster, and T. Wong 2009, An observationally-based energy balance for the Earth since 1950, J. Geophys. Res., 114, D17107, doi:10.1029/2009JD012105.
Myhre, G., E. J. Highwood, K. P. Shine, and F. Stordal, 1998, New estimates of radiative forcing due to well mixed greenhouse gases, Geophys. Res. Lett. 25:14, 2715–2718, doi:10.1029/98GL01908.
Paltridge, G., 2009, The Climate Caper, Connor Court, Sydney, Australia, 110 pp.
Roe, G., 2009, Feedbacks, Timescales, and Seeing Red, Ann. Rev. Earth. Planet. Sci. 37, 93-115.
Schwartz, S.E., 2007, Heat capacity, time constant, and sensitivity of Earth’s climate system, J. Geophys. Res. 112, D24So5, doi:10.1029/2007JD008746.
Schwartz, S.E., 2008, Reply to comments by G. Foster et al., R. Knutti et al., and N. Scafetta on “Heat Capacity, time constant, and sensitivity of Earth’s climate system”, J. Geophys. Res. 113, D15015, doi: 10.1029/2008JD009872.
Scotese, C.R., A.J. Boucot, and W.S. McKerrow, 1999, Gondwanan paleogeography and paleoclimatology, J. African Earth Sci. 28:1, 99-114.
Shaviv, N., 2005, On climate response to changes in the cosmic-ray flux and radiative budget, J. Geophys. Res., doi:10.1029.
Soden, B.J., and I.M. Held, 2006, An assessment of climate feedbacks in coupled ocean-atmosphere models. J. Clim. 19, 3354–3360.
Spencer, R.W., and W.D. Braswell, 2010, On the diagnosis of radiative feedback in the presence of unknown radiative forcing, J. Geophys. Res, 115, D16109.
Spencer, R.W., and W.D. Braswell, 2011, On the misdiagnosis of surface temperature feedbacks from variations in Earth’s radiant-energy balance, Remote Sensing 3, 1603-1613, doi:10.3390/rs3081603.
Zachos, J., M. Pagani, L. Sloan, E. Thomas, and K. Billups, 2001, Trends, Rhythms and Aberrations in Global Climate 65 Ma to Present, Science 292, 686-693.
The surface of the Earth was radiating at 386 W/m2 in the year 1700 (before any increase in GHGs started) which produced an average temperature of 14.3C.
Today, the surface is radiating at 390 W/m2 which produces an average temperature of 15.0C (20C at the height of the day and 10C at the low point at sunrise and +0.7C higher than 1700).
Okay, so CO2 doubles from the year 1700 level or an extra 3.7 W/m2. The other GHGs such as Methane, N20 and the CFCs add another 0.22 W/m2 so we are at +3.92 W/m2.
From this extra +3.92 W/m2, tTemperatures increase by 1.04C at the tropopause and just 0.74C at the surface (which might imply, the lapse rate also falls from the current 6.5C/km to 6.4C/km which is close to what the IPCC estimates for the lapse rate feedback so that counts in feedback No. 1).
So what about the other feedbacks.
Water Vapour seems to increase by about 4.0% per 1.0C temperature increase (which is a little less than the climate models have and is indicated in the Classius Clapeyron equations at 7.0% per 1.0C but this is the consistent empirical estimate from all sources).
4.0% * 113.2 W/m2 * 0.5 (log impact) = +2.25 W/m2 for water vapour from this 0.74C to 1.04C temperature increase [which is very close to what the climate models have].
What about clouds? Clouds go up by about 3.0% (a little less than the water vapour increase).
Cloud long-wave positive forcing = 32 W/m2 * 3% * 0.5 (log impact) = +0.5 W/m2.
Cloud short-wave reflectance = -53 W/m2 * 3% * 1 (no log impact here now) = -1.6 W/m2.
Lets now add-in the IPCC Albedo feedback of +0.26 W/m2.
We then have —> 386 W/m2 + 3.92 W/m2 + 2.25 W/m2 + 0.5 W/m2 – 1.6 W/m2 + 0.26 W/m2 = 391.3 W/m2
—-> 15.3C or just 1.0C above the year 1700 level with just 0.3C more to go.
There you go, another estimate. All the forcings included (except for the Aerosols and solar changes which could net to Zero or a small negative if you believe Hansen which would just further reduce the numbers).
DirkH says:
Those aren’t caveats, they are factors that make Lord Monckton’s conclusions all the more justified. Willis’ negative feedback adds to Christopher’s argument, and the T^4 power in Stefan-Boltzmann means that a small T increase results in a massive shedding of heat by radiation, which is yet another negative feedback. If S-B were T^1, it would be linear; T^0.5 would be a caveat to Christopher’s argument – but T^4 ! That is an overwhelming reason all by itself why the GW theory is on shaky ground.
Lord Monckton,
Like you, I’m not a professional scientist, but I have sufficient grounding in both mathematics and physics to follow both the climate debate in general and your explanation above (I spent ten years or so doing “design wins” for manufacturers of electronic components). As Willis pointed out, the analogy to negative feedback loops in electronics doesn’t hold up 100%. Part if the “art” if you will, of designing an analog amplifier, is biasing the power transistors into their operating range. Their “operating range” is that part of their performance curve which is relatively linear. Outside of that range the slope of their output (vs input) can range to much higher gain (at the low end) to much lower (at the high end). But I understand completely the point you are trying to make, it was a very similar analogy that I used to use myself when I first started participating in this debate. Recently I’ve settled on a simpler approach, and one that I find leaves the trolls and warmists and even the lukewarmists pretty much without response. Here’s the short version:
o According to the IPCC, “doubling” of CO2 = 3.7w/m2 = ~ +1 degrees C “average”
o The reference to “doubling is defacto” acceptance of CO2’s direct effects being logarithmic, and no IPCC reference I’ve seen claims otherwise
o Initial conditions per the IPCC are 280 PPM in the atmosphere. (The IPCC quotes 278 PPM, for simplicity I’ve used 280 PPM). They fix the initial date as about 1920, the beginning of the industrial age.
o The current concentration of CO2 is close to 400 PPM, with the increase over the last ~90 years being about 120 PPM.
o Keeping in mind that CO2 is logarithmic, and lab results can easily quantify that fact, we can arrive at the following. (Gory math not shown for brevity, all values approximate for simplicity):
280 + 120 = 400 PPM
Direct warming vs 280 PPM is ~ 0.6 C
400 +120 = 520 PPM
Direct warming vs 400 PPM is ~ 0.3 C
520 + 120 = 640 PPM
Direct warming vs 520 PPM is ~ 0.15 C
640 + 120 = 760 PPM
Direct warming vs 640 PPM is ~ 0.08 C
640 + 120 = 880 PPM
Direct warming vs 760 PPM ia ~ 0.04 C
So there is the part where the scare mongerers simply stop responding to me. If we start at 400 PPM, where we are now, and produced CO2 increases every 50 years in the same order of magnitude as we did in the last 90 years, the direct effects of CO2 would be, in 50 year increments:
+ 0.3, 0.15, 0.08, 0.04
That’s two HUNDRED years, another 480 PPM, and the direct effects have dropped from 0.6 degrees per 120 PPM to 0.04 degrees per 120 PPM.
Can anyone propose a feedback mechanism that would result in LINEAR (let alone exponential) increases in average temperature? I think not.
To go back to your analog amplifier analogy, when one drives the darlington pair of power transistors beyond their operating range, their output becomes decreasingly sensitive to input. If the input is ALSO falling…why would anyone expect the output to be linear? And what bizarre branch of physics (be it radiative or semi-conductors) claims otherwise?
NONE. And that is why the trolls retreat into silence when I present this argument.
timoric says:
September 27, 2011 at 5:28 pm
Does it look this will be the first year warmer than 1998? I always wonder when that will happen again so the climate religionists can say “see I told you so!”
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Uhmm, no….. not even close, but you make the call…… http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1995 . Now, that doesn’t mean GISS won’t devalue some of the other years in their graph, http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1995 , but they’d have to work harder than what they are today. Expect are re-evaluation soon. Historical temps for GISS are subjective, and dynamic….. as you can see, 1998 there doesn’t measure up to what it once was…….. turns out, we didn’t know how to read a thermometer back then…… as temps get further in the past for GISS, they tend to decrease. But, we can look elsewhere for temps….. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1995
No, we’re not coming close to 1998, even if GISS plays their expected games.
James
With regards to mangled equations, maybe it is time to explore the use of such suitable software as LyX or TeX/LaTeX, available for most platforms of interest!
Usually, I dodge these threads even though 99.9% of the material may be correct it’s that nagging smallish balance that could make a difference by a casual read by the wrong individual.
Done properly, one can use an op-amp in the design of a comparator and using a measured, controlled, calculated positive feedback create a specified amount of hysteresis (as might be seen in a Schmitt trigger for instance). Doing so avoids the ‘glitching’ that might otherwise occur as the two voltages input to said comparator come to be nearly equal (the differential input voltage of the comparator that determines output state). Of course, if your circuit is not DC coupled AND your poles and zeros are in the wrong place one could have an oscillating, squealing LM741 op-amp instead. It’s ALL in the design. A quick tutorial, see: http://www.maxim-ic.com/app-notes/index.mvp/id/3616
Full disclose: I used hysteresis in this manner in conjunction with a four-quadrant ‘multiplier’ circuit (MC1494) and a 400 Hz 11.0 V AC source to synthesize resolver I and Q output signals for testing shaft position A/D decoders in the (Panavia Tornado
) MRCA computer/processor during a re-design of the LRU 1 computer/processor test set in the mid 80’s …
.
When in a tough neighborhood, one had best learn to speak the native dialect.
Christopher masters the tongue and makes a mockery of it at the same time.
Bravo!
It is a shame that such brilliant minds have to spend so much time proving what is self-evident to most sensible folks. We have so much more that we could be doing to improve our well being.
steven mosher says:
September 27, 2011 at 3:39 pm
Free the mails, Christopher.
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Wouldn’t it be easier if you and Lucia would assign a modicum of character to Chris Monckton and quit assuming and insinuating that he’s trying to hide or deceive something or someone?
Its BS what you people do. I’ve seen Monckton make errors. It has been pointed out to him. He’s corrected the errors and moved on. Is there something more you wish? WTF is wrong with you people? Damn, Steve, I like you, but what you and Lucia are doing is nothing more than character assassination.
I suggest you people get a grip and look around for a bit of reality.
James Sexton
I should add that the historical climate seems to be better explained by the amount of ice that builds up at the poles (which depends on how much land-mass there is above sea level close to the poles and the Milankovitch Cycles as well).
The amount of sunlight reflected by the ice at the poles (which can also move down toward the equator if enough ice builds up) and by the cloud on the Earth can vary by between 25% to 50%.
The current amount reflected is 29.83% which puts us in a cold episode historically (still warmer than the 33% reflected during the ice ages) but go back to Pangea when there was very little land-mass near the poles and most of the land-mass was near the equator. You still have clouds reflecting the sunlight back but it is only 25% and there is no ice and the Earth is the hottest it has ever been at close to 25.0C versus today at 15.0C.
No CO2 needs to be involved in this explanation at all. In fact, in the early years of the Pangea hothouse, CO2 levels were lower than today. At other times, CO2 was 30 times higher than today and almost the entire Earth was frozen.
That signals a negative feedback for GHGs (clouds most likely) but a strong ice-Albedo feedback (which is still hard to change – it takes a lot of extra ice or a lot less ice at the poles to change the Albedo numbers by enough).
Great post, Lord Monckton. The process control approach is the key to debunking the global warming alarmism.
I have long stated that the key to the entire man-made global warming debate is one of process control. The evidence is clear that CO2 cannot do what the alarmist community insists that it does.
A highly acclaimed professional engineer in Control Systems Engineering, also a PhD in Chemical Engineering, agrees with my assessment. Dr. Pierre R. Latour, of Houston, Texas wrote letters on the subject in January 2009, in Hydrocarbon Processing. I also wrote about his statements in hopes of clarifying and bringing the important points to a broader audience.
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/chemical-engineer-takes-on-global.html
@Gary Young Swift says:
September 27, 2011 at 4:25 pm
“…On the other hand, notice how the temperature swings rapidly (in geological time) from max to min and spends very little time in the middle range. Does that look like a system with or without feedbacks?…”
You might want to get an expanded geological time scale and check this out. Inflection to inflection (turn up from low point to turn flat at high point) will be on the order of millions, or even a few tens of millions of years. The PETM was one of the really brief excursions; this took place over a few hundred thousand years.
The interesting thing, assuming Scotese et al. are reasonably accurate in their estimates, is that the temperature really spends most of the time at one extreme or the other. I suspect we could handle the high end, but the low extreme probably takes us back to a time of a handful (a few hundred thousand, perhaps) of humans huddling in caves and eking out a living a la Ayla and the Clan of the Cave Bear. And lately (geologically speaking) it grows cold.
“Given Monckton’s somewhat unusual visual appearance (which I agree should not be made fun of, regardless of whether it is related to an illness or otherwise), I do think it’s a bit odd he’s willing to be so cheeky in describing a critic as “an overcooked prawn”.”
This caught my attention as well. I simply do not understand how supposedly brilliant people don’t have the common sense to understand that bad manners, snark, sarcasm, and the rest only serve to make THEM look bad. That e-mail exchange did not make M. look good.
Has the “greenhouse effect” as proposed by Arrhenius ever been replicated experimentally? I’ve never seen it anywhere in lo the many years I’ve been trying to understand the theory.
Surely such an elementary experiment has been performed? R. de Haan posted one such experiment. Is it correct? Meaningful? If not why not?
Truly awesome post. I ask myself, is this the Waterloo of fake science, the day true science returned to the surface of the planet.
In the spirit of this thread, I humbly ask, please, will somebody address the point made by Legatus, re measurement of Infra Red at the surface. This seems a brilliant thought experiment for Willis, which if he then confirms the hypothesis, can be taken further..
The weak point in my view is that these instruments are not at the surface but high on mountain tops.
To Legatus says:
September 27, 2011 at 4:16 pm
You asked Everyone dances around it but no one even thinks to once look at the basic idea and take the simple and easy measurements which we already have the equipment for at every observatory? This is the very basis of the entire theory, easily measured, why has no one ever measured it? Why has no one even MENTIONED it?
See also CO2 CANNOT CAUSE ANY MORE “GLOBAL WARMING”
FERENC MISKOLCZI’S SATURATED GREENHOUSE EFFECT THEORY
by Miklos Zagoni, 2007 IPCC Reviewer, Physicist
Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary
December 18, 2009
as reported at http://pathstoknowledge.net/2010/01/13/ferenc-miskolczi’s-saturated-greenhouse-effect-theory-c02-cannot-cause-any-more-global-warming/
Here is the picture. The Earth’s atmosphere maintains a constant effective greenhouse-gas content and a constant, maximized, “saturated” greenhouse effect that cannot be increased further by CO2 emissions (or by any other emissions, for that matter). After calculating on the basis of the entire available annual global mean vertical profile of the NOAA/NCAR atmospheric reanalysis database, Miskolczi has found that the average greenhouse effect of the past 61 years (from 1948, the beginning of the archive, to 2008) is:
* constant, not increasing;
* equal to the unperturbed theoretical equilibrium value; and
* equal (within 0.1 C°) to the global average value, drawn from the independent TIGR radiosonde archive.
During the 61-year period, in correspondence with the rise in CO2 concentration, the global average absolute humidity diminished about 1 per cent. This decrease in absolute humidity has exactly countered all of the warming effect that our CO2 emissions have had since 1948.
Similar computer simulations show that a hypothetical doubling of the carbon dioxide concentration in the air would cause a 3% decrease in the absolute humidity, keeping the total effective atmospheric greenhouse gas content constant, so that the greenhouse effect would merely continue to fluctuate around its equilibrium value. Therefore, a doubling of CO2 concentration would cause no net “global warming” at all.
James–
Monckton and I exchanged 5 emails. I initiated one containing a question, received a reply, sent more questions, received a reply– prefaced with a decree that the conversation was over and I replied.
I would be happy to make these public if Monckton agrees.
I don’t believe I’ve I haven’t assumed such thing and I don’t believe I’ve insinuated that Monckton’s trying to hide anything or to deceive.
I do disagree with some substantive statements in his paragraph interpreting which involve interpreting what he or I said in the email exchange. I would be happy to discuss those issues. In that regard, I think it would be helpful to make the emails available as the emails themselves supply information about their contents. I suspect the “fair use” provision under copyright permits me to make the full contents available for purpose of comment. However, at the moment, I would prefer to only do so if Monckton agrees that the emails should be made public.
My request for agreement is not intended as an insinuation of anything.
To JimF:
just to be clear, I’m not saying Lord Monckton is wrong. I’m just saying that the particular method he is using in this one instance is not adequate to prove he is right.
I think you are basically understanding my point and agreeing with me.
In electrical engineering tihings are simpler than they are in aerospace, but I think climate engineering would be even more complex, if such a thing existed. I agree with you about the high end versus low end, and I thank you for being open to my criticism.
To Lord Monckton:
I’m sorry to harp on a technical issue, but you know that the guys on the other side will pick at stuff like that, so I’m trying to add to the discussion in a positive way.
“Global mean surface temperature over the past 750 million years, reconstructed by Scotese (1999), showing variations not exceeding 8 K (<3%) either side of the 291 K"
Would this not be proof that while things may get very hot or very cold and it may take thousands of years to get back to 'normal', whatever that may be, there are no tipping points?
I believe Lubos' article on Le Chatelier's principle and climate would be an interesting read: http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/11/le-chateliers-principle-and-natures.html
From this article:
"But the idea that positive feedbacks dominate or that they are the ones who win at the end simply contradicts basic laws of thermodynamics."
We know how Le Chatelier's principle applies to basic chemical systems when a single variable such as temperature, pressure, or concentrations changes. However indications are that it applies to climate as well.
Two concrete examples: according to how much CO2 man is putting into the air every year, only half shows up in the atmosphere. That is because photosynthesis uses more than normal and much CO2 gets dissolved in the oceans.
Then Earth's temperatures are not rising nearly as fast as the models believe they ought to be. That is because the feedbacks due to clouds are negative and not positive.
So while Le Chatelier’s Principle initially just basically applied to simple systems, I believe a much more complicated set of Le Chatelier’s types of Principles could be developed for climate, but we are not there yet. Perhaps 50 variables may be changing at any given time. While many pieces of the puzzle are still missing, papers like SB11 fill in some of the pieces.
BTW, the little dispute over the emails and who said what and when is typical misdirection away from the technical points which are really key. I would suggest taking the “he said, she said” discussion into a totally different thread, if it is worth talking about at all. Franky, I couldn’t care less about that.
In the interest of full disclosure I suggest we do so.
lucia says:
September 27, 2011 at 7:47 pm
James–
==========================================
Lucia, thank you for the response. It wasn’t necessary. I would point out my comment here….. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/27/monckton-on-pulling-planck-out-of-a-hat/#comment-753692
That said, while I disdain wars of personalities, I can’t help but note the attack on Christopher Monckton. Why? Is it because you don’t like his style? Or is it his politics? It certainly isn’t because of his maths, because you jumped to an assumption before the full explanation was available to you. And, worse, you did this before you allowed it to be available to you.
Lucia, it isn’t my purpose to attack you. Though, I see where it can be construed as such. I’m tired.
I’m tired of watching the suffering because of this asinine subject. I’m tired of watching the devotion of great minds and energy devoted to such madness. I’m tired of watching people ride the fence. But most of all, I’m tired of seeing people attack people that would help end this insanity.
It is past time. And you of all people should know the cost. Stand up and be counted, or go home.
James Sexton
Legatus
You presume the Warmistas are amenable
to scientific argument via measuring the sky’s LWIR,
when actually they are self-blinded ideologists
who will never let mere measurements upset their received wisdom of Alarmism.
Even another Little Ice Age will not make them admit falsification.
I’ve done lots of of infrared sky-temp measurements,
thirty-five years ago, and today, with the same pyrgeometers.
Their unchanged readings contrast sharply
with Alarmism’s computer-predicted increases.
The Inquisition refused to look through Galileo’s telescope,
and Warmistas refuse to even spell ‘pyrgeometer’,
since for them data isn’t data until it’s been properly ‘adjusted’ (quasi-faked).
Having been shrieking the sea-level false-alarm for decades
with nobody calling them out,
it’s easy for Warmistas to studiously ignore actual data
that so immediately disprove their insane hysteria.
Really, this makes no sense; can someone disabuse me of the notion that an EM wave (LWIR) does not care a whit about the ‘temperature’ of the reflecting surface (or the energy level of a vibrating molecule in a gas some distance away.)
Check your various modes of molecular ‘vibration’ for CO2 and H2O absoption and re-radiation (molecular vibration modes couple to LWIR via EM – ElectroMagnetic wave action) via the various molecular vibrational modes seen in CO2 and H2O molecules. Liquid water (clouds) are similar but shifted spectrum-wise …
Insert a reflecting 3-D (gaseous) medium (absorb/capture EM wave and then re-rad the energy via another EM wave results in much the same effect as ‘reflect’ for conceptual purposes here), and viola … the energy flow to space must now traverse a ‘bounce’ diagram from surface into the medium thusly:
(1) Some EM energy is reflected back (this is a re-radiation process actually)
(2) while some re-rads into space (assume simplistically that our molecules radiate isotropically)
(3) while some EM energy makes it straight through to ‘space’ in the first pass. Rinse, repeat.
Remove the ‘media’ and you have a straight-line path to space, which is the ‘sink’ (as opposed to ‘source’ which is the surface of earth). Obviously, this does not ‘warm’ the surface, but rather changes the rate at which it will cool.
Elementary.
Or so it seems …
.
James said
Quote
I’m tired of watching the suffering because of this asinine subject. I’m tired of watching the devotion of great minds and energy devoted to such madness. I’m tired of watching people ride the fence. But most of all, I’m tired of seeing people attack people that would help end this insanity.
Unquote
Post of the day
Lord Mockington strikes at the heart of AGW…
A very interesting read through the posts.. Some very valid points to be sure. The math simply dos not support the IPCC models used to prophesy a fatal feed back loop.
And to Luci.. it takes great fortitude to admit being incorrect in an open public forum.
Even with the trolls (i might even be considered this) and arm chair scientists to boot, this is by far the best moderated and civil discourses between professionals on the Net. Thanks Anthony! I hope you keep this going… information is the key to the public not being lead to their own destruction.
Bill