By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
I am very grateful for the many thoughtful postings in response to my outline of the fundamental theoretical upper bound of little more than 1.2 K on climate sensitivity imposed by the process-engineering theory of maintaining the stability of an object on which feedbacks operate. Here are some answers to points raised by correspondents.
Iskandar says, “None of these feedbacks or forcings are ever given in the form of a formula.” In fact, there are functions for the forcings arising from each of the principal species of greenhouse gas: they are tabulated in Myhre et al., 1998, and cited with approval in IPCC (2001. 2007). However, Iskandar is right about temperature feedbacks. Here, the nearest thing to a formula for a feedback is the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, which states that the space occupied by the atmosphere is capable of carrying near-exponentially more water vapor as it warms. However, as Paltridge et al. (2009) have indicated, merely because the atmosphere can carry more water vapor there is no certainty that it does. The IPCC’s values for this and other feedbacks are questionable. For instance, Spencer and Braswell (2010, 2011, pace Dessler, 2010, 2011) have challenged the IPCC’s estimate of the cloud feedback. They find it as strongly negative (attenuating the warming that triggers it) as the IPCC finds it strongly positive (amplifying the original warming), implying a climate sensitivity of less than 1 K. Since feedbacks account for almost two-thirds of all warming in the IPCC’s method, and since it is extremely difficult to measure – still less to provide a formula for – the values of individual temperature feedbacks, an effort such as mine to identify a constraint on the magnitude of all feedbacks taken together is at least worth trying.
Doug says we cannot be sure when the dolomitic rocks were formed. What is certain, however, according to Professor Ian Plimer, who gave me the information, is that they cannot form unless the partial pressure of CO2 above the ocean in which they form is 30%, compared with today’s 0.04%. Yet, during the long era when CO2 concentrations were that high, glaciers came and went, twice, at sea level, and at the equator. Even allowing for the fact that the Sun was a little fainter then, and that the Earth’s albedo was higher, the presence of those glaciers where there are none today does raise some questions about the forcing effect of very high CO2 concentrations, and, a fortiori, about the forcing effect of today’s mere trace concentration. However, in general Doug’s point is right: it is unwise to put too much weight on results from the paleoclimate, particularly when there is so much scientific dispute about the results from today’s climate that we can measure directly.
Dirk H and the inimitable Willis Eschenbach, whose fascinating contributions to this column should surely be collected and published as a best-seller, point out that I am treating feedbacks as linear when some of them are non-linear. For the math underlying non-linear feedbacks, which would have been too lengthy to include in my posting, see e.g. Roe (2009). Roe’s teacher was Dick Lindzen, who is justifiably proud of him. However, for the purpose of the present argument, it matters not whether feedbacks are linear or non-linear: what matters is the sum total of feedbacks as they are in our own time, which is multiplied by the Planck parameter (of which more later) to yield the closed-loop gain whose upper bound was the focus of my posting. Of course I agree with Willis that the non-linearity of many feedbacks, not to mention that all or nearly all of them cannot be measured directly, makes solving the climate-sensitivity equation difficult. But, again, that is why I have tried the approach of examining a powerful theoretical constraint on the absolute magnitude of the feedback-sum. Since the loop gain in the climate object cannot exceed 0.1 (at maximum) without rendering the climate so prone to instability that runaway feedbacks that have not occurred in the past would be very likely to have occurred, the maximum feedback sum before mutual amplification cannot exceed 0.32: yet the IPCC’s implicit central estimate of the feedback sum is 2.81.
Roger Knights rightly takes me to task for a yob’s comma that should not have been present in my posting. I apologize. He also challenges my use of the word “species” for the various types of greenhouse gas: but the word “species” is regularly used by the eminent professors of climatology at whose feet I have sat.
R. de Haan cites an author whose opinion is that warming back-radiation returned from the atmosphere back to the surface and the idea that a cooler system can warm a warmer system are “unphysical concepts”. I know that the manufacturers of some infra-red detectors say the detectors do not measure back-radiation but something else: however, both Mr. de Haan’s points are based on a common misconception about what the admittedly badly-named “greenhouse effect” is. The brilliant Chris Essex explains it thus: when outgoing radiation in the right wavelengths of the near-infrared meets a molecule of a greenhouse gas such as CO2, it sets up a quantum resonance in the gas molecule, turning it into a miniature radiator. This beautifully clear analogy, when I recently used it in a presentation in New Zealand, won the support of two professors of climatology in the audience. The little radiators that the outgoing radiation turns on are not, of course, restricted only to radiating outwards to space. They radiate in all directions, including downwards – and that is before we take into account non-radiative transports such as subsidence and precipitation that bring some of that radiation down to Earth. So even the IPCC, for all its faults, is not (in this respect, at any rate) repealing the laws of thermodynamics by allowing a cooler system to warm a warmer system, which indeed would be an unphysical concept.
Gary Smith politely raised the question whether the apparently sharp ups and downs in the paleoclimate temperature indicated strongly-positive feedbacks. With respect, the answer is No, for two reasons. First, the graph I used was inevitably compressed: in fact, most of the temperature changes in that graph took place over hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. Secondly, it is the maximum variance either side of the long-run mean, not the superficially-apparent wildness of the variances within the mean, that establishes whether or not there is a constraint on the maximum net-positivity of temperature feedbacks.
Nick Stokes asked where the limiting value 0.1 for the closed-loop gain in the climate object came from. It is about an order of magnitude above the usual design limit for net-positive feedbacks in electronic circuits that are not intended to experience runaway feedbacks or to oscillate either side of the singularity in the feedback-amplification equation, which occurs where the loop gain is unity.
David Hoffer wondered what evidence the IPCC had for assuming a linear rise in global temperature over the 21st century given that the radiative forcing from CO2 increases only at a logarithmic (i.e. sub-linear) rate. The IPCC pretends that all six of its “emissions scenarios” are to be given equal weight, but its own preference for the A2 scenario is clear, particularly in the relevant chapter of its 2007 report (ch. 10). See, in particular, fig. 10.26, which shows an exponential rise in both CO2 and temperature, when one might have expected the logarithmicity of the CO2 increase to cancel the exponentiality of the temperature increase. However, on the A2 scenario it is only the anthropogenic fraction of the CO2 concentration that is increased exponentially, and this has the paradoxical effect of making temperature rise near-exponentially too – but only if one assumes the very high climate sensitivity that is impossible given the fundamental constraint on the net-positivity of temperature feedbacks.
DR asks whether anyone has ever actually replicated experimentally the greenhouse effect mentioned by Arrhenius, who in 1895/6 first calculated how much warming a doubling of CO2 concentration would cause. Yes, the greenhouse effect was first demonstrated empirically by John Tyndale at the Royal Institution, London (just round the corner from my club) as far back as 1859. His apparatus can still be seen there. The experiment is quite easily replicated, so we know (even if the SB equation and the existence of a readily-measurable temperature lapse-rate with altitude did not tell us) that the greenhouse effect is real. The real debate is not on whether there is a greenhouse effect (there is), but on how much warming our rather small perturbation of the atmosphere with additional concentrations of greenhouse gases will cause (not a lot).
Werner Brozek asks whether the quite small variations in global surface temperature either side of the billion-year mean indicate that “tipping-points” do not exist. In mathematics and physics the term “tipping-point” is really only used by those wanting to make a political point, usually from a climate-extremist position. The old mathematical term of art, still used by many, was “phase-transition”: now we should usually talk of a “bifurcation” in the evolution of the object under consideration. Since the climate object is mathematically-chaotic (IPCC, 2001, para. 14.2.2.2; Giorgi, 2005; Lorenz, 1963), bifurcations will of course occur: indeed any sufficiently rare extreme-weather event may be a bifurcation. We know that very extreme things can suddenly happen in the climate. For instance, at the end of the Younger Dryas cooling period that brought the last Ice Age to an end, temperatures in Antarctica as inferred from variations in the ratios of different isotopes of oxygen in air trapped in layers under the ice, rose by 5 K (9 F) in just three years. “Now, that,” as Ian Plimer likes to say in his lectures, “is climate change!”
But the idea that our very small perturbation in temperature will somehow cause more bifurcations is not warranted by the underlying mathematics of chaos theory. In my own lectures I often illustrate this with a spectacular picture drawn on the Argand plane by a very simple chaotic function, the Mandelbrot fractal function. The starting and ending values for the pixels at top right and bottom left respectively are identical to 12 digits of precision; yet the digits beyond 12 are enough to produce multiple highly-visible bifurcations.
And we know that some forms of extreme weather are likely to become rarer if the world warms. Much – though not all – extreme weather depends not upon absolute temperature but upon differentials in temperature between one altitude or latitude and another. These differentials tend to get smaller as the world warms, so that outside the tropics (and arguably in the tropics too) there will probably be fewer storms.
Roy Clark says there is no such thing as equilibrium in the climate. No, but that does not stop us from trying to do the sums on the assumption of the absence of any perturbation (the equilibrium assumption). Like the square root of -1, it doesn’t really exist, but it is useful to pretend ad argumentum that it might.
Legatus raised a fascinating point about the measurements of ambient radiation that observatories around the world make so that they can calibrate their delicate, heat-sensitive telescopes. He says those measurements show no increase in radiation at the surface (or, rather, on the mountain-tops where most of the telescopes are). However, it is not the surface radiation but the radiation at the top of the atmosphere (or, rather, at the characteristic-emission altitude about 5 km above sea level) that is relevant: and that is 239.4 Watts (no relation) per square meter, by definition, because the characteristic-emission altitude (the outstanding Dick Lindzen’s name for it) is that altitude at which outgoing and incoming fluxes of radiation balance. It is also at that altitude, one optical depth down into the atmosphere, that satellites “see” the radiation coming up into space from the Earth/atmosphere system. Now, as we add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and cause warming, that altitude will rise a little; and, because the atmosphere contains greenhouse gases and, therefore, its temperature is not uniform, consequent maintenance of the temperature lapse-rate of about 6.5 K/km of altitude will ensure that the surface warms as a result. Since the altitude of the characteristic-emission level varies by day and by night, by latitude, etc., it is impossible to measure directly how it has changed or even where it is.
Of course, it is at the characteristic-emission altitude, and not – repeat not – at the Earth’s surface that the Planck parameter should be derived. So let me do just that. Incoming radiation is, say, 1368 Watts per square meter. However, the Earth presents itself to that radiation as a disk but is actually a sphere, so we divide the radiation by 4 to allow for the ratio of the surface areas of disk and sphere. That gives 342 Watts per square meter. However, 30% of the Sun’s radiation is reflected harmlessly back to space by clouds, snow, sparkling sea surfaces, my lovely wife’s smile, etc., so the flux of relevant radiation at the characteristic-emission altitude is 342(1 – 0.3) = 239.4 Watts per square meter.
From this value, we can calculate the Earth’s characteristic-emission temperature directly without even having to measure it (which is just as well, because measuring even surface temperature is problematic). We use the fundamental equation of radiative transfer, the only equation to be named after a Slovene. Stefan found the equation by empirical methods and, a decade or so later, his Austrian pupil Ludwig Boltzmann proved it theoretically by reference to Planck’s blackbody law (hence the name “Planck parameter”, engagingly mis-spelled “plank” by one blogger.
The equation says that radiative flux is equal to the emissivity of the characteristic-emission surface (which we can take as unity without much error when thinking about long-wave radiation), times the Stefan-Boltzmann constant 5.67 x 10^–8 Watts per square meter per Kelvin to the fourth power, times temperature in Kelvin to the fourth power. So characteristic-emission temperature is equal to the flux divided by the emissivity and by the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, all to the power 1/4.: thus, [239.4 / (1 x 5.67 x 10^–8)]^¼ = 254.9 K or thereby.
Any mathematician taking a glance at this equation will at once notice that one needs quite a large change in radiative flux to achieve a very small change in temperature. To find out how small, one takes the first differential of the equation, which (assuming emissivity to be constant) is simply the temperature divided by four times the flux: so, 254.9 / (4 x 239.4) = 0.2662 Kelvin per Watt per square meter. However, the IPCC (2007, p. 631, footnote) takes 0.3125 and, in its usual exasperating way, without explaining why. So a couple of weeks ago I asked Roy Spencer and John Christy for 30 years of latitudinally-distributed surface temperature data and spent a weekend calculating the Planck parameter at the characteristic-emission altitude for each of 67 zones of latitude, allowing for latitudinal variations in insolation and adjusting for variations in the surface areas of the zones. My answer, based on the equinoxes and admittedly ignoring seasonal variations in the zenith angles of the Sun at each latitude, was 0.316. So I’ve checked, and the IPCC has the Planck parameter right. Therefore, it is of course the IPCC’s value that I used in my calculations in my commentary for Remote Sensing, except in one place.
Kiehl & Trenberth (1997) publish a celebrated Earth/atmosphere energy-budget diagram in which they show 390 Watts per square meter of outgoing radiative flux from the surface, and state that this is the “blackbody” value. From this, we know that – contrary to the intriguing suggestion made by Legatus that one should simply measure it – they did not attempt to find this value by measurement. Instead, they were taking surface emissivity as unity (for that is what defines a blackbody), and calculating the outgoing flux using the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. The surface temperature, which we can measure (albeit with some uncertainty) is 288 K. So, in effect, Kiehl and Trenberth are saying that they used the SB equation at the Earth’s surface to determine the outgoing surface flux, thus: 1 x 5.67 x 10^–8 x 288^4 = 390.1 Watts per square meter.
Two problems with this. First, the equation holds good only at the characteristic-emission altitude, and not at the surface. That is why, once I had satisfied myself that the IPCC’s value at that altitude was correct, I said in my commentary for Remote Sensing that the IPCC’s value was correct, and I am surprised to find that a blogger had tried to leave her readers with a quite different impression even after I had clarified this specific point to her.
Secondly, since Kiehl and Trenberth are using the Stefan-Boltzmann equation at the surface in order to obtain their imagined (and perhaps imaginary) outgoing flux of 390 Watts per square meter, it is of course legitimate to take the surface differential of the equation that they themselves imply that they had used, for in that we we can determine the implicit Planck parameter in their diagram. This is simply done: 288 / (4 x 390) = 0.1846 Kelvin per Watt per square meter. Strictly speaking, one should also add the non-radiative transports of 78 Watts per square meter for evapo-transpiration and 24 for thermal convection (see Kimoto, 2009, for a discussion) to the 390 Watts per square meter of radiative flux, reducing Kiehl and Trenberth’s implicit Planck parameter from 0.18 to 0.15. Either 0.15 or 0.18 gives a climate sensitivity ~1 K. So the Planck parameter I derived at this point in my commentary, of course, not the correct one: nor is it “Monckton’s” Planck parameter, and the blogger who said it was had been plainly told all that I have told you, though in a rather more compressed form because she had indicated she was familiar with differential calculus. It is not Monckton’s Planck parameter, nor even Planck’s Planck parameter, and it is certainly not a plank parameter – but it is Kiehl & Trenberth’s Planck parameter. If they were right (and, of course, I was explicit in using the conditional in my commentary to indicate, in the politest possible way, that they were not), then, like it or not, they were implying a climate sensitivity a great deal lower than they had perhaps realized – in fact a sensitivity of around 1 K. I do regret that a quite unnecessary mountain has been made out of this surely simple little molehill – just one of more than a dozen points in a wide-ranging commentary.
And just to confirm that it should really have been obvious to everyone that the IPCC’s value of the Planck parameter is my value, I gave that value as the correct one both in my commentary and in my recent blog posting on the fundamental constraint on feedback loop gain. You will find it, with its derivation, right at the beginning of that posting, and encapsulated in Eq. (3).
Thank you all again for your interest. This discussion has generally been on a far higher plane than is usual with climate discussions. I hope that these further points in answer to commentators will be helpful.
Lord Monckton, Thank you very much for your extensive replies to many of the comments!
“dscott says:
September 29, 2011 at 11:18 pm
You can not conflate a summer temperature (high humidity) as roughly proportional in heat content to winter temperatures (low humidity). You can’t assume the humidity content from year to year will even out”
I understand where you are coming from. However how much difference does it really make in the end? The percent water vapor in the atmosphere can vary from close to 0 to about 4%. Let us assume that in a dry year, the humidity averages 1% and in a humid year, it averages 3%. The specific heat capacity of air is 1.0. Let us assume the specific heat capacity of water vapor is 2.0. So if the air has 1% water vapor, the average specific heat capacity is 1.01. And if the air has 3% water vapor, the average specific heat capacity is 1.03. I know the molar mass of water is 18 and not 29, but if we just assume they are the same, then the mass of the atmosphere with 3% water vapor is 2% larger than if there is 1% water vapor. (I am also generously assuming water vapor exists evenly throughout the atmosphere and does not condense out.) Then applying mct(moist air) = mct(dry air), we find that the mc for the moist air is 4% larger than for dry air. So to balance things out, the dry air has to have a temperature change that is 4% larger than the moist air. In other words, if moist air goes up by 1.00 degrees C, the dry air, with the same energy input, would go up by 1.04 degrees C. So unless I am missing something, I would say the difference is very small. Perhaps the error bars need to be made just a wee bit larger to account for the unknown average humidity values?
Smokey:
If by going ballistic, you mean that she is correcting the errors and nonsense that need to be corrected then indeed, she is going ballistic.
If by “fair debate”, you mean a debate where nonsense and obfuscation drown out wisdom, intelligent analysis, and science, then perhaps you are right that there is no way to have a fair debate there.
Now that I have understood how to properly interpret Smokey’s comments, they are starting to make a lot more sense.
Terry MN,
Thanks for your post. I have no doubts about Lucia’s competence in maths. The key issue here is she’s barking up the wrong tree with the maths. Problems with Kimoto? Address it to the author and journal. Problems with IPCC’s values on the Planck’s constant? Take it up with them and with K&T.
Instead, she’s turned her guns full force on the messenger who cited those merely to show that as per those values the claimed sensitivity is wrong.
And if she decides that she’ll strip down everything to an obscure irrelevant mathematical point of her choosing only, it shows her narrow mindedness. And if she expects mathematical exactitude to the minutest detail, let her show the maths for her sweeping claim about 90% of E&E’s papers being wrong. Where’s the evidence of that? She has not produced it. So what right has she got to accuse CM of pulling numbers out of the hat?
That is obvious to everybody else except her and her echo chamber. See the desperate and irrational comments made there even to PaulM who politely suggested to Lucia that she’s in danger of losing level headed leaders. See the comment here from Steven Mosher calling CM as Moncktopus. Steven is fond of asking everybody else about the maths. Did he ask Lucia for the maths about her 90% claim?
Sorry, that whole bunch are behaving like kids with brain fatigue.
Werner Brozek-
yeah, you are missing something – heat of vaporization.
heat is measured in joules, not temperature, too.
Joel Shore says:
“If by going ballistic, you mean that [Lucia] is correcting the errors and nonsense that need to be corrected then indeed, she is going ballistic.
“If by ‘fair debate’, you mean a debate where nonsense and obfuscation drown out wisdom, intelligent analysis, and science, then perhaps you are right that there is no way to have a fair debate there.”
•••
Joel, get a grip on reality. A ‘debate’ on Dr Lucia’s blog, where she is the de-facto moderator, is clearly unfair. Where fair and honest debates have been held, the scientific skeptics have routinely kicked ass, and the alarmist crowd has been routed. That is a fact. Sorry if that makes your ilk uncomfortable.
Septic Matthew said:
“Maybe (my other post agrees), but we must “nail it” as they say in other fields.”
In my opinion the real world observations have already nailed it. We just need others to open their eyes.
Special for OK S.
For Friday Funnies,
See Kiehl and Trenberth’s drawing.
Laughable cartoon.
========
Joel Shore;
There are are at least a few things wrong with this analysis:
(1) Most importantly… The place to apply radiation balance is at the top-of-the-atmosphere>>>
REPLY
And yet the IPCC uses the effective black body temperature of the earth which occurrs neither at the surface nor at the TOA. Further, while they explain this in AR3, they skip the explanation completely in AR4, and the wording is such that the average reader is left with the impression that the one degree of warming is surface temperature when in fact it is not. So, if I accept your position above, then you must support the same conclusion I came to which is that the IPCC explanation is both incorrectly calculated and also presented in a misleading fashion. That is the conclusion one must draw regardless of your physics or mine being closer to the actual facts.
Joel Shore;
(2) While it is true that the temperature rise is not uniform… there are negative sides too…half of the surface area of the earth lies between 30 S latitude and 30 N latitude and only 13.4% total lies poleward of 60 N latitude or 60 S latitude. This means, once again, that the average temperature over the earth’s surface is weighted much more strongly by what happens in the tropics and much less strongly by what happens near the poles…>>>
REPLY
I agree. So what you are saying (if you stop to consider for a moment) is that most of the temperature change will be over land (where we live) but that most of the land…is in the zone that will experience the LEAST temperature change from increased levels of CO2. Thanks for reinforcing my point!
You haven’t responded at all by the way to my previous point (that no one else had responded to either). Since CO2 is logarithmic, what plausible feedback mechanism exists that would result in linear or exponential warming? If such a feedback mechanism exists, why did it not result in catastrophic changes when initial increases in CO2 were % wise far larget per PPM than they ever will be again?
steven mosher says:
September 30, 2011 at 12:25 pm
Thanks, Mosh. I am saddened to see the name calling.
Returning to the math, like Lucia I cannot see any way to derive Kimoto’s Equation 18 from his Equation 17. So my vote goes with Lucia on the math. Kimoto is wrong, as far as I can see.
This is because the only way that Kimoto could be right is if, like radiative losses, both evapotranspiration losses and conduction losses were to vary strictly proportionally with the fourth power of the temperature. If that were true, Equation 18 could be derived from Equation 17.
However, I have not seen any indication that the evapotransporative and conductive losses vary in that manner. Both do go up fast with temperature (with the usual caveats about thresholds), but not with a simple T^4 relationship.
w.
HenryP says:
September 30, 2011 at 8:42 am
“Quote: “The real debate is not on whether there is a greenhouse effect (there is), ”
If by green house effect you mean GHG backradiation.
GHG backradiation has been built on an impossible proposition. It has then been supported by maths and various models. But maths or flash models does not make the impossible possible.
The impossible proposition is
100 units of energy leave earth’s surface as radiation (at the speed of light).
Over 90 units escape to outer space and never return.
Under 10 units interact with CO2 and under half (under 5 units) return to the earth’s surface.
These 5 units replace the energy lost of the 100 units and some more energy on top.
Various models have been developed and various formulas used. But common sense and a reasonableness test has not been applied.
The GHG backradiation theory is flawed.
I don’t think people understand what Christopher Monckton is trying to do here.
He is simply trying to find out if, using the math (correct or incorrect) and data (real or imaginary) that the IPPC accepts as true, we can come up with the climate sensitivity that they claim.
It does not matter if the math is correct, only if it is the math that the IPCC accepts.
It does not matter if the data is correct, only if it is the data that the IPCC accepts.
Then, using their math, and their data, do we arrive at the climate sensitivity they claim?
His conclusion is that we do not, even using their math and data.
In other words, he is saying that their logic is not internally self consistent.
Also, some people say that he should do this or that to find out what the truth is, say, to take this or that into account.
I don’t think he is trying to find the truth here, only what is NOT the truth.
He is attempting to show that the IPCC is not telling the truth, even if we accept all their math and data.
“”Instead of applying observation to the things we wished to know, we have chosen rather to imagine them. Advancing from one ill-founded supposition to another, we have at last bewildered ourselves amidst a multitude of errors….
Once we know that is NOT true, we can then do this:
“…When matters have been brought this length, when errors have been thus accumulated, there is but one remedy by which order can be restored to the faculty of thinking; this is, to forget all that we have learned, to trace back our ideas to their source, to follow the train in which they rise, and, as my Lord Bacon says, to frame the human understanding anew.”” Lavoisier
OK, NOW we can look for truth, what is really going on with the climate, what actual effect increasing CO2 has, if any.
Probably in another, separate WUWT post.
As for the idea of showing the economics of this, one can use some of the IPCC’s own methodology here, and look for feedbacks, tipping points, sort of economic sensitivities if you will, which I suspect could be quite high. Example, lets say that they get at least some of what they want, well, this will hurt the economy. However, they are bureaucrats, they live off of other people’s taxes, and now the tax base has shrunk. What to do, simple, raise the tax rate (probably disguised as something, say carbon credits or some such). This will then hurt the economy more, and you need to raise the tax rate even more to keep living the lifestyle that a planet saver such as yourself deserves, feedback. Lets say that you manage to lower power production (all those coal fired plants), well, now there is not enough power to go around. However, you, the planet saver, still deserve to live that lifestyle, so YOU get all the power you want, and there is even less left over for anyone else (and now the tax base goes down again). And lets say that in all this planet saving, some people get a little annoyed at what you have been doing, when you hear about that, what actions will you take to prevent any little “accidents” that might happen, and what will be the result of that? And when you take those actions, even more people get even more annoyed, and now you need to take even more actions, feedback.
Lets see one possible tipping point. You bring in major “green energy”, far more expensive and rather unreliable. Businesses now wish to relocate elsewhere, say China, where power is plentiful and cheap. China now realizes that you are dependant on them, how will they use that? If they use that in ways you don’t want, will you be tempted to turn the people against them so that they are angry at someone else instead of you, the person who lost them their job? So now how will China then react, and how will you react to that. What may seem like a smallish change to you can quickly escalate rapidly out of control. Of course you could massively subsidize all that green energy, but that means a lot of money flowing around, and certain people will be tempted to get their hands in the till, and massive corruption could the ensue which could change things like the government, the police force, and even the way private business is run. Or you could borrow the money for all those subsidies, until that massive debt comes suddenly crashing down on your head, or the government starts churning out money like mad (hyperinflation). Or lets say the EPA gets their wish, and shuts down 8% of our power plants. When the rolling blackouts hit, how many businesses will fail, and then how many more dependant on them will fail, and how many will wish to relocate out of the country, and now how many (more) unemployed are there, and will they be happy about that, and will they become restless (to put it mildly), and how will the government react to all that restlessness? And now it’s winter, and there is not enough power for heat, and people start dying, and they get restless, and the government reacts in it’s typical knee jerk fashion, and that produces even more consequences, etc And if the EPA gets it’s 230,000 more bureaucrats, might they get just a wee bit arrogent with all that power, how far will they take that? And if they do, how will the people react, and now how will the EPA and the rest of the government react, and just how far will that go? And this all started with a mere 8% drop in power.
In short, the primary effects, say, more expensive green energy, will almost always result in a chain of cause and effects, consequences, followed by consequences of the reaction to the consequences, and on and on, which will magnify the original effect many times over. Thus, merely saying that, say, green energy will raise your electric bill may be no where close to the truth. So this idea of “sensitivity” could be far more applicable to the remedy for climate change than to the climate itself.
And the real danger of climate change can be shown to be the danger of it’s cure, not it’s disease. And the cure may be so bad that even if the worst fears about climate change are true, they pale besides the danger of the cure.
Monckton of Brenchley said Multiplying the two gives the IPCC’s implicit central estimate of the loop gain 0.645, which is again absurdly high.
Lord Monckton, as you are un doubtfully aware, terms like “absurdly high” are not scientific. Would you care to present evidence that suggests that a loop gain of 0.645 (or implied amplification of 1.55) is ruled out by paleo climate analysis or present other empirical evidence of this amplification being “absurdly high”.
Henry@RJ
If you say there is no back- or re-radiation, then how do you explain that we can measure this re-radiated light, e.g. specific to CO2 coming back from the moon, see here:
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0004-637X/644/1/551/64090.web.pdf?request-id=76e1a830-4451-4c80-aa58-4728c1d646ec
They measured this re-radiation from CO2 as it bounced back to earth from the moon. So the direction was sun-earth-moon-earth. Follow the green line in fig. 6, bottom. Note that it already starts at 1.2 um, then one peak at 1.4 um, then various peaks at 1.6 um and 3 big peaks at 2 um.
It all comes back in fig. 6 top.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
About the poster who linked to this site:
http://principia-scientific.org/publications/New_Concise_Experiment_on_Backradiation.pdf
First, is it really true that the IPCC uses a value of backradiation of around 300W? This fellow measured 300 coming up from the ground, but only around 60W coming down from the night sky. That means, IF the IPCC is actually using 300W as he claims, then it is no wonder we see no global warming, since their value of backradiation is five times too large, and thus the increase of backradiation must only be 20% of what they claim. If that is true, then the IPCC has been caught in a whopping big lie.
He does have a point that some of the radiation seen could be from hot air from convection, evaporation, and the like, and some of the actual backradiation could be from water vapor and clouds. I do not see that he has conclusively proved that ALL of the detected infrared is not backradiation from CO2, however.
If he is right that at least a significant portion of it comes from heated air from convection and evaporation, and backscatter from water vapor and clouds, then that leaves precious little left over for CO2, even if that CO2 doubles it would still be dwarfed by all that.
And if he is right that the IPCC is using a number five times too big for backradiation, AND much of the backradiation comes from non CO2 sources, then the amount caused by CO2 is vanishingly small, perhaps not even detectable.
And that is not even taking into account that the doubling of CO2’s backradiation increase may be logarithmic, not linear…
And there may be a way to measure whether increased CO2 causes increased backscatter without resorting to records of backscatter. There are ways now to measure areas where there are pockets of CO2, where the CO2 is greater than normal, and other areas where there is far less CO2. If you measure backscatter at night in the high CO2 and low CO2 areas, you should see significantly more backscatter in the high CO2 area, all else being equal. It might even be possible to find areas with enough difference in CO2 concentration that you can actually measure backscatter with a doubling of CO2. The one problem is “all else being equal”, that one could be a big problem. One would need to measure air temperature, pressure, humidity, presence of thin clouds, etc, all the way from the sensor and in a very high cone above it, up to perhaps 30km. One advantage even with that problem could be, if you do measure those things, and any one of them changes, and backscatter changes, you could find out what percentage of backscatter is caused by CO2, and what backscatter is caused by other factors, like say rising hot air, humidity, clouds etc.
And I will point out again that backscatter of infrared is only applicable at sea/ground level. That is where it could cause increased evaporation, which could increase the greenhouse gas water vapor (and the anti-warming cooling cloud cover), and where it could warm ice and melt it and raise the sea level. If it is not happening at sea/ground level, it is irrelevant.
“A word means what I want it to mean” – Humpty Dumpty
The concept of feedback is now sloshing around the climate arena, as shown by this and other threads. Feedback is a fairly rigorously defined idea in control theory, but is being used in a way that simply “clouds” the issue.
For example, the SB radiation law, clearly places a constraint on temperature rise with increasing temperature. This has been referred to as feedback, which it is not, it is simply a non-linear property of the system. One might be able to model it as feedback, but I would suggest that in the context of control theory, one would have to be rather careful. As another example, this thread follows from a staic analysis of climate, which may be useful if the climate went from one steady state to anaother. However, it seems clear that climate does not adopt a steady state and therefore what is important is the role of feedback in how the climate change.
If one is going to use control theory in analysing climate, one has to produce a mathematical model that it not only statically, but dynamically correct. A control system allows a variable to be controlled in the presence of time varying perturbations, a feature of control theory that seems to regularly ignored in climate.
Until the formalism of control theory is addressed, its use of control theory in climate science, will continue to be a mess and continue to contain elementary mathematical and physical misunderstandings. Perhaps climate scientists should read some textbooks on control theory, or even enrol in an undergraduate course. Alternatively, the Caligula method could be applied: “Utinam populus Romanus unam cervicem haberet!”, (although I am not suggesting that climate science should henceforth be conducted in Latin).
PS: To the editor. These types of threads contain some mathematics – it would be increadibly helpful if one could insert equations in a more elegent typeface into the comments. If one could “cut and paste” equations from, say MS Equation, it would make comments much easier.
PPS: I realise this is fighting talk, but the concepts can be explained quite simply, given an opportunity.
@Monckton of Brenchley
One thing one needs to know – indeed, THE thing one needs to know in the climate debate – is how much temperature change we shall get in response to a given change in radiative flux.
I would question that.
The figures I’ve seen show around 50% of the heat leaves the surface via evaporation. Almost all that water eventually forms clouds and the energy is lost.
So, for half the temperature flow from the surface, the question that seems most pertinent is:
“How much cloud shall we get in response to a given change in radiative flux“.
And of course, cloud itself is a massive affecter of radiative flux, so we can modify this to the apparently absurd:
“How much radiative flux we get in response to a given change in radiative flux“.
The conclusion I draw from this, is that the effects of solar radiation (at least the 50% that seems to be conducted from the surface by evaporation) is a dynamic system with massive feedbacks, whereas the question: “how much temperature change we shall get in response to a given change in radiative flux.” is a static system, a passive system.
So whilst you are right to argue feedbacks (the massive instabilities of high positive feedbacks), you then appear to dismiss them when considering the fundamental behaviour of the climate.
To my mind the atmosphere is not a static system as your focus on direct forcing would imply. And I would encourage you to cook more chips, because a pan of heated oil shows all the main characteristics of out atmosphere: it clearly divides into cells, the cells where there is a heat driver cycle as hot oil rises and falls. The analogy with the frontal systems of the climate are obvious. Air is heated (and moistened) so it rises. These rising air masses create low pressure, the air looses its energy and then falls creating high pressure zones. The system is one massive heat engine (or even cooling system): heat from the surface driving the cyclonic air movement and then being liberated at cloud level by presumably by IR emissions to space.
This is all a water-cloud-rain driven system. Sitting hear in Glasgow in the gloom of a rainy day, you may forgive me for thinking clouds affect our weather more than any other factor, but it seems to me that any model of the climate that ignores the dynamic heat flow of which clouds are an integral part, is a failed model.
But my real gripe, is that this static, forcing model of the climate which concentrates on: “THE thing one needs to know … (temperature) response to a given change in radiative flux”,… is the reason why climate “science” has for the last few decades focussed almost exclusively on this question of CO2 forcing. And because they ignore the dynamic (cloud) behaviour of the climate they have not only attempted squeeze 3.5C (modelled effective) warming into 1C of scientifically supportable CO2 warming, but they have totally ignored the importance of solar activity which works through its affects on clouds. Ignore the clouds, you ignore Svensmark!
I’m not saying that CO2 forcing is not an important question, but I do feel that the fundamental reason for these exaggerated claims of CO2 warming is precisely because people have thought this is “THE thing one needs to know” – it’s a one club solution – the only tool in their bag has been the 1C forcing, so its almost inevitable that they tried to make this one tool 1C fit the 3.5C (modelled) trend when it clearly is not the right tool, and in so doing have dismissed all the dynamic cloud and solar activity effects which arguably are far more important.
And just to “play” with the figures. If their typical estimate is 3.5C and you are claiming 1C, then the other dynamic effects surely account for the 20th century warming that caused them to imagine that 1C actual would lead to around 3.5C estimate. So, I think the scale of importance of “dynamic effects” is 2.5C … which is a lousy argument … but I hope you see the point.
davidmhoffer says:
(1) Doing the calculation with respect to radiative balances at the TOA does not mean one uses the temperature at the TOA. One uses the effective blackbody temperature of the earth as seen from space, which is what determines the outgoing radiation at the TOA.
(2) As has been discussed, what temperature rise one considers to be the zeroth order effect vs what one considers the effect after feedbacks is rather arbitrary. You are correct that the surface temperature rise is expected to be a little lower than the temperature rise computed at altitude because of the negative lapse rate feedback. However, it is unclear to me why including that feedback in the zeroth-order temperature change, while ignoring all the positive feedbacks, is more justified, especially since the lapse rate feedback involves so much of the same physics as the water vapor feedback that models that differ in the strength of each feedback individually have a much narrower spread for the net feedback due to the two effects, which is always positive. At the end of the day, what matters is the temperature rise after feedbacks are included, not the rise in the absence of feedbacks.
No…It is not re-enforcing your point at all. Your point is that somehow talking about an average temperature change is deceiving because it ignores the fact that the temperature change is non-uniform and you think most of the temperature change will occur in places where it will only have a small negative effect or be beneficial. I am pointing out that, in fact, the average is already weighted very strongly by locations that will experience below-average temperature change, including some like the oceans where we don’t even live. Hence, looking at the average in many ways underestimates the effects that will be actually be seen.
Your statement that I have not responded is incorrect. See here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/27/monckton-on-pulling-planck-out-of-a-hat/#comment-754595 and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/27/monckton-on-pulling-planck-out-of-a-hat/#comment-755311
In summary, I have shown that:
(1) Your mathematical calculation was seriously incorrect and that for a logarithmic dependence of temperature on concentration, the decrease in the temperature increment with each successive 120 ppm CO2 increment is much, much slower than you claimed it to be. For example, you had calculated that the temperature increment in going from 760ppm to 880ppm is only 1/16 (or 6.25%) of that going from 280 to 400 ppm whereas the correct value is that it is still over 40% of going from 280 to 400 ppm
(2) Given the general trends of increasing CO2 emissions (that you apparently want to do nothing to reduce), it is not at all unreasonable to expect linear or somewhat superlinear temperature increases.
The issue is that the IPCC/Hansen/Global Warming Theory calculations do not add up.
They long ago decided that 3.7 to 4.3 W/m2 (or any number really) of forcing/radiation slow-down by GHGs resulted in 3.0C of net warming and they have been trying to justify it ever since.
That even means when newer measurements and better understanding of temperature changes per W/m2 of forcing and better understanding of the limited nature of the feedbacks occur, they still stick to the 3.0C even if that means ignoring Grade 3 math rules.
They just lack the desire to do any kind of self-examination so it is up to us to re-do the math again for them. Eventually, it has to take hold.
To Roy Weiler: The timing of your post accusing me of “hand-waving” was unfortunate: for I had just posted a lengthy and surely quite detailed indication of why T/(4F) is a respectable and accurate form of the first differential of the fundamental equation of radiative transfer, a point which – as far as I could understand the extremely hostile noises being made by a blogger at another site – she disagreed with. It would be helpful if posters on this blog were less instinctually discourteous.
To Septic Matthew: Yes, indeed, it is as simple as you say: the two forms of the differential are indeed identical for the reason you mention, which makes it all the more puzzling that a blogger at another site, whom several people on this thread seem to think is good at math, seemed to challenge that point.
She also challenged my use of Kimoto’s eq. (18), but, as I and several others have pointed out, nothing rests on this: if one omitted the non-radiative transports from the surface because the SB equation treats radiative transports only, then the resultant climate sensitivity would still be around 1 K, so – in the context in which I was using Kimoto’s equation – it simply doesn’t make any difference. A competent mathematician would have spotted that fact at once and stopped wasting any more time on it.
Also, a competent mathematician would have understood that, since Kiehl & Trenberth say their value for the surface radiative flux is the blackbody value, implying that the used the SB equation to calculate it from the surface temperature, they are also implying that there is at present a blackbody relationship between temperature and flux at the surface. If that link between the two exists – and that is what K&T are (to my mind wrongly) saying, then it is the surface value of the Planck parameter that will determine climate sensitivity, even though the correct altitude at which to do the calculation is the characteristic-emission altitude. For, as Dick Lindzen points out in his recent lecture to the American Chemical Society, flux imbalances up in the atmosphere match those at the surface.
The fact is that Lucia has gotten far more of her math wrong in this than I have – and in any event, as several people have told her publicly as well as privately, in conducting herself in such a visibly malevolent fashion she is not doing herself or mathematics any favors. She has not kept matters in perspective. She had at first accused me of using the surface value of the Planck parameter for what she called “further evaluations”, and became very bad-tempered when I demonstrated to her that, of course, I had done no such thing. So, because nothing whatsoever rested on whether or not Kimoto’s equation (18) was right, there is really no point in screeching at me about it: she should get on to Kimoto and see if she can persuade him to publish a correction.
To Venter and Legatus: Thank you both for keeping matters firmly in perspective. My commentary does indeed demonstrate by several distinct methods that using the IPCC’s own methodology indicates a low climate sensitivity. That is the central message. I am not warranting that the IPCC is right in how it does things: but I have demonstrated, I think, that if it does things the way it does things then there is a statable case that climate sensitivity is not very high.
For instance, there has been about 3 W/m2 of radiative forcings from greenhouse gases since 1750, and we take back around 1 W/m2 to allow for non-GHG anthropogenic effects, chiefly particulate aerosols. So that’s 2 W/m2 of net anthropogenic forcings since 1750, and there has been 0.8 K of warming since then. So the transient climate sensitivity over that period is (5.35 ln 2)(0.8/2) = 1.5 K, or less if one assumes that not all of the warming since 1750 was manmade. Transient sensitivity is not equilibrium sensitivity, of course, but since equilibrium does not arrive for 1000-3000 years it’s the transient sensitivity we need to worry about – or, rather, on these figures, don’t need to worry about.
A similar analysis since 1950 produces much the same result.
Or you can observe that since 1850 the maximum rate of global warming sustained for more than a decade was at a rate equivalent to 1.6 K/century. Given no warming in the first decade of this century, and assuming that what has been the maximum supra-decadal warming rate suddenly becomes the average warming rate, you still only get 1.5 K warming over this century.
Or you can simply extrapolate the warming rate since 1950 (0.7 K) over 100 years instead of 61 years. Once again, warming of around 1 K over the century is indicated. Not quite the same thing as climate sensitivity at first blush: but the IPCC projects that CO2 concentration will double compared with today by the end of the century.
So there you have four distinct back-of-the-envelope determinations of climate sensitivity, none of them definitive – I made that point in my Commentary – but all of them tending to indicate that climate sensitivity is likely to be low. When I gave these arguments recently to a particle physicist from CERN, he said nothing at the time: but the next morning his wife came down to breakfast and said, “He came back and looked up what you’d told him, and woke me up at midnight to tell me he thought you were right.” And they’d both been quite annoyed the previous year when they’d attended a lecture I’d given at the World Federation of Scientists’ annual conference on climate sensitivity.
Doesn’t mean I am right, of course: but it does suggest that I’m not quite as obviously, completely wrong as some people seem so very anxious to suggest. I’m a layman doing my best because a well-placed part of the climate-science community is bent, and the damage their crookedness is causing is very costly, particularly to poor people. We need to get science back on to a proper footing; and, until we do, I’ll be doing my best to check whether what the usual suspects are telling us is true.
Legatus: I don’t think people understand what Christopher Monckton is trying to do here.
He is simply trying to find out if, using the math (correct or incorrect) and data (real or imaginary) that the IPPC accepts as true, we can come up with the climate sensitivity that they claim.
I am glad that you wrote that. I was going to post it this morning, and I see that Lord Monckton has affirmed it: To Venter and Legatus: Thank you both for keeping matters firmly in perspective. My commentary does indeed demonstrate by several distinct methods that using the IPCC’s own methodology indicates a low climate sensitivity. That is the central message. I am not warranting that the IPCC is right in how it does things: but I have demonstrated, I think, that if it does things the way it does things then there is a statable case that climate sensitivity is not very high. .
Lord Monckton, please let us know how your revised commentary is received.
“However, 30% of the Sun’s radiation is reflected harmlessly back to space by clouds, snow, sparkling sea surfaces,”
Harmlessly is a relative term. Sometimes you want more sunlight at the surface and sometimes you don’t.
Be that as it may, 30% is a gross estimate and on the low side of all estimates. The fact of the matter is that we know a lot less about the earth’s average albedo than we do its average temperature. This is critical because a 1% change in global average albedo has about the same “forcing” as a doubling of CO2.
From wikedpedia:
There are two great attractors vis climate on the earth. Both have to do with the water cycle and whether the liquid or solid phase is dominant on the surface. If the surface were entirely ocean (ocean has a very low albedo) the surface temperature would average 27C and if it all presents as ice then it would be -40C.
This is ALL due to albedo!!! Imagine that. Here we are quibbling over whether a doubling of non-condensing greenhouse gas engenders something nearer to 1C or 5C temperature rise when changes in albedo can drive the temperature through a range of almost 70C.
Ice has a positive feedback that makes more ice and water has a positive feedback that makes more water. Currently the planet is in a no-man’s land teetering back and forth from ice cover growing to water cover growing in a cycle some 100,000 years or so in duration.
The usual state of affairs for the earth is no permanent ice cover even at the poles. It’s a water world and tends to stay that way. But there are perturbations that occassionally give ice the upper hand for millions of years. These are likely “perfect storm” perturbations (IMO) where there’s a grand minimum in solar activity, Milankovich cycle at the peak point for least summer ice melt in hemisphere with most land mass, and a supervolcano erupting all at the same time.
Anyhow, there has never been a “runaway greenhouse” in the earth’s history and anthropogenic CO2 can’t possibly get atmpspheric content anywhere near as high as nature herself raised it in the very long warm epics when temperate forests were growing in Antarctica. However, there HAVE been runaway deep freezes where the earth was either completely or very nearly covered in ice. Given that the earth has been in a moderate ice age for the past several million years it seems pretty friggin’ stupid to worry about too much warming. The Milankovich orbital parameters are approaching the peak point favoring warmer winters and cooler summers (the situation that favors glacial advance) in the northern hemisphere, possibly worse is that sun appears to have just exited 50 of the most active years in the solar observation record and is entering what appears to be a Dalton or Maunder Minimum (both of which coincided with very cold decades or centuries). All we need to complete the perfect storm is something like a supervolcano and BOOYAH say hello to snowball earth for 10 million years.
If anthropogenic CO2 has some small surface warming effect then, as an engineer, I call that a greater margin of safety against the real climate threat – the ice age.
Monckton
Nonsense. There incorrect application of differential calculus is not the only error in the derivaiton of Kimoto. It is not the only one I discussed. Those who read and understood the first post are aware that the derivation contains an unstated assumption about the functional form for back-radiation (and likely for convection and evapo-transpiration. The unstated assumption about back radiation is the more momentous issue.
However, though I have invited you to state all the assumption in the derivation, you have consistently refused to do so.
The discussion of the error in differentiation in the final post was included merely because you insist that you (or Kimoto) have differentiated correctly, when in fact, you have not done so. Moreover, you provide as evidence the differential in Hansen, which in fact represents differentiation of a different function.
Others can decide how to interpret the fact that you are reluctant to answer when someone requests you state the assumptions in an, they may decide how to interpret the fact that you do not recognize a very simple error in taking a derivative, they may decide how to interpret the fact that you defend your error when your error has been brought to your attention, and that your defense includes insistence that anyone would obtain your result if they referred to a text on differential calculus.
With all due respect, I would suggest that at least some readers who do not know calculus or heat transfer suspect that even now, you still do not understand that derivation of (18) contains several important assumption with little basis in physics, and the magnitude of the errors introduced by these assumptions is non-trivial. Many readers who know calculus and heat transfer likely do more than suspect this.
Lucia, was there a problem with my note at September 30, 2011 at 7:07 pm.
I went to your blog, and that post of mine above seems to address the only mathematical problem that you pointed to, that I found. Since Kimoto used the same relationship (assuming for now that I am right) as Hansen (cited above) why the critique of Kimoto but not Hansen?
Joel Shore;
(1) Your mathematical calculation was seriously incorrect and that for a logarithmic dependence of temperature on concentration>>>
REPLY
I agreed to use the numbers that you calculated and asked you to propose a feedback mechanism which would result in linear temperature increases as a result. You did not, and you have not.
Joel Shore;
(2) Given the general trends of increasing CO2 emissions (that you apparently want to do nothing to reduce), it is not at all unreasonable to expect linear or somewhat superlinear temperature increases.
REPLY
You are implying that CO2 increases are accelerarting which the record does NOT show, they are in fact nearly linear. That said, you have once again evaded the question. I asked you to propose a feedback mechanism that would result in linear temperature increases versus logarithmic effects of CO2. By insinuating the CO2 levels are accelerating, you’ve ducked the question, which has nothing to do with them acclerating or decelerating. The question was, what possible feedback mechanism could result in a linear temperature increase in the face of logarithmic effects of CO2?
Joel Shore;
No…It is not re-enforcing your point at all. Your point is that somehow talking about an average temperature change is deceiving because it ignores the fact that the temperature change is non-uniform and you think most of the temperature change will occur in places where it will only have a small negative effect or be beneficial. I am pointing out that, in fact, the average is already weighted very strongly by locations that will experience below-average temperature change, including some like the oceans where we don’t even live. Hence, looking at the average in many ways underestimates the effects that will be actually be seen.>>>
REPLY
Read the whole thing again Joel. you can’t keep moving the yard stick from one place to another. Actual observations BTW, back me up. Look at either NASA/GISS or HadCrut broken down by latitude and by season and you will see that the distribution is what I described. You can argue as to why, but you can’t argue with the results. Summers have increased in temp the least, winters the most. Tropics the least, high latitudes…well almost… the high mids actually show more than the arctic zones by a bit. But over all, the data doesn’t support you.