From Christopher Monckton of Brenchley in Durban, South Africa
It. Ain’t. Gonna. Happen. This is the ghastly secret that almost all the delegates here in Durban are desperate to conceal. Paper after paper, result after result, shows that the “global warming” we can expect from a doubling of CO2 concentration this century is just one Celsius degree or perhaps 2 Fahrenheit degrees, not the 3-4 C° once predicted by the UN’s well-tarnished climate panel.
When a journalist with South Africa’s national broadcaster interviewed me in the conference center, I told him the climate scam was just that – a scam. He replied that that was a merely emotional argument. So I gave him the following scientific argument, and explained to him that – simple though the truth is – it is just complicated enough that the IPCC and the global-warming profiteers have thus far gotten away with confusing the general public, and the average scientifically-illiterate politician, and, with respect, the average journalist.
Take all the greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and keep the Earth’s albedo magically the same as today’s. How much cooler would it be? All are agreed that it would be around 33 Celsius degrees cooler. This is climate theory 101. So, how much radiative forcing causes the 33 C° warming that arises from the presence – as opposed to total absence – of all the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? The answer – again straight out of the usual suspects’ playbook – is around 100 Watts per square meter.
Accordingly, the equilibrium system climate sensitivity parameter is 33/100 = 0.33 Celsius per Watt per square meter, after just about all temperature feedbacks have acted. Multiply this key parameter by 3.7 Watts per square meter, which is the IPCC’s own value for the radiative forcing from a doubling of CO2 concentration, and you get a warming of just 1.2 C° per CO2 doubling. But that is just one-third of the 3.3 C° the IPCC predicts.
This theoretical value of 1.2 C° is remarkably robust: it uses the IPCC’s own data and methods, applied to the entire history of the atmosphere, to demonstrate just how low climate sensitivity really is. When I pointed out this simple but powerful result to scientists recently at the Santa Fe climate conference organized by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of them said, “Ah, yes, but what evidence do you have that today’s climate exhibits the same sensitivity as the total system sensitivity?”
The answer is that the world is now in a position to verify this theoretical result by measurement. In August this year, Dr. Blasing of the Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center in the United States quietly published a bombshell. Few noticed. His detailed estimate is that all the manmade greenhouse gases added to the air by us since 1750 have caused as much as 3 Watts per square meter of radiative forcing between them.
From this 3 Watts per square meter, in line with IPCC data, we must be fair and deduct 1 Watt per square meter to allow for manmade climate influences that cause cooling, such as soot and other particulates that act as helpful little parasols shading us from the Sun and keeping us cooler than we should otherwise be.
How much warming did this manmade net 2 Watts per square meter of forcing cause? Around 0.8 Celsius of warming has occurred since 1750, of which – if the IPCC is right – 50-100% was attributable to us. So the equilibrium climate sensitivity parameter since 1750 (again, most of the temperature feedbacks that the IPCC wrongly imagines will amplify warming hugely will have acted by now) is 0.2-0.4 Celsius per Watt per square meter.
Multiply that key parameter by 3.7 and the warming we can expect from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration is just 0.75-1.5 Celsius. Those estimates neatly bracket the equilibrium system sensitivity of 1.2 C° that we calculated earlier by well-established theory.
So the sensitivity of the climate over the most recent quarter of the millennium is very much the same as the sensitivity of the climate throughout the past 4.5 billion years – at around one-third of the IPCC’s central estimate. Frankly, one Celsius degree of warming this century will simply not be worth worrying about. It will do far more good than harm. Not a cent should be spent trying to prevent it.
As President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic pointed out at a recent climate conference in Cambridge, if we leave less wealth to our successors because we have wasted trillions on the non-problem of global warming, we harm future generations by denying them the full inheritance they would otherwise have received.
But don’t expect any of the delegates here to get the point. They are making far too much money out of the climate scam –at taxpayers’ expense – to want to do anything other than recite that The Science Is Settled. As the West goes bust, drowned under the sheer cost of the ever-expanding State, the UN, the IPCC, the UNFCCC, the UNEP and the WMO are luxuries we can no longer afford and will no longer pay for. Time to shut them all down and make their self-serving, rent-seeking bureaucrats go out into the real world and do a proper job.
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The ever so smart AWG scientific community got paid a .100th of what it was worth to the “scientifically-illiterate politicians”.
The wealth transfer goes on.
The enablers , Mann etal, made a dumb deal off of dumb science for dumb reasons.
Revenge and justice must come.
About the 33 degrees model without greenhouse gasses is the most fatal error in the whole thermageddon business. If the earth would have had an atmosphere without greenhouse gasses, the atmosphere would have still warmed with convection, considering that at noon directly under the sun there is 1365 W/m2 warming it to values close to the light side of the moon – close to boiling. That hot air convection heats up the atmosphere at daytime. But at night time there is no negative convection and there is no outradiation, since we have no greenhouse effect. Hence the atmosphere does not lose heat in a significant way, other than via direct conduction in the boundary layer with the earth surface (maybe a few inches).
So with a non-radiating atmosphere no greenhouse gas, the atrmosphere would be a lot hotter, not colder.
Right, and they assumed (speculated) the feedback would be POSITIVE but so far it is turning out from observation that the feedback might be (looking like they are) NEGATIVE. The entire AGW issue is based on speculation and speculative models. There is not a shred of real world observation that validates the hypothesis and with every passing day more invalidating evidence comes in.
Ged: “No, given 3C sensitivity we should see 3C of warming per doubling of CO2…How much warming have we seen over the past century? ~1C.”
And given the ~100ppm increase from 280 to 390, or roughly 1/3 of a doubling, a 1C increase is just about what we should expect.
@KR
Either you or I have misunderstood Monckton’s point: His base calculation includes the effects of feedbacks, all and sundry, because the 33K increase in temperature is what has resulted after the system has been in operation for at least a billion years and so takes all the feedbacks, fast and slow, into account. 33K is what CO2 plus H20 plus all the other greenhouse gasses plus their interactive feedbacks have produced. Unless you think that the water feedback found in the unvalidated climate models represents some new and additional feedback mechanism which only came into existence about 1940 when human CO2 emissions began to be significant, rather than the erroneous result of a misspecification of the models.
I thought the temperature rise to CO2 increase was logarithmic? On that basis, 280 to 390 is an increase of approximately x1.39, and according to my quick calculations, that should be approximately 50% of the total increase of a doubling. Unless I’ve made a mistake (quite probably), which should be expecting to see a 1.5-1.6C increase if the IPCC’s sensitivity figure is correct, and we’re only seeing 0.8-0.9C.
What have I done wrong?
JT – The 33K/33C difference between a world with and without greenhouse gases (minor effects like albedo, glaciation, etc., ignored) is not the issue <em"after just about all temperature feedbacks have acted", to quote Monckton. Nor, really, is the 3.7 W.m^2 from CO2 doubling leading to ~1.1 or 1.2C warming (forcing).
But – a big part of that 33C is water vapor and clouds, which change concentration in the atmosphere as feedbacks (as a rough approximation, relative humidity remains close to constant with long duration temperature changes, while relative/absolute humidity increases with temperature). Monckton blithely ignores the feedback component of that 1.2C, which is the nonsense bit. Especially since he made a point of mentioning it earlier.
Essentially Monckton is giving a horrible argument:
A + B = C
A’ = some number
A’ scaled can’t produce C, completely ignoring the B discussed before!
And this, as I said, is complete nonsense. CO2 is part of why the Earth isn’t 33C colder. But so are the feedbacks. 1C warming is about what we should expect for a 1/3 increase in CO2 since the industrial age.
I fear I’m not following this part:
Leaving aside the 33° question, I don’t understand the source for the “100 watts per square metre”. Where in the “usual suspects’ playbook” is that 100 w/m2 found?
I ask because it seems to me that the total radiative forcing that causes the warming must be the total “greenhouse” radiation, which per Trenberth is on the order of 320 W/m2 at the surface, or about 150 w/m2 at the TOA.
What am I missing here?
w.
KR,
You wrote: “~1.1 to 1.2°C warming for a doubling of CO2 is exactly what the science says – prior to feedbacks! The feedbacks are what are expected to take matters to 3.3°C ”
Have you actually read what Monckton wrote? Let me explain again:
Monckton began with the figure that everyone seems to agree on – that without greenhouse gases the earth would be 33k cooler than it is today. He then adds the second bit of information that everyone agrees on – the radiative forcing that has given rise to this 33k anomaly is 100 watts per square metre. He then asks what is the climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases based on these figure? Well, it must be 33/100 or 0.33k per wat per square metre of forcing after “just about all feedbacks due to warming have acted”.
But you say: “while the exact magnitude of feedbacks can be discussed, Monckton is simply ignoring them here. ”
This is not true, as can be seen – the quote above specifically says “all feedbacks due to warming have acted.” So, what Monckton has shown is that based on the first 33k of greenhouse gas forcing that we know and can observe, the warming INCLUDING feedbacks, is 0.33k per watt per sq m of forcing.
The final step, is take the projected forcing of 3.7 watts per sq m for a doubling of CO2 and multiply that by the sensitivity of 0.33k per watt which give a warming of 1.2k.
Let me turn the question back to you. If temperature sensitivity of the first 100 watts per sq m of forcing is 0.33k per watt – which must ipso facto include all feedbacks – why should the next 3.7 watts per sq m of forcing have a sensitivity three times as high?
Graeme W – Quite correct, I was doing very quick back-of-envelope numbers there. Just don’t forget the accompanying aerosols produced by fossil fuels (cooling things).
Take a look at the total numbers as per this chart: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/figure-2-4.html
That’s a total, including aerosols, CO2, methane and other GHG’s, surface albedo, insolation, etc., showing 0.6 to 2.4 W/m^2, mean estimate of 1.6 W/m^2. Or, roughly 43% the effect of a CO2 doubling. Add lag (the oceans will take a while to warm, after all), and 1C warming is just about right.
Lord Monckton, if this was Judo I would call it Ippon now. Well done!
Make them sweat in Durban. That’s what they’ve come for after all.
Folks, there is a very clear discussion of this issue at: http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/06/observations-show-climate-sensitivity.php
This dates from 5 years ago, and was not the first time this particular mistaken idea of climate sensitivity was corrected. 1C is about right for the ~35% increase of CO2 since the industrial age, logarithmically 43% of a doubling influence, along with the fact that it takes _time_ for the Earth to change average temperature.
Monckton should certainly know this. He’s either spouting things he knows to be incorrect, or just not up on the science.
KR says:
December 5, 2011 at 12:06 pm
Ged: “No, given 3C sensitivity we should see 3C of warming per doubling of CO2…How much warming have we seen over the past century? ~1C.”
And given the ~100ppm increase from 280 to 390, or roughly 1/3 of a doubling, a 1C increase is just about what we should expect.
The 1C increase in global temperatures is cherry picking using the coldest period during the insturmental data as a starting point. Wihen using 280ppm as a starter you should use all the data available.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1998/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1998/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1998/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/to:1998/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/to:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1934/to:1980/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1934/to:1980/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1905/to:1934/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1905/to:1934/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1880/to:1905/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1880/to:1905/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from/to:1880/plot/hadcrut3gl/from/to:1880/trend
Therefore, the recent decade is only around 0.6c for roughly 1/3 of a doubling. Hence, this would lead if continued to a doubling of 1.8c, much closer to the value without feedbacks and below the now apparantly alarming value of 2c per doubling. Still fail to see how increasing water vapour not observed globally and high possibility of this forming clouds causes further postive feedback. Unless to say that this only causes high levels clouds and that would be ridiculous?
But there is a major problem with that thinking. Most of the warming that has come since the end of the LIA happened well before there was any significant increase in CO2 emissions. Basically CO2 emissions started when we did two things: 1) Large scale coal fired blast furnaces producing loads of steel in the post WWII economy, 2) Large scale building of coal fired power plants to produce electricity as the countryside was being electrified.
In 1935 only 68% of homes were even wired for electricity and only 13% of farms were. And even with 68% wired for electricity, many used electricity only for lighting and maybe a radio and an iron and that was about it. Refrigerators, such as they existed, were mainly gas and people didn’t have freezers or electric ovens or dryers.
So one major problem is that we should see, if AGW theory is correct, we should see that we have temperatures today that are significantly higher than the temperatures we experienced in the 1930’s. But we don’t. There was a fall in temperatures from the 1940’s to the 1970’s and a rise in temperatures from the 1970’s to 2000 but temperatures never rose higher than those seen in the 1930’s by any significant degree. Sure, there’s a lot of hoopla if a year’s annual temperature average exceeds the 1930’s by a few hundredths of a degree, but it isn’t really significant unless you want to say that all of this CO2 warms climate by a few hundredths of a degree.
We just have not seen the warming that we should see if the AGW speculation is correct. Not a single model projection has been correct. Not for ocean temperatures:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/figure-4.png
Not for land surface temperatures:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/CherriesAppliesOranges.png
Not for sea level rise:
http://climate4you.com/images/UnivColorado%20MeanSeaLevelSince1992%20With1yrRunningAverage.gif
And the question is, as has been asked by so many people: For how long must the models and the observations diverge before the models are declared invalid?
Added to previous post.
This 1.8c doubling for CO2 is based on linear responce, so with CO2 being logarithmic the value will be lower than this.
Andre says:
December 5, 2011 at 11:56 am
Non-radiating atmosphere… What? Ya gotta be kidding.
Everything made of matter radiates depending on its temperature and other physical properties. If you don’t have matter in the atmosphere that absorbs outgoing IR emitted from the Earth’s surface, then there are no collisions with the absorbers and the temperature doesn’t rise. That means N2, and O2 emit radiation and the atmosphere cools. Remember, in your gedanken experiment there are no IR absorbers to prevent that radiation from escaping into space. Ergo, don’t expect a warm atmosphere or Earth. Yep, it will get pretty frosty at night.
One thing you can rely on here WUWT is a vigorous exchange of views and science. Unlike every warmist site. Lord Monckton is a brilliant man who can debate the balls off a brass monkey. Some of you have state that he isn’t always right, as demonstrated here by some very knowledgeable people, this has created an excellent debate which I welsome. but Lord Monckton also has the ability to listen, learn and modify his views when reasonable, provable counter theory’s/ science comes to the fore. Something that is totally lacking in the green / warmist community.
As Lord Monckton walks the Streets of Durban in the face of glassy eyed Eco fanatics and climate crooks, has our back’s and I could not pick a finer man to stand up to the disgusting hypocrisy, lies and misuse of the public’s trust and that flows like a open sewer at COP17 Durban today.
Lord Monckton you make me proud and a pat on the back of the commentators and discussions here and everyday this is what science is about!
I trust those models about as far as I can throw a midget.
Latest scientific studies say the models fail. (D. Koutsoyiannis et al 2010) Other scientists like Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. say same thing.
From 2.0 emails IPCC author Jagadish Shukla:
“I would like to submit that the current climate models have such large errors in simulating the statistics of regional [climate] that we are not ready to provide policymakers a robust scientific basis for ‘action’ at a regional scale. . . . It is inconceivable that policy-makers will be willing to make billion- and trillion-dollar decisions for adaptation to the projected regional climate change based on models that do not even describe and simulate the processes that are the building blocks of climate variability.”
What’s the point arguing about various feedbacks or a W/m sensitivity here and there, when the underlying science for the models is a failure?
Matt G – A decade is too short a timeframe – Santer thinks it requires 17 years minimum to establish a trend through variability, I (personally) would prefer ~20.
Humidity? You mean the ~4% increase in specific humidity since the 1970’s? With the relative humidity (which drives cloud formation) remaining fairly constant due to warming air?
And don’t forget Monckton’s bad argument – 33C with forcings and feedbacks, 1.2C with a forcing from doubling CO2, and completely ignoring feedbacks on that.
Another thing is we could, right this minute with the technology we already have provide 100% of the US electric power generation without creating hardly a molecule of CO2. If CO2 is the real problem, then lets get rid of it right now with technology we know to work and that is much safer in its current implementation than the installed base we have of that same technology that is currently producing roughly 10% of our power with a 50 year old version of that technology.
The worst thing that every happened to our environment was Three Mile Island. Not because the event harmed the environment in any way, but because the fear that it produced HAS done harm and driven up energy costs which has a direct impact on jobs. There are no more excuses. If CO2 is a problem and if access to cheaper energy is desired to spur economic activity, then we must have a national nuclear electrification plan. Otherwise this is simply an exercise in scaring people into subsidizing wind and solar so certain people can make a killing in that market without improving our energy security, reducing energy costs, or reducing CO2 emissions one iota.
For how long?
As long as it takes to get all the taxes and regulations irreversibly implemented.
crosspatch says:
December 5, 2011 at 10:40 am
‘ We ARE leaving MORE wealth to our successors because all of this money we are spending on “climate change” actually ends up in the pockets of thousands of different people. It actually does get spent. What we are doing is “redistributing” that wealth from billions of individual “common” citizens into the pockets of people connected to the “climate change” industry. The money isn’t disappearing, it is simply being allocated.’
*******************
I’m afraid that you have veered into “broken window fallacy” land here. The broken window amounts to instant depreciation of the asset. It’s replacement requires the expending of wealth. The vendor of windows may realize a benefit but you realize a loss.
Any carbon capture scheme that removes carbon from the biological carbon economy amounts to wealth destruction. Any time we are forced to divert our resources into unproductive activity we suffer economic loss. When done by coercion it amounts to theft.
I agree with the “Wimpy” part.
The calculation of 33 K cooler is based on a quarter of the insolation.
Can anyone please explain how you can calculate the temperature of a sphere which is half illuminated by applying one quarter of the radiative flux to the whole sphere ? Does the incoming radiation somehow spread over the whole sphere and slip in under the cover of darkness ?
This is voodoo science and is the trick these clowns use to convince you of a lie – if the effective temperature of the Earth is 255 K there must be a “greenhouse effect”.
The temperature of the Earth’s surface subject to the Sun could theoretically reach temperatures approaching 364 K or 91 C for 1000 W/sq m (30% albedo) at the equator with the sun directly overhead.
It doesn’t because of convection and evaporation.
there is proof these “blackbody” radiation balance equations are wrong – the temperatures measured on the moon during the day equates well with the theoretical maximum of Stefan-Boltzmann with an albedo of .12 and 1368 W/sq m insolation – 380 K or 107 C.
When the Sun sets and the cooling acceleartes the Earth rotates and before everything is lost and the Sun rises again.
If their nonsense is correct then how did Langley’s greenhouse experiment on Pike’s Peak in Colorado manage to record 113 C or 386 K inside the greenhouse ?
And why did Wood’s simple experiment show that “trapping” infrared radiation inside one of his experimental apparatus failed to result in any measurable temperature increase over the one which freely allowed infrared to pass out – in fact the glass panelled apparatus had a slightly lower temperature – perhaps glass though opaque to infrared may be a slightly better conductor than halite ?
The average temperature is a joke – what significance can it really have on a planet where the maximums have been recorded at about 58 C and minimums at about minus 89 C ?
Willis,
“Where in the “usual suspects’ playbook” is that 100 w/m2 found?”
I’m not sure where this came from either, so I tried a simple calculation. Using the Stefan Boltzman equation I took the ratio of blackbody radiation that would occur between surface temperatures of 255k and 288k and get 1.63. I assume this means that the Earth must be receiving an additional forcing of 63%.
Then I took the average insolation at the Earths surface as 260 watts per metre squared allowing for albedo. But, if we are saying that this is AFTER the 63% greenhouse gas forcing, then dividing 260 by 1.63 gives 160 – ie 160 watts per sq m without greenhouse gases. In that case we actually have an extra 100 watts due to the greenhouse gases.
This does agree with Moncktons figure, but it could be a coincidence.
crosspatch says:
December 5, 2011 at 10:40 am
Well, he isn’t seeing the entire picture in this case. We ARE leaving MORE wealth to our successors because all of this money we are spending on “climate change” actually ends up in the pockets of thousands of different people. It actually does get spent. What we are doing is “redistributing” that wealth from billions of individual “common” citizens into the pockets of people connected to the “climate change” industry. The money isn’t disappearing, it is simply being allocated…..
________________________________
For once I disagree with you crosspatch.
WEALTH is not money. We are frittering away labor, time and resources in the USA on the 14,000 windmills left to rust and the solar panel left to rot. We are devoting a tremendous amount of time, energy and intellect chasing “The bogeyman”
Perhaps the worst part is the USA and EU has “De-industrialized” getting rid of their capacity to produce wealth AND fill our children’s heads with useless crap “science”
THAT is the true tragedy of this whole mess.
Lord Monckton is correct we have tossed away not only our grand kids wealth but their ability to produce wealth.