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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Vince Causey says:
Exactly. And, Monckton is indeed implicitly including the water vapor feedback because he is basing that 100 W on the total effect of greenhouse gases ***including the water vapor that is present***. However, the whole point is that if we removed the non-condensable greenhouse gases, then the temperature would cool, some of that water vapor would be removed from the atmosphere and the total effect of greenhouse gases would decrease not just due to the removal of the non-condensable gases but also because of the removal of some of the water vapor.
Juraj V. says:
December 5, 2011 at 10:37 am
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.
————————
I do not agree.
1/ That 33K is non-physical nonsense, calculating Earth without “greenhouse gases” but still considering albedo of 0.3, which is made mostly by clouds (=condensed greenhouse gas).
Of course the removal of greenhouse gasses without affecting albedo is impossible. But Monckton’s argument still works. Its like the mathematical device of the values i and j – i.e. the square root of minus one etc. Impossible. But used in mathematical derivations they produce valid results.
So the trolls are all shouting “feedback” as the predictable response. They are willfully ignoring the research quoted by Monckton of Dr. Blasing of the Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center, whose sensitivity measurement, which is based on real world data from 1750, gives a result which agrees with Monckton’s theoretically derived figure of 1.2 C / doubling.
REAL WORLD DATA INCLUDES FEEDBACKS!
Joel Shore,
If evolution loses to creationism in a debate, it is probably because the person supporting the evolution side assumed the other person was stupid, and so didn’t prepare. People who believe in creationism are modern humans just like the rest of us, if evolution and anthropology have taught us anything, it is don’t underestimate a modern human.
Joel Shore,
I wrote: “In other words, you are saying that this 100 watts is not just greenhouse gas forcing but forcing plus all feedbacks, and therefore the actual greenhouse gas forcing without the feedbacks would be a lot less.”
And you replied: “Exactly. And, Monckton is indeed implicitly including the water vapor feedback because he is basing that 100 W on the total effect of greenhouse gases ***including the water vapor that is present***.”
But, I then went on to express doubt that this 100 watts includes feedbacks at all, and that it consists of forcing alone. You say that Monckton is implicitly including water vapour feedback, and you suggest that this is the case because he is basing that 100w on the total effect of greenhouse gases. But is this true? So far you have not offered any evidence that this is the case. Monckton said in his post on this thread that this value comes from Trenberth. Well, it should be easy to confirm or refute. Either the 100w includes feedbacks or it doesn’t. I say it doesn’t and you say it does. Where do we go from here?
@ur momisugly John Marshall (December 6, 2011 at 2:42 am):
I agree. It is all in the atmosphere’s mass, therefore pressure. Vastly different molecular species of the other planet’s and moon’s atmospheres with vastly different mean molecular weights but the temperature is per the pressure and especially if you apply the density-at-pressure-level correction (mass attenuation coefficient).
Thanks for highlighting that “inconvenient” fact from the astrophysics side. C. Monckton is correct on the political and policy side, shut them all down, but still off on the science side explanation, he’s still hanging out that “carbon dioxide warms planetary atmospheres” notion (really, any GHG).
GHG’s only speed energy transfer by high emissivity radiation lines across space (distance) compared to conduction, convection and/or state changes of matter and in the end, all energy leaves by it. All matter radiates when above absolute zero depending solely on its locally corrected emissivity. All gases absorb energy by mass extinction coefficient even if there are no emission lines present in a molecular species. There are so many hidden truths being totally ignored by both sides.
On Christopher’s side though I think he clearly placed bounds on what he was explaining above. Explicitly no GHG’s but the albedo remaining identical. That is the key (and rather nonsensical).
With no GHG’s there would be no clouds, so up the TSI reaching the surface. Also if no GHG’s, no evaporation/transpiration, so decrease energy leaving the surface by the hydro cycle. Thermals would still occur, leave that in. Yes more would radiate directly to space (390-239) but that does not immediately imply cooler for the increased solar radiation and decreased movement by the water cycle would more than compensate that 151 Wm-2, offset by the 79+80 or 159 Wm-2 per TKF(2009) graphic, I see most likely a bit warmer with no GHG’s, not cooler. (I hear rumbles, heresy! Ok, how about no change at all)
Real physics is so symmetrical !! (maybe that’s why I always see these pesky equal signs everywhere, darn them. Could conjure up one scary universe without them.☺)
Jack Greer,
“In other words, he misleads with absolute intent. He does it continually and you folks are like zombies oblivious to damning evidence that expose Monckton for what he is … a showman and charlatan with a mission.”
And what is your mission here, Jack?
Apart from a litany of ad hominem attacks you have not given even one example of these “Fabricated quotes”, or that he is “constantly misrepresenting scientific articles.”
You say: “I’ve heard him make statements in radio interviews on a given scientific topic that is designed to generate a specific impression. Invariably when a knowledgeable listener calls and challenges Monckton’s claim he backtracks with a knowing comment that leaves a different, more accurate impression.”
Great! So you have actually heard him make statements that another “knowledgeable” listener has called him on. Then you should have no problem offering concrete examples.
I’m sorry, but to me this is just so much arm waving.
KR says: December 5, 2011 at 12:45 pm
quote
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).
unquote
It is entirely possible that we have altered the way that water vapour is controlled by natural processes — for example, altering the number and/or composition and size of aerosols may change the precipitation regime, with concomitant effects on humidity. Removing hygroscopic particles, for instance, slows the uptake of water vapour. This means that water vapour might well be a forcing (in the ghastly parlance of climate change) and as such would invalidate your calculations above. Not only water vapour, of course, the effect on clouds would be even more pronounced.
Interesting graphs earlier with humidity at low level remaining steady (no slope on the grapph, I’d guess a very slow rise) while higher up humidity is falling. WTH is going on there?
One of the more unconvincing aspects of climate science is how capacious it is — if a paper appeared tomorrow showing a large forcing from e.g. agricultural dust, then by nightfall the new forcing would be incorporated into the scheme and the calculated sensitivity would remain unchanged. It’s like some mysterious and mystic bag which the conjurer can fill with anything and still pull out the same tired old rabbit.
JF
Dave Wendt says: December 5, 2011 at 9:57 pm
quote
The above paper is based on spectral analysis of downwelling longwave radiation at the Pole and one interesting thing that they suggest is that CO2 is responsible for fully a third of the DLR signal there, H2O gets the other 2/3rds, but this very likely makes the South Pole the one spot on Earth where its contribution to the GHE is at its maximum. It’s particularly interesting if you are aware of what the temps have been doing there over the last 40 or 50 years.
unquote
Go on, I dare you! Produce a theory that rising CO2 levels cause cooling. It’s worth it to see Mosher’s head explode…
JF
KR,
Ben Santer is an a$$. He say he needs 17 years to predict trends. Nonsense. Did anyone ask why? The reality is the temperature actually stopped climbing in 1995 except for the “Super Nina” year of 1998. That is weather NOT climate, as even the charlatans of EAU and PSU freely admit.
So we have temperature stasis or decline since 1995. 2012 -1995 equals 17 years, Mr. Santer.
Match. Set. Game!!.
I look forward to Mr. Santer entering unsubsidized retirement and doing Science as was done for Millenia by disinterested and unsubsidized true Scientists, post november 2012. I’d actually like to see what he says when he is not induced by money to say one thing.
If this were true ANY cooling causes WVapor to condense and all cooling would terminate in a snowball earth. You are merely reversing your meme that all warming will result in run-away warming because of positive feedback. The entire human history falsifies your conjecture. Never happened… ever. GK
Frankly, I don’t think MoncKton’s argument here addresses the issue. If you assume that increased CO2 will increase temperature on its own, then it will also increase water vapor in the atmosphere which will increase the GH effect by some amount on top of that.
A much better approach IMO is to try and figure out whether the assumed WV feedback is reasonable. Personally, I have always wondered why when the numbers for CO2 assume that there have been the equivalent of ~8 doublings of CO2 to reach the current GH levels in the atmosphere(32Wm-2 of CO2 GH effect ~ 3.7Wm-2 per doubling) whereas there has only been the equivalent of 3.5 doublings of WV (each 6% increase in WV yields ~2Wm-2 in GH effect yields about 20W-m2 per doubling giving ~ 3.5 doublings of WV to reach 75Wm-2) despite WV being much more common(by molecule) in the atmosphere.
Cheers, 🙂
Vince Causey says:
We look at Table 3 of the Kiehl and Trenberth 1997 paper http://www.geo.utexas.edu/courses/387H/PAPERS/kiehl.pdf and see that indeed the 100 W/m^2 includes water vapor. (Note that the table shows the clear and cloudy sky results and Monckton has represented it as something between the two.)
Hey Vince, I made it easy enough for you already. I posted 5 videos worth of actual examples, above. Take a few minutes and view them.
The mission is to expose a fraud so that attention can be refocused toward constructive examination of climate issues.
G. Karst says:
AGW skeptic fallacy #107: A positive feedback leads to a run-away warming or cooling.
Actual fact: Consider the infinite geometric series 1 + (1/2) + (1/4) + (1/8) + (1/16) + … It does not diverge but rather converges to the value 2. Hence, if the water feedback produces an additional half-degree of warming for every one degree of warming caused by anything else, then the net result in this case will be a doubling of the climate sensitivity, not a divergence.
Martin Lewitt says:
You can’t demonstrate something by assuming it to be true, which is what Monckton’s argument here is doing…It is completely circular.
The subject of this thread is not to prove to your satisfaction whether or not the net feedback is positive. There is plenty of evidence that it is, as discussed in the IPCC report, but the subject of the current discussion is something much more basic, which is whether Monckton has succeeded in showing that it isn’t. And, the answer is that he hasn’t…He has just made some major blunders.
long pig says:
Real world data also includes uncertainties. And, you have to interpret real world data correctly. The two major problems with Monckton’s interpretation:
(1) In fact, the climate models predict a significant difference between the equilibrium climate sensitivity and the transient climate response. This is mainly because the oceans have a high thermal mass and warm so slowly. You can look in the IPCC report here http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8s8-6-2-3.html#table-8-2 and see what various models predict for the transient climate response; it is generally quite a bit lower than the equilibrium climate sensitivity of the model.
(2) The simple fact is that the uncertainties in the radiative forcings are just too great to get a very tight estimate of the climate sensitivity from the instrumental temperature record. The forcings due to the greenhouse gases are known to quite good accuracy but the forcing due to anthropogenic aerosols is not. By varying this forcing within the uncertainty ranges, you can get almost any result you want for the climate sensitivity (really the transient climate response) from this data. That is why the best constraints on climate sensitivity come from combining empirical data from a variety of other things, such as the climate response to the Mt Pinatubo eruption or the temperature diference between the LGM (last glacial maximum) and now.
Joel,
Thanks for the link. I can see from Trenberth’s radiation budget that there is about 360 watts per metre squared of back radiation due to greenhouse gases. This, I presume, is what they call “forcing” of greenhouse gases.
The problem is, this gives a climate sensitivity of 33k/360watts or 0.091k per watt of forcing, which gives an even lower sensitivity than Monckton is claiming.
Vince Causey says:
You presume incorrectly. Look at Table 3 where they clearly give the radiative forcing due to greenhouse gases, labeled as such.
Jack Greer,
“Hey Vince, I made it easy enough for you already. I posted 5 videos worth of actual examples, above. Take a few minutes and view them.”
I have viewed the first one. Interesting points were made, but the overall impression I came away with is mostly nit picking, although the cynic in me would say “pot is calling the kettle black.”
What have we got here then? Monckton cherry picked start and end points to support a conclusion of cooling? You don’t say! Can we apply the same even handedness to Michael Manns hockey stick and other studies? No, thought not. None of this however will alter the fact that there has been no temperature increase since 1998.
He also launches into righteous indignation about misquoting from a scientific report on Greenland ice. To see such righteous indignation from him is amusing, because he says nothing – I mean nothing – about the raft of misquoted papers that have been published in the IPCC.
See the thread on WUWT “IPCC Brand Science™ – extrapolating 10 himalayan glaciers to speak for 54,000 – meanwhile Himalayagate 2 is evolving over the Stern Report” to see how the Asia group misrepresents the Stern report which in turns misrepresents the Barnett paper on Himalayan glaciers. They are other examples too, including Amazon rainforest.
The rest of the video seemed to consist of some general muck raking over Monckton’s past, or his qualifications.
Well, people are entitled to their opinion. If you like to think of Monckton as a showman and charlatan, that’s your privilege. However, please remove the plank from thine own eye before trying to remove the speck from mine.
And nobody here is sceptical of AGW because they have seen Monckton give a lecture and have suddenly “seen the light.” We have been following debates here at WUWT for quite a while and looking at the evidence from all sides, and the evidence on the AGW side has been found wanting. If you want to change peoples minds, I would suggest spending more time presenting the science, and less chasing after Monckton. I guess the same goes for that pothole bloke who seems to be suffering from some kind of obsessive disorder.
All I want to say is just open your mind and apply your criticisms even handedly to both sides of the debate, if you can.
KR says:
December 5, 2011 at 3:41 pm
Matt G – I’ll point you to Dessler 2010 (http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler10.pdf) looking at 5 or 6 specific humidity trend analyses. They show positive feedback and rising specific humidity with increasing temperature.
This paper tries to dismiss long term negative feedback observed trends with much shorter observed periods recently. The reason for this is only just because El Nino shows positive feedback short term, long term must obey the signal for El Nino. This is clearly false and contradicted in the same paper because the data even included in this paper, shows decline for over a decade after the El Nino of 1998. Therefore it is already in this short period behaving differently to the El Nino and at the same time shows a negative feedback.
Amazing that the short term data since the 1998 El Nino actually supports the long term negative trend, that they dismiss in the tropical mid and upper troposphere. Measurements from the AIRS instrument since 2003 also show a decline. All the recent data is now backing the NCEP/NCAR that was wrongly claimed to be incorrect.
Joel Shore says:
December 6, 2011 at 1:09 pm
True, but you have to add the w.a.g. IPCC feedbacks to the direct CO2 forcing, and the historical record does not support that, as Monckton pointed out. Hell Joel we do not even know how long at what levels CO2 forcing is lograrythmic, 1 ppm to 2 ppm? 5 ppm to 10ppm?, 500 to 1000?. It truly is a WAG and nothing to base global policy on, as the world is not conforming to the predicted disasters.
Joel Shore says:
“This is mainly because the oceans have a high thermal mass and warm so slowly.”
I wonder how slowly? Slowly enough that the oceans are still warming from the last ice age? There is a lot of cold water in the deep ocean and if I remember grade school science correctly the weight of the earth’s atmosphere only amounts to 33 feet of water and average ocean depth is something like 14,000 feet.
Joel Shore,
“the climate response to the Mt Pinatubo eruption or the temperature diference between the LGM (last glacial maximum) and now” don’t give you a sensitivity to CO2 forcing in the current climate regime. Aerosols and solar are coupled quite differently to the climate system than a well mixed greenhouse gas like CO2, and there is climate mode change between the LGM and now. The IPCC just doesn’t have any evidence for a high sensitivity to CO2 relevant to the next century or two.
Vince Causey says:
December 6, 2011 at 2:17 pm
Jack Greer troll like attacks on Monckton are full of misinformation. See this for some typical attacks and Monckton’s response. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=monckton%20answers%20his%20critics&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwattsupwiththat.com%2F2011%2F09%2F18%2Fmonckton-answers-a-troll%2F&ei=0qbeTsHjDsioiAKSx9nzCA&usg=AFQjCNHktWqwZePrwG2FRcKv_aDD82Hc6Q&sig2=n37FgO1W4Xb7uNBKiSh0mA
Better yet, go to Moncktons site where he details 500 questions to the video smear campaing and decimates it for the hack job it is. His 500 questions remain unanswered, and I bet Jack Greer never read Moncktons very detailed response to the video.