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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Here it is for you Vince, you also Jack if you wish to be fair. It is after all 83 pages of on point and detailed answer to every accusation you have publicly made, so in fairness you owe it to the man to read it, and perhaps your anger will be redirected to tha accusers.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/monckton-warm-abra-qq2.pdf
David says:
And, as I pointed out, Monckton’s argument on this part is not much better than his other argument: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/05/monckton-on-sensitivity-training-at-durban/#comment-821081
Yes, we do know that…That’s an issue of forcings not feedbacks and can be calculated by the line-by-line radiation codes with good precision. It remains more or less logarithmic for quite some time and to the extent it deviates from logarithmic, it is in the direction of being a bit faster than logarithmic.
As for basing public policy on the science: Choosing to continue emitting more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is as much a public policy choice as choosing to curtail them. Public policy has to be made all the time on issues for which there are uncertainties. It should be made on the basis of the best available science, not on the desires of those who are adamantly opposed to the solutions for ideological reasons to have artificially high standards of evidence.
Martin Lewitt says:
There is no evidence from the known physics that there is any dramatic climate sensitivity change between going up from the current climate and going down. It is true that ice albedo feedbacks may be a bit stronger in the cooler climate; however, working the other way is the fact that water vapor feedback tends to get stronger in a warmer climate and that most of the calculations of the difference between the LGM climate and now consider the much of the ice-albedo effects as forcings, not feedbacks.
There is also not much evidence that one sort of radiative forcing (such as solar) is much more effective than another sort of radiative forcing and good reason to believe that they act fairly similarly. One of the ironies in these sorts of discussions is that you often have AGW skeptics make comments to the effect of “Why do the climate scientists attach positive feedbacks to CO2 and not to other mechanisms” when the truth is that it is the climate scientists who treat the mechanisms equally and some skeptics who are desperately looking for ways to selectively magnify any forcing other than that from CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
There are certainly uncertainties associated with the grand climate experiment that we are currently carrying out, but these uncertainties cut in both directions. Maybe it will miraculously turn out to be less severe than we are expecting…but maybe it will be worse.
Joel Shore says:
“Maybe it will miraculously turn out to be less severe than we are expecting…but maybe it will be worse.” Translation: “What if…”
It’s all ‘what ifs’. And we know that Joel Shore is [to use his overused word] desperately hoping that runaway global warming will appear. Because his whole ego is tied up in that belief. Unfortunately for Joel, the planet isn’t cooperating.
So to boil his whole argument down to its essence: click
@Vince Causey says: (and David)
December 6, 2011 at 2:17 pm
Vince, watch the remaining videos with a critical, fair eye – it won’t take that long. It shouldn’t be someone like me pointing out the rubbish – It’s people like you who should be taking out your own trash. Trying to justify Monckton’s actions with the “oh yeah, did you see what they did?” defense is itself a dishonest exercise.
I have seen Monckton’s replies to Abraham. I think that after viewing the videos you should judge for yourself if Monckton directly, accurately, and persuasively addresses the actual core points levied against him.
Joel Shore,
“There is also not much evidence that one sort of radiative forcing (such as solar) is much more effective than another sort of radiative forcing and good reason to believe that they act fairly similarly”
You appeared to have missed the nonlinear dynamics lecture. The Knutti and Hegerl review paper was refreshing in explicitly stating, what anybody with minimal knowledge of the nature of the nonlinear dynamic system knows:
“”The concept of radiative forcing is of rather limited use for forcings with strongly varying vertical or spatial distributions.”
Solar energy penetrates tens of meters into the oceans, and couples strongly to the land surface and the stratosphere. It is concentrated in the tropics. It generates the greenhouse gas ozone. Solar’s coupling to the climate is strongly effected by clouds.
CO2 couples to the atmosphere, increasing both absorption and emission of infrared radiation, and its radiation penetrates mere microns into the oceans.
How could solar couple to the climate much more differently? Even Hansen admits “”There is a difference in the sensitivity to radiative forcing for different forcing mechanisms, which has been phrased as their ‘efficacy'”
Hand waving is not mathematically valid here, either for the assumption that different forcings are equivilent or to spin away the model diagnostic issues.
http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf
Lord Monckton’s argument is scientifically invalidated from the impossibility of refuting an assumption that is a premise to his argument by reference to empirical data. Monckton’s “climate sensitivity parameter” is the ratio of the rise in the equilibrium temperature at Earth’s surface to the rise in the radiative forcing. Monckton assumes this ratio to be a constant but there are other possibilities. One is that the ratio is variable. Another is that the equilibrium temperature varies independently with respect to the radiative forcing. In the latter case, the magnitude of the radiative forcing provides no information about the magnitude of the equilibrium temperature.
Were we to try to refute Monckton’s assumption of a constant ratio, we would find this impossible, for the equilibrium temperature is not an observable feature of the real world. Monckton’s assertion of a constant value of 0.33 Celsius per Watt per square meter for the climate sensitivity parameter is not a scientific hypothesis from its lack of refutability.
Julian Flood says:
December 6, 2011 at 12:39 pm
Dave Wendt says: December 5, 2011 at 9:57 pm
“Go on, I dare you! Produce a theory that rising CO2 levels cause cooling. It’s worth it to see Mosher’s head explode…”
A hypothesis that CO2 causes cooling might be a bit of a stretch, although at this stage the state of climate science is so dismal that almost any proposition is at least arguable, if not convincingly so. I have in the past suggested a conjecture, that I think is at least semi-plausible, which posits that the contribution of CO2 to planetary warming is barely beyond negligible. It’s based on the data from another work which utilized the spectral analysis techniques used in the Antarctic study I cited. Evans and Puckrin sort of pioneered the technique back in the late 90s in Canada and offered their findings in a presentation paper in 2006.
http://ams.confex.com/ams/Annual2006/techprogram/paper_100737.htm
You need to click the Extended Abstract link to see the data I will refer to. The analysis the authors offer is more than usual warmist blather. They ballyhoo an observed increase in DLR of 3.5W/m2 without much mentioning that it all occurred in the dead of winter in West Central Canada, where none of the inhabitants are likely to view it as alarming. Despite the weakness of their analysis, their experimental methodology seems sound and AFAIK has not been challenged, which should offer some support for the data they collected. I would refer you to tables 3a & 3b which are for respectively their observation for winter and summer. In the Winter table we do see CO2 providing a significant amount of the total, 34.7W/m2 out of a total of slightly lees than 150W/m2. What is interesting is what occurs when we move to the Summer table. Overall DLR increases to about 270W/m2, but the CO2 number falls to 10.5W/m2, strongly suggesting that in the presence of a certain level of H2O the action of CO2 is actively suppressed. In support of this notion I would point out that as part of their work E&P constructed a model to construct a pre-industrial baseline to measure any changes against. Although I am usually less the sanguine about such models, I must admit this one seems to have done a much better than ballpark job of estimating their observed values, which is of interest because the model predicted almost exactly the suppression of CO2 that was observed.
We now get into the part of my conjecture which is based almost entirely on what I see as rather obvious logical implications of this information and hardly at all on any scientific sophistication. The suppressive effect was shown to be in effect in Summer in Canada when total DLR is 270W/m2, but if you examine maps of global DLR you find that that level is exceeded over most of the Earth most of the time. What I find most telling is that over Tropical and Subtropical latitudes, where the increase in evaporation required to drive the positive H2O feedback necessary for AGW sensitivity numbers to be real, total DLR is almost constantly far beyond the Canadian figures(350-450+W/m2) which suggests to me that CO2’s contribution there would be almost negligibly small and therefore entirely incapable of driving the H2O feedback.
The Antarctic study I cited previously shows that CO2’s contribution there is quite strong. but the accompanying temperature data suggest it is having almost no effect. This leaves the high temperate latitudes in Winter and the Arctic as the only places on Earth where CO2 might be actively contributing to planetary warming. The size of those areas is small relative to the total planet, but large enough that CO2’s influence wouldn’t be entirely negligible although the data also suggest that its influence would play out mostly in raising wintertime temperatures in areas where almost no one would complain about such a change.
When I came upon E&P’s work, almost the first thing that entered my mind was that here at last was a technique which would provide clear empirical observational data to judge what each of the various gaseous components of the atmosphere is contributing to the atmosphere’s ability to warm the planet. Rather naively as it turns out, I assumed there would be a rush to replicate these experiments to provide that data. Over the years I’ve gone dumpster diving through various search engines trying to locate such works, although it has been a while since my last try. Other than E&P’s work the Antarctic study is the only other I have found.
To verify my conjecture would require, at a minimum, several years of similar data from locations in the Tropics and preferably from a wider of assortment of sites across the globe. Sadly those studies don’t appear to be forthcoming. It seems to me almost as if the people providing the funding for climate research don;t want to know the answers those studies might provide, but I’m probably just being paranoid. But as the Old Philosopher says, ” Just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you”
“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.”
NICE! Repeated here for effect.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Joel Shore says:
December 6, 2011 at 5:40 pm
“There are certainly uncertainties associated with the grand climate experiment that we are currently carrying out, but these uncertainties cut in both directions. Maybe it will miraculously turn out to be less severe than we are expecting…but maybe it will be worse.”
========================================
Nice for you to admit the “grand climate experiment”.
But then you fall back on the obvious DUH: it might be less or it might be more.
Is that all you can concede?
Really?
Glad you will AT LEAST admit “the uncertainties cut in both directions”…but, in reality, do both directions diverge with the same quantity of misinformation??
Yeah…I thought not.
Please post the evidence for your claims against your “opponents.”
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Terry Oldberg,
“Monckton assumes this ratio to be a constant but there are other possibilities. One is that the ratio is variable.”
There isn’t a time element in Monckton’s calculation. Since no one is claiming that we started from a no GHG data point, the calculation should be taken as a gross assessment or argument, a common sense argument appealing to linear thinking. Obviously, while it may be unsettling because it perhaps coincidentally lines up with the consensus direct effect of CO2, it doesn’t settle the matter, as you note, the ratio may be variable. We are in a very interesting part of the Clausius–Clapeyron relation for water as Wentz reported in the journal Science (2007). The observations and the models both agree that the water vapor increased 15% during the recent warming. However, the models only had precipitation increasing 7%, while the observed increase was 15%. Such a proportionate speedup in the water cycle and the failure of the models leave wide open the plausibility that the “variable” ratio will be in the net negative feedback direction. We don’t know what the net feedback to CO2 forcing is, but null hypothesis probably should be that it is negative or minimally positive, since the main mechanism for any feedback to CO2 is from its temperature effect, and we’ve had temperatures sampling warmer parts of the Clausius–Clapeyron relation in both this and past inter-glacials. The diagnostic literature shows the models are not yet ready, and the model independent analyses of scientists like Lindzen and Spenser suggest that the feedback is negative.
Martin Lewitt:
Thanks for the thoughtful reply!. From an expository standpoint, the case in which the rise in the equilibrium temperature varies independently with respect to the rise in the CO2 concentration has a use for in this case, the rise in the CO2 concentration provides no information about the rise in the equilibrium temperature. However, according to the the argument of Lord Monckton and the similar argument of IPCC Working Group I, the rise in the CO2 concentration provides perfect information about the rise in the equilibrium temperature. As the truth must lie somewhere between the two extremes, Monckton and the Working Group I must be fabricating an indeterminate amount of information about the rise in the equilibrium temperature given the rise in the CO2 concentration. The amount fabricated is indeterminate because the equilibrium temperature is not an observable.
As you imply, the Monckton and Working Group I arguments result from the false but prevalent way of thinking that is called “reductionism” (aka, linear thinking). Under reductionism, every system can be reduced to cause and effect relationships with the result that a rise in the CO2 concentration must cause the equilibrium temperature to rise by an amount that is determined by the rise in the CO2 concentration. It is by their reductionism that Monckton and Working Group I fabricate their information.
If Monckton and Working Group I were to abandon the practice of fabricating information in this manner, this would provide motivation for creating information in the scientific manner. This would entail collection of observed statistical events, each one of which was defined in terms of observables such as temperature, and extraction of the information content in these events.
The extent to which reductionism has replaced the scientific method in the practice of IPCC climatologists is suggested by the complete absence of citation to the observed statistical events upon which the IPCC’s conclusion of AGW rests in the 2007 report of Working Group I. This conclusion evidently rests on a statistical sample of size zero, all of the apparent information content in the IPCC’s conclusion having been fabricated.
steven mosher says:
December 5, 2011 at 9:37 pm
“So, Smokey do you buy Monkton’s 1.2C number?”
Yes. And I have been consistent. ≈1.2°C includes all feedbacks, and the planet apparently agrees. CO2 is a bit player that can be disregarded for all practical purposes.
So, what’s your model-based number?
Robert E. Phelan says:
December 6, 2011 at 9:36 am
Jack Greer says: December 6, 2011 at 9:01 am
I really shudder to think of people like you being in charge of things…. but I figure you won’t be. Believers like you should really learn from the past: find out what happened to the Old Bolsheviks.
They are alive and well. It is well known that the so-called Neocons, the Israel-first warmongers that have taken the world to the brink of destruction, are admitted Trotskyites. The fathers of the Neocon plague are Irving Kristol (whose son William is one of the most shrill advocates for blowing up the entire Islamic world and drawing the rest of us into total warfare) and Leo Strauss, and their followers include such psychos as influential figures in government like Elena Kagan and Paul Wolfowitz, along with pundits like William Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, policy wonks like Frank Gaffney, and dangerous fellow travelers like Donald Rumsfeld. Not to mention the writers and loyal followers of such sites as Daily Kos and HuffPo.
@ur momisugly moderators.
You do a good job.
Many things make WUWT superior to alternative sites. There are two features that must be included in the top ten. Freedom of speech is the first. Anthony hosts a site that insists on being open to contrary ideas. Civility of discussion is the next feature. Anthony is a gentleman, and you moderators follow his lead. He himself has acknowledged that he hasn’t always lived up to this ideal- but given the provocation, no fair-minded person can blame him, and we can admire the fact that after stumbling he still aspires to this ideal. Everyone who visits climate related sites can see the superiority of WUWT.
These two goals are in conflict, and you moderators must make judgment calls. Nevertheless I wish you had not approved the comment by TonyB(another one) .
It lets down the site and embarrasses me as a skeptic when you approve a comment that calls another commentator ‘stupid’, ‘clueless’ and a ‘troll’; that does not advance the discussion at all, and that makes unfounded aspersions on another person’s knowledge.
@ur momisugly Joel Shore
I do disagree with your critique, and later hope to post a response. But right now I personally wish to extend my apologies for the abuse to which you were subjected.
@ur momisugly Joel Shore
I enjoyed your analogy with Bill Gates, but as far as I can see, the analogy fails.
Do I understand correctly that in your analogy, Watts input is the equivalent of public donations, and temperature increase is the equivalent of lives saved?
Accordingly we know that $20 million publically donated saves 100 million lives after all feedbacks are considered. Accordingly the ‘dollar sensitivity’ is 5 to one, and $100 million dollars will suffice to save five million lives after all feedbacks are taken into account. This is substantially different to the $500 million you allege Monkton’s argument would require.
Or am I missing something?
Joel Shore,
“You presume incorrectly. Look at Table 3 where they clearly give the radiative forcing due to greenhouse gases, labeled as such.”
Okay, I’ve found it. Trenberth has given 125 watts per metre squared for “clear sky radiative forcing” of which H20 contributes 71 watts and CO2 29 watts.
In that case, to work out the proportion of warming due to CO2 alone, you would have to say this is 33k * 29/125 = 7.65k. Therefore the sensitivity due to CO2 is 7.65k/29 = 0.26k per watt per metre squared of forcing. Multiply this by 3.7 watts of additional forcing and you get 0.97k of warming per doubling of CO2, which is less than Monckton’s original estimate of 1.2k.
Jack Greer,
“I have seen Monckton’s replies to Abraham. I think that after viewing the videos you should judge for yourself if Monckton directly, accurately, and persuasively addresses the actual core points levied against him.”
I’ve seen Abrahams long litany of accuations and Moncktons rebuttal. As I recall, Abraham’s was mostly a lot of straw men arguments and pendantic nit picking. Monckton’s rebutalls for the most part were correct. Does that mean that Monckton never made any mistakes, or never exagerated or cherry picked? No. But does it substantially alter the conclusions of Monckton’s arguments? Not at all.
Look, I don’t condone using exageration or cherry picking data, but lets put this into perspective. This is sadly the way climate science is conducted these days which is why it has become too political. We should be against all attempts at exageration, and if this is your only beef with Monckton, I won’t argue with you. But there is this knee jerk reaction by the warmist supporters, whenever Monckton performs, to fall upon him in the most savage way, to exploit minor errors or inventing strawmen, for the sole purpose of trying to destroy whatever point he is trying to make.
It just shows how scared they are – and it makes them look weak, not strong. But if you want to join in with the charade, go ahead, just don’t expect the majority here to go along with you.
Jack Greer says:
December 6, 2011 at 6:01 pm
@Vince Causey says: (and David)
December 6, 2011 at 2:17 pm
“Vince, watch the remaining videos with a critical, fair eye – it won’t take that long. It shouldn’t be someone like me pointing out the rubbish – It’s people like you who should be taking out your own trash. Trying to justify Monckton’s actions with the “oh yeah, did you see what they did?” defense is itself a dishonest exercise.
I have seen Monckton’s replies to Abraham. I think that after viewing the videos you should judge for yourself if Monckton directly, accurately, and persuasively addresses the actual core points levied against him.”
Jack I did see Monckton’s 83 page reply, and I do not think you saw that one, just the very brief one pertaining to one or two issues. His response was detailed and very direct, first presenting Abrahams’ arguments (and often mis directions and even lies), showing in detail after detail what Abraham said, then responding point by point in showing Abrahams’ misrepresention, logical fallacies, sloppy work and incorrect assumtions. Monckton’s counter arguments and charges are decimating, and remain to this day unanswered.
Leo Morgan says:
Yes, you are. As I noted in this post http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/05/monckton-on-sensitivity-training-at-durban/#comment-820890 , the analogy is closer if Gates doesn’t publicly reveal his matching ratio (since the earth has not publicly revealed what the feedback factor is).
Monckton is not taking into account the feedback factor in his analysis. (He can’t since he doesn’t know what it is, i.e., he doesn’t know how much more water vapor is in the air due to the CO2 levels being what they are, just as in the (modified) analogy he doesn’t know how much of the total money of $100 million came from the public and how much came from the Bill Gates feedback.) He is simply looking at how much “total forcing” there is due to everything including water vapor as a forcing, just like in my analogy he is looking at how much total money there is including any amount that Bill Gates contributed. And, then he is using that to determine the climate sensitivity is, i.e., how much you would have to raise CO2 levels to get a certain temperature rise, just as in the analogy, he is using it to determine how much the public has to pay to get a certain result in terms of people fed. The analogy is perfect.
Vince Causey says:
Sorry, Vince, but you still aren’t accounting for the water vapor feedback. Before you were leaving it out because you were taking the total response and dividing by the total forcing considering water vapor as a forcing. Now you are leaving it out because you are taking the part of the forcing that is due to CO2 alone…without any feedback and dividing by the forcing of CO2 alone. There is more than one way to get an incorrect result.
When you say, “Therefore the sensitivity due to CO2 is 7.65k/29 = 0.26k per watt per metre squared of forcing,” you are explicitly assuming that none of the water vapor contribution to the forcing is there because of the CO2 levels being what they are. Assuming the result you want is a good way to get the result you want but it is not good science.
Joel Shore says…” 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
Yes Joel, and we do not know the sign of the long term response. Take clear sky water vapor effects on TSI. Solar spectrum modification charts show that about 98% of that energy lies between about 250 nm in the UV and 4.0 microns; with the remaining as 1% left over at each end. Such graphs often have superimposed on them the actual ground level (air Mass once) spectrum; that shows the amounts of that energy taken out by primarily O2, O3, and H2O, in the case of H2O which absorbs in the visible and near IR perhaps 20% of the total solar energy is captured by water VAPOR (clear sky) clouds are an additional loss over and above that.
At its most basic only two things can effect the energy content of any system in a radiative balance. Either a change in the input, or a change in the “residence time” of some aspect of those energies within the system. The greater the energy capacity, the longer it takes for any change to manifest, and in the case of OHC this involves years, not annually.
It therefore follows that any effect which increases the residence time of LW energy in the atmosphere, but reduces the input of SW energy entering the oceans, potentially causes a net reduction in the earth’s energy balance, proportioned to the energy change involved relative to the residence time of the radiations involved. We do not know the residence time of much of the SWR which enters the oceans, we just know it is far longer then the residence time of LWR in the atmosphere. Therefore cloud feedback could be positive short term, but negative long term.
There are however some things we do know about the antropogenic increase in CO2. The benefits are known, the harms are theoretical and have failed to manifest. The fortuitous accident of industrial CO2, minus the particulates and chemicals other then CO2 of course, enforces a symbiotic relationship between warmth and life. Crops world wide now produce (on the same amount of water) 10 to fifteen percent more food then if this CO2 had not been in the atmosphere. It is entirely reasonable to suggest that the world would be at war over food and water without this unintended consequence.
Monckton of Brenchley,
Based on the WUWT response to your post, I think your message to the IPCC centric advocates at the Durban conference in right on.
Have fun.
John
[snip – suggesting we are all mentally ill here won’t fly – but that’s typical for you – take a month or two time out, I’m tired of being insulted by you Greer – Anthony]
He’s baaaack. The despicable and delusional Pelicanman. With a real laugher too.
Hard to believe with all the issues confronting society in the year 2011 that anti-semitism still has such a stranglehold on the weak minds of people such as this ‘person’.
I mean really, after a major holocaust and many individual acts of terrorism there are less than 14 million jews left alive on this planet, with a much smaller subset really practicing. But I guess these ‘people’ think that is still too many. How pathetic.
Scapegoats are created for a reason you know. You really should ask yourself something, exactly why did your parents (or friends or whoever) originally implant this scapegoat into your empty mind? What were they trying to divert you from? There is something out there that you have missed because of you’re being distracted by this scapegoat. Perhaps you should ponder this.
*****
Dave Wendt says:
December 6, 2011 at 7:19 pm
What I find most telling is that over Tropical and Subtropical latitudes, where the increase in evaporation required to drive the positive H2O feedback necessary for AGW sensitivity numbers to be real, total DLR is almost constantly far beyond the Canadian figures(350-450+W/m2) which suggests to me that CO2′s contribution there would be almost negligibly small and therefore entirely incapable of driving the H2O feedback.
The Antarctic study I cited previously shows that CO2′s contribution there is quite strong. but the accompanying temperature data suggest it is having almost no effect. This leaves the high temperate latitudes in Winter and the Arctic as the only places on Earth where CO2 might be actively contributing to planetary warming. The size of those areas is small relative to the total planet, but large enough that CO2′s influence wouldn’t be entirely negligible although the data also suggest that its influence would play out mostly in raising wintertime temperatures in areas where almost no one would complain about such a change.
*****
Interesting. So what the data is telling us is that the warmxist’s “polar amplication” is in reality “tropical/subtropical extinction” of CO2s GH effect. Another example of doublespeak.
And since Antarctica’s temps aren’t changing, CO2’s once “global” effect is suddenly limited to —– the Arctic.
The “doublepeak” that you have observed in the climatological literature has a technical description and relationship to logic. When a single word or group of synonyms makes ambiguous reference to the associated ideas, there is associated with this ambiguity a violation of the law of non-contradiction. Examples in climatology include “greenhouse,” “heat,” “science” and “prediction/projection.”
The law of non-contradiction is a principle of classical logic. Accompanying the violations of this principle are an ability to prove various falsehoods. One of these falsehoods is that a “greenhouse effect” is operative in the atmosphere under which “greenhouse” gases trap “heat” thus warming Earth’s surface.
Joel Shore,
“Sorry, Vince, but you still aren’t accounting for the water vapor feedback.”
Yes, I am well aware of that, but this thread was about Monckton’s original thesis – that if the total greenhouse forcing was 100 watts and the temperature rise is 33k, then the sensitivity due to the ghg’s is 0.33k per watt. You argued that that 100 watts included feedbacks, and then linked to the Trenberth paper. Table 3 showed that the clear air forcing was around 150 watts instead of 100. The table makes no reference to feedbacks, only forcings.
To redo the calculations, I used the portion of ghg forcing due to co2 – 29 watts, and apportioned accordingly. Admittedly the real situation is more complicated, and would include feedbacks. But that wasn’t the basis of Monckton’s argument – only to compare forcings. You say that my results are incorrect because I have left out feedbacks. But that is the limitation of this type of back-of-envelope calculations. We don’t know what the feedbacks are, or what their function of non-condensable ghg’s are.
You can assume that the forcing due to water – 71watts according to Trenberth – is entirely a result of the presence of co2, in which case feedbacks make a huge amplification. Or you could say that the water vapour would be there without co2, in which case my calculation has left out a non-existent feedback. Either way, it is an open question, and probably proves the futility of these types of calculations.