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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Well that IS the point isn’t it; The BLUE PLANET is actually The BLACK PLANET.
Over 70% of the total surface area is water, which behaves much like a grey body with an absorptance/emissivity of around 0.97-0.98, and at least 3/4 of all the arriving solar energy goes into that water.
If you take ALL of the GHGs out of the atmosphere; which means including H2O, then there is no cloud cover; down from the 60+% we have now, so the albedo, won’t be anywhere near 0.35; and that will result in the mother of all “FORCINGS”, that will make a dash of CO2 look mighty puny.
No longer will the surface air mass one solar insolation be about 1kW per square metre; but considerably higher; with just the Raleigh scattering of blue light (mostly) that disguises the BLACK planet as BLUE.
Well of course the GHG free atmosphere will be just a short flash of history; and then be gone back to pretty much the present state. Negative feedback is a wonderful thing.
“”””” Joel Shore says:
December 5, 2011 at 11:50 am
KR says:
“…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.”
~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 – and while the exact magnitude of feedbacks can be discussed, Monckton is simply ignoring them here.
Just to clarify what KR says here: Some might argue that, for example, the calculation includes the water vapor feedback. After all, Monckton imagined removing the water vapor too. However, this point-of-view is incorrect. In order to correctly account for the water vapor feedback, you have to treat it as a feedback and not a forcing as Monckton has done. (Willis Eschenbach came up with a similar argument to Monckton’s, which had the same sort of error in it.) “””””
Come on Joel; I don’t know about KR; but I DO know that ypou are a lot smarter than that.
The ONLY “feedback” that is of any consequence, is the feedback from changes in atmospheric GHGs, and the primary climate “forcing” which drives the whole system; namely the direct solar energy input from the sun.
Wentz et al proved (SCIENCE July 7, 2007) that a one degree rise in mean global surface Temperature results in a 7% increase in total g;lobal evaporation, total global atmospheric water content, and total global precipitation; (which of necessity must equal total evaporation). Well proved in the sense that that is what was observed on planet earth. The GCMs; well at least some of the 13 or so you can take your pick from to get the result you want, agreed on the total water content, but only “predict”/project/ guess/whatever, the evap/precip to be 1-3%; not the observed 7%.
That’s as much as a factor of seven error between the guesstimates, and the observed; but of course preserves the obligatory climatism 3:1 fudge factor.
So the principal result of a Temperature change (upwards) is a massive infusion of H2O, into the atmosphere; which is well known to absorb copious amounts of incoming solar energy, and lead to the loss of at least half of it back to space.that is a massive negative feedback regulation of the earth surface Temperature.
Between more water vapor and more clouds (which for some reason seem to go hand in hand with precipiitation), the earth extremes of Temperature are likely to remain within the comfortable range from -90 deg C to +60 deg C that we presently enjoy.
Vince Causey says:
So, what was the purpose of this whole post by Monckton? He claims that he was doing a calculation of the climate sensitivity that includes the effect of feedbacks. Now you seem to be admitting that you and he did calculations of the climate sensitivity in the absence of feedbacks, a calculation which has already been done and is not in serious dispute.
George E Smith says:
George, these things can be calculated and the effect of water vapor on outgoing longwave radiation is larger than the effect on incoming shortwave radiation. So no, water vapor is not a negative feedback.
Clouds are admittedly more uncertain but your simplistic views of how cloudiness will change are just that…Way too simplistic. Besides which, the details turn out to be important: Low clouds have a net cooling effect on the earth because the albedo effect on shortwave is greater than their effect on outgoing longwave radiation, whereas high clouds have a net warming effect because the opposite is true.
As for the Wentz data, it is always interesting to see how data that agrees with what some people want to see are automatically bullet-proof and don’t even have the sort of error bars attached to them that the authors admit are present! And, although there is a lot of hand-waving as to why the Wentz data are so significant in somehow showing the climate models are over-predicting the climate sensitivity, nobody has put together any very compelling argument on that score, especially one that agrees with other empirical data.
At any rate, nobody seems to be coming forward anymore to defend Monckton’s deeply flawed arguments in this post claiming to demonstrate a fairly low climate sensitivity, so I assume we can consider them dead and buried?
@ur momisugly Dave Wendt:
December 6, 2011 at 7:19 pm
Very good information there Dave. That E&P extended abstract has supplied me with some missing relations and hard numbers that I had been searching for. Thanks for that link. Your thoughts, as you said, so logical that much truth lies there, and if only they could extend that research across many latitudes so a curve could be plotted per season, and then integrated, not merely an average. The view of global parameters would surely be different than those currently held by the ‘consensus’.
@Leopold Danze Morgan
I guess you have forgotten the famous phrase “Its the economy, stupid”?
A short memory perhaps.
I, amongst many many others, am heartily sick of being lectured to by people who clearly have no clue, and no ability to think for themselves. And when their beliefs seemingly become fact, merely because they are repeated endlessly, and those “facts” start to drive legislation which impacts my pocket, and my freedoms, then I get angry. And this has been going on for more than 20 years.
The statements made by “believers” frequently fall into 1 of 2 possible categories:
– so unfounded/ridiculous/illogical that relying on them indicates someone is unable to think for themselves (clueless)
– so unfounded/ridiculous/illogical that making them indicates a desire to wind-up the readership of this blog (trolling)
And getting upset over potentially offending a “believer” is pretty rich when you consider the freedom with which the “believers” dish out insults (deniers/flat earthers/creationists, etc etc etc) and worse (No pressure, kaboom/splat).
With much of the world tipping into financial meltdown, yet whilst vast sums of money are still being syphoned off and wasted in the pursuit of non-solutions to a non-problem, the time for always being Mr Nice and Polite has long since passed.
And I note that the poor offended one has not bothered to (or perhaps cannot) counter my substantive points:
a) The Earth’s climate system is fundamentally stable and reverts to equilibrium even when perturbations far more significant than mankind’s puny production of CO2 have been in play.
b) Carbon is part of a continuous cycle and it is present in various forms – including CO2 – at various times (making it out of nothing is actually quite difficult). The existence of vast quantities of coal and oil clearly indicates that at points in the past there were significantly greater quantities of CO2 in the atmosphere. And the planet did not fry.
Monckton says:
December 6, 2011 at 12:12 am
Finally, I understand that someone called “Potholer” has produced some sneering videos about me. I have looked at a few minutes of one of these, which seems rather intellectually dishonest. “The pothead takes me to task, inappropriately, for having said (correctly) that I had given advice to Margaret Thatcher on various scientific matters, including climate change, on the ground that “my supporters” had in his view mischaracterized the position by referring to me as her “science advisor”.
The potboiler also said that I had claimed in 2009 that global cooling since 2001 had been statistically significant, but that I had rebutted myself the following year by saying the cooling since 2001 had been insignificant. To 2009 the cooling had indeed been significant, but the rapid warming of 2010 meant that the trend from 2001-2010 was insignificant: both my statements, therefore, were correct, and they were not incompatible with one another.
I was disinclined to look any further at that drivel. Given the amount of time the pinhead seems to devote to such nonsense, one wonders who is paying him. Perhaps he is convincing the usual suspects, but on the little I have seen he is unlikely to convince anyone else.
==========================================================================
The comment regarding significant cooling from Jan 2001 relates to the graph shown at 0.36 on the video here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNI19Z-LUjo&feature=related
Please note that the graph finishes at Dec 2009. The comments were made at a presentation he gave in Melbourne on 1 February 2010.
The comment regarding insignificant cooling from Jan 2001 relates to the graph shown at 2.21 on the video here : http://www.youtube.com/user/potholer54#p/a/u/1/9K74fzNAUq4
Please note that the graph finishes at July 2009. The comments were made at a presentation he gave at Bethel University on 14 October 2009.
Monckton states in his reply above that both comments are correct as the rapid warming of 2010 meant that the trend from 2001 to 2010 was insignificant.
What he has failed to realise is that both graphs do not include any data from 2010 and that both statements were made well before data from 2010 was available. What magical powers does Monckton possess that enables him to see twelve to fifteen months into the future?
I get the impression he is just making it all up or he does not have a clue about the subject. His response above indicates he is just trying to bluff his way out of it.
Also “potholer54” in his video refers to him as simply “Monckton”. Monckton’s response refers to “potholer54” as “the Pothead”, “the potboiler” and “pinhead”. Says a lot really.
Monckton should watch the whole video. Potholer54 makes him an offer. Given Monckton’s predisposition towards threatening such actions I would hope he follows through.
How likely is it that the waste will be stopped by the recipients and beneficiaries of said waste?
The question answers itself.
Joel Shore says,
“…George, these things can be calculated and the effect of water vapor on outgoing longwave radiation is larger than the effect on incoming shortwave radiation. So no, water vapor is not a negative feedback.
Clouds are admittedly more uncertain but your simplistic views of how cloudiness will change are just that…Way too simplistic. Besides which, the details turn out to be important: Low clouds have a net cooling effect on the earth because the albedo effect on shortwave is greater than their effect on outgoing longwave radiation, whereas high clouds have a net warming effect because the opposite is true…”
Joel as this post showed you,( David says: December 7, 2011 at 5:47 am ) we do not know the residence time of the SW spectrum modification of energy entering the ocean, which up to 1% of TSI can penetrate up to 300 meters deep in the oceans, so the short term feedback can be positive, the long term negative. So a smaller reduction in a longer residince time energy can, over time, have a greater affect then a larger change which primarily affects the atmosphere. The oceans are a far more potent GHG then the atmosphere. Also watervapor feedback may vary. In the tropics TSI at the surface can be reduced 20%, over 200 WsqM. As for clouds we certainly do not know, but Lindzen makes a convincing case of negative feedback overall using observations.
“”””” @ur momisugly Joel Shore…
George E Smith says:
So the principal result of a Temperature change (upwards) is a massive infusion of H2O, into the atmosphere; which is well known to absorb copious amounts of incoming solar energy, and lead to the loss of at least half of it back to space.that is a massive negative feedback regulation of the earth surface Temperature.
George, these things can be calculated and the effect of water vapor on outgoing longwave radiation is larger than the effect on incoming shortwave radiation. So no, water vapor is not a negative feedback. “””””
Well if they can be calculated Joel, why do they never get the correct results. Can you give us some references to any peer reviewed papers that contradict the findings of Wentz et al that I cited.As for your claim that water vapor affects outgoing LWIR more than it does incoming solar energy; what total drivel.The affect of H2O in any phase, solid, liquid or gas, in the atmosphere is to PERMANENTLY remove a sizeable fraction of the incomiong solar radiation energy, so that it NEVER reaches the earth’s primary energy storage location; namely the deep oceans; it is lost from the planet forever.
But the LWIR effect of GHGs including H2O as well as CO2 and O3, is to simply delay the exit of that LWIR energy; it still gets lost.
And yes; that loss can result in a change of surface Temperature to increase the emission rate (4th power of Temperature); but absolutely nobody claims that a one degree C increase in surface Temperature results in a 7% increase in the rate of LWIR emission. How could a 7% increase in total global precipitation (as a result of a one deg C Temperature rise) not also result in something like a 7% increase, in precipitable cloud cover, or its equivalent in density, time of persistence, or location relative to evaporation regions.
So which are the models that in your view, best account for the reduction in earth absorbed solar energy from the sun, due to increased atmospheric H2O (in all three phases) ?
And that high cloud, low cloud nonsense is getting a bit long ion the tooth; any water in any form anywhere in the atmosphere at any altitude, anywhere on earth must result in a loss of solar energy from this planet; there is no physical process by which water in any phase in the atmosphere can increase the amount of solar energy that reaches earth’s surface and get stored.
David says:
Last time I checked, his analysis was so unconvincing that even Roy Spencer didn’t buy it.
@george E Smith: You have really gone off the deep end with your claims. The high cloud / low cloud stuff is accepted by ever serious scientist, including Spencer and Lindzen. And, when you say GHGs “simply delay the exit of that LWIR energy” as an excuse for ignoring the radiative forcings this produces, you are getting into territory of the SkyDragon Slayers, which is even nuttier. I’ve pledged to myself in this thread that in this thread I would ignore those who deny the existence of the greenhouse effect (like wayne, jae, and John Marshall as they are beyond hope and I think most people here know they are spouting nonsense).
At any rate, as I said, I am glad to see that we seem to have arrived at a consensus that Monckton’s post here presents a hopelessly-flawed analysis…At least nobody seems to be defending Monckton’s original arguments. That, at least, is progress.
George the only point I would add to your comments is even if the reduction in SWR was intially smaller then the increase in LWR, the fact that the SWR reduction may take years (however long the change lasts) to reach a radiative balance, whereas the LWR would reach a radiative balance much more quickly. like the same day. I to would like to see Joels chart showing the exact changes in solar spectrum modification of WV as well as high clouds and low clouds and also showing the residence times of the relative enegies involved within the earth/water/ atmosphere of our plants system.
Sorry about the typos, especially plant instead of planet!!
Vince Causey said:
December 6, 2011 at 1:38 pm
“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.”
Suppose all the greenhouse gases are added all at once to an Earth 33K cooler than at present (with same albedo and an atmosphere in radiative equilibrium). The ‘total forcing’ (which includes the total water vapour contribution) is the immediate reduction of outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) to space. There is also an immediate increase in back radiation. There results a rapid cooling at the tropopause, now shielded from the lower layers, and a long term (lasting a few decades) warming of the surface until a new radiative balance is achieved at all levels. In particular, enough heat must be radiated from the surface and the atmosphere trough the atmospheric window to balance out the reduction in OLR, that is, to balance out the new forcing. The increase in back radiation, on the other hand, is balanced out by the increases not only of longwave radiation escaping through the atmospheric window, but also by increases in latent heat transport (through evaporation), thermal conduction/convection and surface radiation to the atmosphere (trapped by GHGs). These three additional processes result in the atmosphere being heated further and thus in feedback amplification of the back radiation. This explains why the increase in back radiation is very much larger than the forcing at the tropopause.
Joel Shore says:
December 7, 2011 at 4:42 pm
David says:
As for clouds we certainly do not know, but Lindzen makes a convincing case of negative feedback overall using observations.
Last time I checked, his analysis was so unconvincing that even Roy Spencer didn’t buy it.
Roy Spencer is an honest scientist, unlike some of your heros. Last I checked he answered his critics, accepted some of the criticism and adjusted accordingly, like an honest scientist, made no attempt to excomunicate anyone from the scientific community, and his main conclusions based on observations, not failed models (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/07/tisdale-schools-the-website-skeptical-science-on-co2-obsession/ ) hold as valid.
The AGWScienceFiction (AGWSF) energy budget,KT97 and ilk, excludes the Water Cycle. The general figures given for Earth without any atmosphere at all is a temp of -18°C, which is the difference of 33°C from what we have with an atmosphere at 15°C. But, to get to that 15°C is impossible without including the Water Cycle. With an atmosphere of the gases we have, but with water taken out, we’d end up with a temp of 67°C. That’s plus 52°C cooling by the water cycle to get to “33°C warmer”..
In the AGWSF claim that it is CO2 which is driving warming, that CO2 is the prime mechanism for creating this warming of 33°C, what AGWSF has to show is not that “CO2 traps heat,or radiates back, or whatever” adding heat, but that CO2 stops the water from its great cooling cycle, or that it matters even a jot how much warming CO2 adds when water wipes it out by 52°C anyway…
“”””” @george E Smith: You have really gone off the deep end with your claims. The high cloud / low cloud stuff is accepted by ever serious scientist, including Spencer and Lindzen. “””””
Well Joel, that statement is false; because I am a very serious scientist and I don’t accept it.
The thesis as presented in well known climatism text books (that have beed referenced several times at WUWT) is that clouds either cool the surface or warm the surface, depending on their altitude. The lower the clouds are, the more they cool the surface, and the higher the clouds are, the more they warm the surface, so there is a magic altitude at which clouds neither cool, nor warm the surface.
That is what ever serious scientist believes as you put it.
Simple geometrical optics puts the lie to that thesis. Because the sun is a near point source (0.5 deg divergence), ANY cloud at ANY height casts a shadow on the ground that is a rough image of the cloud, and yes it will have a penumbral edge that varies with cloud height, because of that divergence.
But the outgoing LWIR radiation is not a point source; it is at least Lambertian (cosine intensity distruibution), and likely to be closer to isotropic, since the surface is not an optical surface.
So the inverse square law works fully, and the energy intercepted by a cloud drops off with the square of the altitude. The cloud itself, as an LWIR emitter (as a consequence of its Temperature), is also an isotropic source, and the irradiance of the ground from that source also drops off with the square of the cloud altitude, so the higher the cloud is, the smaller the LWIR energy it intercepts, and the colder it gets, so it radiates at a lower intensity in the IR, and that is spread over an increasingly large surface area, the higher the cloud is. The higher the cloud, the lower its density specially of H2O molecules, so the less LWIR it can absorb and also emit.
If your theory was correct, then the high noctilucent clouds should be frying all of us.
Add to that the simple fact, that even you Joel can’t deny, that the Temperature ALWAYS drops in the shadow zone, whenever a cloud passes in front of the sun; it NEVER increases under those conditions.
Yes Joel it IS true, that high clouds and warm balmy nights go together; that old saw has been reported here ad nauseum.
BUT !! it is the heat and humidity during the previous day, that RESULTS in the formation of that cloud at night, when the daytime evaporated moisture rises, and cools, until it reaches the dew point and forms a cloud. And it was that heat during the day, that resulted in the balmy night; not the cloud. The high cloud is the result of the surface warmth; it is NOT the cause of it,
And the hotter it is during the day (so the night will be warmer), the higher the water vapor has to rise before it cools to the dew point so the cloud that forms at night will be higher.
I know that even you can understand this Joel; the heat and humidity of the day, results in the cloud at night; it ALWAYS cools down after sunset; it NEVER heats up after sunset, and the hotter the day is (with some water) the higher will be the cloud formed at night, and of course the warmer the evening will be.
The cloud DOES NOT heat the surface; the surface heat forms the cloud.
Dave Wendt says:
December 6, 2011 at 7:19 pm
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.
===============================
Stands to reason:
the Water Cycle cools the Earth by 52°C, from 67%deg;C from Earth without any atmosphere at all to Earth as we have now 15°C. Water vapour picks up heat at the surface and rises into the colder higher levels where it loses that heat and if enough dust around condenses out into rain or ice and this colder will now fall to the surface cooling it. Carbon dioxide spontaneously joins with water vapour and water in the Water Cycle to form carbonic acid, all pure rain is carbonic acid, so whatever heat is has will be lost in that combining, rain, fog, dew.
any hot carbon dioxide in a volume of rising hot air will be taking heat away from the surface into higher colder where it gives up heat spontaneously in the law heat always flows from hotter to colder, and, as hot air rises colder air from above is drawn down below it, that’s how we get wind which is volumes of air on the move, so cooling the surface by default while on its way up in hot air rising. That colder air displacing rising hot air will again pick up any heat and rise in the same cycle until the surface has cooled and no greater heat to warm it it hangs around cold at the surface.
Aggggh..
the Water Cycle cools the Earth by 52°C, from 67%deg;C it would be without the water cycle, but with the rest of the atmosphere in place, to Earth as we have now 15°C., which is 33°C difference between Earth without any atmosphere at all, -18°C, and Earth with the atmosphere as we have it, 15°C.
Sorry, I’d written that in my mind, and surprised to find it wasn’t typed… 🙂
Joel, George asked,”Can you give us some references to any peer reviewed papers that contradict the findings of Wentz et al that I cited”
I sked if you could show a solar insolation chart of the different residence times of different W/L insolation, I showed you that water vapor alone (clear sky) removes 20% of TSI from the surface. Yes, I admit, this increases the resdence time of energy in the atmosphere, but it decreases the residence time of energy in the oceans, or even in the same affected W/L which would have reached the earths land surface. I would love to see a chart showing this with low clouds, with high clouds, just in the tropics for a start. Let me ask you another question. If the GCMs are subjected to a 100 watts per sq meter increase of TSI at the top of the atmosphere, would they show the earth warming or cooling?
RE: Main Article
“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.”
I think this is an indication of how easy it is to assume that it should now be obvious to everyone that the danger of anthropogenic carbon dioxide has been grossly overstated, when full belief in that danger is still alive and well in the press, and with many otherwise well informed people. Political candidates are still characterized as right-wing ideologues if they do not accept this flawed belief.
George E. Smith said: “But the outgoing LWIR radiation is not a point source; it is at least Lambertian (cosine intensity distruibution), and likely to be closer to isotropic, since the surface is not an optical surface.
So the inverse square law works fully, and the energy intercepted by a cloud drops off with the square of the altitude.”
This is true of the energy intercepted by a cloud from some fixed small ground surface area. It is indeed governed by an inverse square law. However, when the cloud is higher, it also receives fluxes from a proportionally wider surface area. Imagine a 100% cloud cover over the whole Earth. Then the whole cover intercepts all the flux from the surface below. And any x% potion of the cover therefore absorbs x% of the total flux. This is altitude independent. Compare gravitation, which is also governed by an inverse square law. It is easy to show that the gravitational field from an infinite plane of uniform density is constant. The force exerted by the plane on a point particle some distance from it is independent of this distance. This is true despite the fact that the part of that force exerted by any infinitesimal portion of the plane is governed by an inverse square law. And the force exerted by an empty shell is the same as the force exerted by a point mass at the centre of the shell. When you move in the vicinity of the surface of the shell (outside, not inside, where it is null), the force is, to the first order, insensitive to the distance. The reason is the same. That’s how an inverse square law behaves when integrated over a wide area of a thin surface.
George E. Smith said: “The cloud itself, as an LWIR emitter (as a consequence of its Temperature), is also an isotropic source, and the irradiance of the ground from that source also drops off with the square of the cloud altitude, so the higher the cloud is, the smaller the LWIR energy it intercepts, and the colder it gets, so it radiates at a lower intensity in the IR, and that is spread over an increasingly large surface area, the higher the cloud is.”
That’s right. The downwelling longwave radiation spreads over a larger surface. But it contributes the same amount of flux over this larger surface. The *totality* of the downwelling radiation still reaches the ground, doesn’t it (neglecting non-cloud GHG effects, and Earth curvature effects)? So, while the warming effect sensed (or measured) by an observer located below the cloud would diminish if that cloud were moved up to an higher altitude, a larger area would be affected. And the effect integrated over the whole surface area will be the same. You observed also that the warming from an overcast cloud never exceeds the cooling effect in the shadow zone. But this is irrelevant to determining which one of the two effects is largest overall. That’s because the cooling effect is restricted to the shadow zone while the warming effect must be integrated over (1) a much larger zone and (2) over a whole 24 hours period. After sunset, the cooling effect drops to zero and the warming effect only diminishes slightly.