By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Responses to my post of December 28 about climate sensitivity have been particularly interesting. This further posting answers some of the feedback.
My earlier posting explained how the textbooks establish that if albedo and insolation were held constant but all greenhouse gases were removed from the air the Earth’s surface temperature would be 255 K. Since today’s temperature is 288 K, the presence as opposed to absence of all the greenhouse gases – including H2O, CO2, CH4, N2O and stratospheric O3 – causes 33 K warming.
Kiehl and Trenberth say that the interval of total forcing from the five main greenhouse gases is 101[86, 125] Watts per square meter. Since just about all temperature feedbacks since the dawn of the Earth have acted by now, the post-feedback or equilibrium system climate sensitivity parameter is 33 K divided by the forcing interval – namely 0.33[0.27, 0.39] Kelvin per Watt per square meter.
Multiplying the system sensitivity parameter interval by any given radiative forcing yields the corresponding equilibrium temperature change. The IPCC takes the forcing from a doubling of CO2 concentration as 3.7 Watts per square meter, so the corresponding warming – the system climate sensitivity – is 1.2[1.0, 1.4] K, or about one-third of the IPCC’s 3.3[2.0, 4.5] K.
I also demonstrated that the officially-estimated 2 Watts per square meter of radiative forcings and consequent manmade temperature changes of 0.4-0.8 K since 1750 indicated a transient industrial-era sensitivity of 1.1[0.7, 1.5] K, very much in line with the independently-determined system sensitivity.
Accordingly. transient and equilibrium sensitivities are so close to one another that temperature feedbacks – additional forcings that arise purely because temperature has changed in response to initial or base forcings – are very likely to be net-zero.
Indeed, with net-zero feedbacks the IPCC’s transient-sensitivity parameter is 0.31 Kelvin per Watt per square meter, close to the 0.33 that I had derived as the system equilibrium or post-feedback parameter.
I concluded that climate sensitivity to the doubling of CO2 concentration expected this century is low enough to be harmless.
One regular troll – one can tell he is a troll by his silly hate-speech about how I “continue to fool yourself and others” – attempted to say that Kiehl and Trenberth’s 86-125 Watts per square meter of total forcing from the presence of the top five greenhouse gases included the feedbacks consequent upon the forcing, asserting, without evidence, that I (and by implication the two authors) was confusing forcings and feedbacks.
No: Kiehl and Trenberth are quite specific in their paper: “We calculate the longwave radiative forcing of a given gas by sequentially removing atmospheric absorbers from the radiation model. We perform these calculations for clear and cloudy sky conditions to illustrate the role of clouds to a given absorber for the total radiative forcing. Table 3 lists the individual contribution of each absorber to the total clear-sky [and cloudy-sky] radiative forcing.” Forcing, not feedback. Indeed, the word “feedback” does not occur even once in Kiehl & Trenberth’s paper.
In particular, the troll thought we were treating the water-vapor feedback as though it were a forcing. We were not, of course, but let us pretend for a moment that we were. If we now add CO2 to the atmospheric mix and disturb what the IPCC assumes to have been a prior climatic equilibrium, then by the Clausius-Clapeyron relation the space occupied by the atmosphere is capable of holding near-exponentially more water vapor as it warms. This – to the extent that it occurred – would indeed be a feedback.
However, as Paltridge et al. (2009) have demonstrated, it is not clear that the water vapor feedback is anything like as strongly positive as the IPCC would like us to believe. Below the mid-troposphere, additional water vapor makes very little difference because its principal absorption bands are largely saturated. Above it, the additional water vapor tends to subside harmlessly to lower altitudes, again making very little difference to temperature. The authors conclude that feedbacks are somewhat net-negative, a conclusion supported by measurements given in papers such as Lindzen & Choi (2009, 2010), Spencer & Braswell (2010, 2011), and Shaviv (2011).
It is also worth recalling that Solomon et al. (2009) say equilibrium will not be reached for up to 3000 years after we perturb the climate. If so, it is only the transient climate change (one-third of the IPCC’s ’quilibrium estimate) that will occur in our lifetime and in that of our grandchildren. Whichever way you stack it, manmade warming in our own era will be small and, therefore, harmless.
A true-believer at the recent Los Alamos quinquennial climate conference at Santa Fe asked me, in a horrified voice, whether I was really willing to allow our grandchildren to pay for the consequences of our folly in emitting so much CO2. Since the warming we shall cause will be small and may well prove to be beneficial, one hopes future generations will be grateful to us.
Besides, as President Klaus of the Czech Republic has wisely pointed out, if we damage our grandchildren’s inheritance by blowing it on useless windmills, mercury-filled light-bulbs, solar panels, and a gallimaufry of suchlike costly, wasteful, environment-destroying fashion statements, our heirs will certainly not thank us.
Mr. Wingo and others wonder whether it is appropriate to assume that the sum of various different fourth powers of temperature over the entire surface of the Earth will be equal to the fourth power of the global temperature as determined by the fundamental equation of radiative transfer. By zonal calculation on several hundred zones of equal height and hence of equal spherical-surface area, making due allowance for the solar azimuth angle applicable to each zone, I have determined that the equation does indeed provide a very-nearly-accurate mean surface temperature, varying from the sum of the zonal means by just 0.5 K in total. In mathematical terms, the Holder inequality is in this instance near-vanishingly small.
Dr. Nikolov, however, considers that the textbooks and the literature are wrong in this respect: but I have deliberately confined my analysis to textbook methods and “mainstream-science” data precisely so as to minimize the scope for any disagreement on the part of those who – until now – have gone along with the IPCC’s assertion that climate sensitivity is high enough to be dangerous. Deploying their own methods and drawing proper conclusions from them is more likely to lead them to rethink their position than attempting to reinvent the wheel.
Mr. Martin asks whether I’d be willing to apply my calculations to Venus. However, I do not share the view of Al Gore, Dr. Nikolov, or Mr. Huffman that Venus is likely to give us the answers we need about climate sensitivity on Earth. A brief critique of Mr. Huffman’s analysis of the Venusian atmospheric soup and its implications for climate sensitivity is at Jo Nova’s ever-fragrant and always-eloquent website.
Brian H asks whether Dr. Nikolov is right in his finding that, for several astronomical bodies [including Venus] all that matters in the determination of surface temperature is the mass of the atmospheric overburden. Since I am not yet content that Dr. Nikolov is right in concluding that the Earth’s characteristic-emission temperature is 100 K less than the 255 K given in the textbooks, I am disinclined to enquire further into his theory until this rather large discrepancy is resolved.
Rosco is surprised by the notion of dividing the incoming solar irradiance by 4 to determine the Wattage per square meter of the Earth’s surface. I have taken this textbook step because the Earth intercepts a disk-sized area of insolation, which must be distributed over the rotating spherical surface, and the ratio of the surface area of a disk to that of a sphere of equal radius is 1:4.
Other commenters have asked whether the fact that the characteristic-emission sphere has a greater surface area than the Earth makes a difference. No, it doesn’t, because the ratio of the surface areas of disk and sphere is 1:4 regardless of the radius and hence surface area of the sphere.
Rosco also cites Kiehl and Trenberth’s notion that the radiation absorbed and emitted at the Earth’s surface is 390 Watts per square meter. The two authors indicate, in effect, that they derived that value by multiplying the fourth power of the Earth’s mean surface temperature of 288 K by the Stefan-Boltzmann constant (0.0000000567 Watts per square meter per Kelvin to the fourth power).
If Kiehl & Trenberth were right to assume that a strict Stefan-Boltzmann relation holds at the surface in this way, then we might legitimately point out that the pre-feedback climate-sensitivity parameter – the first differential of the fundamental equation of radiative transfer at the above values for surface radiative flux and temperature – would be just 288/(390 x 4) = 0.18 Kelvin per Watt per square meter. If so, even if we were to assume the IPCC’s implicit central estimate of strongly net-positive feedbacks at 2.1 Watts per square meter per Kelvin the equilibrium climate sensitivity to a CO2 doubling would be 3.7 x 0.18 / (1 – 2.1 x 0.18) = 1.1 K. And where have we seen that value before?
In all this, of course, I do not warrant any of the IPCC’s or Kiehl and Trenberth’s or the textbooks’ methods or data or results as correct: that would be well above my pay-grade. However, as Mr. Fernley-Jones has correctly noticed, I am quite happy to demonstrate that if their methods and values are correct then climate sensitivity – whichever way one does the calculation – is about one-third of what they would like us to believe it is.
All the contributors – even the trolls – have greatly helped me in clarifying what is in essence a simple but not simpliste argument. To those who have wanted to complicate the argument in various ways, I say that, as the splendid Willis Eschenbach has pointed out before in this column, one should keep firmly in mind the distinction between first-order effects that definitely change the outcome, second-order effects that may or may not change it but won’t change it much, and third-order effects that definitely won’t change it enough to make a difference. One should ruthlessly exclude third-order effects, however superficially interesting.
Given that the IPCC seems to be exaggerating climate sensitivity threefold, only the largest first-order influences are going to make a significant difference to the calculation. And it is the official or textbook treatment of these influences that I have used throughout.
My New Year’s resolution is to write a short book about the climate question, in which the outcome of the discussions here will be presented. The book will say that climate sensitivity is low; that, even if it were as high as the IPCC wants us to think, it would be at least an order of magnitude cheaper to adapt to the consequences of any warming that may occur than to try, Canute-like, to prevent it; that there are multiple lines of evidence for systematic and connected corruption and fraud on the part of the surprisingly small clique of politically-motivated “scientists” who have fabricated and driven the now-failing climate scare; and that too many who ought to know better have looked the other way as their academic, scientific, political, or journalistic colleagues have perpetrated and perpetuated their shoddy frauds, because silence in the face of official mendacity is socially convenient, politically expedient, and, above all, financially profitable.
The final chapter will add that there is a real danger that the UN, using advisors from the European Union, will succeed in exploiting the fraudulent science peddled by the climate/environment axis as a Trojan horse to extinguish democracy in those countries which, unlike the nations of Europe, are still fortunate enough to have it; that the world’s freedom is consequently at immediate and grave risk from the vaunting ambition of a grasping, talent-free, scientifically-illiterate ruling elite of world-government wannabes everywhere; but that – as the recent history of the bureaucratic-centralist and now-failed EU has demonstrated – the power-mad adidacts are doomed, and they will be brought low by the ineluctable futility of their attempts to tinker with the laws of physics and of economics.
The army of light and truth, however few we be, will quietly triumph over the forces of darkness in the end: for, whether they like it or not, the unalterable truth cannot indefinitely be confused, concealed, or contradicted. We did not make the laws of science: therefore, it is beyond our power to repeal them.
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davidmhoffer says:
I don’t see the place where R. Gates has made the mistake that I pointed out that you made. Could you direct me to it?
Wayne:
You wouldn’t take yes for an answer.
If you parse what I said, namely, “What my code–and yours–computes is not, as I characterized it, “the temperature of a uniform-temperature sphere that radiates the same total power,” you will see that I was not criticizing the code (yours or mine) or the equation it implements; I was criticizing the mischaracterization made by my code’s comments. I was in fact saying exactly what you responded with by saying “You say: ‘the temperature of a uniform-temperature sphere that radiates the same total power’ and that is totally incorrect.”
Resolution aside, moreover, the only substantive difference I see between my R code and your C code is my code’s assumption–which makes a negligible difference in the result–that the background radiation is isotropic instead of all coming from the sun’s direction. So, yes, I do understand that your program does indeed “correctly [compute] the ‘mean effective radiative temperature’ of a massless gray body as a perfect radiator.” I therefore recognize that objections based, e.g., on the moon’s higher average temperature have no merit as far as the correctness of your and my results and, to the extent that our programs implement Equation 2, the authors’. (I still don’t understand their integrating with respect to mu, but that’s probably just a testimony to how little remains of my once-adequate mathematical ability.)
However, now that I have a firm grasp on what those results are, I find I’m not yet able to comprehend their relevance to the question before the house, and I certainly see no evidence that supports your contention that “most of climate science on the radiation side keep[s] insisting on a massless surface without any thermal inertia, they keep assuming all radiation hitting the Earth immediately and totally radiates back to space.”
And, the apparently contrary evidence in my mischaracterization above notwithstanding, I doubt that many reasonably numerate observers fail to grasp the fact that the total radiation emitted by a body can vary widely with surface-temperature distribution even if the spatial-average temperature is kept constant; many commenters in this blog and others have made that point implicitly–and occasionally explicitly–in criticizing the concept of global average temperature. So I would caution you not to jump to that conclusion–as there is some evidence that the authors have–from the fact that people resist Equation 2’s results. I believe it much more likely (1) that some are objecting not to its correctness but rather to its relevance and (2) that others misunderstand it because, in reading it over more quickly than you and now I have, they assume the authors are shooting for a different quantity, one that has more relevance than I’ve yet been able to perceive to the question of whether atmospheric density alone amplifies the surface’s temperature response to insolation. My guess that the latter is the reason why Lord M argued past you in his response.
Now, I haven’t given the rest of Nikilov’s post a fair shake, and, given what he reports is a great deal of prior effort on it by him and others, there is some basis for hope that there’s more to it than smart guys like, e.g., Roy Spencer yet see. But I am pessimistic because the authors seem to base so much on what I think is an invalid assumption that they are among very few who understand the temperature-field implications of Hoelder’s inequality.
Joel Shore says:
December 31, 2011 at 4:58 pm
“As I have demonstrated here and nobody has seriously challenged, Monckton’s current pet argument about climate sensitivity is completely and utterly bogus. ”
With an average temperature of 288 K, the earth would radiate at about 390.7 watts Supposedly a doubling of CO2 would increase that by an additional 3.8 watts, That would result in an increased temperature to 288 * (394.5/390.7)^0.25 = 288.7, or an increase of 0.7 K, hardly catastrophic The assumed 3K warning is all smoke and mirrors
You have asserted that Monckton is wrong, but you haven’t DEMONSTRATED anything,
I think you’re using Lewis Carroll logic
The Hunting of the Snark
Lewis Carroll
Fit the First – The Landing
“Just the place for a Snark!” the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
“Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What i tell you three times is true.”
Arguing about a non-greenhouse earth earlier, some have pointed out the average temperatue of the moon, about 250 K. Note that the average fluctuation over a lunar day is on the order of 100 to 300 K, as opposed to earth’s diurnal fluctuaton of more like 10 K.
Even if average temperatures on earth went up by 4.5 K, about 2/3 of that would be increased nighttime and winter temperatures, making the planet much cozier for us creatures who originated in the tropics. – and for life in general.
Joel Shore;
I don’t see the place where R. Gates has made the mistake that I pointed out that you made. Could you direct me to it?>>>
Sure, happy to oblige. Since you object to my extrapolation from 280 ppm as the logarithmic function breaks down at concentrations approaching zero, then by the same logic, R. Gates cannot extrapolate any sensitivity calculations based on any assumptions about the net effect of CO2 in current concentrations for the exact same reason. Since he doesn’t know how much of his 6 degrees is a product of CO2 in the non logarithmic range, he cannot draw any conclusions about the remaining effect in the logarithmic range.
R. Gates says:
December 31, 2011 at 3:39 pm
… such that the 25% conservative estimate of the contribution to the 33C of warming does not even begin to indicate the full measure and value of the stability that CO2 brings to temperatures from its non-condensing nature.
————————————-
I seem to be picking on you lately but it is not on purpose.
CO2 might be non-condensing, but it cycles through the atmosphere on the order of just 4 to 5 years. Its lifetime is just 4 or 5 years.
Each 4.5 years, CO2 gets converted into C6H12O6 + 6O2 (vegetation) and H2CO3 (ocean) amongst hundreds of other molecules.
There is balance of CO2 in the atmosphere but it can turn around and get cut in half in short order by just more rainfall or more ice-sheet formation.
So let’s not have anymore of that CO2 controls 90% of the water vapour. It could easily be the other way around.
Joe Born says:
January 1, 2012 at 6:39 am
Joe, I do apologize. I missed the word ‘not’ and totally misunderstood you. Guess I’ve been beat over the head by some that like to make me always sound wrong this week, or maybe just too little sleep. So you did get your code close enough to see it was correct, great. I do have want to reply deeper to you further comment but I’ll have to get back later this eve. Just had to stop and write you this at the moment. Oh, check Dr. Spencer’s site and skip down to Dr. Nikolov’s statements on NASA’s new lunar orbiter data that apparently backs his equations (1) and (2). I’m like you, still trying to understand some of the deeper portions.
Alan D McIntyre says:
You have omitted feedbacks…and done the no-feedback calculation incorrectly by looking at the surface energy balance (which is hard to work with because much more than radiation affects it) rather than the top-of-the-atmosphere energy balance.
I have provided detailed explanations and a very nice analogy here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/30/feedback-about-feedbacks-and-suchlike-fooleries/#comment-848206 and http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/30/feedback-about-feedbacks-and-suchlike-fooleries/#comment-848211
Nobody has made any coherent challenge to them because they are clearly correct.
With regard to Gates, davidmhoffer says: “That would mean that if 280 ppm = 6 degrees, then 400 ppm which is close to what we have now would result in another +3 (CO2 being logarithmic, plus 40% is about a 50% increase). That in turn would be about 6 degrees for doubling of CO2, TWICE as much as you claim with your utterly ridiculous circular logic based on artificial models being averaged with totally discredited paleo records.”
Well said, as I was just conjuring the same thoughts while looking at the logarithmic heating effect of CO2 and CO2 at an atmospheric concentration of 0.04%. How so little can be so dynamic. Amazing little gaseous compound CO2 is.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/heating_effect_of_co2.png
Monckton, is of course, doing the right thing by and as you so did yourself in vetting out the nonsense.
Joel Shore says:
January 1, 2012 at 10:23 am
……
“You have omitted feedbacks…and done the no-feedback calculation incorrectly by looking at the surface energy balance (which is hard to work with because much more than radiation affects it) rather than the top-of-the-atmosphere energy balance.”
Yes, I omitted feedbacks. The original effect is small- about 0.7 K as Monkton asserted , based on simple calculations. It’s up to you to DEMONSTRATE that there will be a positive feedback fo a factor of 4 or greater- to increase temperatures by 3K as you assert. Over the aeons of earth’s history, feedback has generally been negative- else we wouldn;t have had oceans lasting for aeons.
As to surface energy balance see
http://www.geo.utexas.edu/courses/387H/Lectures/chap2.pdf
specifically sections 2.3 through 2.5 and figure 2.12
Ultimately, the amount of radiation leaving the earth has to equal the radiation approaching the earth for the situation to be in equilibrium If an instant doubling of CO2 would .decrease the outgoing wattage from 240 to 236.2 watts, the earth would warm up until the outgoing wattage reached 240 again. From figure 12, you’ll see that once the earth is in balance again, the surface flux would also have increased by 3.8 watts ( or less since CO2 is not equally transluctant in all frequencies). My assumed 3.8 watt increase for the surface was actually CONSERVATIVE.
You continue to misspell my name- so much for your powers of observation.
Let it be made plain again: Kiehl & Trenberth’s paper of 1997, from which I took the radiative forcing interval for the presence as opposed to absence of all greenhouse gases, is not, repeat not, talking about feedbacks. The system forcing interval 101[86-125] Watts per square meter represents radiative forcings only, and does not include feedbacks. From this interval the system sensitivity follows, as explained in my posts. The troll who persists in asserting – without evidence or citation – that his inaccurate representation of Kiehl & Trenberth’s paper is correct and that I am not taking into account feedbacks that he wishes were a major constituent of the system forcing interval, and who draws futile analogies with the activities of Bill Gates, is not contributing constructively, as the generally unpleasant, sneering tone of his posts indicates.
In the opposite direction, I also have concerns about the so-called “slayers” who have long tried to pretend that there is no such thing as the greenhouse effect. One of the “slayers”, in a comment on this thread, has cited an experiment by Dr. Nasif Nahle. However, that experiment was not fit for its purpose, since the equipment used was inappropriate. Also, I have reason to know that Dr. Nahle has himself recently realized that the “slayers” are not pursuing honest or sensible science and has distanced himself from them.
The “slayers” do great harm to the objective of bringing the world’s ruling elite to its senses, because they make it easy for the climate-extremist faction to maintain that “skeptics” as a whole do not even believe in the greenhouse effect. Indeed, anyone wanting to discredit the questioners of the official storyline could hardly do better than to set up a spoof group to manufacture a bogus notion that there is no greenhouse effect, precisely so as to allow the alarmists to tar us all with the “slayers'” ludicrous brush.
To the “slayers”, and to Dr. Nikolov’s separate group, I say this. The warming effect of increasing the concentration of a a greenhouse gas in an atmosphere such as that of the Earth was well established by experiment in 1859. The experiment has been frequently repeated since then. Unless and until a convincing contrary experiment be done, the matter is not in doubt.
Therefore, however superficially attractive it may be to invent new notions of how the atmosphere keeps the Earth warm, any paradigm that assumes – as Dr. Nikolov’s team do – that the temperature at the surface of an astronomical body possessing an atmosphere is dependent solely upon its pressure and density is overlooking the measured and readily-verifiable fact that adding a very small quantum of CO2 to the atmosphere will cause a far larger warming than the resultant minuscule alteration in atmospheric density and pressure would lead them to expect.
My recommendation is that one should either stick to established science, as I try in my fumbling. layman’s way to do, or publish in the peer-reviewed literature a proper, scientifically-credible refutation of the established science – established not by mere modeling but by a straightforward and well-grounded experiment.
Using the IPCC’s own data and methods, it is not difficult to establish that climate sensitivity is low. One can do it by numerous methods, of which these postings have outlined two: the equilibrium system sensitivity and the transient industrial-era sensitivity, which are near-identical, suggesting that temperature feedbacks may be net-zero or thereby.
Fortunately, some of the world’s leading politicians and bureaucrats are beginning to listen rather carefully now to the low-sensitivity case, not least because it can be established without complex and increasingly incomprehensible computer models, and because it is doing a better job of predicting future climate than the extremists’ models, and because the pseudo-scientific attacks on it by the usual suspects are so in-your-face intellectually dishonest. The trolls who have tried to play a shoddy public-relations game by making up false challenges to the low-sensitivity case should realize, therefore, that such attacks based on bogus science are no longer impressive to the world’s decision-makers, who are increasingly listening to the low-sensitivity case with attention and respect. The billions spent on public relations by watermelon groups and governments are no longer convincing anyone. If the climate extremists want anyone serious to heed them, they should keep their arguments scientific and abandon the childishly ad-hominem tone that marks out their contributions for what they are – expressions of sheer desperation as their miserable house of cards collapses around them.
Alan D McIntire said:
Then your calculation is not relevant to the issue at hand.
Sorry about the misspelling…but snide remarks like this about what it does or does not indicate might care a little more weight if you hadn’t misspelled Monckton’s in the very same comment.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
It continues to amaze me that someone who considers himself qualified to make pronouncements that the scientists who write the IPCC report are wrong about feedbacks has so little basic understanding of what a forcing or feedback is that he would make such a nonsensical claim as the one you are making. Anyone who actually understood what the meaning of forcing and feedback are would know that they are defined by the context of the situation. Whether water vapor is considered a feedback or a forcing depends on whether the change in water vapor in the atmosphere comes about by some direct change or whether it comes about as a result of some other change, such as a change in non-condensable greenhouse gases that then lead to a change in temperature.
The whole question of relevance for the water vapor feedback is how much of the water vapor that is in the atmosphere is due to the other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (and the resulting warming that they cause) and how much would be there anyway. You are assuming that it would all be there anyway.
The Kiehl and Trenberth paper is not addressing this question…They are merely calculating the total effect of all the greenhouse gases that are present in the atmosphere without regard to how they got there. The paper by Lacis et al addresses, using modeling, the question of what happens if you remove the non-condensable greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and concludes that most of the water vapor ends up getting removed too.
If you are really incapable of understanding this stuff, then read my analogy that presents in terms that even a non-scientist can understand. And, for heaven’s sake, refrain on commenting about feedbacks until you understand the very basics about what they are.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
Anybody can take data and methods and use them incorrectly to produce results that happen to be more in line with what they would like to think the truth is. The actual facts are these:
(1) Your “equilibrium system sensitivity” is simply wrong because you don’t understand the distinction between forcing and feedback and how it depends on context. In particular, you are assuming no feedbacks in computing your sensitivity because you are considering the radiative effect of all the water vapor that is in the atmosphere, without determining to what extent it is there only because of the additional warmth produced by the non-condensable greenhouse gases and to what extent it would be there anyway. It is trivially easy to see how it is wrong with an analogy as I have presented: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/30/feedback-about-feedbacks-and-suchlike-fooleries/#comment-848211
(2) The actual fact is that the industrial era data can be used to support a high sensitivity or a low sensitivity depending on assumptions made, even staying with assumptions that are reasonable. IN OTHER WORDS, THE INDUSTRIAL ERA DATA DOES NOT PROVIDE A TIGHT CONSTRAINT ON THE CLIMATE SENSITIVITY. This is why this piece of empirical data is used in concert with other empirical data in order to establish the best constraints on climate sensitivity (and, admittedly, even with all the data together the constraints are not as tight as one would ideally like them to be…but they are better).
P.S. – I agree with you about the “Slayers” and how they are hurting your cause more than helping it, at least among scientists. I think, however, that the Slayers may well have made the calculation that this is worth doing because they are not trying to appeal to scientists, but rather to the public. Your refusal to budge on your clearly wrong notions about point (1) above makes me wonder how seriously you are really trying to win over knowledgeable scientists…Your argument may fool a few more people than the Slayers’ arguments do, but ultimately nobody who really understands about forcings and feedbacks.
I applaud you Lord Monckton for focusing strictly on using their own ammunition against them and staying within those boundaries. That is the only way exposes work in the real world. My most expressed congratulations on a job very well done.
Happy New Year to you and your kin,
Best,
J.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
January 1, 2012 at 4:01 pm
I read your comment, two times, and see your points very clearly, but if I was going to be any real help to you, it would take me a while to carefully compile. It would have to do with the various ‘flavors’ of people here on WUWT, and there are many. You seem to be speaking to WUWT as a whole entity but you are going to find you will never get the expected resonse, as a whole, and I’m not talking of the counter commenters, if you don’t also pay attention to who and why each commenter is here to accomplish, or just for the argumentative entertainment. See my point, it took me the first year to come to that realization and the next to try to sort the personalities so I myself did not go starking mad! It made no sense.
If you want my help, I will not name names, but I just might help you to know why certain groups, even though they wholly support your efforts and see ecactly where you are coming from and try to aid when possible, might seem against you in some respects if you are not aware of exactly where their effort are lying. A very few, like myself, have move way past where you might we are and are moving on into the future, past the low sensitivity, you have convinced me, for that is where it is, low, maybe even so small ignorable, and I am personally trying to answer the next layer of questions that already seem to present themselves as Dr. Nikolov seem also to do. But keep up with your efforts for yours is hugely more than mine in the actual “today” with the politics the way they are.
Maybe that gives you a little insight when you might seem one of my comments, it is not counter to you, your point has already been accepted and I’ve moved down the scientific road. I’m not very good at either arguments or politics.
If you want it any deeper thoughts on that matter, let me know. Either a comment back here or Anthony or the mods have my email address and I give permission for you to have it and please excuse my terrible handling of words, that is one more of my weak points.
“A very few, like myself, have move way past where you might we are and are moving on into the future, past the low sensitivity, you have convinced me, for that is where it is, low, maybe even so small ignorable, and I am personally trying to answer the next layer of questions that already seem to present themselves as Dr. Nikolov seem also to do.”
Yes, I agree, trying to get answers. And it’s very messy. But I hope people are learning as
much as I imagine I am learning. I claim I don’t have the answer. I also claim no one has the answer- if we did there would less serious arguments.
I agree with Lord Monkton that for tactical reasons, it is sensible to use IPCC whenever possible data even if that data is questionable.
I consider that observational data establishes what Lord Monkton has to say about low sensitivity UNLESS there is a significant delay in the effects of net feedbacks being felt in the climate system. If net feed back takes place on a century scale (or even 30 to 50 years), we have not yet seen the effects of net feedback and therefore the conclusions drawn from more recent observational may not be sound and may be over stated.
I should state that I am one of those who is sceptical to the claims of the IPCC and I consider it likely that net feedbacks to CO2 are neutral or even negative. I merely point out that there are arguments of certainty surrounding the point being made by Lord Monkton.
Please stop trashing compact flourescent light bulbs. I completely agree windmills and solar panels for bulk power generation are completely useless and a major con, although not for many smaller scale specialised applications
Agreed, CFLs are lovely and save a bunch of money! However, note that solar panels will not remain any sort of con at all for very long (and in some places aren’t much of a con now). At the current rate of improvement in the technology, large scale solar will be break even to win a bit within the decade without any sort of subsidy or stimulus, and there is no good reason to think that this decade will be “it” as far as solar cell technology is concerned. Also note that the cost/benefit solar cells doesn’t improve “smoothly” — it is a series of more or less discrete discoveries and subsequent improvements, smeared out by many things, in several completely distinct approaches.
To put it another way, within 20 years there will be major solar plants being built “everywhere” no matter what if capitalism continues to work the way it should. Probably within ten years, actually, for a smaller subset of everywhere. Higher fuel prices make it happen sooner; fuel price drops postpone it, but solar is coming unless cost-effective thermonuclear fusion happens first.
This is actually important because it illustrates another fallacy in the IPCC arguments — that all things will remain equal. They won’t. They never have. Witness (as a metaphor, if you like) the SETI program, looking for radio emissions from distant civilizations — initiated back at a time when the world was “bright” with high power radio emissions, with radio stations and television and so on and we thought distant civilizations must be like us, radiating like crazy. Then optical fiber came along and it was proposed that advanced civilizations might not radiate at all! And now cell phones have come along, and we’re radiating like crazy again, although in a very different (incoherent) way, so that we are probably still invisible to our own SETI search tools.
Similarly, while we will probably use fossil fuels to move vehicles unless/until somebody comes up with a cost-effective way of achieving similar energy densities some other way — it is difficult to compete with the energy content of a gallon of gasoline or diesel fuel — we will very likely stop using them to generate electricity most if not all of the time not to save the Earth from Evil CO_2 but because they are more expensive than (better) alternatives. At some point we may even get to where synthesizing gasoline and/or fuel oils from plants is economically more sensible than mining fossil oil, and we’ll basically start recycling the carbon with a energy assist from the Sun. No matter; in fifty years people will look back on the “panic” of the present and smile at our own naivety as we failed to foresee that (fill in a dozen technologies, some of which may not even been conceived yet) would make the use of fossil fuels moot long before they became a problem, if using fossil fuels could ever become a problem.
Personally I think oil is far too useful a substance to burn, and I dislike some aspects of the direct effect it has had on the history of the world (political, economic and military) as nations have used every possible means to ensure access to and control over oil as a resource. But it won’t matter what you, or I, or anyone else think of oil, or solar cells, or coal, or even wind politically — what matters is what is cost effective in a continually changing field of supporting technologies.
If thermonuclear fusion were perfected and made commercially viable by (say) 2020, is there any doubt that anthropogenic CO_2 production would (and probably will!) plunge to a fraction of its current value within at most another decade, and continue to plunge until it returns at or close to pre-industrial levels? If (when!) solar cells drop to $0.25/watt (and improved means of storing daytime energy for nighttime use are developed), will not the exact same thing happen, without any help? If thorium/salt fission plants turn out to be as meltdown-proof and cost-effective as they appear likely to be (and eliminate most of the risk of nuclear proliferation in their implementation) will this not make a huge difference in the CO_2 output of at least countries with vast thorium reserves (China and India come to mind, 1/3 of the world’s population)?
So perhaps the one technology to whack on is wind. Even wind is a useful energy source — witness the use of windmills for at least centuries to do work in areas difficult to supply energy in any other way AND where the wind is reliable. However, the wind isn’t terribly reliable in most locations. Probably the best thing to do with wind is leave it alone — don’t subsidize it, don’t encourage it, don’t discourage it. That way it can be implemented as an economic decision where it makes cost-benefit sense. The technology itself is pretty stable and unlikely to fundamentally change. The problem isn’t that wind isn’t useful, it is that wind isn’t useful everywhere, and isn’t worth additional cost (and lowered benefits) if there is no CAGW scare to drive it even in most places where the wind does blow with some degree of regularity.
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Joel Shore continues to misrepresent Kiehl & Trenberth’s 1997 paper, in which radiative forcings only, and not temperature feedbacks, are considered. The paper is quite specific and I have already cited one of the relevant passages. The evidential value of the paper seems greater than that of Mr. Shore’s oft-repeated claims, which do not seem to be supported by evidence and are impolitely expressed.
Radiative forcings are changes in the net (down-minus-up) flux of radiation at the tropopause caused by some external perturbation of the climate, such as a change in insolation, a Milankovich cycle, or an anthropogenic increase in greenhouse-gas concentrations.
Temperature feedbacks are also radiative forcings, but they are consequent upon a temperature change triggered by the initial forcing that perturbed the presumed pre-existing equilibrium of the climate system. Feedbacks are consequently expressed not in Watts per square meter simpliciter but in Watts per square meter per Kelvin of the initial warming that triggered them.
The forcings in Kiehl and Trenberth’s paper are plainly and repeatedly expressed in Watts per square meter simpliciter, not in Watts per square meter per Kelvin.
If Mr. Shore would like to gain a better understanding of the distinction between radiative forcings and temperature feedbacks, he may like to read the comprehensive pedagogical study by Roe (2009). Roe was a student of the great Professor Richard Lindzen.
The IPCC’s case for alarm rests solely upon the assumption that temperature feedbacks are strongly net-positive. Reliance upon this assumption has the effect of multiplying any initial forcing approximately threefold.
However, a growing body of empirical evidence in the peer-reviewed literature suggests that the IPCC – which unwisely relies too heavily on purely numerical as opposed to empirical or theoretical methods – is simply wrong in its assumption that feedbacks are strongly net-positive. For powerful reasons explained in earlier posts here last year, it is near-impossible for the climate to remain stable in the presence of temperature feedbacks as strongly net-positive as the IPCC imagines.
No temperature feedback can be definitively measured by empirical methods. A fortiori, no feedback can be reliably determined by numerical methods either. Yet the IPCC’s entire case rests upon assuming the feedbacks are strongly net-positive (amplifying the original warming triggered by the base forcing), rather than net-zero or even somewhat net-negative. Negative feedbacks (whose history is given at the beginning of Roe’s paper, and it is a rattling good yarn), are consistent with the remarkably temperature-stable climate of the past 60 million years, during which global temperatures have not varied by more than 3% either side of the mean. Though even these small changes in temperature can bring us ice ages at one moment and a hothouse Earth the next, they are too small to be consistent with high climate sensitivity.
If Mr. Shore would like to grasp the reasons why temperature feedbacks in the Earth’s climate are very much more likely to be net-zero or even net-negative than net-positive, he may like to consult a process engineer, such as Dr. David Evans. It was in the context of electrical circuitry that the modern analysis of feedbacks began. The classic textbook is by Bode (1945): but be warned, the book requires a good working knowledge of applied mathematics, and is 551 pages long.
Nikolov and Zeller suggest that there is no back radiation, just the temperature of the air above the surface. I agree and this is why.
We do not need the GHGs at all in order to set the surface temperature of the atmosphere.
Atmospheric pressure dictates the energy value of the latent heat of vaporisation so it is atmospheric pressure that dictates the rate at which energy can leave the oceans. The more it costs in terms of energy to achieve evaporation the warmer the oceans must become before equilibrium is reached.
So the oceans will build up to whatever temperature is permitted by atmospheric pressure with or without any GHGs in the air at all.
Once that ocean temperature is achieved the energy for the baseline temperature of the air above the surface is then supplied to the air by energy leaving the oceans and NOT by energy coming in from the sun and especially NOT by energy flowing down from above as so called back radiation.
So the upshot is that the oceans accumulate solar energy until they radiate 390 at current atmospheric pressure, at that point 170 continues to be added by solar but to balance the budget the atmosphere by virtue of its density retains whatever energy is required to achieve balance.
A feature of GHGs is that they add to the temperature of the air proportionately more than other gases in the atmosphere but in the end it is surface pressure that controls the energy value of the latent heat of vaporisation which is the ultimate arbiter of what rate of energy transfer can be achieved from oceans to air.
So if GHGs add a surplus over and above that required by surface pressure for equilibrium then the system has to make an adjustment but what it cannot do is alter the energy value of the latent heat of vaporisation in the absence of any change in atmospheric mass or pressure. So instead it is the rate of evaporation that must change to balance the budget in the absence of a significant change in surface pressure. Thus a change in the size or speed of the water cycle removes in latent form any excess energy produced as a result of GHGs.
There is no back radiation, merely a temperature for the atmosphere just above the surface and it is wholly pressure dependent. That temperature is a consequence not of downward atmospheric scattering of outgoing longwave but simply a consequence of atmospheric density slowing down energy loss first from sea to air and then by separate mechanisms from the air above the sea surface to space.
So if one increases atmospheric pressure at the surface the amount of energy required to provoke evaporation at the sea surface rises and the equilibrium temperature of the whole system rises including the temperature of the air above the surface.
The opposite if one decreases atmospheric pressure at the surface.
We have been looking at back radiation from the wrong point of view. There is no such thing. What we see is simply the air temperature near the surface and it is pressure dependent and not GHG dependent.
Wherever my previous post refers to GHGs I actually mean non condensing GHGs.
The feedbacks are only 2.0 W/m2/C anyway (including positive cloud feedback of close to 1.0 W/m2/C which is clearly in question now).
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-8-14.html
So, plug in the direct forcing from doubling of +3.7 W/m2 (might actually be +4.0 W/m2) and we get a direct temperature increase of about 1.0C at the tropopause. Okay, add 2.0 W/m2 of feedbacks and we get a rise of just 5.7 W/m2 to 6.0 W/m2 of total direct forcings and feedbacks.
That would result in and increase of temperatures at the tropopause of just +1.5C and, if the same wattage applied to the surface, an increase in temperatures of just +1.0C.
– direct forcing +4.0 W/m2,
– feedbacks +2.0 W/m2
– Stefan Boltzmann says that results in just +1.0C (surface) to +1.5C (tropopause)
The math backwards and forwards. The pro-AGW like to talk about feedbacks but then they never check to see if that makes much difference. The IPCC says it doesn’t.
I can’t speak for your program, but I will stand by mine for correctly computing the ‘mean effective radiative temperature’ of a massless gray body as a perfect radiator. Remember, there is no real temperature in such of an example for there is no mass. It takes mass to even define temperature. (but most climate scientist have no problem with it and therefore they are all wrong, sorry)
I’d like to chime in and support this statement, without necessarily endorsing the results of the computation (since I’d have to look at code and results directly to do that:-). Let’s just think about scaling for a moment. There are several equations involved here:
P = (4\pi R^2)\epsilon\sigma T^4
is the total power radiated from a sphere of radius R at uniform temperature T. \sigma is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant and can be ignored for the moment in a scaling discussion. \epsilon describes the emissivity of the body and is a constant of order unity (unity for a black body, less for a “grey” body, more generally still a function of wavelength and not a constant at all). Again, for scaling we will ignore \epsilon.
Now let’s assume that the temperature is not uniform. To make life simple, we will model a non-uniform temperature as a sphere with a uniform “hot side” at temperature T + dT and a “cold side” at uniform temperature T – dT. Half of the sphere will be hot, half cold. The spatial mean temperature, note well, is still T. Then:
P’ = (4\pi R^2)\epsilon\sigma ( 0.5*(T + dT)^4 + 0.5(T – dT)^4)
is the power radiated away now. We only care how this scales, so we: a) Do a binomial expansion of P’ to second order (the first order terms in dT cancel); and b) form the ratio P’/P to get:
P’/P = 1 + 6 (dT/T)^2
This lets us make one observation and perform an estimate. The observation is that P’ is strictly larger than P — a non-uniform distribution of temperature on the sphere radiates energy away strictly faster than it is radiated away by a uniform sphere of the same radius with the same mean temperature. This is perfectly understandable — the fourth power of the hot side goes up much faster than the fourth power of the cold side goes down, never even mind that the cold side temperature is bounded from below at T_c = 0.
The estimate: dT/T \approx 0.03 for the Earth. This isn’t too important — it is an order of magnitude estimate, with T \approx 300K and dT \approx 10K. (0.03^2 = 0.0009 \approx 0.001 so that 6(0.03)^2 \approx 0.006. Of course, if you use latitude instead of day/night side stratification for dT, it is much larger. Really, one should use both and integrate the real temperature distribution (snapshot) — or work even harder — but we’re just trying to get a feel for how things vary here, not produce a credible quantitative computation.
For the Earth to be in equilibrium, S/4 must equal P’ — as much heat as is incident must be radiated away. I’m not concerned with the model, only with the magnitude of the scaling ratio — 1375 * 0.006 = 8.25 W/m^2, divided by four suggests that the fact that the temperature of the earth is not uniform increases the rate at which heat is lost (overall) by roughly 2 W/m^2. This is not a negligible amount in this game. It is even less negligible when one considers the difference not between mean daytime and mean nighttime temperatures but between equatorial and polar latitudes! There dT is more like 0.2, and the effect is far more pronounced!
The point is that as temperatures increase, the rate at which the Earth loses heat goes strictly up, all things being equal. Hot bodies lose heat (to radiation) much faster than cold bodies due to Stefan-Boltzmann’s T^4 straight up; then anything that increases the inhomogeneity of the temperature distribution around the (increased) mean tends to increase it further still. Note well that the former scales like:
P’/P = 1 + 4 dT/T + …
straight up! (This assumes T’ = T + dT, with dT << T the warming.) At the high end of the IPCC doom scale, a temperature increase of 5.6C is 5.6/280 \approx 0.02. That increases the rate of Stefan-Boltzmann radiative power loss by a factor of 0.08 or nearly 10%. I would argue that this is absurd — there is basically no way in hell doubling CO_2 (to a concentration that is still < 0.1%) is going to alter the radiative energy balance of the Earth by 10%.
The beauty of considering P'/P in all of these discussions is that it loses all of the annoying (and often unknown!) factors such as \epsilon. All that they require is that \epsilon itself not vary in first order, faster than the relevant term in the scaling relation. They also give one a number of “sanity checks”. The sanity checks suggest that one simply cannot assume that the Earth is a ball at some uniform temperature without making important errors, They also suggest that changes of more than 1-2C around some geological-time mean temperature are nearly absurdly unlikely, given the fundamental T^4 in the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. Basically, given T = 288, every 1K increase in T corresponds to a 1.4% increase in total radiated power. If one wants a “smoking gun” to explain global temperature variation, it needs to be smoking at a level where net power is modulated at the same scale as the temperature in degrees Kelvin.
Are there candidates for this sort of a gun? Sure. Albedo, for one. 1% changes in (absolute) albedo can modulate temperature by roughly 1K. An even better one is modulation of temperature distribution. If we learn anything from the decadal oscillations, it is that altering the way temperature is distributed on the surface of the planet has a profound and sometimes immediate effect on the net heating or cooling. This is especially true at the top of the troposphere. Alteration of greenhouse gas concentrations — especially water — have the right order of magnitude. Oceanic trapping and release and redistribution of heat is important — Europe isn’t cold not just because of CO_2 but because the Gulf Stream transports equatorial heat to warm it up! Interrupt the “global conveyor belt” and watch Europe freeze (and then North Asia freeze, and then North America freeze, and then…).
But best of all is a complex, nonlinear mix of all of the above! Albedo, global circulation (convection), Oceanic transport of heat, atmospheric water content, all change the way temperature is distributed (and hence lost to radiation) and all contribute, I’m quite certain, in nontrivial ways to the average global temperature. When heat is concentrated in the tropics, T_h is higher (and T_c is lower) compared to T and the world cools faster. When heat is distributed (convected) to the poles, T_h is closer to T_c and the world cools overall more slowly, closer to a baseline blackbody. When daytime temperatures are much higher than nighttime tempratures, the world cools relatively quickly; when they are more the same it is closer to baseline black/grey body. When dayside albedo is high less power is absorbed in the first place, and net cooling occurs; when nightside albedo is high there is less night cooling, less temperature differential, and so on.
The point is that this is a complex problem, not a simple one. When anyone claims that it is simple, they are probably trying to sell you something. It isn’t a simple physics problem, and it is nearly certain that we don’t yet know how all of the physics is laid out. The really annoying thing about the entire climate debate is the presumption by everyone that the science is settled. It is not. It is not even close to being settled. We will still be learning important things about the climate a decade from now. Until all of the physics is known, and there are no more watt/m^2 scale surprises, we won’t be able to build an accurate model, and until we can build an accurate model on a geological time scale, we won’t be able to answer the one simple question that must be answered before we can even estimate AGW:
What is the temperature that it would be outside right now, if CO_2 were still at its pre-industrial level?
I don’t think we can begin to answer this question based on what we know right now. We can’t explain why the MWP happened (without CO_2 modulation). We can’t explain why the LIA happened (without CO_2 modulation). We can’t explain all of the other significant climate changes all the way back to the Holocene Optimum (much warmer than today) or the Younger Dryas (much colder than today) even in just the Holocene. We can’t explain why there are ice ages 90,000 years out of every 100,000, why it was much warmer 15 million years ago, why geological time hot and cold periods come along and last for millions to hundreds of millions of years. We don’t know when the Holocene will end, or why it will end when it ends, or how long it will take to go from warm to cold conditions. We are pretty sure the Sun has a lot to do with all of this but we don’t know how, or whether or not it involves more than just the Sun. We cannot predict solar state decades in advance, let alone centuries, and don’t do that well predicting it on a timescale of merely years in advance. We cannot predict when or how strong the decadal oscillations will occur. We don’t know when continental drift will alter e.g. oceanic or atmospheric circulation patterns “enough” for new modes to emerge (modes which could lead to abrupt and violent changes in climate all over the world).
Finally, we don’t know how to build a faithful global climate model, in part because we need answers to many of these questions before we can do so! Until we can, we’re just building nonlinear function fitters that do OK at interpolation, and are lousy at extrapolation.
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Bill Illis says:
Wow, Bill. The IPCC made a trivial math error and you are the first to notice it? How about the more likely explanation: You are the one who has made the math error because you don’t know what you are doing.
You have used the wrong equation for including the feedbacks: The feedbacks act not only on the original temperature rise due to increase in CO2 but also on the subsequent temperature rise due to the feedbacks themselves. You have to solve self-consistently.
What you have done is mathematically equivalent to saying that the sum of the infinite geometric series 1+ (2/3) + (4/9) + (8/27) + … = 1.67 because you just take the first two terms in the series. (The actual sum is 3.)
Robert Brown that is an outstanding contribution. With your permission I’d like to post that on my blog, where it is relevant to our discussion of Nikolov and Zeller’s Unified Theory of Climate.
Thanks