By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Joel Shore, who has been questioning my climate-sensitivity calculations, just as a good skeptic should, has kindly provided at my request a reference to a paper by Dr. Andrew Lacis and others at the Goddard Institute of Space Studies to support his assertion that CO2 exercises about 75% of the radiative forcings from all greenhouse gases, because water vapor, the most significant greenhouse gas because of its high concentration in the atmosphere, condenses out rapidly, while the non-condensing gases, such as CO2, linger for years.
Dr. Lacis writes in a commentary on his paper: “While the non-condensing greenhouse gases account for only 25% of the total greenhouse effect, it is these non-condensing GHGs that actually control the strength of the terrestrial greenhouse effect, since the water vapor and cloud feedback contributions are not self-sustaining and, as such, only provide amplification.”
Dr. Lacis’ argument, then, is that the radiative forcing from water vapor should be treated as a feedback, because if all greenhouse gases were removed from the atmosphere most of the water vapor now in the atmosphere would condense or precipitate out within ten years, and within 50 years global temperatures would be some 21 K colder than the present.
I have many concerns about this paper, which – for instance – takes no account of the fact that evaporation from the surface occurs at thrice the rate imagined by computer models (Wentz et al., 2007). So there would be a good deal more water vapor in the atmosphere even without greenhouse gases than the models assume.
The paper also says the atmospheric residence time of CO2 is “measured in thousands of years”. Even the IPCC, prone to exaggeration as it is, puts the residence time at 50-200 years. On notice I can cite three dozen papers dating back to Revelle in the 1950s that find the CO2 residence time to be just seven years, though Professor Lindzen says that for various reasons 40 years is a good central estimate.
Furthermore, it is questionable whether the nakedly political paragraph with which the paper ends should have been included in what is supposed to be an impartial scientific analysis. To assert without evidence that beyond 300-350 ppmv CO2 concentration “dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system would exceed the 25% risk tolerance for impending degradation of land and ocean ecosystems, sea-level rise [at just 2 inches per century over the past eight years, according to Envisat], and inevitable disruption of socioeconomic and food-producing infrastructure” is not merely unsupported and accordingly unscientific: it is rankly political.
One realizes that many of the scientists at GISS belong to a particular political faction, and that at least one of them used to make regular and substantial donations to Al Gore’s re-election campaigns, but learned journals are not the place for über-Left politics.
My chief concern, though, is that the central argument in the paper is in effect a petitio principii – a circular and accordingly invalid argument in which one of the premises – that feedbacks are strongly net-positive, greatly amplifying the warming triggered by a radiative forcing – is also the conclusion.
The paper turns out to be based not on measurement, observation and the application of established theory to the results but – you guessed it – on playing with a notorious computer model of the climate: Giss ModelE. The model, in effect, assumes very large net-positive feedbacks for which there is precious little reliable empirical or theoretical evidence.
At the time when Dr. Lacis’ paper was written, ModelE contained “flux adjustments” (in plain English, fudge-factors) amounting to some 50 Watts per square meter, many times the magnitude of the rather small forcing that we are capable of exerting on the climate.
Dr. Lacis says ModelE is rooted in well-understood physical processes. If that were so, one would not expect such large fudge-factors (mentioned and quantified in the model’s operating manual) to be necessary.
Also, one would expect the predictive capacity of this and other models to be a great deal more successful than it has proven to be. As the formidable Dr. John Christy of NASA has written recently, in the satellite era (most of which in any event coincides with the natural warming phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation) temperatures have been rising at a rate between a quarter and a half of the rate that models such as ModelE have been predicting.
It will be helpful to introduce a little elementary climatological physics at this point – nothing too difficult (otherwise I wouldn’t understand it). I propose to apply the IPCC/GISS central estimates of forcing, feedbacks, and warming to what has actually been observed or inferred in the period since 1750.
Let us start with the forcings. Dr. Blasing and his colleagues at the Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center have recently determined that total greenhouse-gas forcings since 1750 are 3.1 Watts per square meter.
From this value, using the IPCC’s table of forcings, we must deduct 35%, or 1.1 Watts per square meter, to allow for negative anthropogenic forcings, notably the particles of soot that act as tiny parasols sheltering us from the Sun. Net anthropogenic forcings since 1750, therefore, are 2 Watts per square meter.
We multiply 2 Watts per square meter by the pre-feedback climate-sensitivity parameter 0.313 Kelvin per Watt per square meter, so as to obtain warming of 0.6 K before any feedbacks have operated.
Next, we apply the IPCC’s implicit centennial-scale feedback factor 1.6 (not the equilibrium factor 2.8, because equilibrium is thousands of years off: Solomon et al., 2009).
Accordingly, after all feedbacks over the period have operated, a central estimate of the warming predicted by ModelE and other models favored by the IPCC is 1.0 K.
We verify that the centennial-scale feedback factor 1.6, implicit rather than explicit (like so much else) in the IPCC’s reports, is appropriate by noting that 1 K of warming divided by 2 Watts per square meter of original forcing is 0.5 Kelvin per Watt per square meter, which is indeed the transient-sensitivity parameter for centennial-scale analyses that is implicit (again, not explicit: it’s almost as though They don’t want us to check stuff) in each of the IPCC’s six CO2 emissions scenarios and also in their mean.
Dr. Lacis’ paper is saying, in effect, that 80% of the forcing from all greenhouse gases is attributable to CO2. The IPCC’s current implicit central estimate, again in all six scenarios and in their mean, is in the same ballpark, at 70%.
However, using the IPCC’s own forcing function for CO2, 5.35 times the natural logarithm of (390 ppmv / 280 ppmv), respectively the perturbed and unperturbed concentrations of CO2 over the period of study, is 1.8 Watts per square meter.
Multiply this by the IPCC’s transient-sensitivity factor 0.5 and one gets 0.9 K – which, however, is the whole of the actual warming that has occurred since 1750. What about the 20-30% of warming contributed by the other greenhouse gases? That is an indication that the CO2 forcing may have been somewhat exaggerated.
The IPCC, in its 2007 report, says no more than that between half and all of the warming observed since 1950 (and, in effect, since 1750) is attributable to us. Therefore, 0.45-0.9 K of observed warming is attributable to us. Even taking the higher value, if we use the IPCC/GISS parameter values and methods CO2 accounts not for 70-80% of observed warming over the period but for all of it.
In response to points like this, the usual, tired deus ex machina winched creakingly onstage by the IPCC’s perhaps too-unquestioning adherents is that the missing warming is playing hide-and-seek with us, lurking furtively at the bottom of the oceans waiting to pounce. However, elementary thermodynamic considerations indicate that such notions must be nonsense.
None of this tells us how big feedbacks really are – merely what the IPCC imagines them to be. Unless one posits very high net-positive feedbacks, one cannot create a climate problem. Indeed, even with the unrealistically high feedbacks imagined by the IPCC, there is not a climate problem at all, as I shall now demonstrate.
Though the IPCC at last makes explicit its estimate of the equilibrium climate sensitivity parameter (albeit that it is in a confused footnote on page 631 of the 2007 report), it is not explicit about the transient-sensitivity parameter – and it is the latter, not the former, that will be policy-relevant over the next few centuries.
So, even though we have reason to suspect there is a not insignificant exaggeration of predicted warming inherent in the IPCC’s predictions (or “projections”, as it coyly calls them), and a still greater exaggeration in Giss ModelE, let us apply their central estimates – without argument at this stage – to what is foreseeable this century.
The IPCC tells us that each of the six emissions scenarios is of equal validity. That means we may legitimately average them. Let us do so. Then the CO2 concentration in 2100 will be 712 ppmv compared with 392 ppmv today. So the CO2 forcing will be 5.35 ln(712/392), or 3.2 Watts per square meter, which we divide by 0.75 (the average of the GISS and IPCC estimates of the proportion of total greenhouse forcings represented by CO2) to allow for the other greenhouse gases, making 4.25 Watts per square meter.
We reduce this value by about 35% to allow for negative forcings from our soot-parasols etc., giving 2.75 Watts per square meter of net anthropogenic forcings between now and 2100.
Nest, multiply by the centennial-scale transient-sensitivity parameter 0.5 Kelvin per Watt per square meter. This gives us a reasonable central estimate of the warming to be expected by 2100 if we follow the IPCC’s and GISS’ methods and values every step of the way. And the warming we should expect this century if we do things their way? Well, it’s not quite 1.4 K.
Now we go back to that discrepancy we noted before. The IPCC says that between half and all of the warming since 1950 was our fault, and its methods and parameter values seem to give an exaggeration of some 20-30% even if we assume that all of the warming since 1950 was down to us, and a very much greater exaggeration if only half of the warming was ours.
Allowing for this exaggeration knocks back this century’s anthropogenic warming to not much more than 1 K – about a third of the 3-4 K that we normally hear so much about.
Note how artfully this tripling of the true rate of warming has been achieved, by a series of little exaggerations which, when taken together, amount to a whopper. And it is quite difficult to spot the exaggerations, not only because most of them are not all that great but also because so few of the necessary parameter values to allow anyone to spot what is going on are explicitly stated in the IPCC’s reports.
The Stern Report in 2006 took the IPCC’s central estimate of 3 K warming over the 20th century and said that the cost of not preventing that warming would be 3% of 21st-century GDP. But GDP tends to grow at 3% a year, so, even if the IPCC were right about 3 K of warming, all we’d lose over the whole century, even on Stern’s much-exaggerated costings (he has been roundly criticized for them even in the journal of which he is an editor, World Economics), would be the equivalent of the GDP growth that might be expected to occur in the year 2100 alone. That is all.
To make matters worse, Stern used an artificially low discount rate for inter-generational cost comparison which his office told me at the time was 0.1%. When he was taken apart in the peer-reviewed economic journals for using so low a discount rate, he said the economists who had criticized him were “confused”, and that he had really used 1.4%. William Nordhaus, who has written many reviewed articles critical of Stern, says that it is quite impossible to verify or to replicate any of Stern’s work because so little of the methodology is explicit and available. And how often have we heard that before? It is almost as if They don’t want us to check stuff.
The absolute minimum commercially-appropriate discount rate is equivalent to the minimum real rate of return on capital – i.e. 5%. Let us oblige Stern by assuming that he had used a 1.4% discount rate and not the 0.1% that his office told me of.
Even if the IPCC is right to try to maintain – contrary to the analysis above, indicating 1 K manmade warming this century – that we shall see 3 K warming by 2100 (progress in the first one-ninth of the century: 0 K), the cost of doing nothing about it, discounted at 5% rather than 1.4%, comes down from Stern’s 3% to just 0.5% of global 21st-century GDP.
No surprise, then, that the cost of forestalling 3 K of warming would be at least an order of magnitude greater than the cost of the climate-related damage that might arise if we just did nothing and adapted, as our species does so well.
But if the warming we cause turns out to be just 1 K by 2100, then on most analyses that gentle warming will be not merely harmless but also beneficial. There will be no net cost at all. Far from it: there will be a net economic benefit.
And that, in a nutshell, is why governments should shut down the UNFCCC and the IPCC, cut climate funding by at least nine-tenths, de-fund all but two or three computer models of the climate, and get back to addressing the real problems of the world – such as the impending energy shortage in Britain and the US because the climate-extremists and their artful nonsense have fatally delayed the building of new coal-fired and nuclear-fired power stations that are now urgently needed.
Time to get back down to Earth and use our fossil fuels, shale gas and all, to give electricity to the billions that don’t have it: for that is the fastest way to lift them out of poverty and, in so doing, painlessly to stabilize the world’s population. That would bring real environmental benefits.
And now you know why building many more power stations won’t hurt the climate, and why – even if there was a real risk of 3 K warming this century – it would be many times more cost-effective to adapt to it than to try to stop it.
As they say at Lloyds of London, “If the cost of the premium exceeds the cost of the risk, don’t insure.” And even that apophthegm presupposes that there is a risk – which in this instance there isn’t.
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
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Part 1 of Sense and Sensitivity can be found here
Monckton, you got it all wrong. The sensitivity is ……zero;
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/plot/rss/from:1997/trend
The notion that because, under some imaginary and completely impossible scenario generated by a computer model that has never demonstrated the least bit of predictive skill, H2O would disappear entirely from the atmosphere in very short order, we should conclude that CO2 is the dominant gas driving the atmospheric warming effect is such utter nonsense that I have difficulty imagining how much of a moron one would have to be to even suggest it.
On the real planet atmospheric H2O varies a great deal spacially and temporally and even the average and mean values dither about somewhat, but from what I’ve seen not all that much. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that even in the depths of worst of the planet’s ice ages H2O ever came close to disappearing from the atmosphere or that it is ever likely to. I’ve linked this paper a number of times
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI3525.1
Spectral and Broadband Longwave Downwelling Radiative Fluxes, Cloud Radiative Forcing, and Fractional Cloud Cover over the South Pole
The authors used spectral analysis of Downwelling Longwave Radiation (DLR) to determine the contribution of various components of the atmosphere to the total DLR. The experiment was conducted at the South Pole, the coldest and driest environment on the planet, which I would point out has temperatures throughout most of the year well below the CW temp for an atmosphereless S/B blackbody. They did determine that CO2 was responsible for fully a third of DLR there over the entire year, which of course left 2/3rds to be provided the admittedly seriously diminished atmospheric H2O
http://journals.ametsoc.org/action/showFullPopup?id=i1520-0442-18-20-4235-f08&doi=10.1175%2FJCLI3525.1
Even there the water never completely leaves even in the dead of winter when the temps there often approach 200K and under clear sky conditions
http://journals.ametsoc.org/action/showFullPopup?id=i1520-0442-18-20-4235-f09&doi=10.1175%2FJCLI3525.1
As I’ve mentioned when linking this work in the past, their measurements indicate that the South Pole is probably the point on the planet where CO2 has its maximum contribution to the GHE, which is interesting when you consider what the temps there have been doing for the last 40-50 yrs
As a critique of Andy Lacis paper, the preceding makes very little physical sense, which explains its author’s conspicuous absence from peer reviewed publication. In contras his wares gave perfect satisfaction during his tenure as my London shirtmaker, and it saddens me to see him abandon his useful career as a wholesale haberdasher.
To suggest water vapour is irrelevant because it is only a response to CO2 is absurd. Water vapour is a strong green house gas and remember the green house effect is logarithmic. Even without atmospheric CO2, some water would evaporate and because at very low concentrations small changes give big effects (logarithmic effect) the warming effect would be considerable. The rising temperature would result in more water evaporating with still more warming etc. Sounds like strong positive feedback. right? Well no, for two reasons. Firstly as the concentration rises the sensitivity falls (logaritmic effect again) so the positive feedback coefficient reduces but more importantly water vapour in the air causes clouds and clouds generate very siginificant cooling by reflecting incoming energy back out to space (the albedo effect). There is good reason to consider cloud impact to be roughly linear with water vapour concentration.
Thus water vapour exerts 2 effects, green house warming and cloud cooling, the first is logarithmic and the second near linear. The impact of this is that at very low temperatures (low water vapour concentration) the warming sensitivity is high and dominates over cloud cooling so water vapour is net warming but at high temperatures the warming sensitivity is low and is dominated by cloud cooling so increasing water vapour content causes a net temperature reduction.
Far form being insignificant, water vapour in isolation is absolutely paramount in importance. It establishes an “operating point” or equilibrium temperature for the Earth and maintains it by strong negative feedback. CO2 only slightly perturbs this equilibrium temperature.
The warmists so glibly talk about massive positive feedback in the climate system yet virtually all naturally stable systems exhibit strong negative feedback. This is so ubiquitous that, given that the climate has remained stable enough for life to continue unabated for millions of years, to suggest that the climate system exhibits positive feedback not negative feedback is an absolutely extraordinary claim. As others have said, extraordinary claims require substantial proof.
To claim positive feedback based on one aspect of water vapour’s actions while ignoring other actions does not just fall short of the mark, it is laughable.
Yes I realise the above is descriptive without any maths to back it up but the purpose here is to point it out not prove it. The maths has been done elsewhere and stands up.
crosspatch says: (In relation to “lives” of atmospheric CO2 and water vapour),
“I am not understanding how the residence time is relevant.”
Exactly my contention.
Firstly the current amount of atmospheric CO2, and its effect, are minute.
Secondly, whatever the cause of any global warming increases, increased water vapour results.
I don’t believe that, even in the long term, the increase of CO2 has been shown to result in any significantly higher ratio cf average water vapour levels.
Nevket240 and Patrick Davis attempt to smear CSIRO.
As SPM says the CSIRO did not introduce the Cane Toad. The CSIRO did however introduce the Cactoblastis cactorum wasp which brought prickly pear under control when it was threatening to over run large tracts of Australia. It introduced dung beetles which have substantially reduced fly populations in much of Australia, It introduced Myxomatosis which dramatically reduced the rabbit menace in Australia and it introduced three diseases which substantially reduced the economic cost of skeleton weed in Australia. All of these introductions had major beneficial effects and no significant negative effects because CSIRO researched their impacts carefully before they were released as you would expect from such a great scientific organisation
These are just four CSIRO successes there are many others – one that affects most of us is the invention of the technology that is used as the basis for every WIFi network. CSIRO is an organisation of which we Australians can feel justifiably proud and which has repaid many times over the funds that Australian Governments have invested in it.
Lord Monckton would get my vote. Sadly I still haven’t learnt how a forcing is derived.
What I have learnt elsewhere is that ALL “greenhouse gases” have absorption/emission bands in the near infrared whence only incoming solar radiation is effective. Half the planet is always in sunlight so that half is being shielded by “greenhouse gases”. This aspect of anthropogenic radiative heat transfer never seems to be discussed
I suspect the primary reason for ignoring water vapor is that it is non-anthropogenic. If one takes the MODTRAN utility hosted by the University of Chicago to find the surface temperature needed to create a flow of 292.993 W/m² (a standard program-favored number that I use) 70 km up in clear tropical air with a CO2 concentration of 396 PPM, I get a ground temperature of 301.18 deg K required to force this flow. Next, if I set the CO2 to 0.0 PPM, I get 293.56 deg K as the temperature required for a CO2-free atmosphere.
Then if I change the default CH₄(methane) from 1.7 PPM to 0.0 I get 293.17 deg K as the required surface temperature. Then if I change the two settings for ozone to zero, I get 291.75 deg K as the required temperature.
Finally if I set the water vapor scale to zero I get 275.86 deg K as the surface temperature required with all optional greenhouse gases set to zero. By this measure, water vapor accounts for about 63 percent of the total raw greenhouse effect and carbon dioxide only accounts for about 30 percent.
Damn, I’m tired and late for the party, but all one has to do is look at the seasonal removal of atmospheric CO2 to know its residence time is entirely exaggerated. It gets renewed quite regularly. Anthony once posted an video of satellite rendition of CO2. It’s quite remarkable. But, to get an idea, just look here……..http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979 Assuming CO2 has no migratory instincts, it looks to me that about 3-4ppm gets removed annually. Again, the video shows this much better.
And then there is this which you can add to the mix
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/outgoing-vs-land-vs-water-vapor/
When arguing their case, alarmists are invariably caught in a circular reasoning trap and their only escape is by appealing to the authority of the IPCC which relies on the authority of computer models which in turn simply confirm the initial assumptions and its raison d’être (how could it be otherwise) and around we go getting nowhere: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b31569e2013489158321970c-800wi
How by 1989-90 trained scientists could conclude that the post-war CO2 emissions were the overwhelming climate driver is a mystery that will puzzle future science historians.
It all “gets so teejus don’t it”.
We are all doomed mr Monkton. The seas will rise……..It is written…..
http://fenbeagleblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/14/221/
JFD mentions something new to me – the use of sequestered water (deep aquifers) for irrigation. He has this causing sea levels to rise by 2.6mm/yr – 10 inches per century. Which conflicts with the 2 inches per century occurring at present. Something else to be confused about!
What is it with the inability to understand the role of water vapour?
Warmer air can hold more water vapour. If we do something that warms the atmosphere, then the atmosphere can hold more water. It probably will, given that 2/3 of the earth’s surface is covered by a great big source of water.
So why do we worry about putting CO2 into the atmosphere but not water? Its pretty simple. Extra water in the atmosphere will fall out as rain or snow very quickly, and there will be no lasting extra water vapour in the atmosphere re-emitting IR radiation in all directions. Extra CO2 will stay in the atmosphere for some time. Lets agree with Christy on 40 years. The CO2 continually warms the atmosphere, allowing more water vapour to be held by the air, until the temperature stabilises at a higher value.
So if this part of AGW is true, you’d expect, through a lot of natural variation, to see higher absolute humidity in the atmosphere as it warms.
TFNJ says:
January 16, 2012 at 1:09 am
JFD mentions something new to me – the use of sequestered water (deep aquifers) for irrigation. He has this causing sea levels to rise by 2.6mm/yr – 10 inches per century. Which conflicts with the 2 inches per century occurring at present. Something else to be confused about!>>>
Nothing that adding in the right number of zeros behind the decimal place won’t fix. If JFD thinks that all the irrigation from all the deep acquifers over the next century adds up to 10 cm X the surface area of the oceans, then he’s welcome to think so. He’s also welcome to think that deep acquifers even HAVE that volume of water in the first place. But if he wants to substantiate his opinion with numbers, he’s going to have to make up his own numbers.
JFD on January 15, 2012 at 8:55 pm said:
—————
JFD, could you remove the word “Deniers” and resubmit please.
Water evaporating from the surface will cool that surface due to the need for latent heat to do this. Condensing water vapour in the mid to high troposphere will release that latent heat to be radiated to space.
A survey of all the latest research papers on CO2 residence time put the majority between 3 and 7 years. The maximum time being 20 years and nothing near the IPCC version. The model derived 1000’s is blatant rubbish.
ITYM multiply by 0.75, rather than divide.
“Spector says:
January 16, 2012 at 12:19 am
a standard program-favored number that I use”
That proves only a lineal function to find the surface temperature needed to create a flow of 292.993 W/m². As so often in this climate science bizzo, the multivariate needed to conclude climatic predictions is missing.
The good Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, has just shown you about pathways for reasoning, and you come in here and dishonor Aristotle by blaspheming against the first law of logic. Einstein wouldn’t have a bar of it. His theory were simply two or more premiss with a universal application.
Whereas, you sir, come up with one premise and a false conclusion. If you are a scientist you suffer from a lack of pedagogy.
There is that date 1750 again, I just don’t get it, what relevance does it have to anything? Let us ask that question, accepting what the IPCC says as gospel truth.
One question, just how much CO2 did mankind add to the atmosphere between 1750 and 1950? Most people would think it is not much, based on the amount of industry in that time frame, the IPCC must know something we don’t.
So why is the IPCC using the date 1750, because most of the warming happened between 1750 and about 1900 at the latest, with little or no warming since then. The IPCC knows this, and wants to show warming, so they set the date back to 1750. it is easy to show that from the depths of the little ice age to now, it has warmed, viola, the IPCC is able to show warming!
Conclusion, something warmed up the planet between 1750 and 1900. The IPCC is going to have to show that mankind produced most of the CO2 we see right now in the atmosphere between 1750 and 1900 if they wish to dare to continue to use the date 1750, and insist that it is CO2 and CO2 alone that has caused the warming from 1750 to now.
The conclusion is, since most of the warming, according to the IPCC who are using the date 1750, is known to have happened between 1750 and 1900 (in fact, many say the end of the little ice age was 1850, 1900 is being generous), and we know that warming is caused almost entirely by CO2 (ignore that little sun behind the curtain), we therefore know that mankind produced most of it’s CO2 between 1750 and 1900. Therefore, little CO2 has been produced since then, according to the IPCC’s own dating system and knowledge of what actually causes warming. The IPCC wants us to cut back on CO2 production, According to the IPCC’s own dating and methodology, we must not have produced any CO2 between 1900 and 2012. Therefore we have succeeded in doing exactly what the IPCC wants, we need do nothing more. Man, are we good, or what!
The number 1750 should be hung around their necks, people should point and laugh.
Back in the good old days, those in the know argued over the number of epicycles needed to “explain” planetary orbits — I wonder if someone made up a “dynamical system sensitivity” to judge between the various epicycle models. That, of course, was before Kepler found that orbits weren’t the perfect circles that Ancient Wisdom — or just the “experts” of the time — had made them out to be. There is no real science in all of this, it is like listening to two children at play, arguing over who gets to be the hero, and who shot who first and best. Don’t expect the public to care, or laugh indulgently over such youthful shenanigans, when the ugly truth comes out. All of science will get the licking.
Water is the refrigerant that drives the worlds heat pump, I would urge all these scientists that push CO2 non sense to stop, and have a good long look around. The real world is there for all to see. They seem to lack a sense of reality or a sense of shame.
“scepticalwombat says:
January 16, 2012 at 12:17 am
Nevket240 and Patrick Davis attempt to smear CSIRO.”
Smear the CSIRO they did not.
The Koalas introduced onto Kangaroo Island by CSIRO have flourished, to the degree that their preferred food source, the Manna Gum, is currently at risk of local extinction. Koalas have recently been forced to turn to other, less palatable, species. Management methods used include surgical sterilisation and transfer to suitable empty mainland sites. This does not appear to be keeping up with the breeding rate, though, so the only practical solution may be culling. The government is opposed to this though, fearing an economic backlash through tourism boycotts.
Uber green scientists saving the Koala whilst destroying ecosystems.
The ‘other’ way of calculating 2XCO2 sensitivity is by showing the average amount of solar radiation received on Earth as:
Sin=(1-a)FoHr^2
Where a is albedo, Fo is the total solar radiative flux [w/m2] and Hr^2 is the cross-section of Earth.
Energy radiated by Earth is:
Sout=eQ4Hr^2T^4
Where e is emissivity, Q the Stephan-Boltzman constant, 4Hr^2 the total area of Earth and T the temperature in K.
At equilibrium Sin=Sout.
Deriving we achieve:
(1-a)Fo=eQ4T^4
The average albedo is 0.297, solar irradiance 1366W/m2; assuming a blackbody e=1 so we have:
(1-0.297)1366=5.67×10^-8(4)T^4
Which gives T=255K; so the above becomes 255-273=-18C
With e=0.612 the equation becomes:
(1-0.297)1366=0.612(5.67×10^-8)4T^4
Which gives T=288K – 273=15C
The difference between the 2 temperatures [blackbody and real, that is with a greenhouse atmosphere] is 15-(-18)=33C; the greenhouse temperature.
So with Earth reflecting 0.297 and emitting 0.612 =0.909 the amount of energy that Earth absorbs is:
(1-0.909)1366=124W/m2. 124W/m2 has produced 33C. The sensitivity is therefore:
33/124=0.27K/W/m2
The radiative forcing for CO2 is:
(5.35)In(C/Co)W/m2 [from Table 3 http://folk.uio.no/gunnarmy/paper/myhre_grl98.pdf }
2XCO2=(5.35)In(2)=3.7W/m2 [the official IPCC forcing]
So, the temperature increase from 2XCO2 is:
(0.27)(3.7)=1C
This a lower figure than calculated by either F&R or Hansen et al but I still think it is too high. Why? Clouds.
scepital wombat says
These are just four CSIRO successes there are many others – one that affects most of us is the invention of the technology that is used as the basis for every WIFi network. CSIRO is an organisation of which we Australians can feel justifiably proud and which has repaid many times over the funds that Australian Governments have invested in it.
I say
These are just four CSIRO successes there are many others – one that affects most of us is the invention of the technology that is used as the basis for every WIFi network. CSIRO is an organisation of which we Australians used to feel justifiably proud of and which has been infested with enviromental activists.