Concerned Scientists Reply on Global Warming
The authors of the Jan. 27 Wall Street Journal op-ed, ‘No Need to Panic about Global Warming,’ respond to their critics.
I was sent a copy of the original letter, which allows me to reproduce it in entirety here.
The interest generated by our OpEd of January 27, “No Need to Panic about Global Warming,” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html is gratifying but so extensive that we will limit our response to the letter of February 1, 2012 by Kevin Trenberth and 37 other signatories, and to the letter by Robert Byer, President of the American Physical Society of February 6.
We agree with Trenberth et al. that expertise is important in medical care, as it is in any matter of importance to humans or our environment. Consider then that by eliminating fossil fuels, the recipient of medical care (all of us in the world) is being asked to submit to what amounts to an economic heart transplant. According to most patient bills of rights, the patient has a strong say in the treatment decision. Natural questions from the patient are whether a heart transplant is really needed, and how successful the diagnostic team has been in the past.
In this respect, an important gauge of scientific expertise is the ability to make successful predictions. When predictions fail, we say the theory is “falsified” and we should look for the reasons for the failure. Shown in the nearby graph is the measured annual temperature of the earth since 1989, just before the first report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Also shown are the projections of the likely increase of temperature, as published in the Summaries of each of the four IPCC reports, the
first in the year 1990 and the last in the year 2007. These projections were based on IPCC computer models of how increased atmospheric CO2 should warm the earth. Some of the models predict higher or lower rates of warming, but the projections shown in the graph and their extensions into the distant future are the basis of most studies of environmental effects and mitigation policy options. Year to year fluctuations and discrepancies are unimportant; longer term trends are significant.
From the graph it appears that the projections exaggerate, substantially, the response of the earth’s temperature to CO2 which increased by about 11% from 1989 through 2011. Furthermore, when one examines the historical temperature record throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, the data strongly suggest a much lower CO2 effect than almost all models calculate.
Looks to me like no warming since 2002 Joel. Maybe even a slight cooling although GISTEMP seems higher than the others.
So the model ensemble (averages of integrated random noise) shows to 95 % confidence either no warming at all or 1.2 Deg C warming.
WTF good is it?
@joel
That’s a fair point to make, but what a lot of people may not realise is that the AR4 projections shown are based on a 1980-1999 baseline. Basically the modelers knew what happened from 1980-2000 so their projection actually starts from 2001 or so. The fit looks impressive but they basically already knew *what had happened* for most of their graph. No surprises it looks like a good fit. Your Average Joe would not know this and assume that the models have been remarkably prescient for 30 years or so. Although the other side of the coin is that we don’t have 30 years of forecasts from the IPCC to compare AR4 projections against and a decade or so of data is a little too short to say anything too definitive about their accuracy.
CRS replies: Hey, don’t compare a bunch of rent-seeking make-believe academics to good physicians! Medicine dates back to the ancient Egyptians, but I’m not even sure that “climatology” is a legitimate branch of science.
“the data strongly suggest a much lower CO2 effect than almost all models calculate.”
Of course – no apparent effect at all since we have had level or slightly declining temperatures since 1998 which was the maximum of the superimposed natural 60 year cycle, now declining, but nearly offset by the long-term natural trend which is increasing at about 0.05 deg.C / decade until its likely maximum within 200 years or so.
Why no effect? Because absorptivity measurements are done with incident visible light, even though it is well known that they drop off rapidly when the source has much lower frequencies.
It is thus totally incorrect to assume high absorptivity for the Earth’s surface when the source is very low frequency radiation from the atmosphere. In fact, the absorbtivity has to drop to zero when the temperaure of the source is less than that of the target. Otherwise the Second Law of Thermodynamics would be violated as explained here: http://climate-change-theory.com/RadiationAbsorption.html
You know it’s strange…. all along, amongst all the other data that “warmers” have ignored and fabricated, that “big-yellow-thingie” in the sky still changing the ambient temperature in the world for as much as 40 F. degrees every 24 hours. Yet the climate whoozes still errect their clever and secret models while playing in the dark inside their blanket-forts, fouled by their own gas, in the windowless basement of their hourse, while denying the reality of sunlight, or perhaps truly being afraid of the Light altogether. Are they not the result and the true factor of “instability” due to their own incessant navel-gazing?
Perversely, you might think, I am at long last convinced that CO2 has this extraordinary ability to back radiate. Following my conversion on the way to Damascus, I now have an overpowering sense of foreboding. I note that we have this giant planet sized cloud of CO2 circulating in the solar system all too close to the sun. (You might refer to it as planet Venus, but effectively it is a giant gas cloud). Clearly, since CO2 back radiation has the power to warm the surface of the earth, there can be no doubt whatever that by this same mechanism this gas cloud is warming the surface of the sun! If one bears in mind that the damned thing is spinning backwards, the cloud that is, not the sun, then who knows what the evil consequences may be in store for planet earth. It would give me some reassurance if I could establish that its atoms, at least, are spinning in the right direction. We don’t even know whence it came nor when, although I distinctly remember that it was lurking there last Thursday.
Clearly the matter needs further study which raises the matter of financing. Sadly I am not personally conversant with the accepted means of seeking this and armed only with my nineteen forties General Science text book acquired before I dropped out of high school in the same decade, I may just lack a little in appeal for those who make these very vital funding decisions. I am thus looking for a partner who should have a good degree, in almost anything, and who has some experience of approaching decision makers in the funding field. Anyone interested can advise me by comment almost anywhere on this site.
Gary Mount says::
You say:Today some 23,000 die each winter in the UK due to winter cold.
Really !?
I kannt belive.
————–
I think you will find that most of those deaths are due to the flue and not a direct result of cold temperatures.
Why exactly do you think vulnerable people are given flue jabs in September and not in April?
In a recent British Medical Journal a medical editor mentions that he asks prospective authors to submit their data. In one third of cases the author is unable to produce any data. A brief glance through medical journals from a few decades ago will reveal that the medical profession has its fair share of Millenium Bugs and CAGW panics.eg excision of the Carotid Body was a certain cure for asthma-do any of you remember that one. What became of Repetitive Strain Injury or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Dr Trenbeth should choose his physician carefully to avoid a “Global Warmist” equivalent. Historically when the “overwhelming Concensus ” of doctors believe something alarm bells should ring. Geoff Broadbent
Here is a chart of the breakdown of solar insolation. http://climate-change-theory.com/insolation.jpg
Note the reference to most of the infra-red being absorbed by the atmosphere. Clearly that radiation in the visible spectrum is by no means “most” of the energy. For a start, the UV, X-rays etc have much higher energy than light as you all must know. So the atmosphere has a significant cooling effect during daylight hours, and water vapour has a net negative feedback partly because of this absorption and also due to reflection off clouds.
Seeing that backradiation does not affect climate in any way (as proved on my website ‘Radiation’ page), there is no way WV could have a positive feedback as assumed by IPCC, thus amplifying CO2 effects they claim.
There simply cannot be an atmospheric radiative greenhouse effect without violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics, as I have proved on my website, and also because every ray of radiation has to be treated as a separate process.
There is no physical meaning associated with, and no physical entity corresponding to “net” radiation. Radiation rays do not combine like, for example, force vectors.
The concept that this spurious “net radiation” is directed out of the surface cannot be used to excuse what is really a violation of the Second Law resulting from the conjecture that radiation from a cooler atmosphere can increaase the rate of warming of the surface in the morning and decrease the rate of cooling in the evening.
A warm body will not absorb any radiation from a cooler source, no matter how much of such radiation is sent in its direction, as shown in my funnel experiment. And all such radiation has no effect on the normal spontaneous outgoing radiation, let alone the heat loss by evaporation and diffusion followed by convection.
Before we consider what “backradiation” contributes, let’s say that at 11am on the Equator on one side of the Earth the Sun is shining and delivering 900 W/m^2 to the surface, of which 300W/m^2 is leaking out again into the atmosphere, let’s say 120W/m^2 by evaporation and diffusion followed by convection, and the remaining 180W/m^2 of it by radiation. So we have a net overall inward flux of 900 – 300 = 600W/m^2, this being 900 – 180 = 720W/m^2 net radiation inwards less 120W/m^2 outwards by other processes, ie 720 – 120 = 600W/m^2.
Let us suppose this overall net 600W/m^2 has warmed the surface by 6 deg.C since dawn.
Now the models make out that, let’s say an extra 150 W/m^2 of backradiation from the cooler atmosphere also does some extra warming. So perhaps the increase in temperature has been an extra 1.5 deg.C making a total of 7.5 deg.C since dawn. After all, there is certainly net radiation into the surface.
Does anyone really believe this extra 1.5 deg.C of warming from the cold atmosphere would not have been in violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics?
This surely must be the weakest argument and the most blatant travesty of physics in the whole (radiative) greenhouse conjecture..
Have you ever considered that proper application of S-B Law would result in no radiation from a cooler atmosphere to a warmer surface, because you would have to subtract a larger value from a smaller one and get a negative result.
But I come to the rescue and say that there will in fact be downward radiation, because after all you would expect radiation to go in all directions within a full spherical angle.
I say about half of the full amount of SBL radiation will head towards the Earth’s surface – but it won’t have any effect and will be rejected and not warm anything that is warmer than its source was. So, after coming back up from the surface, it can only warm cooler air (usually higher up) or get through to warm some object in space one of these years.