By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
In a previous post, I explained that many of the climate-extremists’ commonest arguments are instances of logical fallacies codified by Aristotle in his Sophistical Refutations 2300 years ago. Not the least of these is the argumentum ad populum, the consensus or head-count fallacy.
The fallacy of reliance upon consensus, particularly when combined with the argumentum ad verecundiam, the fallacy of appealing to the authority or reputation of presumed experts, is more likely than any other to mislead those who have not been Classically trained in mathematical or in formal logic.
To the Classicist, an argument founded upon any of the Aristotelian logical fallacies is defective a priori. Nothing more need be said about it. However, few these days are Classicists. Accordingly, in this post I propose to explain mathematically why there can be no legitimate consensus about the answer to the central scientific question in the climate debate: how much warming will occur by 2100 as a result of our sins of emission?
There can be no consensus because all of the key parameters in the fundamental equation of climate sensitivity are unknown and unknowable. Not one can be directly measured, indirectly inferred, or determined by any theoretical method to a precision sufficient to give us a reliable answer.
The fundamental equation of climate sensitivity determines how much global warming may be expected to occur once the climate has settled back to a presumed pre-existing state of equilibrium after we have perturbed it by doubling the atmospheric concentration of CO2. The simplifying assumption that temperature feedbacks are linear introduces little error, so I shall adopt it. For clarity, I have colored the equation’s principal terms:
Climate sensitivity at CO2 doubling (blue) equals the product of the CO2 forcing (green), the Planck parameter (purple) and the feedback gain factor (red).
The term in green, ΔF2x, is the “radiative forcing” that the IPCC expects to occur in response to a doubling of the concentration of CO2 in the air. Measurement and modeling have established that the relation between a change in CO2 concentration and a corresponding change in the net down-minus-up flux of radiation at the top of the climatically-active region of the atmosphere (the tropopause) is approximately logarithmic. In other words, each additional molecule of CO2 exerts less influence on the net radiative flux, and hence on global temperature, than its predecessors. The returns diminish.
To determine the radiative forcing in response to a CO2 doubling, one multiplies the natural logarithm of 2 by an unknown coefficient. The IPCC’s first and second Assessment Reports set it at 6.3, but the third and fourth reduced it by a hefty 15% to 5.35. The CO2 forcing is now thought to be 5.35 ln 2 = 3.708 Watts per square meter. This value was obtained by inter-comparison between three models: but models cannot reliably determine it. Both of the IPCC’s values for the vital coefficient are guesses.
The term in purple, 
, denominated in Kelvin per Watt per square meter of direct forcing, is the Planck or zero-feedback climate-sensitivity parameter. This is one of the most important quantities in the equation, because both the direct pre-feedback warming and separately the feedback gain factor depend upon it. Yet the literature on it is thin. Recent observations have indicated that the IPCC’s value is a large exaggeration.
The Planck parameter is – in theory – the first differential of the fundamental equation of radiative transfer about 3-5 miles above us, where incoming and outgoing fluxes of radiation are equal by definition. The measured radiative flux is 238 Watts per square meter. The radiative-transfer equation then gives us the theoretical mean atmospheric temperature of 255 Kelvin at that altitude, and its first differential is 255 / (4 x 238), or 0.267 Kelvin per Watt per square meter. This value is increased by a sixth to 0.313 because global temperatures are not uniformly distributed. However, it is also guesswork, and the current Lunar Diviner mission suggests it is a considerable overestimate.
Theory predicts that the Moon’s mean surface temperature should be around 270 Kelvin. However, Diviner has now found the mean lunar equatorial temperature to be 206 K, implying that mean lunar surface temperature is little more than 192 K. If so, the theoretical value of 270 K, and thus the lunar Planck parameter, is a 40% exaggeration.
If the terrestrial Planck parameter were similarly exaggerated, even if all other parameters were held constant the climate sensitivity would – on this ground alone – have to be reduced by more than half, from 3.3 K to just 1.5 K per CO2 doubling. There is evidence that the overestimate may be no more than 20%, in which event climate sensitivity would be at least 2.1 K: still below two-thirds of the IPCC’s current central estimate.
If there were no temperature feedbacks acting to amplify or attenuate the direct warming caused by a CO2 doubling, then the warming would simply be the product of the CO2 radiative forcing and the Planck parameter: thus, using the IPCC’s values, 3.708 x 0.313 = 1.2 K.
But that is not enough to generate the climate crisis the IPCC’s founding document orders it to demonstrate: so the IPCC assumes the existence of several temperature feedbacks – additional forcings fn demonimated in Watts per square meter per Kelvin of the direct warming that triggered them. The IPCC also imagines that these feedbacks are so strongly net-positive that they very nearly triple the direct warming we cause by adding CO2 to the atmosphere.
The term in red in the climate-sensitivity equation is the overall feedback gain factor, which is unitless. It is the reciprocal of (1 minus the product of the Planck parameter and the sum of all temperature feedbacks), and it multiplies the direct warming from CO2 more than 2.8 times.
Remarkably, the IPCC relies upon a single paper, Soden & Held (2006), to establish its central estimates of the values of the principal temperature feedbacks. It did not publish all of these feedback values until its fourth and most recent Assessment Report in 2007.
The values it gives are: Water vapor feedback fH2O = 1.80 ± 0.18; lapse-rate feedback flap = –0.84 ± 0.26; surface albedo feedback falb = 0.26 ± 0.08; cloud feedback fcld = 0.69 ± 0.38 Watts per square meter per Kelvin. There is also an implicit allowance of 0.15 Kelvin for the CO2 feedback and other small feedbacks, giving a net feedback sum of approximately 2.06 Watts per square meter of additional forcing per Kelvin of direct warming.
Note how small the error bars are. Yet even the sign of most of these feedbacks is disputed in the literature, and not one of them can be established definitively either by measurement or by theory, nor even distinguished by any observational method from the direct forcings that triggered them. Accordingly, there is no scientific basis for the assumption that any of these feedbacks is anywhere close to the stated values, still less for the notion that in aggregate they have so drastic an effect as almost to triple the forcing that triggered them.
Multiplying the feedback sum by the Planck parameter gives an implicit central estimate of 0.64 for the closed-loop gain in the climate system as imagined by the IPCC. And that, as any process engineer will tell you, is impossible. In electronic circuits intended to remain stable and not to oscillate, the loop gain is designed not to exceed 0.1. Global temperatures have very probably not departed by more than 3% from the long-run mean over the past 64 million years, and perhaps over the past 750 million years, so that a climate system with a loop gain as high as two-thirds of the value at which violent oscillation sets in is impossible, for no such violent oscillation has been observed or inferred.
Multiplying the 1.2 K direct warming from CO2 by its unrealistically overstated overall feedback gain factor of 2.8 gives an implicit central estimate of the IPCC’s central estimate of 3.3 K for the term in blue, 
, which is the quantity we are looking for: the equilibrium warming in Kelvin in response to a doubling of CO2 concentration.
To sum up: the precise values of the CO2 radiative forcing, the Planck parameter, and all five relevant temperature feedbacks are unmeasured and unmeasurable, unknown and unknowable. The feedbacks are particularly uncertain, and may well be somewhat net-negative rather than strongly net-positive: yet the IPCC’s error-bars suggest, quite falsely, that they are known to an extraordinary precision.
It is the imagined influence of feedbacks on climate sensitivity that is the chief bone of contention between the skeptics and the climate extremists. For instance, Paltridge et al. (2009) find that the water-vapor feedback may not be anything like as strongly positive as the IPCC thinks; Lindzen and Choi (2009, 2011) report that satellite measurements of changes in outgoing radiation in response to changes in sea-surface temperature indicate that the feedback sum is net-negative, implying a climate sensitivity of 0.7 K, or less than a quarter of the IPCC’s central estimate; Spencer and Braswell (2010, 2011) agree with this estimate, on the basis that the cloud feedback is as strongly negative as the IPCC imagines it to be positive; etc., etc.
Since all seven of the key parameters in the climate sensitivity equation are unknown and unknowable, the IPCC and its acolytes are manifestly incorrect in stating or implying that there is – or can possibly be – a consensus about how much global warming a doubling of CO2 concentration will cause.
The difficulties are even greater than this. For the equilibrium climate sensitivity to a CO2 doubling is not the only quantity we need to determine. One must also establish three additional quantities, all of then unmeasured and unmeasurable: the negative forcing from anthropogenic non-greenhouse sources (notably particulate aerosols); the warming that will occur this century as a result of our previous enrichment of the atmosphere with greenhouse gases (the IPCC says 0.6 K); the transient-sensitivity parameter for the 21st century (the IPCC implies 0.4 K per Watt per square meter); and the fraction of total anthropogenic forcings represented by non-CO2 greenhouse gases (the IPCC implies 70%).
Accordingly, the IPCC’s implicit estimate of the warming we shall cause by 2100 as a result of the CO2 we add to the atmosphere this century is just 1.5 K. Even if we were to have emitted no CO2 from 2000-2100, the world would be just 1.5 K cooler by 2100 than it is today. And that is on the assumption that the IPCC has not greatly exaggerated the sensitivity of the global temperature to CO2.
There is a final, insuperable difficulty. The climate is a coupled, non-linear, mathematically-chaotic object, so that even the IPCC admits that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. It attempts to overcome this Lorenz constraint by presenting climate sensitivity as a probability distribution. However, in view of the uncertainty as to the values of any of the relevant parameters, a probability distribution is no less likely to fail than a central estimate flanked by error-bars.
If by this time your head hurts from too much math, consider how much easier it is if one is a Classicist. The Classicist knows that the central argument of the climate extremists – that there is a (carefully-unspecified) consensus among the experts – is an unholy conflation of the argumentum ad populum and the argumentum ad verecundiam. That is enough on its own to demonstrate to him that the climate-extremist argument is unmeritorious. However, you now know the math. The fact that not one of the necessary key parameters can be or has been determined by any method amply confirms that there is no scientific basis for any assumption that climate sensitivity is or will ever be high enough to be dangerous in the least.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
Where does the IPCC make this clear?!?! I have no clue what you are talking about here. And, the calculation for the moon is so trivial (since there is no complicating factor on where in the atmosphere they emission is coming from) that one can clearly see that the 270 K figure is a constraint on the fourth root of the average of T^4 and not on the average of T itself, which will be much lower because of the dramatic temperature variations on the moon.
Yes, their collective value is unquestionably essential. But, the point is that most calculations and most empirical determinations of the climate sensitivity just obtain this collective value and not the individual values of each feedback. Soden and Held is one of the few papers to study all the models and attempt to break down the contribution from each individual feedback (which involves some estimation since the feedbacks are not simply additive). Hence, saying that only one paper is referenced as giving the individual values does not imply what you seem to think it implies.
Lindzen and Choi’s second version was only published in the latter half of 2011….and in a rather obscure journal to boot. There hasn’t been enough time for it to be challenged in the literature. One can almost always argue for one’s pet scientific conclusion in a scientific field of any significant size by using papers so new that nobody has had time to debunk them yet.
As for the “growing body of papers” that you speak of, it is still a rather small body and most of them are known to have serious flaws. And, the many papers that establish that climate sensitivity is in the range of what the IPCC concludes also are based on empirical data.
No, we are saying that because it is obvious to anybody who understands what a forcing and a feedback is, and the contextual nature of those terms, that we are in fact absolutely correct. In particular, it is clear that the 110 W/m^2 includes the radiative effect of water vapor currently in the air and the whole point is that if the water vapor feedback behaves the way that all the empirical evidence and theoretical understanding says it does then most of that water vapor in the atmosphere is there because of the feedback on the non-condensable greenhouse gases. In other words, if you removed the non-condensable greenhouse gases account for only a small fraction of the 110 W/m^2 but if you remove them from the atmosphere, you lose much of the rest of the 110 W/m^2 because as the atmosphere cools the water vapor condenses out of the atmosphere.
joelshore;
not quite right there. We know that there is 150 W/m^2 blocked from leaving due to all atmospheric effects since the surface is going to emit around 390 and for a rough balance, 239 W/m^2 is all that can escape on average. We know that to emit 239 W/m^2, the Earth without an atmosphere would have to be 33 deg C lower. One must hold variables constant to find effects of other variables – in math, it’s called partial derivatives. That 33 deg C per 150W/m^2 is the real effect averaged which includes all feedbacks to date. THIS is what the Earth has done, not what some video game model says it should do.
For small pertubations to these numbers, the results will change linearly. All feedbacks can only work due to changes in temperature. If you add a forcing of 1 W/m^2, temperature only has to increase by 0.22 deg C to compensate. If you remove a forcing of 1 W/m^2, temperature only has to drop 0.22 deg C to compensate for the emission. If you compare it to a grey body or blackbody with an atmosphere that blocks the same fraction of outgoing power as does our atmosphere, you would have to increase or decrease the temperature by 0.3 deg C to achieve a 1 W/m^2 increase or decrease that escapes the atmosphere to space. 0.3-0.22 = 0.08 deg C negative feedback net.
Now, if you want to pretend that this is not the situation, and that the 0.22 deg C/W/m^2 is actually only from the forcing and that it contains no new feedback values, then you may go look up the nature of absolute humidity which is what determines the water vapor absorption and what determines the relative humidity along with the temperature. Note that holding RH constant is a valid and acceptable assumption during temperature changes in climate research. what results is the realization that small changes in temperature result in really small changes in absolute humidity and water vapor is only two to three times more potent than co2 per doubling and that it is like CO2 in that it is a log function over about 10 or 11 doublings. Not even a 5 deg C total temperature change results in more than a 30% increase increase in h2o vapor at constant RH and that is a long way from the 100% increase necessary for a doubling. In short, the IPCC professed major feedback can add about 3.1 W/m^2 to the total blocking as compared to the CO2 forcing of 3.7 W/m^2 for a doubling assuming a 5 deg C total rise. In fact, the total T rise due to forcing + its major feedback becomes 1.5 deg C and that is 3.5 deg C less than the temperature needed to create the 5 deg C rise and humidity increase. Now, after your forcing and feedback have been accounted for, you are still short by 16 W/m^2 that must come from the “lesser” feedbacks instead of the major feedback of h2o vapor. No matter what you try, the sensitivty adding h2o vapor to the forcing results in only a tiny fraction of an increase in T above the rise in forcing. Unlike the CAGW view, this is a stable equilibrium feedback.
Brendan H seems dismayed to find that the key arguments he and other climate extremists have been using are logical fallacies. He has made various attempts to confuse the issue – which was not even raised in my head posting. That posting explicitly concerned itself with demonstrating by mathematics why there is no scientific basis for the existence of any consensus as to how much global warming our enrichment of the atmosphere with greenhouse gases may cause.
He persists in trying to maintain that there is no need for the premises and conclusion of an argument to be made explicit, whereas it is essential to the rigor of logic that they be made explicit even if they were not explicit at the time they were uttered. For instance, when the bossy environmentalist with the messy hair at Union College said, “There’s a CONSENSUS!”,, she was making a declarative statement which, on its won, did not and does not constitute an argument. However, in the context, she was attempting to justify the notion that anthropogenic global warming will be serious enough to be catastrophic by asserting that there was a consensus about it. The premise, then, is that there is a consensus as to manmade climate disaster: the conclusion is that the threat of manmade climate disaster is real and credible, not so much in se as because there is a consensus. And that, once the premise and the conclusion have been made explicit, is a logical fallacy – or, as I bluntly put it at the time, intellectual baby-talk.
Brendan H. indulges in further intellectual baby-talk when he writes: “Presumably, you are also happy to accept that the claims made about logic by a person who is Classically trained in logic are about as good as the next person’s.” No, of course not: that is a characteristically sloppy formulation. Are the fallacies that I have said are fallacies fallacies? Yes, they are: one can look them up in any textbook of logic. The fact that they are fallacies does not depend upon my Classical training: but my Classical training allows me to recognize fallacies more quickly and more correctly than someone who has taken no trouble to learn the elements of logic.
Brendan H, in attempting to assert that the consensus fallacy is not really a fallacy, and that no part of an argument need be made explicit before the logician considers whether the argument is valid, departs altogether from the norms of logic. That will not do. It is the obligation of all scientific enquirers to make a genuine attempt to reach the truth rather than attempting to deploy sophistical arguments that are intended at best to confuse the issue and at worst to lead to a prejudiced and false conclusion. It does not matter what one wants the truth to be: it matters what the truth is.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 25, 2012 at 9:58 am
Mr. House challenges me to prove the existence of the greenhouse effect.
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This is not true. I did not ask you to prove that.
I specifically asked you to prove your claim you made on this thread, that (your exact words) “the fact that adding greenhouse gases such as CO2 to an atmosphere such as ours will cause some warming has been established by oft-repeated experiments”.
I asked you specifically to (quote) “present clear, distinct references and links to who when and where and how experimentally physically measured (not calculated on the statistical basis) how much increase in physical temperature how much “greenhouse gasses” produce. Physics, please, no speculations.”
You answer unfortunately does not contain any “clear, distinct references and links to who when and where and how experimentally physically measured (not calculated on the statistical basis) how much increase in physical temperature how much “greenhouse gasses” produce.” Hence your claim remains unsupported by evidences.
Maybe you did not understand what you had been asked to present, but now I hope we have cleared that.
So, Christopher, please, present clear, distinct and exact references and links to who when and where and how experimentally physically measured (not calculated on the statistical basis) how much increase in physical temperature how much “greenhouse gasses” produce.
To Robert G. Brown @ur momisugly 4/25 – 5:59 a.m.:
Are you claiming that numbers, sets, groups, integrals, conic sections, etc., etc. do not exist?
To Robert and Terry Oldberg:
Could each of you provide a concise statement of the “problem of induction” as you understand it.
Leigh B. Kelley
“Induction” is the process by which a model is extracted from observational data and other sources of information. The “problem of induction” is to provide a logical basis for induction.
Though Shannon contributed to solving the problem of induction, he didn’t complete the job. Among the unfinished business that was left in Shannon’s wake was a method for the assignment of numerical values to probabilities. Maximum likelihood estimation doesn’t work as it overestimates the amount of information in the data causing the model building process to blow up. Christensen solved this problem with the application of the principle of entropy maximization which he called “maximum entropy expectation.”
Well, he really didn’t start the job. Information theory wasn’t concerned with induction per se, it was (and continues to be) concerned with communication. It was Jaynes, primarily, who recognized that it also gave e.g. statistical mechanics an a priori basis that didn’t depend on Gibbs.
Cox, on the other hand, actually published something from which Shannon’s result can be trivially derived (slightly before Shannon, I should point out), but was looking directly at probability with the specific intent of putting stat mech on firmer ground using the ideas of Keynes and Jeffries. He is the person that introduced as what Jaynes called “disiderata” (but are really just axioms of the theory) — the Cox axioms, which are basically a prescription for how to represent and alter plausibilities. From the Cox axioms one can derive the algebra of probability theory (e.g. the probabilistic algebra of Laplace or Boole as laid out in Boole’s monograph) and hence the theory of inference, as is laid out quite concisely in his monograph (or by Jaynes).
I believe it was Jaynes who was almost singlehandedly responsible for the notion of maximum entropy being equivalent to the principle of indifference and for establishing it as a fundamental principle of probability theory. As evidence, I can only offer the Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_maximum_entropy
and quote from it: “The principle was first expounded by E.T. Jaynes in two papers in 1957 where he emphasized a natural correspondence between statistical mechanics and information theory. In particular, Jaynes offered a new and very general rationale why the Gibbsian method of statistical mechanics works. He argued that the entropy of statistical mechanics and the information entropy of information theory are principally the same thing. Consequently, statistical mechanics should be seen just as a particular application of a general tool of logical inference and information theory.” Note well the date.
Jaynes later corrected his earlier work to give precedence to Cox and to acknowledge the cleanness of Cox’s axioms, as opposed to the fairly convoluted way of proceeding from information theory. Nobody else in the world noticed at that point, of course — Shannon’s theorem was by then established as was the maximum entropy connection proceeding from it.
I recommend reading:
http://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/mobil.pdf
(the Mobil lecture). Note well this is a republishing of his typed up notes for the lecture he gave in 1957. Note also that although he gives major kudos to Shannon, the three principles he associates with the theory — real number plausibilities, consistency, common sense variation (plus all of the axiomatic baggage of real numbers as an ordinal system, there but not explicitly acknowledged) are all Cox, in a paper published in 1946, solidly before Shannon’s publication. The point is that this is an idea that suddenly “came of age” in the decade between 1946 and 1956, but it was Jaynes who seems to have best understood its immense power (and was its most indefatigable advocate).
As for confounding Hume — not really, Hume still gets the last word even after the methodology of science and the theory of epistemology is put on as sound a footing as it will ever get. Hume was wrong — one can derive the algebra of inference from a small set of axioms, and it turns out to be Bayesian probability theory. Hume was right — one cannot derive the axioms themselves, and one of them is the “axiom of common sense” for all intents and purposes — evidence should increase our degree of believe in consistent propositions and decrease our degree of belief in inconsistent ones — meaning that you still cannot escape the need for heuristics and can never establish any proposition about the real world as certain truth.
I personally like to view the resulting theory of knowledge and empirically founded mathematically and logically sound science as the ultimate validation of both Hume and Descartes. Descartes invented methodological doubt as a path to truth. Hume realized that “truth” was a chimera, a mirage that fades as we apply Descartes skepticism in its fullest form as everything can be doubted (except, perhaps, the immediate empirical reality of our own existence) if you try hard enough. Cox and Jaynes succeeded in quantifying doubt, so that instead of truth, we seek best belief as that which we can doubt the least.
As for Ron Christensen — I have no clear idea who you are talking about. He isn’t even listed as a reference on the maximum entropy page, and the only Ron Christensen I could find who is a professor of statistics got his BA in mathematics in 1974, so he could hardly have done anything fundamental or original with maximum entropy before then, although he is indeed a Bayesian statistician now.
rgb
rgbatduke:
The bibliography at http://www.knowledgetothemax.com provides citations to the work of the right Ronald Christensen. The one who is an academic statistician is the wrong Ronald Christensen. Using ideas that were first developed by the right Ronald Christensen plus others that were developed by predecessors of Christensen that include Cardano, Clausius, Boltzmann, Gibbs, Lebesgue, Shannon and Jaynes, it is possible to build a model without resorting to the method of heuristics. Optimization replaces the method of heuristics. Absent Christensen’s contributions, this would be impossible.
Mr. House, yet again, is sneeringly off topic. My head posting demonstrated by mathematics that there is no scientific basis for assuming a high climate sensitivity by the IPCC’s methods, because all seven of the key parameters in the fundamental equation of climate sensitivity are unmeasured and unmeasurable, unknown and unknowable, and because the climate behaves as a mathematically-chaotic object, so that the reliable, long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible by any method.
Precisely because the relevant quantities are unknown and unknowable, it ought to be blindingly obvious that it is not possible to do as Mr. House asks and demonstrate how much warming greenhouse gases produce: for that is the question that the climate-sensitivity equation attempts to answer but cannot answer. That greenhouse gases produce warming is not in doubt, and has been well established by experiment, over and over and over again. But how much warming they produce is unknown and unknowable, because – it cannot be said often enough – all of the relevant quantities in the fundamental equation of climate sensitivity are unknown and unknowable to anything like a sufficient precision.
It would perhaps have been helpful if Mr. House had read the head posting with due care and attention. Had he done so, he would have grasped my central point, which is surely not expressed in an obscurantist fashion; and, whether or not he agreed with that point, he would have realized that it was not and is not reasonable for him to persist in asking me to provide precisely what that posting says it is impossible provide. Once again, it seems that Mr. House is not genuinely seeking objective scientific truth, but is trying inexpertly to cloud the issue in an unconstructive manner.
Mr. Shore asks where the IPCC makes it plain that the terrestrial value of the Planck parameter is greater than, not less than, the value 0.267 Kelvin per Watt per square meter that is derivable from the theoretically-determined 255 K by taking the first differential of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation on the assumption that radiative flux at the characteristic-emission altitude is 238 Watts per square meter. He may like to read the footnote on page 631 of the IPCC’s 2007 report, where the value of the Planck parameter is deducible as the reciprocal of 3.2 – i.e. 0.313 Kelvin per Watt per square meter, or greater by approximately one-sixth than that given by the first differential of the fundamental equation of radiative transfer, and the references on which the IPCC relies make it plain that the reason for this difference is latitudinal temperature variation. The discrepancy between theory and observation on the Moon, by which the true mean lunar temperature is considerably below rather than somewhat above the theoretically-determined 270 K given in NASA’s lunar fact sheet, is accordingly significant and has obvious iimplications for the determination of climate sensitivity on Earth.
Mr. Shore says that the feedback sum is obtained in the models by methods other than considering the value of each individual feedback. However, the IPCC’s discussion of feedbacks simply does not bear out Mr. Shore’s assertion: each feedback is considered separately. One agrees with Mr. Shore that it is remarkably difficult to determine the overlap between one feedback and another: that is yet another reason why determining climate sensitivity by the numerical methods on which the IPCC relies, rather than by observing what has actually happened in the climate, is doomed to fail – and why there is simply no scientific basis for assuming that climate sensitivity will be anything like as high as the IPCC says it is.
Mr. Shore says that no one has yet responded to Lindzen and Choi’s 2011 paper demonstrating a very low climate sensitivity because the paper was not published until late in 2011. It was not published “late in 2011” but in May of that year. A full year has passed since publication, therefore.
He adds that most of the papers establishing a high climate sensitivity are empirically based. No, most of them are numerically based, relying on modeling and not on real-world results. It is claimed, of course, that the models adequately represent physical realities, but they manifestly do not do so to a sufficient precision, not least because the object they are attempting to model behaves as a chaotic object, and also because the data are insufficiently precise and insufficiently available, and the processes by which the climate evolves are insufficiently understood.
Mr. Shore also makes a further attempt to say that the 110 Watts per square meter of forcing from the presence rather than the absence of all greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is chiefly feedbacks rather than forcings. In that event, the paper in which the 110 Watts per square meter estimate was given could have and should have denominated – but crucially did not denominate – two-thirds of the 110 Watts per square meter not in Watts per square meter nut in Watts per square meter per Kelvin.
One appreciates that it is essential to the maintenance of a case for high climate sensitivity to suggest that most of the water vapor in the atmosphere is only there because the non-condensing greenhouse gases are present, and that it would disappear if they did. But it is not clear to me that this point has been sufficiently established by the papers that purport to establish it. Even if the 110 Watts per square meter were to some extent feedbacks, the difficulty of distinguishing the forcings from the feedbacks and the feedbacks from each other would be no less formidable than it is in today’s climate. Once again, unduly precise quantitative claims are being made on the basis of manifestly inadequate evidence: and perhaps this is the main reason why the warming over the past generation has been well below what the IPCC predicted it would be in its 1990 report. The models have been tried and found wanting.
I am a process engineer, and in my field experience in troubleshooting dynamic multi-variate systems [Temperature, Pressure, Flowrate, Composition, AND Valve Position (the controller)], I have generally found that about one-third of my problems have been solved with the correct tuning of control loop parameters for the system suffering the “trouble”. As a result, (along with a focus on Process Control when obtaining my Masters in Chemcial Engineering), I am quite familiar with determining the proper gain, offset, lag, etc, for both feed-forward, feed-back control loops, using proportional-integral-differential (PID) controllers and the like. For the most part, these systems exhibit first order responses (rarely second order – but can indeed be non-linear), and the appropriate parameters are determined by a proper analysis of the system’s reponse using pulse and step-change inputs. This can be done by experiment (i.e “making it happen”), but it is often found by just looking at the historical data, if available. The point is to ensure the system has a robust and controlled response to “upset” input variable conditions.
As a participant in a large “Denver Climate Study Group” (a sort of email society which includes members from both sides of the debate, but whose total membership is only known by the “monitor”), I was responding to just this question from a participant. In my research, I stumbled upon the Lord’s March 10, 2012 presentation at the University of Minnesota here:
I was delighted also to find this article in my research, and have enjoyed observing the legitimate discussion of the mathematics of control theory, with the philosophy of logic “discussion” thrown in for fun!
As usual, the Viscount is winning on this thread, as he has in all the forums I’ve seen him, by using CLASSICAL LOGIC and FACTS, and, most importantly, MATHEMATICS (actually, rather simple math to boot!)
To assist in the Lord in his efforts, I hope I can provide some clarification on his calculations and units for the readers here:
3.3K=3.708W/m^2*0.313Km^2*[1/(1-0.313Km^2/W*([1.8-.84+.26+.68+0.15]W/Km^2)]
Note that 0.313Km^2/W*([1.8-.84+.26+.68+0.15]W/Km^2)=0.648 (the number which needs to be between 0 and 1) and that both it, and its reciprocal, are dimensionless.
He is absolutely right about the value of the second number being critical. If between 0 and 0.1, it is stable, if between 0.1 and 1, it is highly likely to be unstable, and if greater than 1, most assuredly unstable and most likely runaway. He is also right that electrical engineers allow this number to go to =or>-1 (and back to =or<+1) to create oscillating circuits.
I count myself honored to participate in this august group of posters, even if some of the members exhibit seriously flawed and "self-emoliating", ad hominem, red-herring, and data/logic bereft arguments for their "cause".
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 25, 2012 at 3:37 pm
That greenhouse gases produce warming is not in doubt, and has been well established by experiment, over and over and over again.
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I am afraid you did not understand the point again. No problem. Let me first tell you that if in a scientific debate someone claims (like you did on this thread): “the fact that adding greenhouse gases such as CO2 to an atmosphere such as ours will cause some warming has been established by oft-repeated experiments” and is then asked to produce evidences (exact references, links etc to these alleged experiments), then a simple repetition of the same claim is not a scientific answer, Christopher.
Your part about “relevant quantities are unknown and unknowable” can be accepted, however, because you indeed claimed “some warming”. I am not going to distract the readers analysing how your “some” corresponds to your “unknown and unknowable”, let us put it aside for a while. But, Christopher, your claim unfortunately still remains unsupported by any evidence. So, let me drop the “how much” part.
Referring to your claim you made earlier on this thread (“the fact that adding greenhouse gases such as CO2 to an atmosphere such as ours will cause some warming has been established by oft-repeated experiments”) I am humbly asking you to present clear, distinct and exact references and links to who when and where and how experimentally physically proved (not calculated on the statistical basis) that “greenhouse gasses” produce SOME (as you put it) warming.
Tomazo says:
April 25, 2012 at 4:35 pm
To assist in the Lord in his efforts, I hope I can provide some clarification on his calculations and units for the readers here:
3.3K=3.708W/m^2*0.313Km^2*[1/(1-0.313Km^2/W*([1.8-.84+.26+.68+0.15]W/Km^2)]
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Tomazo, a mathematician must be able to operate with things like cares driving at 99999 miles per hour, although it is a fiction.
Just for the sake of science and common sense, please, ask yourself why you assume or believe that this “3.708W/m^2” is not a fiction.
As you can possibly conclude from Lord Moncktons’s zero presented evidences for a physical proof of “CO2 forcing”, this number must have been derived from something else. If you look carefully at the core assertion about 33K “greenhouse” warming, you will notice that they simply claim the “greenhouse gasses” cause this warming. This is a fiction, Tomazo. Then they derive those “3.708W/m^2” mathematically from their claim and then their “climate sensitivity” again from this “3.708W/m^2”. Unfortunately, it works with so many people, a lot of them are well educated, but not trained in finding well hidden fallacies.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
No…It has no implications whatsoever. The fact that the average temperature is below the average temperature that a uniform body emitting the necessary amount of radiation to be in radiative balance is what is a consequence of Holder’s Inequality. On the Earth with its current albedo, the limit set by Holder’s Inequality is 255 K. The fact that the actual surface temperature is 288 K is a fact that can only be explained by the fact that the atmosphere absorbs some of the radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface, i.e., there is a greenhouse effect.
All because they are discussed separately does not mean that they can be measured separately in the real world or that it is even very common to measure them separately in climate models.
I said it was published in the latter half of 2011. Given that it was not accepted for publication until May 22 and that it did appear in 2011, I was able to narrow down the range of publication date to between May 22 and Dec. 31, which would put it in the latter half of the year unless it was published between May 22 and June 30, which would put it just barely in the first half, but that would be pretty fast turn-around between acceptance and publication. And, less than a year is not a very long time for a scientific paper to have garnered significant response from the scientific community, particularly for a paper that is published in a relatively obscure journal and for which the previous version of the paper was already debunked.
The IPCC estimate of climate sensitivity relies primarily on empirical data, including the paleoclimate data (especially the last glacial maximum), the response of the climate to the Mt Pinatubo eruption, the current seasonal cycle, and the historical temperature record, among other things. It is also supported by the numerical models but, no, that is not the only or primary source of these estimates.
How can you denominate 2/3 of something in different units. Whether something is a forcing or a feedback depends on the particular climate experiment being contemplated, as anyone who actually considers himself at all conversant with the concepts of forcing or feedback would understand. The paper that you are referencing wasn’t dealing with the question of how the water vapor observed in our current climate got into the atmosphere. They were just interested in the radiative effect of the greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere without regard to how they got there. This is why you can’t find any serious climate science endorsing your non-sensical argument. If it was such a wonderful argument, why do you think that Roy Spencer or John Christy or Richard Lindzen don’t make this argument? They don’t because they know enough to know that it is wrong and that they would lose a lot of credibility if they were to try to pass off such silliness as a real argument.
I think it has but, furthermore, your opinion on this matter is not relevant. The fact that you believe that the mechanism doesn’t exist does not mean that you can perform a calculation that ignores this mechanism and then claim that it includes this mechanism!!!
…Which is precisely why your and cba’s argument is not made by any serious scientists. So, why don’t you stop using it too?
Monckton of Brenchley says:
This sentence is very confused and, to the extent it has any correct physics in it at all, gets things exactly backwards. First of all, a larger Planck parameter corresponds to a LOWER emission temperature since the Planck parameter tells us how much temperature rise is necessary to produce an additional W/m^2 of emission. And, the amount of temperature rise necessary to do this is higher at lower temperatures than it is at higher temperatures. (This is why people who mistakenly try to calculate the no-feedback climate sensitivity of the Earth using the surface temperature of 288 K rather than the characteristic emission temperature of 255 K get a SMALLER value for that climate sensitivity.)
Second of all, I don’t think the fact that the Planck parameter is higher than estimated assuming the characteristic emission temperature of 255 K means that the characteristic emission temperature itself is higher or lower than the 255 K value. Rather, the Planck parameter is higher because the INCREASE in temperature, and thus the INCREASE in emission, occurs more in colder regions than in warmer regions (polar amplification). In those colder regions, the colder emission temperature leads to a higher value of the Planck parameter, i.e., it takes a larger temperature increase to produce each additional W/m^2 than it would if the warming occurred more uniformly (or predominantly in the warmer regions).
If CO2 causes warming, it doesn’t cause very much. Most of the rise in CO2 comes from ocean outgassing. But let’s pretend for a moment that all warming since the 1800’s is due entirely to human CO2 emissions [preposterous, I know. But remember that we’re pretending here]. If that were the case, there would still be nothing to worry about. Joel Shore refers to Prof Richard Lindzen, so let’s hear what the esteemed Professor says:
“If one assumes all warming over the past century is due to anthropogenic greenhouse forcing, then the derived sensitivity of the climate to a doubling of CO2 is less than 1ºC.”
Since most of the warming [possibly all] since the LIA is natural [per the un-falsified null hypothesis], then the true effect of CO2 is minuscule. It is too small to measure. And of course the past decade and a half deconstructs the “carbon” scare.
The funniest thing about Joel Shore’s always wrong model-based pontifications is the fact that the planet — the ultimate Authority — is debunking his whole CO2=CAGW belief system. Maybe planet earth is an ‘ideologue’, eh? ☺
cba says:
Yeah…One must do that if one is interested in finding the no-feedback value! If you are interested in figuring out what the effect of adding a certain amount of CO2 is when you hold all the other greenhouse gas concentrations fixed, then you have outlined the correct method. However, that is the no-feedback value. (And, it holds not only the concentrations fixed but also the ice-albedo fixed.) To get the value including feedbacks, you must take the equivalent of the total derivative that includes the effects of the change in CO2 causing changes in water vapor and so forth. Your reducing this to mathematical terms is indeed useful in explaining exactly where your argument is wrong!!
No…As you have just explained, what you have calculated is the effect of changing one greenhouse gas concentration while holding the others fixed (and fixing the ice-albedo). To get the effect of the feedbacks, you have to consider the fact that an increase in the concentration of the non-condensable greenhouse gases leads to increases in the water vapor (and some change in clouds that is non-trivial to predict).
Smokey says:
Not preposterous at all given that it is known to a high degree of certainty that the oceans have in fact been a net sink of CO2. The oceans are not outgassing in net; they are absorbing. Any “outgassing” due to warmer ocean temperatures is more than offset by absorption due to the fact that the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere above the oceans has been increasing due to anthropogenic emissions.
I only referred to Lindzen in noting that his views on global warming have been debunked time and time again. He once at least made interesting hypotheses but as these hypotheses were found to be contradicted by real-world data, he has turned to more and more desperate arguments.
Joel Shore says:
“I only referred to Lindzen in noting that his views on global warming have been debunked time and time again.”
As I’ve often pointed out, if it were not for psychological projection, Joel Shore wouldn’t have much to say. The plain fact is that it is Joel Shore’s nonsense that is being debunked by planet earth, and he is dreaming if he actually believes that Prof Lindzen — his scientific better — has had his work falsified. Only in Joel Shore’s fevered dreams [and I note that Willis decisively b!tch slapped Shore all around the playground last week]. Here, I’ll repeat what I posted because it obviously went right over Joel’s head the first time:
The funniest thing about Joel Shore’s always wrong model-based pontifications is the fact that the planet — the ultimate Authority — is debunking his whole CO2=CAGW belief system.
So who should we believe? The projection afflicted Joel Shore? Or Planet Earth?
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 25, 2012 at 4:10 pm
Mr. Shore asks where the IPCC makes it plain that the terrestrial value of the Planck parameter is greater than, not less than, the value 0.267 Kelvin per Watt per square meter that is derivable from the theoretically-determined 255 K by taking the first differential of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation on the assumption that radiative flux at the characteristic-emission altitude is 238 Watts per square meter. He may like to read the footnote on page 631 of the IPCC’s 2007 report, where the value of the Planck parameter is deducible as the reciprocal of 3.2 – i.e. 0.313 Kelvin per Watt per square meter, or greater by approximately one-sixth than that given by the first differential of the fundamental equation of radiative transfer, and the references on which the IPCC relies make it plain that the reason for this difference is latitudinal temperature variation. The discrepancy between theory and observation on the Moon, by which the true mean lunar temperature is considerably below rather than somewhat above the theoretically-determined 270 K given in NASA’s lunar fact sheet, is accordingly significant and has obvious iimplications for the determination of climate sensitivity on Earth.
Overall I have enjoyed your articles, very much a skeptic myself.
I think, though, there is a weak point in a section of your current argument which unnecessarily opens you up to partially successful attack if someone reads closely.
The Moon’s temperature varying more from its average than Earth does is very important to the net result. That can be expected to make application of the same one-sixth increase to the Planck parameter not remotely sufficient to account for lunar extreme temperature variation utterly whether or not it would account for terrestrial lesser temperature variation by latitude. The first random web page googled says that lunar temperature varies -233 degrees Celsius to +123 degrees Celsius, so it varies far more than Earth from its mean.
Let me illustrate the principle by a simplified analogy. In this example, all of the following three objects have an average temperature of 192 K.
Object A is to represent a body of no temperature variation from its 192 K average. The T^4 term in the formula would equal 1.36 * 10^9 K^4.
Object B is like Object A but varies in temperature moderately from its 192 K average, by plus and minus 30 K. In this simplified analogy, pretend one half is at 162 K and the other half is at 222 K. The respective T^4 terms in the formulas for each half are about 0.689 * 10^9 K^4 and 2.43 * 10^9 K^4 respectively.
Object C is like the other two objects but varies in temperature vastly from its 192 K average, by plus and minus 150 K. In this simplified analogy, pretend one half is at 42 K and the other half is at 342 K. The respective T^4 terms in the formulas for each half are about 0.00311 * 10^9 K^4 and 13.68 * 10^9 K^4 respectively.
If all objects have the same albedo throughout, then, even with all three having 192 K average surface temperature, the net result is:
Object B = 15% more watts of radiative heat emitted from its surface than object A
Object C = 400% more watts of radiative heat emitted from its surface than object A
Now, suppose one makes a constant multiplier adjustment to account for the mild difference between object A and object B, to account for moderate temperature variation. That same multiplier which worked for moderate temperature variation from the average would just automatically be totally off if applied to a a body (object C) with far greater temperature variation.
Obviously the example is exaggerated for the point, but one can see how greater temperature variation just automatically makes the adjustment needed not remotely the same constant.
One can’t apply the same adjustment multiplier to the Moon as Earth in any case, because the Moon has more temperature variation.
So finding application of a formula with that adjustment multiplier to be wrong on the Moon doesn’t show anything directly about its validity or not on Earth. Whatever would be the true temperature variation correction for the Moon (which has a 14 day lunar night) would be alien to that for Earth.
I think the NASA lunar fact sheet you are mentioning is http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/moonfact.html . It is misleading / wrong for implying 271 K equilibrium blackbody temperature. However, such just means some random employee posting that particular web page messed up. The IPCC has inaccuracies in other regards but not necessarily the same ones on this.
I highly doubt I would agree with joeldshore on the accuracy (or not!) of historical IPCC predictions compared to observations, cosmoclimatology in general, whether there has been a remotely honest portrayal of claimed AGW (or as it really boils down to for the activists: CAGW) effects versus observations, what is seen in the paleoclimate record, and much else. But that doesn’t prevent him being right on one aspect, namely:
joeldshore says:
April 24, 2012 at 7:25 pm
“ >> Monckton of Brenchley says:
>> Theory predicts that the Moon’s mean surface temperature should be around 270 Kelvin.
No it doesn’t. The energy balance arguments referred to constrain the average of T^4, not the average of T, on the surface. The 270 Kelvin number is obtained as the fourth root of the average of T^4 on the surface. By Holder’s Inequality, it will be greater or equal to the average of T. Only for a fairly uniform temperature distribution does one expect this upper bound to provide a reasonably good estimate of the average temperature. The moon is an airless body with a very broad temperature distribution and hence it is expected that the average temperature will be considerably less than the constraint provided by this inequality.”
Calculations for Earth would need a lot different adjustment if Earth had a broader temperature range and a 14-day night like the Moon does.
Anyway, I’d just like to see that weak point closed, as you’re great in arguing in some other ways and one of the top public advocates in the world for our side.
The IPCC’s climate sensitivity itself can be disproved by empirical comparison to past history and observations, including how wrong their predictions a couple decades old have been as you already know.
joel shore,
it would seem you have a real case of fanaticism there. You claim my presentation has one feedback included and no other. Considering it does not specifically include or exclude anything perhaps we can qualify what is included and excluded by the simple criteria of whether a feedback is real or imaginary. Since I’m using real Earth averaged data to reach my result, it contains all of the real feedbacks in operation. Only in your mind can it strip out some feedbacks and retain others.
As for feedbacks versus forcings, that is I believe a red herring. CO2 concentrations are temperature dependent because of the ocean gas concentrations, hence it, like most everything else involved has both attributes.
Concerning ice, you’ve got serious problems with that too. surface albedo contributions are a small part of the overall albedo with sky and cloud albedo comprising the vast majority of Earth’s albedo. Since 70% of the surface is water and that is under 4% albedo for sun angles that convey most solar power to the surface, and considering about62% of the Earth is covered in cloud at any one time, ice and snow have very little effect. You will find if you look that every effort is taken by certain CAGW proponents to push the numbers as far in the other direction as possible.
Your biases and odd ideas are exhibited by your comment concerning absolute humidity tables. You prefer to believe someone who calculates the value rather than measures the value. Why should I mess with the Clausius Clapeyron equation and theory when the actual measured information is available?
Your comment about “serious scientists” not using my simple little explanation is also quite telling. First off, it brings up the question of what you think is a serious scientist. Judging by your comments, I would have to think that you are referring to the likes of james hanson, michael mann, and other political advocates masquerading as real scientists yet acting with an organized and concerted effort to thwart the scientific method and prevent it from working. Assuming you aren’t referring to these there is still the vested interested problem of millions of dollars of research grant monies being extorted from funding agencies by claims of catastrophic outcomes. This is crowding out legitimate research funding in other areas, some of which may have legitimate catastrophic concerns.
A real scientist follows the scientific method. A real scientist is skeptical of practically everything and knows that the scientific method does not produce results that are unarguable or that are “settled” – EVER! Peer review is not part of the scientific method. Rather it is the duplication of experiments by truly independent researchers that either squashes a budding theory or provides support to the theory. It never proves a theory and it only takes one correctly done experiment to falsify a theory, no matter how long it has been around. The ultimate arbitor of science is momma nature, not some supposed concensus of a bunch of people with vested interests. Note that I decided long ago to not become a scientist in the field of atmospheric physics as my interests were much further out. BTW, I am in full agreement with rutherford that physics is science, all else is stamp collecting and that specifically includes all these biology graduates that comprise so many of the global warming activists along with filling the ranks of hamburger flippers at the fast food joints.
cba,
Joel Shore is a nutcase. He actually believes that “ideology” motivates scientific skeptics, not understanding that numerous commenters here have explicitly stated that their views are politically Leftist, yet they do not accept the AGW arguments. Like most intelligent folks they are scientific skeptics.
As you know, the alarmist gang totally ignores the Scientific Method, which absolutely requires transparency. But fourteen years after MBH98, Mann still stonewalls. That’s not what honest scientists do.
The planet is confirming that CAGW is bunkum, and that “feedbacks” are feeding back nothing. They are only found in computer models, not in the real world. And Joel Shore can wake me if the climate null hypothesis is ever falsified.
cba: There is very little science in your last reply, which I can understand given the fact that you have lost the scientific argument. But, I will try to reply to what little science there is.
I have explained it to you already. In order to get the effect of feedbacks, you can’t treat them as forcings. If you assume that all the water vapor in the atmosphere has to be put in explicitly as a forcing, you are not going to get its effect as a feedback. It comes down exactly to the partial derivative issue that you identified: You correctly noted that you were effectively computing the partial derivative of the temperature with respect to CO2 concentration. However, what we are interested in if we want to include the effect of feedbacks is the TOTAL derivative of the temperature with respect to CO2 concentration.
And, I explained to you why the lapse rate feedback was different: The other feedbacks involve processes that actually change the radiative balance of the Earth, e.g., if more water vapor goes into the atmosphere, this causes more absorption of the longwave radiation emitted by the Earth back into space; if ice melts and changes the albedo, this causes more absorption of incoming solar radiation to occur.
The lapse rate feedback is an odd-man-out in this respect; it simply refers to the fact that it is the temperature at altitude that is relevant in determining the amount the Earth radiates back out into space, but it is the temperature at the surface that we are usually interested in (and that you noted when you talked about the 33 C temperature increase relative to an Earth without a greenhouse effect).
The fact that your argument includes the one known negative feedback and none of the positive ones does not show my fanaticism but yours. This is what makes the argument so tempting to people like you and Lord Monckton who are trying to reason backwards from your desired conclusion to a scientific argument supporting it.
I agree that the ice-albedo feedback is not as big a player as some of the other feedbacks like water vapor…and potentially clouds. However, it is still relevant….and it is another example of a feedback that is not included in your calculation.
I’ll leave aside your denigration of respected scientists who don’t happen to want to bend science to conform to the political ideology that you endorse. But, no I wasn’t referring to Hansen and Mann or even scientists supporting the consensus. I was referring to the fact that even the few reputable climate scientists who dispute the consensus, like Roy Spencer, John Christy, and Richard Lindzen don’t make your argument. If there is such a simple argument to support what they so desperately want to believe, why would they avoid making it?
Smokey says:
This is, of course, another falsehood. It is only the planet, as interpreted by Smokey, that is debunking the science that you are ideologically opposed to. The planet, as interpretted by scientists is not.
joeldshore:
Arguments for regulation of CO2 emissions that are based upon claims regarding the magnitude of the equilibrium climate sensitivity (TECS) have a scientifically fatal flaw. This is that the equilibrium temperature is not observable. It follows that: claims regarding the magnitude of TECS are not falsifiable, thus lying outside science.
Mr. Shore, as is his wont, argues testily, illogically, and unscientifically. For instance, he attacks Professor Lindzen ad hominem in an unpleasant and unconstructive manner for having allegedly been repeatedly “debunked” in the past, and says that the earlier version of his 2011 paper demonstrating a climate sensitivity of 0.7 Kelvin per CO2 doubling was also “debunked”. In using this sort of childish, yah-boo language, Mr. Shore not only reveals an unbecoming prejudice that casts doubt upon all else that he says, but also a discourtesy to the Professor that indicates just how little Mr. Shore understands about the manner in which rational scientific argument is supposed to be conducted: and that is the fallacy of ignoratio elenchi, of which the ad-hom fallacy is a specific instance.
The earlier version of Professor Lindzen’s paper was not “debunked”. A remarkably impolite and ill-tempered paper co-authored by one of the most prominent Climategate emailers said he had used statistical techniques that were inappropriate. The methodology in the original paper was indeed rough and ready – but that was because greater statistical precision would not have been likely to alter the outcome one jot. Sure enough, the second version of the paper, this time carrying out the unnecessarily pernickety requirements of the Climategate emailer, did not produce so much as a tenth of a Celsius degree of variation in climate sensitivity from the original version that had allegedly been “debunked”. One realizes that, to a fanatic such as Mr. Shore, a paper in which his religion is so thoroughly debunked (to use his own childish language, so that he knows what it must feel like to be on the wrong end of it) appears heretical. But Mr. Shore would have been less monumentally unconvincing if, instead of using intellectual baby-talk, he had actually addressed the interesting arguments made in Professor Lindzen’s paper.
Besides, Mr. Shore’s argument is to the effect that the latest version of Professor Lindzen’s paper is untrue because none of the usual suspects has yet had time to debunk it. Now, the argumentum ad ignorantiam, the fallacy of argument from ignorance, usually asserts that a proposition is false because it has not been proven true, or true because it has not been proven false. Mr. Shore offers a novel and still more absurdly and self-evidently fallacious argument: that Professor Lindzen’s paper is false because it has not yet been proven false. Whatever else Mr. Shore’s argument is, it is certainly not scientific. One suspects it is political: for illogicality on this heroic scale is the province of the lesser sort of political mind.
Mr. Shore goes on to confuse the Earth’s characteristic-emission temperature of 255 K with the terrestrial surface temperature of 288 K. Of course he is right to point out that it is the greenhouse effect fatuously denied by the likes of Mr. House that accounts for the difference: but his mention of the surface temperature when the problem is with the emission temperature seems suspiciously like an attempt at misdirection. He had previously asserted that the Holder inequality requires that the mean emission temperature of an astronomical body (which, on the Moon, is at the surface and, on the Earth, is 3-5 miles above it) should be less than or equal to the mean emission temperature indicated by theory. Yet, as I have demonstrated, the Planck parameter on Earth (in theory 0.267 Kelvin per Watt per square meter) is in fact 0.313 Kelvin per Watt per square meter: i.e., higher by about one-sixth than the theoretically-established value. Since the Planck parameter may be expressed as the characteristic-emission temperature divided by (four times the radiative flux at that altitude, where incoming and outgoing fluxes balance by definition), it ought to be obvious that since the flux is constant at 238 Watts per square meter it is the mean temperature that must differ from the mean temperature that had been assumed – and in an upward direction, not a downward direction.
In this connection, Mr. Shore appears to think that the characteristic-emission temperature drives changes in radiative flux at the characteristic-emission altitude. No: It cannot possibly do so, because at the characteristic-emission altitude the incoming and outgoing fluxes balance by definition, and the incoming flux is one-quarter of the solar constant, so it does not change. It is the altitude that changes. As the atmosphere warms, the characteristic-emission altitude rises a little, and the characteristic-emission temperature consequently falls a little. One hesitates to point this out to Mr. Shore, but the clearest explanation of this phenomenon is given in lectures by Professor Lindzen.
Next, Mr. Shore asks: “How can you denominate two thirds of something in different units?” Well, a scientist who had even the most elementary understanding of the difference between forcings and feedbacks would appreciate that climate scientists denominate forcings in Watts per square meter and feedbacks (which are forcings that arise in consequence of and in dependence upon to the temperature change caused by an original forcing) in Watts per square meter per Kelvin. Like it or not, that is how it is done, and with good reason. Mr. Shore will find this matter well explained in the pedagogical paper on feedbacks by Roe (2009), and also (though far less clearly, and with many pusillanimous mistakes) in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report. Roe, though one hesitates to point this out to Mr. Shore, was a pupil of Professor Lindzen, who has also been a contributor to various IPCC reports. Indeed, the extraordinarily powerful influence of the Professor at all points in the climate debate indicates that perhaps Mr. Shore should do him the courtesy of taking him seriously, and addressing his arguments rather than attacking him ad hominem. That would be the grown-up approach.
Mr. Shore says that my opinion on whether water vapor would be present in the atmosphere in the absence of the non-condensing greenhouse gases is “irrelevant”: yet, curiously, he goes on to accept my reason for that opinion, which is that one cannot clearly distinguish between forcings and feedbacks by any empirical method, so that one cannot tell that the water-vapor feedback, for instance, is as strongly positive as the IPCC would like us to believe. Having accepted this point, he then tells me I must no longer rely upon it. Yet the basis for my head posting was that feedbacks, in particular, cannot be reliably quantified either individually or collectively by any method and that, therefore, the IPCC’s claim of very high climate sensitivity lacks any real scientific basis. It is guesswork – and, since the warming during the generation has passed since the IPCC’s first temperature prediction is below the lower bound of that prediction – uneducated guesswork at that.
And it is clear that the bulk of the exaggeration in the IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity arises from its assumption that temperature feedbacks are strongly net-positive – an assertion that is inconsistent with the formidable temperature stability exhibited (as best it can be reconstructed) in the past 64 million years. On this topic, I am most grateful to the many process engineers all of whom have been kind enough to confirm in the plainest terms that an implicit feedback loop gain of 0.64 – implicit in the IPCC’s extravagant central estimate of climate sensitivity – is far too close to the singularity in the feedback amplification equation to be in any degree plausible. Bluntly, it is a monstrous exaggeration.
Mr. Shore goes on to say that feedbacks cannot be measured separately in the real world. Quite right. That is precisely my point. And they cannot be measured collectively either; nor, either individually or collectively, can they be distinguished from forcings. Their values, and even their signs, are guesswork, and the guesses of the modelers and of the IPCC are not proving skilful when compared with what is measured in the real world, whether in the paleoclimate or in the present.
Mr. Shore says that the IPCC determines climate sensitivity not only by modeling but also by looking at the paleoclimate and at the instrumental temperature history. Yet the IPCC itself says it determines its central climate sensitivity estimate of 3.26 Celsius degrees per CO2 doubling as a multi-model mean (it was 3.5 C in the 2001 report and 3.8 C in the 1995 report). It is well known, and obvious from a reading of the IPCC’s reports, that the gravamen of its case for high climate sensitivity lies in the now-discredited models.
As we have already seen, the evidence from the paleoclimate is that notwithstanding the many shocks and forcings over the past 64 million years, the global temperature has remained remarkably stable: and that, to a scientist who properly understood the distinction between forcings and feedbacks, would indicate compellingly, and perhaps decisively, that feedbacks cannot possibly be strongly net-positive.
Likewise, the rate at which the planet has warmed since 1950, when we first began adding enough CO2 to the atmosphere to make a theoretical difference to global temperature, is equivalent to little more than 1 Celsius degree per century: yet the IPCC is predicting that there will be almost 3 Celsius degrees of warming in this century (of which precisely none has occurred so far). To get to 3 Celsius of warming, then, the IPCC is in effect positing that by the end of the century a fourfold or even fivefold increase in the warming rate will have occurred compared with what we have seen over the past 60 years: and there is really no credible scientific basis, in theory or in observation, for any such extreme acceleration in the warming rate. It is mere rodomontade: good for getting grants and headlines and for justifying the establishment of a global “government” to Save The Planet, but most unscientific.
And so to Mr. House, who, having at last accepted how unreasonable it was of him to demand that I should provide references demonstrating what my head posting had very clearly shown could not be demonstrated by any method, now moves the goalposts a few miles and asks instead for references that establish that there is such a thing as the greenhouse effect. This is off topic, as I have said before, and it is high time that the moderators prevented such vexatious attempts at hijacking proper scientific discussion. What is more, I have already answered Mr. House’s question by referring him to any elementary textbook of climatology. Let him do some reading before he does any more screeching. If there were no greenhouse effect, then my conclusion to the effect that there is no scientific basis for a high climate sensitivity to greenhouse-gas enrichment of the atmosphere would be true a fortiori, and nothing more need be said of Mr. House’s undistinguished and irrelevant contributions to this thread than that.
The consensus has always been about anthropogenic climate change, it has never been about climate sensitivity. I have always pondered about the claim that 97% of climate scientists think that man is causing global warming. It seems like an amazing feat to be able to achieve that kind of statistic. Looking into the facts it’s really only based on one study that surveyed 77 climate scientists, with all of them having in the five years preceding the study, published more than 50% of their work on climate change. They were asked the question “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?. 97.4% (75 of 77) answered yes. (http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf)
As you can see it’s an interesting study but not the kind of information I would use during a debate. The point is though the consensus statement is not about climate sensitivity.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 26, 2012 at 6:42 am
If there were no greenhouse effect, then my conclusion to the effect that there is no scientific basis for a high climate sensitivity to greenhouse-gas enrichment of the atmosphere would be true a fortiori,
================================================
If CO2 could not cause some warming, then its climate sensitivity (in sense of increase in temperatures) would be ZERO, Christopher, this is so obvious.
The whole AGW thing, however, is based on the notion of CO2 warming, this is a fundamental core issue.
There is one more important thing. Your concept “there is man made global warming, but it is not that bad” will never have a sufficient positive effect, because your “not that bad” can be easily ignored, but at the same time your “there is man made global warming” effectively supports the fundamental claim of the radical warmists and even reinforces it, because they can say that even “sceptic” Monckton has no doubt.