Guest post by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Abstract
Global CO2 emissions per unit increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration provide an independent constraint on climate sensitivity over the timescale of the available data (1960-2008), suggesting that, in the short term and perhaps also in the long, climate sensitivity may lie below the values found in the general-circulation models relied upon by the IPCC.
Introduction
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2001, p. 358, Table 6.2), citing Myhre et al. (1998), takes the CO2 forcing ΔF as 5.35 times the logarithm of a proportionate change Cb/Ca in CO2 concentration, where Cais the unperturbed value. Warming ΔT is simply ΔF multiplied by some climate sensitivity parameter λ.
Projected 21st-century anthropogenic warming, as the mean of values on all six IPCC emissions scenarios, is 2.8 K (IPCC, 2007, table SPM.3: Annex, Table 0). Of this, 0.6 K is stated to be in the pipeline. Of the remaining 2.2 K, some 0.65 K is attributable to non-CO2 forcings, since the CO2 fraction of anthropogenic warming is 71% (the Annex explains the derivation). Thus the IPCC’s current implicit central estimate of the warming by 2100 that will be attributable solely to the CO2 we emit this century is only 1.56 K.
Projected CO2 concentration C2100 in 2100, the mean of the values on all six IPCC emissions scenarios, is 713 ppmv (Annex, Table 3), 345 ppmv above the 368 ppmv measured in 2000 (Conway & Tans, 2011). Therefore, the IPCC’s implicit climate-sensitivity parameter for the 21st century is 1.56 / [5.35 ln(713/368)], or 0.44 K W–1 m2. This value, adopted in (1), is half of the IPCC’s implicit equilibrium value 0.88 K W–1 m2 (derived in the Annex).
Global warming from 1960-2008
The IPCC’s implicit central estimate of CO2-driven warming from 1960-2008 is at (1):
The CO2 forcing coefficient 5.35 was given in Myhre et al. (1998). Initial and final CO2 concentrations were 316.9 and 385.6 ppmv respectively (Tans, 2012). Since the 0.46 K warming driven by the CO2 fraction is 71% of anthropogenic warming, use of the IPCC’s methods implies that, as a central estimate, all of the 0.66 K observed warming from 1960-2008 (taken as the linear trend on the data over the period in HadCRUt3, 2011) was anthropogenic. However, attribution between Man and nature remains problematic: an independent approach to constraining climate sensitivity produces a very different result.
An independent constraint on climate sensitivity
Since few non-linearities will obtrude at sub-centennial time-scales, to warm the Earth’s surface by 1 K the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere must increase by 345/1.56 = 223 ppmv K–1. From 1960-2008, the trend in the ratios of annual global CO2 emissions to annual increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations does not differ significantly from zero (Fig. 1). The mean emissions/concentration-growth ratio over the period was 15.5 Gt CO2 ppmv–1, which, multiplied by 223 ppmv K–1, gives 3450 GTe CO2 K–1, the quantum of CO2 emissions necessary to raise global temperature by 1 K.
Figure 1. Near-zero trend in annual emissions/concentration-growth ratios, 1960-2008. Data and methods are described in the Annex. Spikes caused by volcanic eruptions are visible. Excluding effects of major eruptions makes little difference to the outcome.
Total global CO2 emissions from 1960-2008 were 975 Gte CO2 (Boden et al., 2011). Accordingly, CO2-driven warming expected over the period, by the present method, was 975 divided by 3450, or 0.28 K. Allowing for the non-CO2 fraction, some 0.40 K warming over the period, equivalent to 61% of observed warming, was anthropogenic, not inconsistent with the estimate in IPCC, 2007 that at least 50% of observed warming from 1950-2005 was anthropogenic. However, inconsistently with (1), this method yields a CO2-driven warming that is only 61% of the central estimate derived from the IPCC’s general-circulation models.
Implications
On the assumption that the coefficient in the CO2 forcing function, cut from 6.3 to 5.35 in Myhre et al. (1998), is now correct, one implication of the present result is that the climate-sensitivity parameter λ appropriate to a 50-year period is not 0.44 K W–1 m2, as the models suggest, but as little as 0.27 K W–1 m2. Since the value of the instantaneous or Planck sensitivity parameter λ0 is 0.31 KW–1 m2 (IPCC, 2007, p. 631 fn.), temperature feedbacks operating during the period of study may have been somewhat net-negative, rather than appreciably net-positive as implied by (1).
If feedbacks operating over the short to medium term are indeed net-negative, there is no warming in the pipeline from past emissions; in the rest of this century CO2-driven warming may be little more than 1 K; anthropogenic warming from all sources may be less than 1.5 K; and supra-centennial-scale warming may also be significantly less than currently projected. If so, all attempts at mitigation will prove cost-ineffective, and the cost of adaptation to future warming will be well below current estimates.
References
Boden, T., G. Marland, and R. Andres, 2011, Global CO2 Emissions from Fossil-Fuel Fossil-Fuel Burning, Cement Manufacture, and Gas Flaring: 1751-2008, available from http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp030/global.1751_2008.ems
Conway, T., & P. Tans, 2011, Recent trends in globally-averaged CO2 concentration, ww2.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/global.html#global.
Garnaut, R., 2008, The Garnaut Climate Change Review: Final Report. Cambridge University Press, Port Melbourne, Australia, 680 pp, ISBN 9780521744447.
IPCC, 2001, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis: Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Houghton, J.T., Y. Ding, D.J. Griggs, M. Noguer, P.J. van der Linden, X. Dai, K. Maskell and C.A. Johnson (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and New York, NY, USA.
IPCC, 2007, Climate Change 2007: the Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007 [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Avery, M. Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and New York, NY, USA.
Myhre et al., 1998, New estimates of radiative forcing due to well mixed greenhouse gases. Geophysical Research Letters25:14, 2715–2718, doi:10.1029/98GL01908.
Ramanathan, V., R. Cicerone, H. Singh and J. Kiehl, 1985, Trace gas trends and their potential role in climate change, J. Geophys. Res.90: 5547-5566.
Solomon, S., G.-K. Plattner, and P. Friedlingstein, 2009, Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions, PNAS 106:6, 1704-1709, doi:10.1073/pnas.0812721106.
Tans, P., 2012, Atmospheric CO2 concentrations (ppmv) at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, 1958-2008, at ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_annmean_mlo.txt.
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to Dr. Patrick Michaels for having drawn his attention to the near-zero-trend in the annual CO2 emissions/concentration-growth ratios that is confirmed here.
Annex: supplementary material
Values of the climate sensitivity parameter λ
If net temperature feedbacks exceed zero, the climate sensitivity parameter λ is not constant: as longer- and longer-acting feedbacks begin to act, it will tend to increase between the time of a forcing to the time when equilibrium is restored to the climate 1000-3000 years after the forcing that perturbed it (Solomon et al., 2009). Illustrative values of λ are given below.
The sensitivity parameter derived from the present result and applicable to the 49 years 1960-2008 is 0.27 K W–1 m2.
Where temperature feedbacks sum to zero, the instantaneous value λ0 is 0.31 K W–1 m2 (derived from IPCC (2007, p. 631 fn.: see also Soden & Held, 2006).
Garnaut (2008) talks of keeping greenhouse-gas rises to 450 ppmv CO2-equivalent above the 280 ppmv prevalent in 1750, so as to hold 21st-century global warming since then to 2 K, implying λ262 = 2 / [5.35 ln{(280 + 450) / 280}] = 0.39 K W–1 m2.
As explained in the text, the IPCC’s implicit climate-sensitivity parameter for the 21st century is λ100 = 1.56 / [5.35 ln(713/368)] = 0.44 K W–1 m2.
On each emissions scenario, the IPCC’s estimate of the bicentennial-scale transient-sensitivity parameter λ200 is 0.49 K W–1 m2 (derived in Table 0), a value supported by IPCC (2001, p. 354, citing Ramanathan, 1985).
The implicit value of the equilibrium-sensitivity parameter λequ is the warming currently predicted in response to a CO2 doubling, i.e. 3.26 K (IPCC, 2007, p. 798, Box 10.2), divided by the forcing of 5.35 ln 2 = 3.71 W m–2 at that doubling. Thus, λequ = 0.88 K W–1 m2.
Additional tables in the annex (which cannot reproduce properly here in blog format) are in the PDF file for this paper:
monckton_climate_sensitivity (PDF)
Garry Stotel:
re your OT comment that Richard Black is leaving the BBC. The AGW-scare is slowly fading away, and your news brings to mind mentions of rats and sinking ships.
Many have shot holes in the AGW-scare, and the above analysis by Lord Monckton launches another torpedo at the foundering scare. But the killer round struck home at the failed Copenhagen climate conference in 2009.
Now, it is important to keep up the attack until the scare sinks out of sight. Importantly, we need to recover the reputation of science which has been damaged by the scare, and the activities of people such as Lord Monckton are needed to achieve that.
Richard
Louise says:
August 31, 2012 at 12:42 am
From the abstract:
“suggesting that”
“perhaps”
“may lie below”
Such weasel words have long been decried on this blog so what’s different about this one?
___________________________________
You are missing the whole point of the exercise. Monckton has taken the points made by IPCC and the climate scientists and showed even using their OWN points CO2 will not have the effect the IPCC states. In such a situation, using the oppositions arguments and not your own, of course you would use “weasel words”
Remember the entire point of the IPCC exercise is to show mankind’s use of energy causes a major “Tipping Point” and a CATASTROPHE. Without a catastrophe politicians and bureaucrats especially in the UN would not have a reason for seizing a great deal of power and money. That is why CO2 must causes positive net forcings in water vapor so the models can take the CO2 forcing and multiply it by a factor of three. (Got to get that catastrophe some how) The fact that CO2 has been much higher in the past and the earth has not burned up and all the water vapor boiled off to space as well as other indications the water vapor net feed back is negative is completely ignored. It does not “Fit” the catastrophe scenario.
Then there is the other bit of IPCC fudging of the data called Judithgate The lead author on the team about the effects of the sun on the earth’s climate was not even a solar physicist. She was also co-author of the key paper that showed the sun’s TSI was constant.
The interesting part is the data she used was from other scientists who were solar physicists and protested in vain that she and her co-author did not know what the heck they were doing. The letters of protest with explanations are included in the link above.
The fraud was so blatant, an author passing judgement on her own work, that the Norwegian government made this complaint.
Luboš Motl, a physicist, was scathing about her credentials as a “Solar” Physicist link
So if the sun did change in intensity, as Dr. R.C. Willson (head of the ACRIM satellites) and Douglas Hoyt, “the people, who were in charge of the satellites and who created the original graphs (the best world astro-physicists: Doug Hoyt, Richard C.Willson)” indicate, then the IPCC has drastically underestimated the solar forcing and everything else has to be adjusted DOWN accordingly.
Yeah, I would be using weasel words too in this case.
richardscourtney says:
August 31, 2012 at 6:55 am
Garry Stotel:
re your OT comment that Richard Black is leaving the BBC. The AGW-scare is slowly fading away, and your news brings to mind mentions of rats and sinking ships.
===============
It is an amazing turn around. However, there are still hundreds of billions being wasted by governments in the name of “saving the planet”, while destroying the economy. Solving CO2 pollution by shipping manufacturing industries to China and India. Using taxpayer money.
As usual, a very nice presentation. However, as the IPCC models, etc, ignore convection and the huge negative feedback of the water cycle, the contention remains that, if CO2 caused any warming, it would only serve to ramp up the water cycle and increase energy loss to space.
Furthermore, as IR absorption by CO2 and water vapor during the day is effectively a wash, emitting in both directions in the face of overwhelming solar input, it is at night that CO2 and water vapor would serve to convert one way, heat energy into IR, and facilitate IR loss to space. These, thus, serve to cool the planet. Remember how fast the air can cool shortly after the sun goes down—that’s CO2 and water vapor doing their job.
And, also, as CO2 appears to replace absolute water vapor content in the air, the overall effect of more CO2 is to have a less effective factor which converts ever so little energy to heat during the day. Increased CO2 could conceivably cause a negligible amount of cooling, but more likely no effect.
I am always concerned when there are attempts to calculate the change in temperature with such precision (or is that accuracy…..) when basing everything on the amount of CO2 in the air ignores the roles of water and the sun, to name two. Water has the double effect of being radiatively active around the same places as CO2 and there is up to 100 tiimes as much water in the air as CO2, plus there is the large effect of evaporation-convection-condensation of water, which (I have read more than once) is much effective in moving heat upward than radiation and CO2. I won’t even go into the solar effects, but they are also believed to be considerably more powerful than CO2 and radiation.
I can understand that Lord Monckton is using the weapons of the warmists against them in his analysis, but doing so only adds credibility to their analysis. IMHOWIR, it would have been better just to leave all references to CO2 and radiation for dumping into that famous dustbin of history.
IanM
Many thanks to everyone who has been kind enough to join this discussion. I am particularly grateful to Dr. Courtney for his generous and helpful comments: it is good to have the agreement of an IPCC reviewer. As he rightly discerns, my purpose in this very short paper is to demonstrate, by a method that is as independent as possible of the computer models, that the models’ central estimates are excessive.
Louise complains that I have qualified my results rather than proclaiming them as definitive: however, since it is not possible to distinguish clearly between natural and anthropogenic effects, and since all of the source data are subject to uncertainties, caution seems scientifically appropriate. As a Huxleian skeptic, I am skeptical of my own arguments (which is one reason why I publish them here from time to time, so as to get some feedback from the scientific community).
In answer to Michel, The Annex to the paper has a brief discussion of various values for the climate-sensitivity parameter lambda in the fundamental equation of climate sensitivity. The values mentioned in the paper itself indeed include all feedbacks that have acted (or will have acted) over the relevant timescales. The equilibrium-sensitivity parameter, mentioned in passing in the paper, includes the full action of all feedbacks over the 1000-3000 years to equilibrium.
Mr. Curtin says his results differ from those that I have plotted in Fig. 1. My results (which are in line with previous results by Dr. Pat Michaels) may be verified by checking the data in the tables in the Annex: but they would not reproduce on the blog, so you will need to download the .pdf for that. If Mr. Curtin is right, that is further good news: for it indicates that the biosphere, far from taking up a declining fraction of the CO2 we emit, are doing the opposite.
Mr. Telford takes me to task for not considering warming in the pipeline beyond 2100. Well, my paper compared observations since 1960 with projections up to 2100. Within that short time-frame, non-linearities are not likely to be significant. The reason why I stated that if feedbacks over the period of study are net-negative then there is no warming in the pipeline is that the 0.6 K in-the-pipeline warming that the IPCC predicts for this century solely as a result of our past sins of emission will not occur. With only 1 K warming from CO2, and another 0.4 K from other greenhouse gases, the anthropogenic warming of the 21st century could be as little as 1.4 K. And, if short-term feedbacks are negative, it is not particularly likely that there will be much in-the-pipeline warming after 2100 either.
Mr. Telford also finds my analysis “strange” because, he says, I argue from CO2 emissions to global warming rather than from CO2 concentrations to warming. On the contrary: I have acted on the basis that the IPCC may be correct in finding that increases in our emissions of CO2 are responsible for increases in its atmospheric concentration; I have determined by a straightforward analysis the ratio of annual emissions to annual concentration changes; I have deduced from the IPCC’s own central estimates the ratio of concentration changes to temperature change that it considers likely; I have applied that ratio to total global CO2 emissions since 1960; and I have found that the IPCC’s central estimates of CO2-driven warming over the period are overstated by almost two-thirds.
AlecM says the mathematics is irrelevant because it makes assumptions about the Earth’s radiative characeristics. The only assumptions I have made are those that the IPCC itself makes. It is not my intention to question whether there is a greenhouse effect: merely to show, using the IPCC’s own methods and comparing them with real-world data, that the IPCC’s central climate-sensitivity estimates are considerably overstated. AlecM concludes that because the radiative forcing capacity of the atmosphere is near saturation the only locations where any significant CO2 forcing may occur are arid deserts. He will find interesting to look at Dr. Murry Salby’s investigation into latitudinal variabilities in the distribution of CO2 concentration. the highest concentration of CO2 appears to be in the mountain-girt Taklamakan Desert, where very few humans live.
Henry Clark says that there was only 0.3 K warming from the 1930s to the present, so I ought not to have calculated that there was 0.4 K warming in the 49 year 1960-2008. However, I have merely followed the data. The least-squares linear-regression trend on the HadCRUt3 data over the period is 0.66 K, and the IPCC’s method indicates that 0.66 K of anthropogenic warming has occurred over the period. My own method indicates that it is only 0.4 K, or about 61% of all warming over the period.
Mr. Huffman asks whether the period of study, 1960-2008, is optimal. No, it is sub-optimal, in that it encompasses an entire warming cycle of the great ocean oscillations but not quite an entire cooling cycle. Optimally, one should consider climate over 60-year periods, and one should only consider lesser periods if they are centered on a phase-transition in the ocean oscillations. However, the data relevant to my analysis are only available from 1960 onwards, so I have taken the longest period available to me.
I agree with Mr. Huffman that the correlation between the monotonically-rising CO2 concentration and the stochastically-fluctuating temperature curve is poor, and that absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation. However, one should be careful to apply this logical consideration correctly. It is the fluctuations in the temperature curve that are not accounted for by CO2: however, it is logically possible (and I consider it likely) that CO2 is exercising a gentle uipward influence on the temperature trend, for there is a greenhouse effect, well established by repeated observation and experiment over the past 200 years. However, for reasons including those set out in the present paper, I do not consider it likely that the upward trend in global temperature will be as rapid as the IPCC has predicted.
Skeptical says one should not try to establish climate sensitivity at all. It may seem surprising, but I have some sympathy with this point of view. My own approach is to take the data and the IPCC’s arguments, put them together, draw logical conclusions using simple mathematical methods, and demonstrate that, even if the premises of their arguments is correct, their conclusion does not follow. This is a very powerful technique, known to the ancient Greeks as elenchus – arguing as far as possible on the opponent’s own ground, and showing him that even on his own terms he is not correct.
The good Lord is not a ‘notable person’ of his own home turf 🙂 – That is, if we are to believe the Wiki on Brenchley. Hasn’t he got editing rights or something? 😉
Kent Beuchert says:
August 31, 2012 at 6:52 am
While scientific debate over carbon will no doubt continue for some time, it seems utterly obvious that CO2 emissions will be reduced, importantly or not, along with harmful emissions in a very big way in the coming years. Looking at the enormous nuclear power building boom currently being planned and undertaken, whereby China alone is anticipating 600 reactors in the next 30 years and 1800 reactors by turn of the century, it’s seems clear to me that electricity will be produced
in the future with few emissions….
____________________________
That is in China and India. Russia is moving forward with plans for doubling nuclear energy output by 2020. Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia already have nuclear planning firmly in place.
Brazil on the other hand said it has shelved plans to build new nuclear power stations in the coming years in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan. So has Germany who has gone even further and is shutting down plants. In Sep of 2011 an explosion shook a French nuclear waste site in southern France, killing one person and injuring four. French President Francois Hollande, who took office in May, pledged to cut the nuclear-power portion of France’s electricity production to 50 percent by 2025 from about 75 percent now, and to invest in renewable energies. UK nuclear plans were also put on hold. As of march of this year Nuclear giants RWE and E.ON drop plans to build new UK reactors The UK also looked at Thorium link
Australia:
The USA gave up on nuclear in the 1970’s. Canada plans to expand its nuclear capacity over the next decade.
ferd berple:
I fear we may be straying OT but I cannot resist the temptation to add to your post at August 31, 2012 at 7:40 am which says
I cannot agree more.
Indeed, I keep posting on WUWT that we need to learn from the ‘acid rain’ scare. Few now remember that scare unless reminded of it. But laws and the bureaucracies to operate those laws were introduced by that scare and they continue to do harm. A clear example is the EU Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD) that sets limits on ‘acid rain’ emissions from power stations. The bureaucrats who operate the LCPD need to justify their jobs so they keep making ever more pointless and always more expensive emission limits.
As the AGW-scare dies its proponents will attempt to keep the effects they desire alive by continuing to use the AGW-scare as an excuse to impose similar rules and bureaucracies to the LCPD. A bureaucracy never dies and is difficult to kill.
We need champions who will lead the fight to ensure such bureaucracies are still-born. Lord Monckton has the background in understanding both AGW and politics to be such a champion, but there are few others.
Richard
@richard S Courtney:
Importantly, we need to recover the reputation of science which has been damaged by the scare.
Indeed so, but before we can recover the reputation of science we need to recover its proper practice.
Thank you Lord Monckton for your courteous answer. Bear in mind that I was not criticising your work, only that after intensive study of the 6 basic mistakes in IPCC ‘science’ , I have concluded the real GHE is, as only an engineer can envisage, so simple as to be laughable.
GHGs in IR self-absorption [~200 ppmV for CO2] switch off that band’s emission at the surface.so there can be no CO2-AGW. The GHE is fixed by the first ~900 ppmV water vapour.
As for the rest of the IPCC’s scientific house of cards, it’s fairly obvious to anyone with reasonable knowledge of the statistical thermodynamics’ thinking of J Willard Gibbs and the radiation physics of Gustav Kirchhoff and Max Planck that there can be no direct thermalisation of real absorbed IR, a fifth of that claimed by the IPCC once you kick out the perpetual motion machine of imaginary ‘back radiation’, false science taught to meteorologists.
Instead the GHGs act as an energy transfer medium with indirect thermalisation mostly at clouds, the rest going to space or back to the ground as ‘Prevost Exchange’ [Auguste le Prevost, 1791]. This serious lack of the scientific and engineering reasoning I was taught at imperial College in the 1960s has led to a monster, a non-science.
Thus the clouds disperse thermal IR energy into grey body IR, a lot of it in the atmospheric window, a short circuit to space. This is why cloud spectra are so different to clear air spectra! This control system is wonderful to see once you clear away Aarhenius’ childish construct.
chris y you write “The result is 0.1 C per W/m^2 or less, indicating strong negative feedback mechanisms are in play.”
Thanks for the reference. However, I take major exception to the quote above. You seem to be assuming that it has been established beyond reasonable doubt that the value for the no-feedback climate sensitiviy has been established as being significant, thus requiring a strong negative feedback to explain the low value of total climate sensitivity.
On the other hand, if the value of the no-feedback sensitivity is, in fact, indistinguishable from zero, as I believe it is, then a low value of total climate sensitivity is completely understandable, with no need to resort to a strong negative feedback. My suspicion is that this explanation is the more likely of the two..
Climate models are filled with educated as well as WAGed fudge factors. It’s what makes the “runs” scenarios instead of predictions. I have no issue with climate models as they are currently formulated. They are very good at determining that the null hypothesis remains intact.
The biggest problem with this analysis is completely inherited from the CAGW proposal that it analyzes. CO_2 is only one component of a highly multivariate problem. I recognize that the point is to show that there are data at hand that do not support the “catastrophic” assignment of overall climate sensitivity, but AR5 already has backed off considerably from this (and I expect will back off still more for every year that CO_2 continues to rise but global temperatures remain more or less trendless, which is yet another constraint on sensitivity). Sadly, ALL of this analysis is across a range of times that is almost invisibly short on a geological scale, on a timescale that is short even compared to KNOWN important timescales of natural variability (e.g. decadal oscillations) and with the Sun in an unusual, if not unique on a timescale of centuries to thousands of years, state of high activity in the latter half of the 20th century. We are fleas trying to predict the height of a dog by looking at the best fit function to a hair on its ass with this kind of analysis.
IMO the only place and way — and I do mean only — that we will be able to quantitatively pin down the overall GHE in a way that can be quantitatively fit and understood is with TOA and BOA spectroscopy. TOA because in the end, the ONLY thing that matters as far as cooling the Earth is concerned is the integrated outgoing average power on a suitably coarse grained averaging interval and how that radiation is distributed. Even that isn’t enough to infer the actual “warming”, because temperature is not enthalpy, especially not with 70% of the Earth’s surface covered with seawater that serves as a huge heat buffer with multiple timescales stretching up higher than 1000 years. BOA spectroscopy provides at least a handle on the local blackbody temperature differential between surface temperatures and TOA emission temperatures across the spectrum, as well as a direct measure of the backradiation from the absorbing greenhouse bands that add to the surface budget of power that has to locally be balanced in dynamic quasi-equilibrium. Even that is perhaps too complex to quantitatively treat, but at least one could look for correlated trends in the data over a sufficiently long time series.
Perhaps 50 years, perhaps 100. More than 30, especially when we are not systematically measuring what we need to measure at the TOA even now, let alone at the BOA. Hell, we can’t even get straight thermometry right.
rgb
Neil:
re your post to me at August 31, 2012 at 8:41 am that says
I very, very strongly agree, and I hope some of my posts on WUWT demonstrate that I agree. Indeed, if you look back at my posts you can see the ferocity with which I attack pseudoscience. I provide an example below.
Richard
In the thread at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/20/us-record-lows-outpace-record-highs-127-to-4-this-weekend/
richardscourtney says:
August 22, 2012 at 1:27 am
Friends:
A post in this thread is an example of pure pseudoscience.
Science
consists of determining the nearest possible approximation to ‘truth’ by formulating ideas then attempting to find information which refutes those ideas and amending or rejecting those ideas on the basis of obtained information.
Pseudoscience
consists of deciding an idea is ‘truth’ and attempting to find information which supports the idea and ignores information which rejects the idea.
I have copied a post in this thread and intend to you use it as an example of pure pseudoscience when explaining the difference between science and pseudoscience. The example is this:
Jan P Perlwitz says:
August 21, 2012 at 5:57 pm
E.M.Smith, you wrote:
All information pertinent to an idea is of “scientific relevance”.
In this case, the idea is that the method used by GISS is correct.
A scientific response to EM Smith would have been,
“Please be specific in stating the places where you found the alleged errors so we can investigate them.”
A pseudoscientific response to EM Smith is,
“I have found an excuse which I will use to ignore your alleged errors; i.e. I will pretend the information does not exist – or is not of scientific relevance – unless it is published in a manner and a place I specify”.
Richard
richardscourtney says:
August 31, 2012 at 6:55 am
…Now, it is important to keep up the attack until the scare sinks out of sight. Importantly, we need to recover the reputation of science which has been damaged by the scare, and the activities of people such as Lord Monckton are needed to achieve that….
_______________________
Unfortunately that genie is not going to go back into the bottle. As I have shown in other comments, it is not just CAGW where the science is suspect. Medicine especially, as well as pyschology has made front page news recently because of fraudulent science.
Perhaps it is just as well that the masses understand scientists are not gods or priests but instead are ordinary humans and are just as prone to the vices of humanity. Vices such as Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, Apathy, Vainglory, Pride and perhaps the worst for a scientist, the need to belong to a group and therefore the fear of speaking out against the general “Consensus”
A useful thread. Many thanks to Lord Monckton, who also made my favourite sky-diving video. But what is this “pipeline?” I thought radiation was the mechanism driving AGW. Radiation is almost instantaneous, is it not?
“And few would doubt that practical and affordable batteries will arrive in the relatively near term, removing auto emissions from the picture.” — Kent Beuchert
Count me among those “few,” Kent.
“Such weasel words have long been decried on this blog so what’s different about this one?” — Louise
Words like ‘may,’ ‘might,’ ‘suggesting,’ and the like have always been part of scientists’ lexicon. I’ve said so here previously. They have, however, been used carelessly by GW fanatics, more so by abstract and headline writers, and often been totally omitted by journalists.
Matt says:
August 31, 2012 at 8:09 am
The good Lord is not a ‘notable person’ of his own home turf….
_______________________________
AHHhh yes the venerated Ad Hominem defense.
‘If the facts are against you, pound on the law. If the law is against you, pound on the facts. And if both are against you, pound on the
tableperson.rgbatduke:
As is your usual practice, you make good points at August 31, 2012 at 10:04 am.
I have devised a possible method for determining the effective emission height as a function of temperature and GHG concentration. It isolates effects of solar and surface radiations over near identical conditions by using the onset (and the end) of solar eclipse totality. I have twice attempted the experiment: in Cornwall where weather prevented the measurements, and in Zambia where the experiment was prevented by a mongoose biting the power cable at a critical moment (yes, I know everybody thinks that is funny but it is a matter of great sadness to me).
Any chance of funding from Duke for another try?
Richard
I’m afraid there’s a schoolboy error by Monckton: if the rate of annual increase in CO2 concentration is proportional to the annual amount of carbon emissions, that does not mean that CO2 concentration is proportional to total emissions: a constant of integration been omitted.
In fact total anthropogenic emissions match very well to atmospheric CO2 concentration (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/703/emissionsvsconc.png/). But the graph does not go through the origin – there was a CO2 concentration of around 280 ppm before the industrial revolution when emissions were zero. If you just take the slope of the plot, as Monckton did, to convert from emissions to concentration and hence derive a temperature increase, you get the wrong answer.
If the calculation is done properly from this plot, the warming predicted from anthropogenic emissions is precisely the same as that predicted from concentration: Monckton’s analysis produces no independent constraint at all!
On another of Monkton’s recent comments on global warming, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/29/new-film-the-boy-who-cried-warming/#more-70119 , he claimed Gore cited a 2005 paper on the drowning of polar bears “that at no point said that global warning was responsible for any of this. He just made it up.”
In fact, Monnett and Gleason’s 2005 paper do put just such a context on their observations: “Although a number of published papers have discussed implications of climate change on polar bears, to date, mortality due to swimming has not been identified as an associated risk.”
Who’s making things up here?
Tom P:
I would welcome expansion/explanation of the points in your post at August 31, 2012 at 12:18 pm.
You say
and
But if the “total anthropogenic emissions match very well to atmospheric CO2 concentration” then what is the problem?
Where is the “schoolboy error”?
What relevance is the “constant of integration”?
And you assert
Really? Lord Monckton did not do the calculation “properly”?
How should he have done it?
You ask
I answer: you are “making things up here” unless and until you explain how you think Lord Monckton should have done the calculation and why.
The rest of your post is about polar bears. But this thread has no relevance of any kind to polar bears. Perhaps you included the stuff about polar bears as ‘filler’ to distract from the fact that the remainder of your post says nothing but,instead, makes unsubstantiated assertions?
I eagerly await your detailed answers to my questions which I am sure you are as eager to provide as I am to obtain them because you would not want people to think you have made a “schoolboy error”.
Richard
Any chance of funding from Duke for another try?
Chuckle. But you know that. My entire participation (such as it is) in Global Climate or Climate Change or whatever one would like to call it is an utterly unfunded, unproductive hobby that has proven to be mostly a waste of time, as was an earlier hobby of trying to convince devout Christians that there was some small chance that Genesis was mythology, not fact, that the story of Noah and his ark was absurd beyond compare, that Moses (contrary to popular opinion) was a genocidal, femicidal, infanticidal murder (see Numbers 31, for example) that today would be tried for war crimes and murder many times over, generously accepting the proposition that Moses existed at all and isn’t just a legend or out and out myth (given a complete lack of corroboratory archeological evidence and a certain amount of absurdity, e.g. spending 40 years making a journey that is at most a few weeks on foot today).
Climate Science is a bizarre mix of similar religious belief and snippets of reason and science, where the latter are utterly incapable of causing any human being participating to shift their religious beliefs regarding the matter by an iota.
At the moment, my current windmill to tilt at is a clear model for the pure radiative greenhouse effect, one that reduces it to first year thermo plus Stefan-Boltzmann ONLY and proves that the second law of thermodynamics is NOT violated by it. This of course doesn’t prove that CO_2 increases do or do not increase global temperature averages — the climate system is complex and involves heat transport, the lapse rate, the differential transparency of the atmosphere to different wavelengths as one ascends the air column to lower pressure/density that you allude to, complex feedback from clouds and water vapor modulating albedo and heat transport, aerosols, heat transport and release from the oceans, particulates, and other things I’m probably forgetting.
But establishing that one of the primary theses of the Skydragon Slayers is nonsense seems like it would still be worthwhile, simply because they are embarrassing and give skeptics a bad name with their terrible physics. As you say, being a skeptic of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change is not an excuse for bad science or weak arguments. The top article here is not bad science, although it isn’t any better than the weak science it directly addresses so it isn’t terribly strong. But Monckton doesn’t go around asserting that there is no such thing as the GHE, because he knows a) sure there is; and b) if he did, people would — with good reason — laugh at him. Science doesn’t involve belonging to a named group or supporting a book that is really pretty humorous where it isn’t sad.
rgb
re Jim Cripwell- you say-
“…value for the no-feedback climate sensitivity has been established…”
I assume a blackbody radiator as the starting point. P = 5.67E-8 * T^4. Increasing T from 288 to 289 K requires about 5.5 W/m^2 of additional incoming intensity. That gives about 0.2 C per W/m^2 for sensitivity. At warmer temperatures it is lower, cooler temperatures it is higher.
rgbatduke:
re your post at August 31, 2012 at 1:20 pm.
No, I didn’t “know that” and – although it was in hope not expectation – my question was serious.
I am not sure of your intent with all the Biblical allusions. Perhaps it was intended as a ‘wind up’ because of my request. If so then it missed its mark: were you to attend next Sunday morning then my sermon concurs with your points about Genesis, Noah and Moses.
And I am not sure which “book” to which you refer but if it is the IPCC AR4 then I fail to see its humour.
Richard
richardscourtney says:
August 31, 2012 at 5:30 am:
“His above analysis indicates the ‘mainstream’ analysis of climate sensitivity uses an erroneous assumption of positive feedback when empirical data indicates a negative feedback exists in reality. Correcting for this error induces the ‘mainstream’ projection of future global warming to be a trivial degree of warming.”
==============================================
The concept of “greenhouse gases warming” excludes a negative feedback. You can not have both at the same time.
If the concept of “greenhouse gases warming” is correct, then you generally must have more warming if you have more “greenhouse gases” (until the effect is saturated). If warming increases concentration of water vapour in the air and water vapour is a “greenhouse gas”, then you will inevitably get more warming, this is a positive feedback.
Logically, if there is a proven negative feedback, then it proves the concept of “greenhouse gases warming” to be false. But, as I said, you can not have both at the same time.