What it would take to persuade me that current climate policy makes sense
Guest post by Matt Ridley
I have written about climate change and energy policy for more than 25 years. I have come to the conclusion that current energy and climate policy is probably more dangerous, both economically and ecologically, than climate change itself. This is not the same as arguing that climate has not changed or that mankind is not partly responsible. That the climate has changed because of man-made carbon dioxide I fully accept. What I do not accept is that the change is or will be damaging, or that current policy would prevent it.
For the benefit of supporters of climate change policy who feel frustrated by the reluctance of people like me to accept their assurances, here is what they would need to do to change my mind.
1. I need persuading that the urban heat island effect has been fully purged from the surface temperature record. Satellites are showing less warming than the surface thermometers, and there is evidence that local warming of growing cities, and poor siting of thermometers, is still contaminating the global record. I also need to be convinced that the adjustments made by those who compile the global temperature records are justified. Since 2008 alone, NASA has added about 0.1C of warming to the trend by unexplained “adjustments” to old records. It is not reassuring that one of the main surface temperature records is produced by an extremist prepared to get himself arrested (James Hansen).
2. Despite these two contaminating factors, the temperature trend remains modest: not much more than 0.1 C per decade since 1979. So I would need persuading that water vapour will amplify CO2’s effect threefold in the future but has not done so yet. This is what the models assume despite evidence that clouds formed from water vapour are more likely to moderate than amplify any warming.
3. Nor am I convinced that sulphate aerosols and ocean heat uptake can explain the gap between model predictions and actual observations over the last 34 years. Both are now well understood and provide insufficient excuse for such an underperformance. Negative cloud feedback, leading to total feedbacks being modest, is the more plausible explanation.
4. The one trend that has been worse than expected – Arctic sea ice – is plausibly explained by black carbon (soot), not carbon dioxide. Soot from dirty diesel engines and coal-fired power stations is now reckoned to be a far greater factor in climate change than before; it is a short-lived pollutant, easily dealt with by local rather than global action. So you would need to persuade me that this finding, by explaining some recent climate change, does not further reduce the likely sensitivity of the atmosphere to carbon dioxide. Certainly, it “buys time”.
5. Even the Met Office admits that the failure of the models to predict the temperature standstill of the last 16 years is evidence that natural factors can match man-made ones. We now know there is nothing unprecedented about the level and rate of change of temperature today compared with Medieval, Roman, Holocene Optimum and other post-glacial periods, when carbon dioxide levels did not change significantly, but temperatures did. I would need persuading that natural factors cannot continue to match man-made ones.
6. Given that we know that the warming so far has increased global vegetation cover, increased precipitation, lengthened growing seasons, cause minimal ecological change and had no impact on extreme weather events, I need persuading that future warming will be fast enough and large enough to do net harm rather than net good. Unless water-vapour-supercharged, the models suggest a high probability of temperatures changing less than 2C, which almost everybody agrees will do net good.
7. Nor is it clear that ecosystems and people will fail to adapt, for there is clear evidence that adaptation has already vastly reduced damage from the existing climate – there has been a 98% reduction in the probability of death from drought, flood or storm since the 1920s, for example, and malaria retreated rapidly even as the temperature rose during the twentieth century.
8. So I cannot see why this relatively poor generation should bear the cost of damage that will not become apparent until the time of a far richer future generation, any more than people in 1900 should have borne sacrifices to make people today slightly richer. Or why today’s poor should subsidise, through their electricity bills, today’s rich who receive
subsidies for wind farms, which produce less than 0.5% of the country’s energy.
9. Indeed I will need persuading that dashing to renewables can cut emissions rather than make them worse; this is by no means certain given that the increased use of bioenergy, such as wood or corn ethanol, driven by climate policies, is indeed making them worse.11 Meanwhile shale gas use in the USA has led to a far greater cut in emissions than
any other technology, yet it is opposed every step of the way by climate alarmists.
10. Finally, you might make the argument that even a very small probability of a very large and dangerous change in the climate justifies drastic action. But I would reply that a very small probability of a very large and dangerous effect from the adoption of large-scale
renewable energy, reduced economic growth through carbon taxes or geo-engineering also justifies extreme caution. Pascal’s wager cuts both ways.
At the moment, it seems highly likely that the cure is worse than disease.
We are taking chemotherapy for a cold.
Full paper with graphs and references here
Related articles
- A climate of scepticism (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Matt Ridley responds with a “sleight of hand” (scienceblogs.com)
- Matt Ridley’s actual response (wattsupwiththat.com)
- The Lukewarmer’s Way
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Even a child understands that a single weather station no more disproves the average effect of clouds than does a single man in Armenia who lived to 110 despite smoking since he was 6 disproves the link between smoking and cancer.
mods ~ AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! blew the end italics tag above. turns out when you type in the part that you blew….it is still an end of italics tag and so doesn’t show up.
[Is that what you intended? Mod]
“That the climate has changed because of man-made carbon dioxide I fully accept.”
That the climate has changed because of man-made carbon dioxide I don’t accept at all.
JPP
davidmhoffer says, January 28, 2013 at 10:40 pm
Please, look at this: http://english.wunderground.com/history/airport/KNYC/2012/7/28/DailyHistory.html . They measure the temperature a few times an hour and also report conditions. You can see, the temperature goes sometimes down despite increase in cloudiness.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Even a child understands that a single weather station no more disproves the averageI/i> effect of clouds than
=====================================================
In this particular case 1 single weather station is sufficient to disprove the warming effect of the clouds (by back radiation).
As soon as a cloud has emerged, (more) back radiation is immediately there, it takes like 0.00001 seconds. Now it is supposed to raise the temperature near the ground, but the measurements in the link above demonstrate that the temperature in fact goes down, despite emerging clouds. Thesis disproved.
Well, OK, like I said, you could modify the thesis and say “sometimes”, but then we would have a very peculiar “greenhouse effect” working also “sometimes”. Never heard of that. Might be interesting.
nothothere says (January 28, 2013 at 8:40 pm): “But it can be disproven quite simply, Woods did it 100 years ago.”
Oh, my mistake then. BTW, do you have a link to his Nobel Prize acceptance speech? 🙂
What Wood actually did was show that a greenhouse warms its interior mainly by restricting convection, and not primarily by trapping infrared radiation. Since the earth’s atmosphere is pretty much the opposite of a physical greenhouse (no roof) the so-called “greenhouse” effect (SCGE) is a misnomer, but we’re stuck with it.
Greg House says (January 28, 2013 at 8:45 pm): “A wonderful idea, Gary: “accept” vs “disprove”. Some people might consider “prove” vs “disprove” being a little bit fairer…”
Well, since “proving” the SCGE would be worthless (both sides of the CAGW debate accept it), but “disproving” it would earn wealth, fame, and the everlasting gratitude of a world freed from the fear of thermageddon, I find the lack of disproof more than a bit puzzling. It’s not a matter of fairness, it’s a matter of incentive.
Greg House says (January 28, 2013 at 8:56 pm): “Gary, if you look closely into the well known study Doran&Zimmerman (2008), you can see that 70% of related scientists do not support the AGW concept.”
If you mean this study
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
90% of participants said the earth has warmed since 1800, and 82% said humans contribute “significantly” to global temperature change. Not a word on the SCGE.
You’re confusing the actual SCGE with dire predictions of its consequences. It’s perfectly reasonable to accept the SCGE while scoffing at warnings of doom from overestimation of its effect and/or underestimation of counteracting factors.
Pat Frank says:
January 28, 2013 at 7:58 pm
“Konrad, the rapid collisional decay rate of 15-micron vibrationally excited CO2 means that it will not radiate away any significant amount of IR energy below about 35 km, i.e., the stratosphere.”
———————————————————————————————————————-
Pat,
the “Effective Radiating Level” game is entertaining as it is one of the few games in which the AGW calculations even consider that the atmosphere actually has depth. But a game is all it is. The ERL argument was concocted to bury under a mountain bafflegab the fact that radiative gases are radiating far more energy to space than they intercept from outgoing surface IR.
For an atmosphere such as ours that has been maintaining a very stable temperature for thousands of years and exhibiting strong convective circulation under the tropopause there is only one answer. Energy must be exiting the atmosphere at a higher altitude than it is entering the atmosphere. This is the “basic physics” of convection.
There are several ways for energy to enter our atmosphere low in the troposphere. Conduction, latent heat and a small amount of intercepted IR. There is only one way energy can exit our atmosphere at altitude, that is radiative gases. Remove these gases from our atmosphere and convective circulation would stall and the atmosphere will heat.
Where are almost all the strong radiative gases in our atmosphere? Below the tropopause.
Where does almost all strong vertical convective circulation occur? Below the tropopause.
No amount of maths games with ERL can cover the fact that the “basic physics” of AGW does not properly model the role of radiative gases in tropospheric convective circulation.
[Is that what you intended? Mod]
yes, thanks.
There is, of course, a more telling conundrum…..
An exhaustive study by Mudelsee (2001) puts it this way:
“On long timescales, variations in Vostok’s CO2 record lag behind those of its air-temperature record (dD) by 1.3±1.0 ka, and lead over global ice-volume variations (derived from Vostok’s d18Oair and marine d18Omar) by 2.7±1.3 ka.”
Caillon et al (2003) found that for ice age Termination 3 (the Kansan ice age) CO2 increases lagged temperature increases by 800 years ( 200 years). Spahni et al (2005) found similar GHG lags as related to temperature changes in the greater depths of the Dome Concordia ice core, and Fischer et al (1999) found Vostok data to show similar lags in CO2 with respect to temperature changes.
The problem here, of course, is that atmospheric concentrations if CO2, purportedly lower than the end-Holocene’s anthropogenic attribution in addition to, whatever lesser domain that really was, failed to prevent onset of the next time/cimate(?)-honored descent into the next punctual glacial.
Which, given CO2’s vaunted thermodynamics, leaves us with something of a paradox, doesn’t it?
Environmental cognoscenti will gladly strip the purported climate security blanket from the late Holocene atmosphere quick-smart.
Just out of curiosity, what significance might that gesture have with respect to normal, similar eccentricity-minima interglacials that can naturally score from 1 to 3 thermal pulses right at their very ends? The most recent being MIS-11e which scored something like from 1.5 to 2 precessional cycles duration, and may have topped-out some +21.3m (or some 36 times the IPCC’s 2007 AR4 (IPCC (2007) worst case scenario of +0.59m by 2100) amsl……
In the political science game we are playing here, because if the word science is employed at all….
“I”ll see your +0.59m highstand in 2100 and raise you +6.0m at the end-Eemian.” (Hearty and Neumann, 2001). I’m still holding climate cards that extend to ~+45m (Hearty and Neumann, 2001), maybe +52m amsl (Lysa et al, 2001) just at the end of the last interglacial back.
But I have a pretty decent hole-card in MIS-11, the very first extreme interglacial, which also just happens to have happened at the last eccentricity minimum, the late Holsteinian highstand some 36 times the 2007 AR4 worst case estimate at +21.3 amsl……
You simply have to do better than Mother Nature, gaia, to get my end-iextreme-interglacial attention here.
References.:
Caillon, N., J. Severinghaus, J. Jouzel, JM Barnola, J. Kang and V. Lipenkov, 2003, Timing of Atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic Temperature Changes Across Termination III, Science, vol. 299, no. 5613, pp. 1728 – 1731.
Fischer, H, M. Wahlen, J. Smith, D. Mastroianni and B. Derek, 1999, Ice Core Records of Atmospheric CO2 Around the Last Three Glacial Terminations, Science, vol. 283, no. 5408, pp. 1712-1714.
Hearty, P. J., and A. C. Neumann (2001), Rapid sea level and climate change at the close of the last interglaciation (MIS 5e): Evidence from the Bahama Islands, Quat. Sci. Rev., 20, 1881–1895.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2007, Assessment Report 4, Climate Change 2007, Cambridge University Press
Lysa, A, Demidov, I, Houmark-NielsenI, M and E. Larsen, 2001, Late Pleistocene stratigraphy and sedimentary environment of the Arkhangelsk area, northwest Russia, Global and Planetary Change 31 Ž2001. 179–199
Mudelsee, M., 2001, The phase relations among atmospheric CO2 content, temperature and global ice volume over the past 420 ka, Quaternary Science Reviews, 20, pp 583-589.
Olson, Storrs L. and Paul J.Hearty, 2009, A sustained þ21 m sea-level highstand during MIS 11 (400 ka): direct fossil and sedimentary evidence from Bermuda, Quaternary Science Reviews 28 (2009) 271–285.
Spahni, R., J. Chappellaz, T. Stocker, L. Loulergue, G. Hausammann, K. Kawamura, J. Flückiger, J. Schwander, D. Raynaud, V. Masson-Delmotte and J. Jouzel, 2005, Atmospheric Methane and Nitrous Oxide of the Late Pleistocene from Antarctic Ice Cores, Science, vol. 310, no. 5762, pp. 1317-1321.
Gary Hladik says, January 28, 2013 at 11:07 pm: “If you mean this study http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf 90% of participants said the earth has warmed since 1800, and 82% said humans contribute “significantly” to global temperature change.”
============================================================
I mean this study, right, but the point is that 70% of the scientists polled refused to confirm the AGW concept, although it would have taken them only 2 minutes to do it. This is the silent scientific majority, Gary.
Greg House;
As soon as a cloud has emerged, (more) back radiation is immediately there, it takes like 0.00001 seconds. Now it is supposed to raise the temperature near the ground, but the measurements in the link above demonstrate that the temperature in fact goes down, despite emerging clouds. Thesis disproved
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Even a child understands that when you turn the burner on a stove to high that the pot of water doesn’t boil in like 0.00001 seconds. Even a child understands that there is a lag. Even a child would also understand that the bottom of the graphs you so proudly display shows that there is significant wind over the period of time you show, that the direction of the wind changes over that period of time, and that the influx of air could be warmer, cooler, or the same as the air around the weather station. Without knowing if the wind is adding warming, cooling or nothing to the temperature, you have no idea what changes are from clouds and what from wind. I notice also that there are changes in barometric pressure, humidity and precipitation which also change temperature and you haven’t bothered to take these into account in your “proof”.
Genius that you are, looked at all that data and simply decided to dismiss anything and everything that could affect temperature so that you were left with only the 10% of the data that said what you wanted it to say. This technique has been perfected by the cagw alarmists and I am sorry to see it show up here in support of ANY argument, not just skeptic ones.
davidmhoffer says:
January 28, 2013 at 10:02 pm
—————————————————————–
Anthony has chosen not to have a post that proposes the lack of a greenhouse effect. That is his choice. He has also banned commentators that do not obey the rules. His blog, his choice.
I return to my original point which you avoided probably because it is an uncomfortable analogy for you. Censoring non-abusive and on topic comments because you do not agree with them is what sites like SkepticalScience does, not what WUWT does. Also, going to the argument from authority defence is also what the likes of SkepticalScience and their ilk does. It is not how science is debated.
By the way, Dr Tim Ball is a welcome commentator and occasional poster and gets a link on the WUWT side bar. He is a “sl@yer” as you call them. Seems like your perception of Anthony’s attitude is not in keeping with the evidence at hand.
Gary Hladik says, January 28, 2013 at 11:07 pm: “What Wood actually did was show that a greenhouse warms its interior mainly by restricting convection, and not primarily by trapping infrared radiation. Since the earth’s atmosphere is pretty much the opposite of a physical greenhouse…”
========================================================
No, Gary, what Wood did was to compare 2 boxes where convection was equally restricted, but only in one of them the radiation was trapped (glass lid vs rock salt lid). And the experiment demonstrated that despite this trapped radiation the difference in temperature between the boxes was either zero or negligible.
@Gary Young Hladik
“If you mean this study
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf”
Tell me you and Greg are not using the meaningless debunked “97%” Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman paper?
GIGO…….
I am only a ‘lukewarmer’ if it means the position that a planet with an atmosphere has a less extreme surface temperature variation at contact than a similar but atmosphere-less planet.
However, ‘lukewarmer’ is logically an unsupportable position if it condones the integrity-challenged activities of intentionally biasing science toward seeing all warming as both bad and attributable to man. In that context then the alarming AGW belief is the same fundamentally equivalent intellectual position as a ‘lukewarmer’ position. That is because there appears to be intellectual equivalency between a science influenced by politics / ideology to find alarming AGW and the very same science influenced by politics / ideology to find one tenth of the alarming AGW.
In that sense both ‘alarming’ and ‘lukewarming’ are not products of scientific integrity.
John
Theoretically, as a consequence of the current unremitting levels of CO2 emissions, the global temperature should be increasing at the same rate as that seen in the 40s onwards. It is not, it has stalled. As soon as you accept that natural variation can cancel out the effects of manmade CO2 emissions thereby explaining the present stall in temperature anomaly rise, it becomes impossible with any degree of certainty to argue that the only explanation for the 1940s onwards warming was manmade CO2 emissions. An equally likely explanation for that warming is natural variation.
Put at its kindest, it would appear that there is extremely strong evidence to suggest that the sensitivity to CO2 has been grossly over-estimated and that there is little worry that CAGW will come to pass.
Personally, I consider there has been a complete failure to properly evaluate the effects of a warmer world which I suspect that if properly evaluated would be seen to be net beneficial. There was no mass extinction during the Holocene Optimum. There is no evidence that the world (and life on Earth) did not flourish during that epoch. That being the case, there is no reason to presume there would be any significant problem if temperatures were once again to rise to that level.
There is a reason why we do not live in the Arctic, and Antaarctic and that populations are always small in cold Northern Climes, whereas populations are large in more temperate climes. Warmth is good for life.
The precautionary principle is misunderstood and misapplied. The true disaster scenario is:
1. We spend trillions on mitigation, only to find that the climate continues to change but this is not due to manmade emissions of CO2 but is due to natural variation and the western world has bankrupted itself and cannot afford to pay for adaption. The developing world also does not have sufficient funds nor knowledge nor wherewithall to meet the demands of adaption; or
2. We spend trillions on mitigation which is successful but later evidence establishes beyond doubt that a warmer climate is of huge benefit and we have deprived us and our childrens from reaping the benefit that would have occured had we not engaged in mitigation, ie., mitigarion is in fact counter productive.
The only sensible policy is targeted adaption. This works whatever the cause of any climate change (whether manmade or natural) and does not waste money should it transpire that climate change is net beneficial. Of course, it also covers the situation where there is no real or significant climate change and what we saw in the 20-th century was poor quality and misunderstood data.
Thanks to Arno, Pat, Konrad and others. Nice to find that sane thinking exitsts on the AGW hoax.
Also, AIUI satellites show stratosphere temps dropping steadily. This is consistent with CO2 behaving as a coolant there. More CO2 leads to more cooling. Humlum’s page has charts for that.
I think he also has a chart that shows OLR has remained (essentially) steady over decades. If OLR is truly not changing then the “Global Warming” people have some explaining to do.
The presence of good surface temp data at Amundsen-Scott, Vostok, Halley and Davis stations show zero warming since the 1950s. Warmerist physics claim that Antarctica would be the first to show warming. They don’t seem too excited to explain why the bulk of Antarctica is immune to their claims. They don’t like to admit anymore that they made those claims.
I do not want to engage in the off topic debate regaring radiation and the so called basic physics.
However, a couple of days ago, I watched a programne on the BBC about ‘Life on Earth’ It was presented by Professor Brian Cox, who is young and trendy, and often on BBC science programnes. He talked about the conservation of energy and the inevitable demise of the universe.
He sat on a beach and said that during the day, the sand receive high quality ordered energy from the sun. The sand then radiates (especially at night) the energy that it has received. However, whilst it gives up the energy that it receives, the energy that it radiates is ‘a lower quality disordered energy’. That energy is ‘less useful and can do less work’. He actually said it can do less work.
I had a number of issues with some of the comments made throughout the programne and he talked quite a bit about the 2nd law of thermodynamics indicating that was perhaps one of the very few universal laws of physics. He did not really explain it, nor did he mention the law of entropy. However, I suspect that that was what he really was getting at, the inevitable and unremitting procession towards disorder.
If he is correct that the energy that is radiated from the ground is of a lower quality and more disordered than the energy received from the sun and can do less work, no doubt he holds the view that the energy that is re-radiated from the atmosphere (the radiated/reflected back energy that was received from the ground having radiated energy) is of even lower quality and even more disordered so that it can do even less work than the energy that was radiated from the ground. In other words although energy may be conserved, what is being conserved is not of the same order and quality but rather it has in some way become disordered and less capable of performing work.
The K&T energy diagram assumes that all energy has the same quality, is equally ordered and equally capable of performing work. However, the law of entropy may suggest that 2nd hand, and then 3rd hand energy etc is not equally capable.
Mr. Ridley
“That the climate has changed because of man-made carbon dioxide I fully accept.”
I don’t.
Can I point you to a guest post by David Archibald.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/
richardscourtney says: January 28, 2013 at 3:26 pm
Julian Flood:wrote
“Why the blip just off the Rhine?”
quote
I would expect it. Nitrates and phosphates from the land are conveyed to the North Sea by the Rhine. They fertilise phytoplankton in the sea with resulting increase to DMS (dimethylsulphide) emission from the sea surface. The DMS breaks down under the action of UV in the atmosphere to form sulphate cloud nuclei which alters cloud cover. Clouds affect surface temperature. (I worked on this alteration to the sulphur cycle in the 1980s).
unquote
A simple increase in DMS would yield more CCNs and thus more stratocumulus cloud (see Salter’s cloud ships), which my naive understanding says leads to cooling. Let us be bolder. The run-off will contain dissolved silica, the limiting nutrient for diatoms. Diatoms outcompete calcareous phytoplankton until the silica is depleted and one might predict that calcareous blooms will occur later where agriculture is disturbing soil cover. Diatoms do not, AFAIK, produce DMS, so the cloud levels will fall. Low level stratocumulus has an albedo of 70, open sea essentially nil. Diatoms export less C to the deep oceans (generally, I know how shallow the North Sea is) and because their metabolic pathway (CAM-like) is less discriminatory against heavy C isotopes. So less pull down leads to higher levels of atmospheric carbon, relatively increased levels of heavy C export leaves a light C ‘it must be fossil fuels because we can’t think of anything else’ signal. Oh, look…
I think it’s oil/surfactant pollution (there is a NASA claim that the annual oily road run-off from a city of 5 million equals a major tanker disaster) reducing salt aerosols, smoothing, lowering albedo, reducing emissivity and evaporation, but the two hypotheses are not contradictory — in the deep ocean there are ways that smooths will reduce phytoplankton feeding. I have banged on elsewhere ad nauseam* about the Kriegsmarine effect.
You realise that one could carry out experiments to see which of us is correct? What next, putting some science into the discussion? Demanding that biological responses to warming, cooling and pollution be incorporated into the settled science? We’d better be careful, might get drummed off the internets.
JF
*If you’ll excuse a Monktonism.
.
Greg House says:
January 28, 2013 at 10:07 pm
…My link disproves your assertion about clouds raising temperature. You did not scroll down, I guess. Otherwise you would have found temperature measurements and remarks about clouds condition corresponding every single temperature measurement….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I am sorry Greg but the empirical data shows you are wrong. The Greenhouse gas H2O as vapor in the atmosphere DOES MODIFY THE TEMPERATURE.
First the data from the eclipse as seen in the Libya desert in 2006: http://www.shadowchaser.demon.co.uk/eclipse/2006/thermochron.gif
Note the absence of sunlight makes the air temperature drop by over 10C while the sand temperature only drops by about 5 C. If you change the energy you change the temperature.
Next look at a comparison of the humid Brazilian rain forest and the dry N. African Desert.
Sleepalot @ur momisugly July 21, 2012 at 4:53 am pointed out the actual effects of the GHG water vapor on the temperature by comparing high vs low humidity.
#1. The solar eclipse data tells you the earth & air temperature response (in low humidity) to a change in solar energy is FAST!
#2 The effect of the addition of water vapor (~ 4%) is not to raise the temperature but to even the temperature out. The monthly high is 10C lower and the monthly low is ~ 10C higher when the GHG H2O is added to the atmosphere in this example. The average temperature is about 4C lower in Brazil despite the fact that Algeria is further north above the tropic of Cancer. Some of the difference is from the effect of clouds/albedo but the dramatic effect on the temperature extremes is also from the humidity.
I took a rough look at the data from Brazil. Twelve days were sunny. I had to toss the data for two days because it was bogus. The average humidity was 80% for those ten days. The high was 32 with a range of 1.7C and the low was 22.7C with a range of 2.8C. Given the small range in values over the month the data is probably a pretty good estimate for the effects of humidity only. You still get the day-night variation of ~ 10C with a high humidity vs a day-night variation of 35C without and the average temp is STILL going to be lower when the humidity is high.
This data would indicate GHGs have two effects. One is to even out the temperature and the second is to act as a “coolant” at least if the GHG is H2O.
The latent heat of evaporation could be why the average is 4C lower when in Brazil vs Algeria. As one of the commenters here at WUWT mentioned using temperature without humidity to estimate the global heat content is bad physics.
More details:
The data is from May which is midway between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice and therefore the sun would be midway between the equator and the Tropic of Cancer (the latitude line at 23.5° North) so the solar insolation at both locations would be roughly equal with a bit more expected in Barcelos, Brazil.
ALTITUDE:
Barcelos, Brazil elevation ~ 30 meters (100 ft)
Adrar, Algeria ~ Elevation: 280 metres (920 feet)
One would expect a drop in temperature of ~ 4C due to altitude for Adrar, Algeria so the difference between locations, taking into account altitude is ~ 8C higher in Adrar which is further north but with much lower humidity.
A look at the actual wavelengths for energy interaction with CO2: Graph Both CO2 and H2O interact with wavelengths in the solar as well as the earthshine bands.
The most important vibrational and rotational transitions for CO2 is
Center……Band interval
667…………..540-800
961
plus…………..850-1250
1063.8
2349………….2100-2400
Visible and near-IR absorption bands
2526………….2000-2400
3703………….3400-3850
5000………….4700-5200
6250………….6100-6450
7143………….6850-7000
Chart from http://irina.eas.gatech.edu/EAS8803_Fall2009/Lec6.pdf
I am sorry that Matt still believes the fairy story of GHG’s. Please read Joe Postma on
http://www.climateofsophistry.com
Full explanations plus the math of the stupidity of the GHG theory.
Arctic ice decline may be due to being in the declining side of the 80 year polar cycle, or, slight changes to ocean currents to funnel warmer water polewards since water will melt ice much faster than warm air. There is also the satellite problem seeing melt ponds on the ice surface as clear water and broken ice from storms seen as clear water.
I have the greatest respect for Matt Ridley, and I greatly enjoyed reading his book ‘Genome’ some years ago. As a matter of interest the book contained a good example of how the scientific consensus can be wrong. For decades scientists thought there were 24 chromosomes in the human genome. In fact it was always obvious that there were actually 23, but the existence of the concensus was more powerful than the truth.
But I am puzzled by one thing: that he believes in the basic theory of AGW. Of course, he may think that the sensitivity is low or even very low. I wonder if he could comment?
But his statement about the physics is rather odd. I would think that most people accept that doubling CO2 will increase the temperature by around one degree – in the laboratory, that is. The climate system is completely different: sometimes chaotic and full of complex feedbacks. It’s the climate system that decides the real sensitivity, not something that happens in a laboratory, particularly if the experiment is conducted by Al Gore’s supporters.
It would be great if Matt could write a piece that explains his belief: what sensitivity figure does he subscribe to and exactly what empirical evidence supports this figure.
For me, the best evidence, the ice cores, strongly suggest that the climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide is very small and possibly negligible. This is consistent with the lack of recent warming. It’s also consistent with the early 20th century warming. This warmong (1900 to 1945) provided almost half of the total modern warming, but it could not have been caused by CO2 as there was not enough of it.
Matt posed ten very reasonable questions. So here are my questions to Matt:
1. How much warming would be caused by a doubling of CO2?
2. If you think there is a fairly high sensitivity to CO2, how do you explain the lack of evidence for this in the ice cores?
3. How do you explain the simple fact that all the significant predictions of AGW are contradicted by empirical measurements? Examples: all computer models showed warming that hasn’t happened, the lack of an equatorial hot spot, the trend in emitted infra red is not just wrong in amount but has the opposite sign (a paper by Richard Lindzen).
Chris
Even with a (hypothetical) vacuum layer between the Earth’s surface and the atmosphere (so that the surface cools only by radiation), I don’t think there would be any significant warming CO2 effect (radiatively active gases would still be the only cooling for the atmosphere). However, with the direct contact surface/atmosphere? No way. How would that work?
For me it’s 100% about the feedback. IF the increase in water vapor is proven to be a major positive feedback, then I’m on board with the “consensus” view although I may not agree with the actions to mitigate. But since CO2 has risen and fallen many times in our geological history and there has NEVER been a case of amplified warming from water vapor, then the most likely case is water vapor is a negative feedback, cutting the 1.whatever C warming you get in the laboratory from a doubling of CO2 to very likely less than 1C.
Water vapor is THE ISSUE between warmists and realists.
” That the climate has changed because of man-made carbon dioxide I fully accept. ”
It has still not been demonstrated. The “attribution” and “fingerprinting” studies are junk.
The slope of the warming in the 80ies and 90ies was identical to the slope of the warming from 1910 to 1940.
Just “accepting” the CO2AGW conjecture is not scientific.
I accept that there is gravity because I can demonstrate its effects. I can’t do that with CO2 and temperature.
Where is the conclusive attribution study that is NOT junk?