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
“I got an A. If I’d used what passes for physics at principia and the whole sl@yer bs load of garbage I would have flunked.”
Oh, that is SO convincing! SO much factual matter there… LOL
[OK, enough Slayer references. Thanks. — Mod.]
DMH:
“That’s not proof said the professor. He produced two cases of warm beer, a pack of thermometers, and marched the class down to the river bank and told us to prove out work.”
Hmm, your professor appears to have been a very good scientist, because he understood the importance of empirical evidence. Diagrams and math don’t prove anything, by themselves. Remember that Einstein had to wait for 4 years for empirical evidence proving his theory of relativity. This is a big problem for proving the existence of a “radiative GHE.” And the mismatch between the constantly increasing OCO, but constant or decreasing temperatures over the last 16 years sure isn’t helping with empirical evidence.
Dear Mr. Ridley:
I read a lot of your stuff and generally applaud what, and how, you write – but not this time.
First: please check this out – it’s 3000 words that won’t fit into this note:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/26/things-we-dont-know-about-climate/
And then let me add something: things like the Noachian deluge, the medieval warming period, and the Dalton minimum all had natural causes. Similar events and processes now are caused by the American SUV – or CO2. How did that happen? Did God die on the job, or what?
bw: 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.
Do you have a link for that?
[Reply: Dr. Humlum’s page is at: climate4you.com. Excellent resource. — mod.]
jae;
Diagrams and math don’t prove anything, by themselves.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Correct. In particular when drawn by people who have no grasp of the math, no grasp of the physics, no experience verifying either via experimentation, and who yet who feel qualified to explain to me what I don’t know about physics and what they do.
I can only think that Gail’s tongue was firmly planted in cheek when she provided me those links. Thanks for the read!
Greg House says (January 28, 2013 at 11:25 pm): “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.”
Ah, now I understand your point! You assume that everyone who didn’t bother to answer the survey (or had changed E-mail address, or dismissed the survey as spam, etc.) didn’t think the earth had warmed since 1800 and didn’t think humans “significantly” affect global temperatures. In other words, “If you didn’t vote, you did, and you voted the way I say you voted.” 🙂
Interesting logic, but probably consistent with belief in a “theory” that no one bothers to demonstrate experimentally despite fabulous rewards for doing so. In future, though, it would save time if you mention up front that the 70% who supposedly “refuse to confirm AGW” are the ones who don’t actually express an opinion. Thanks in advance.
Other_Andy says (January 28, 2013 at 11:56 pm): “Tell me you and Greg are not using the meaningless debunked “97%” Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman paper?
GIGO…….”
Not to worry, Andy. I was just pointing out that Greg, who thinks the survey says the opposite of what it really says, is literally reading what isn’t there. The survey of course only says that a majority of participants think the earth has warmed since 1800 and humans “significantly” affect global temperatures. I would answer “true” to the first and “false” to the second based on my own interpretation of the word “significantly”, which was undefined in the survey. GIGO indeed!
Human nature is a tragically ugly thing, and the climate change has everything to do with it and nothing to do with science. You can take all the graphs, the wordiness and the postulations as meaningless; because science is not and will never be the real cruxt of this context which is, by default, meant to define who make money (the established, the hysterical and the so-aligned) and how pays (toilers, taxpayers, the poor) by FORCE. Remember; it’s our ugly human nature at play, not carbon dioxide.
Greg House says (January 28, 2013 at 11:35 pm): “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.”
Missing the point. Both boxes were significantly warmer than the “outside”, where convection was unrestricted. As Wood wrote about the concept of a greenhouse as a “radiation trap”, “It appeared much more probable that the part played by the glass was the prevention of the escape of the warm air heated by the ground within the enclosure. If we open the doors of a greenhouse on a cold and windy day, the trapping of radiation appears to lose much of its efficacy.” His experiment in fact showed that in his model greenhouses, “trapping” radiation was not much more effective than restricting convection.
Wood extrapolated his results to the atmosphere as a whole, but wrote this disclaimer, “I do not pretend to have gone very deeply into the matter, and publish this note merely to draw attention to the fact that trapped radiation appears to play but a very small part in the actual cases with which we are familiar.”
As I pointed out in an earlier comment, the earth’s atmosphere is not a greenhouse, so Wood’s results can’t be extrapolated to the earth as a whole.
BTW, Wood’s experiment has been severely criticized, e.g. by Vaughan Pratt. An excerpt:
“No one familiar with experimental methods in physics could possibly take this experiment seriously. It is riddled with methodological errors. One glaring one is that Wood neglected to take into account that his extra glass covering the salt window will itself trap radiation and heat up even when ventilated. He also made no attempt to investigate possible sources of errors, or to document the experiment in any reasonable detail. No dimensions or any other numerical parameters of the experiment were given and we have no idea whether the boxes were 2 inches or 2 feet on a side (presumably closer to the former since large IR-transparent windows are a rarity in optical labs), or whether they were cubes or flat trays, or how thick the windows were other than that they were the same thickness, etc. etc.”
See Pratt’s full comment on Judith Curry’s blog (scroll down through comments):
http://judithcurry.com/2011/08/13/slaying-the-greenhouse-dragon-part-iv/
Pratt’s failure to replicate Wood’s results is covered here:
http://boole.stanford.edu/WoodExpt/
So there’s still time to perform the Nobel prize-winning experiment to disprove the so-called “greenhouse” effect. 🙂
Getting a 404 on the pdf link? http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2013/01/Ridley-Ten-Tests.pdf
Dang, I forgot to mention in my last comment that Nasif S. Nahle has replicated Wood’s results, although he also inappropriately extrapolates his results to the atmosphere:
http://www.biocab.org/Experiment_on_Greenhouses__Effect.pdf
Gary Hladik says, January 29, 2013 at 1:22 pm: “Ah, now I understand your point! You assume that everyone who didn’t bother to answer the survey (or had changed E-mail address, or dismissed the survey as spam, etc.) didn’t think the earth had warmed since 1800 and didn’t think humans “significantly” affect global temperatures. In other words, “If you didn’t vote, you did, and you voted the way I say you voted.” :-)”
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Yes, Gary, in this particular case not answering can be interpreted as disagreement with the AGW concept.
You forgot to mention that those “everyone” were not just randomly chosen ordinary people in an anonymous poll. They were earth scientists contacted via their official e-mail addresses: “An invitation to participate in the survey was sent to 10,257 Earth scientists. The database was built from Keane and Martinez [2007], which lists all geosciences faculty at reporting academic institutions, along with researchers at state geologic surveys associated with local universities, and researchers at U.S. federal research facilities (e.g., U.S. Geological Survey, NASA, and NOAA U.S.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) facilities; U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories; andso forth).”
Second, the 2 simple questions about asked were politically very important for everyone. And third, it would have taken only 2 minutes to fill in the form end press “send” button.
Given that an open disagreement on AGW could have had unpleasant consequences for the scientists polled and that AGW proponents had no reason to refuse to answer, the refusal to answer can be interpreted as disagreement on AGW concept.
Pat Frank says:
January 29, 2013 at 10:32 am
“CO2 does not re-radiate IR in the troposphere. It can’t do, because the collisional deactivation time is too short; much, much shorter than the re-radiation deactivation time. That’s not a math game, that’s an experimental fact.”
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Pat,
My apologies for the pre-emptive strike on ERL. I am a little too used to the shifting goal posts of the AGW claims.
First we had the DWIR slows the cooling of the surface thing. However this does not work for liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool, 71% of the earth’s surface. Then AGW moved on to the direct thermalisation claim. However the ability of CO2 to radiate energy acquired by means other than outgoing IR from the surface would offset this. Then the ERL thing became popular.
In re-reading your post I see that you were indicating next to no LWIR emitted from CO2 below the tropopause and not referring to the ERL game.
However I would suggest that CO2, as with all matter, must emit IR at any temperature above 0K. CO2 is also far better at this than N2 or O2. If CO2 could only emit IR above tropospheric altitude, then due to the optical density in the troposphere we would not be able to detect any downwelling IR in the 15um band. 15Um IR from the stratosphere would be absorbed before it reached the surface. This would rule out CO2 increasing DWIR. This is clearly not the case. We do see DWIR in the 15um band.
One of the huge problems with AGW “science” is that it is almost totally focused on radiative exchange. There is little discussion of radiative gases emitting energy from the release of latent heat from condensation or conductive surface contact to space. Given your interest the the adsorption and radiative properties of CO2 there are some simple experiments you could try that would demonstrate the ability of CO2 to radiate energy it has acquired through means other than IR radiation, and do so at tropospheric temperatures and pressures.
Experiment 1. (low cost)
Build two insulated containers with potassium chloride salt lenses for lids. Under a clear dry night sky (desert conditions would be best) fill both containers with dry 30C gas. CO2 in one container 1, N2 in container 2. Which container cools Faster? Is the answer –
A. Both containers cool at the same rate.
B. Container 1 cools faster because of the greater IR emission from CO2.
C. Container 2 cools faster because of the greater thermal conductivity of N2.
Experiment 2. (high cost)
Attach two gas cylinders with regulators one CO2, one N2, to two 10m long lengths of 5mm PVC tubing. Coil most of the tubing through an insulated container full of hot water. Attach the two open ends of the PVC tubes to two retort stands in front of a cool wall. Set gas flow from both tubes to 1 L/s. Observe the gas flowing out of both tubes with a high quality IR camera capable of seeing beyond 15um. Are the results –
A. Both tubes are visible as warm, but both gas plumes are undetectable.
B. Both tubes are visible as warm and the CO2 gas plume is also visible.
@PatFrank
Sorry, were not talking about relative humidity or climate models. We’re talking about something much simpler – does an increase in temperature increase the amount of water that can be carried by air? The answer is yes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Relative_Humidity.png
Air at 50C can carry almost 10% water. Air at -20C can carry almost 0% water. Guess how much water can be carried by air at 100C? (Hint: its called steam.)
So, a rise in temperature due to any source, including more CO2, will be amplified by the increase in water vapor. That addresses the misconception of Matt Ridley. With respect to climate, you’d have to argue that overall relative humidity is falling constantly, and by enough, for there to be _no_ amplification of CO2 by H2O. Good luck with that.
Gary Hladik says, January 29, 2013 at 2:34 pm: “Wood extrapolated his results to the atmosphere as a whole, but wrote this disclaimer, “I do not pretend to have gone very deeply into the matter, and publish this note merely to draw attention to the fact that trapped radiation appears to play but a very small part in the actual cases with which we are familiar.”
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This is not a disclaimer. Let me emphasize the essential part for you: “I do not pretend to have gone very deeply into the matter, and publish this note merely to draw attention to the fact that trapped radiation appears to play but a very small part in the actual cases with which we are familiar.”
“The fact”, Gary, as a result of his experiment.
Given that an open disagreement on AGW could have had unpleasant consequences for the scientists polled and that AGW proponents had no reason to refuse to answer, the refusal to answer can be interpreted as disagreement on AGW concept.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
ROFLMAO
dvunkannon says:
“…you’d have to argue that overall relative humidity is falling constantly, and by enough, for there to be _no_ amplification of CO2 by H2O. Good luck with that.”
Oh, wait…
Gary Hladik says, January 29, 2013 at 2:34 pm: “BTW, Wood’s experiment has been severely criticized, e.g. by Vaughan Pratt. An excerpt: “No one familiar with experimental methods in physics could possibly take this experiment seriously. It is riddled with methodological errors. One glaring one is that Wood neglected to take into account that his extra glass covering the salt window will itself trap radiation and heat up even when ventilated. …”
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I just hope that Pratt did not made it up about “extra glass covering the salt window” intentionally. First, he could not have witnessed the Wood experiment, because he was not even born then yet. Second, it can not be derived from the published description of the experiment either. Let us say, Pratt had probably misunderstood the article.
“Extra glass covering the salt window” would have indeed invalidated the experiment, this is obvious. However, nothing in the article indicates that Wood did that. What he did was let the sunshine pass through a glass pane first to eliminate the warming effect of the solar infra-red. In Wood’s words: “When exposed to sunlight the temperature rose gradually to 65 oC., the enclosure covered with the salt plate keeping a little ahead of the other, owing to the fact that it transmitted the longer waves from the sun, which were stopped by the glass. In order to eliminate this action the sunlight was first passed through a glass plate.” That is all about the extra glass plate in the article. The glass plate could have been easily positioned 2-3 meter away from the boxes thus making a possible effect of “returned” IR negligible.
The results are realistic, we all know how temperature rises in a car when parked in the sun in summer.
By the way, in the same comment (http://judithcurry.com/2011/08/13/slaying-the-greenhouse-dragon-part-iv/#comment-100724) Pratt refers to an experiment where in a box with a glass covering the temperature reached 118C (!) (“three glass covers on a box”). I just wonder, we could boil water this way without power, right?
Konrad, not a problem. 🙂 Atm CO2 will absorb 15 micron radiation. It just will not release that energy as re-radiation, below the tropopause. Instead, it preferentially converts the absorbed energy into kinetic energy by collision with N2 and O2. So, there will always be a 15 micron absorption band. But there won’t be a fluorescence emission band, because the energy has been released by a different mechanism (collision).
Your two closed-lid experiments don’t capture the physical reality of the process.
DvunK, Earth climate isn’t modeled by a heated pot of water. Any increased K.E. in the atmosphere gets partitionaed among a number of climate processes. What we end up observing depends on where it goes. Maybe sensible heat. Maybe increased convection and turbulence. Maybe more clouds. Insisting it all goes directly into water vapor and increased sensible heat is naive. But that’s pretty much what’s built into climate models.
Greg House says (January 29, 2013 at 3:16 pm): “Yes, Gary, in this particular case not answering can be interpreted as disagreement with the AGW concept.”
Romney’s lawyer addressing the US Supreme Court: “Yes Obama won the popular vote 53% to 47%, but only 57.5% of eligible voters cast ballots. The other 42.5% obviously didn’t want Obama to be president, so Romney should get their votes.”
Marketing VP addressing board of directors: “70% of consumers participating in our survey chose our competitor’s yogurt over our new yogurt, but only 30% participated. That means 79% of consumers failed to pick theirs over ours, so we should definitely mass market our new yogurt!”
Al Gore to the Florida Supreme Co– Nah, let’s not go there. 🙂
As I mentioned before, Greg, your view that no data is the same as data is certainly consistent with your view on the so-called “greenhouse” effect. Note, however, that while the Doran & Kendall survey results can be interpreted your way, they can also be interpreted as saying that 70% of E-mailed scientists would rather watch internet porn than answer a survey. I say we conduct a survey to settle the question, and I get to interpret the non-respondents. 🙂
Greg House says (January 29, 2013 at 3:31 pm): “Let me emphasize the essential part for you:”
Now let me emphasize the important part of the disclaimer:
“I do not pretend to have gone very deeply into the matter…”
In particular, he didn’t delve at all into his speculation that the so-called “greenhouse” effect is of little importance in the earth’s atmosphere. His results applied to his model greenhouses, and nothing else. It would be best to follow Wood’s lead and not pretend that they have wider application.
The location of the pdf on the web site has been changed.
It is currently at:
http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2013/01/Ridley-Lukewarmer-Ten-Tests.pdf
Greg House says (January 29, 2013 at 4:26 pm): ‘“Extra glass covering the salt window” would have indeed invalidated the experiment, this is obvious. However, nothing in the article indicates that Wood did that.’
Nothing indicates he didn’t. But since we always interpret no data as data supporting our own view, then obviously he didn’t, right? 🙂 Of course if one is a scientist, not a lawyer, one would like to know all the experimental details before passing judgment.
“The results are realistic, we all know how temperature rises in a car when parked in the sun in summer.”
Well, a car is closer to a greenhouse than the atmosphere is, but why not use an actual greenhouse as your example? It’s OK, I’ve been in real greenhouses growing real plants (legal ones, I hasten to add). 🙂
“By the way, in the same comment (http://judithcurry.com/2011/08/13/slaying-the-greenhouse-dragon-part-iv/#comment-100724) Pratt refers to an experiment where in a box with a glass covering the temperature reached 118C (!) (“three glass covers on a box”). I just wonder, we could boil water this way without power, right?”
For places with sunlilght but without other power or fuel, it’s probably easier to use a solar oven:
Gary Hladik says, January 29, 2013 at 4:51 pm: “I say we conduct a survey to settle the question, and I get to interpret the non-respondents. :-)”
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Of course, Gary, non-responding can be interpreted in a certain way, if certain responding can lead to certain problems for responders, this is obvious.