Guest essay by Ed Hoskins.
Some simple numbers on the effect of CO2 concentration on temperature
As the temperature increasing effect of atmospheric CO2 is known to diminish logarithmically with increasing concentration, these notes clarify the actual amount of warming that might result from additional CO2 released into the atmosphere by man-kind and the temperature reduction impact of any policy actions to control CO2 emissions.
To understand exactly what might be achieved by political action for de-carbonisation the table below gives the likely warming, (without positive or negative feedbacks), that will be averted with an increase of CO2 from 400 ppmv to 800 ppmv, a full extra 400 ppmv, assuming that the amount of CO2 released by all world nations in future is reduced in future by 50%.
It shows the impact of the following countries or country groups with the range of both sceptical and alarmist assessments.
So the impact for the whole of the EU (27) is somewhere between 9 -73 thousandths of degree Centigrade and for the UK the range is between 1-9 thousandths of degree Centigrade.
To achieve this irrelevant and miniscule result the UK, European and other free world governments are willing to annihilate their economies to solve a problem that does not exist.
Western politicians should, “Have the courage to do nothing”.
UPDATE: A fuller essay is in this PDF: Ed_Hoskins_CO2_concentrations
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One more time, jai, we do not have temperatures “GOING UP”.
And no, “extra” heat is not magically transferring “into the deep oceans”.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 11:42 am
The amount of heat radiation that leaves the planet every hour is easily measured by satellites.
No, it is not. The error term is an order of magnitude larger than the signal.
Gature Geoscience
PROGRESS ARTICLE
PUBLISHED ONLINE: 23 SEPTEMBER 2012
DOI: 10.1038/NGEO1580
An update on Earth’s energy balance in light of the latest global observations
Graeme L. Stephens, Juilin Li, Martin Wild, Carol Anne Clayson, Norman Loeb, Seiji Kato, Tristan L’Ecuyer, Paul W. Stackhouse Jr, Matthew Lebsock and Timothy Andrews
“The combined uncertainty on the net TOA flux determined from CERES is ±4 W/m² (95% confidence) due largely to instrument calibration errors.”
No, we do not need to just do nothing – as soon as possible we should pursue a de-Nazification process to remove all the CRL (criminal reactionary leftist) types from the educational system, the professions and government – just as was done in Germany after WWII. And then take their assets to pay for restoring landscapes despoiled by wind turbines and solar arrays – and to pay the fines for killing endangered California condors and whooping cranes – and to reimburse utility customers and automobile owners for the needless excess of costs they caused.
Is this violating these people’s right to free speech? No, because the right of free speech does not extend to conspiring to violate other people’s rights, as these people have been doing. And we have, as a people, the right to insist that our children not be indoctrinated with destructive fantasies – or abused by scaremongers.
Is this harsh? If so, so be it – they have it coming.
@Janice Moore
Not sure what y’all believe but if you are going to use but the analogy then the most appropriate person to use it on would be Senator James Inofe who fameously said that global warming wasn’t happening because God wouldn’t let it happen (waving his magic wand).
@Berényi Péter
I am not talking about TOA I am talking about total outgoing radiation which is almost identical to the incoming radiation which is about 1,366 Watts per meter squared. If the ability of the earth to cool itself is reduced by only .0025 (1/4 of 1 percent) the earth would warm until balance was restored.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 3:04 pm
solar cycles are too small on the 11-year cycle to create any real difference if that is what you mean. funny thing is that the sun actually cooled after 2002 but the earth stayed warm.
Solar cycles give a difference of a few tenths of a degr.C over a complete cycle in the tropic oceans, thus in less than 5 years up and in a similar time span down. Mostly by changing cloudiness, which shifts with the jet stream position, which is directly related to UV light changes in the solar cycle (+/- 10% change over a cycle).
Climate models only take into account the small change in direct incoming solar energy over the cycle, not any fortifying effect of that difference. But do you really think that the influence of 1 W/m2 in solar (UV – ozone – stratosphere and light – oceans) has the same effect as 1 W/m2 of IR from CO2?
if you have an increase in tradewinds then the surface cools due to mixing
Any reference that the tradewinds increased since 2002? Even if that is true, that is heat in the deeper ocean layers that will never come back in the foreseeable future, as these layers are (much) colder than the surface layers and the average air temperature.
JFD says:
June 8, 2013 at 2:09 pm,
JFD, interesting comments. You may be right. I am not a legal scholar.
This is a science site, not a legal forum. My reply was intended to answer the scientific question, in which you seemed to be saying that CO2 is a ‘root cause’ of global warming.
Scientifically, there is no evidence or empirical [real world] observation showing that CO2 causes global warming. That is a conjecture, such as: “There is a black cat under my bed.”
With no evidence of any cat, the next step is to turn on the light, and look under the bed. If no cat is found, then the conjecture is deconstructed. It is not completely falsified, but it is in a very tenuous situation: without evidence, it is a very weak conjecture.
The lights have now been turned on, but no cat has been found: scientists cannot find any testable, empirical evidence showing that rising CO2 causes global warming.
I am only a simple retired engineer, not a lawyer. You may be right in how this situation is handled legally; I don’t know. What I do know is that there are no verifiable, testable scientific measurements showing that CO2 is the cause of any global warming.
Therefore, if the putative effect of CO2 is too small to measure, then the CO2=AGW conjecture should be disregarded — lawyers or no lawyers.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 3:53 pm
“Not sure what y’all believe but if you are going to use but the analogy then the most appropriate person to use it on would be Senator James Inofe who fameously said that global warming wasn’t happening because God wouldn’t let it happen (waving his magic wand).”
Why are you people not giving links for the preposterous claims you make. Because it’s too complicated to forge a video? Giive me an effing break.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 3:53 pm
I am not talking about TOA I am talking about total outgoing radiation which is almost identical to the incoming radiation which is about 1,366 Watts per meter squared. If the ability of the earth to cool itself is reduced by only .0025 (1/4 of 1 percent) the earth would warm until balance was restored.
The point was that satellites can’t measure the influence of the current increase in CO2 on the radiation balance.
If the earth’s reacts on any such warming by increasing its cloudiness with 1%, that will have more cooling effect than a doubling of CO2 has as warming effect. We live on a water planet which keeps temperatures most of the time within reasonable borders…
@ferdinand meeus Englebeen
That kind of reasoning is more faith based than that of James Inhofe. Gaia won’t protect us from AGW. The arctic ice is collapsing this year (or close to it) and this is already messing up our weather.
The IPCC and Hansen used air temperature as their goalposts. They can’t object now to our holding them to their claim.
They didn’t factor in any of the special pleading in the Foster/Rahmstorf paper, either, so it’s moving the goalposts to try to do that now, after the fact. It’s special pleading, practically.
Dirkh
@ur momisugly jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 3:27 pm
the weird thing to me is that, if you check the effect of the sun on the northern hemisphere over the last several hundred thousand years you get why the ice ages happen. except this time, the temperature (and co2) stayed high for longer) if you compare now with the last 4 times that glaciers melted in earth’s history, we should already be well on our way to deep ice in north America. That is what happened at this time the last 4 cycles. Instead we are having temperatures GOING UP! Which is way different than the last 4 cycles (over the last 650,000 years or so.
———————————————-
Wrong again. Each of the previous four interglacials was warmer than the Holocene & at least two of them lasted longer than it has so far. The Holocene Climatic Optimum, c 8000 to 5000 years ago, never got as hot as the Eemian or preceding interglacials.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png
The trend of the past 3000 years has been toward lower peak temperatures during warm cycles. As shown by global proxy data such as Greenland Ice Sheet cores, the Minoan Warm Period was hotter than the Roman, which was sultrier than the Medieval, which was balmier the current Modern WP. The Little Ice Age was also cooler than the Dark Ages Cold Period.
Should the Modern Warm Period ever produce a hot spell of say 50 years toastier than the warmest part of the Medieval WP, then you might have a measure of the human effect on climate, although that would be a contentious to dubious argument to make. To date however, that hasn’t happened.
@ferdinand meeus Englebeen
yeah, this is a pretty good article:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/17/the-trade-winds-drive-the-enso/
trade winds are caused by tropical evaporation.
But jai: I’m not so sure this quote (your video) is a valid argument (against or for) CAGW: He only promised us that He would not end the world by flood after Noah was saved. Didn’t say anything about fire (warmth) —- though “no flooding” may (or may not) technically eliminate the 20 meter Hansen-flood that NASA administrator seems to so religiously believe in
You have got to trust in something, and eventually, Yes, the earth will be destroyed by fire when the sun turns into a red giant. Just as those illiterate shepherds were told some 4000 years ago..
“CO2 makes it harder for the sun’s heat energy to leave the planet … .” [Jai @ur momisugly 11:42 AM today]
Prove it.
@RACookPE1978
I am just saying that, if your fundamental basis for not believing in climate change is that you believe God won’t let it happen, well you may just be believing in fairy tales. . .There are plenty of scriptures that state we will collectively experience weeping and gnashing of teeth for denying God’s laws. If there is any law that is true it is the fact that CO2 molecules store energy. That’s called “physics”.
@markstoval
“Would waving my hands and saying “then some magic happened” satisfy you by any chance?”
It would satisfy me. That’s how I explain everything.
Never convinces my wife, though.
@ur momisugly Janice Moore
Janice,
Here, this shows what kind of heat energy is absorbed by CO2
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/daly_spectra.gif
Janice,
this one also explains it very well
http://spaceguard.rm.iasf.cnr.it/NScience/neo/dictionary/emission.htm
Vern Cornell says: @ur momisugly June 8, 2013 at 10:55 am
The best place to find the benefits of increased atmospheric CO2 is CO2Science.org Here one finds that crops are growing faster than 70 year ago, thus helping feed seven billion people
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Not only that but we harvest more per acre with a heck of a lot less labor thanks to CO2 and oil.
1830 – 100 bushels of wheat from 5 acres 250-300 labor-hours required
1850 – 100 bushels of corn from 2-1/2 acres 75-90 labor-hours required
1890 – 100 bushels of corn from 2-1/2 acres.
(1900-1909 – Average annual consumption of commercial fertilizer: 3,738,300)
1930 – 100 bushels of corn from 2-1/2 acres.
1930 – 100 bushels of wheat from 5 acres.
1945 – 100 bushels of corn from 2 acres.
1955 – 100 bushels of wheat from 4 acres.
1965 – 100 bushels of wheat from 3 1/3 acres.
1975 – 100 bushels of wheat from 3 acres.
1975 – 100 bushels of corn from 1-1/8 acres.
1987 – 100 bushels of wheat from 3 acres. 3 labor-hours required
1987 – 100 bushels of corn from 1-1/8 acres. 2-3/4 labor-hours required
SOURCE
Without oil/energy we are back to the 1800’s or worse. Especially since they want to reduce our CO2 emissions to ~ 80% of current.
The average energy consumption for the USA is 335.9 million BTUs per person.
http://www.nuicc.info/?page_id=1467
In 1949, U.S. energy use per person stood at 215 million Btu.
http://epb.lbl.gov/
The U.S. in 1800 had a per-capita energy consumption of about 90 million Btu.
http://www.bu.edu/pardee/files/2010/11/12-PP-Nov2010.pdf
If the USA reduces its energy consumption/CO2 emissions by 80% it equals 45.18 million Btu. per person which is HALF that used per person in 1800!
The Greenies are absolutely nuts if they think they can power a decent civilization with wind and solar. The only possible way to keep a decent level of civilization and the current world population would be an all out switch to thorium nuclear for use not only in generating electricity but also for transportation.
Thorium Lasers: The Thoroughly Plausible Idea for Nuclear Cars
Would Thorium Powered Ships be better for the Navy?
So, jai, let us look at some “simple physics”, shall we.
Does water expand, or contract, as it is heated?
When water absorbs thermal energy, does its temperature go up, or go down, or do neither?
What does steam do if it absorbs more thermal energy? Get hotter, or increase in pressure?
If I pressurize water, do its molecules move faster, or move slower?
If I depressurize water, do its molecules move faster, or slower?
If the atmosphere changes temperature when CO2 increases, does it change temperature when CO2 is steady?
If CO2 is steady over a 200 to 500 year period, does the atmosphere (globally) increase, decrease, or remain the same?
If CO2 increases over a 15-20 year period, does the atmosphere (globally) increase, decrease, or remain the same?
If CO2 increases 20% over a thirty year period, how much does measured global temperature increase?
@ur momisugly jai mitchel at 410pm …the arctic ice is collapsing this year…sea ice page says No It ISN”t
jai Mitchell – So this ocean mixing from the winds just happened to start and has continued to blow the same direction and speed for 17 years. Is that your explanation for the halt in global warming?
@sweet old bob
we shall see, remember this conversation. When the ice is gone the weather will change for good.
Wow. Just…. wow.