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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Oh, I forgot some more “simple physics” questions. Sorry about that.
When the Arctic Ocean loses 2 million square kilometers of sea ice in mid-September, does the newly exposed ocean water get hotter, or get colder?
When the Antarctic Ocean gains 1 million square kilometers of sea ice in mid-September, does the newly exposed ocean water get hotter, or get colder?
If all of the Arctic sea ice were lost in mid-September, what happens to the Arctic sea ice in October?
if global temperatures have been constant for 16 years, why is there less Arctic sea ice now?
If global temperatures have been constant for 16 years, why is there more Antarctic sea ice now?
jai Mitchell – May I recommend that you add Introduction to Geology to your course curricula? You will thoroughly enjoy it and find it that it will increase enjoyment all of your life as you drive down the road in many places, for example through road cuts in the northeast. The breaks/cracks in the rocks are when the seas transgressed and regressed. The earth’s climate is variable. It gets hot and it cools off. Ice forms and ice melts.
You might want to study the Carboniferous on your own this summer.
Sweet Old Bob says:
June 8, 2013 at 5:00 pm
now, now. Let us be accurate for our guest. 8<)
The 2013 Arctic sea ice through the entire spring and early summer (after a very low year in 2012) is only at a 12-13 year all-time high right now….. Arctic sea ice extents are not quite yet at the level of the mid-1990's – when temperatures were the same as they are right now. (Within 0.2 degree C) …
Alaskan, north European, Siberian, and Bering Strait temperatures this winter – as they were after the 2007 very low sea ice extents! – were also very, very cold…… record-breaking late river ice breakups, low temperatures, reduced growing seasons, more snow, more ice later in the year as far south as Spain and France, more rain and fog in the UK, ….
Sort of makes you wish that vaunted Arctic amplification effect on sea ice and regional temperatures actually worked, doesn't it?
@RACook
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_anom.php?ui_set=0&ui_region=nhland&ui_month=5
Northern Hemisphere snow cover anomalies
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 11:42 am
@Andrew Harding
How can a gas whose concentration in the atmosphere rises from 0.038% to 0.04% cause a significant rise in temperature?
The amount of heat radiation that leaves the planet every hour is easily measured by satellites. This heat radiation is also called “longwave” radiation. (infra red)
If the amount of heat leaving the planet is less than the amount that enters the atmosphere by the sun then the temperature goes up.
so, any change in the ability of the earth to lose heat will cause the planet to heat up until the balance between the sun’s energy coming in is equal to the amount of heat energy going out.
In other words, the CO2 doesn’t “heat” the planet, the sun does, the CO2 makes it harder for the sun’s heat energy to leave the planet until the temperature goes up and more infra-red energy gets emitted by the planet.
Jai thank you for your reply, I understand the science, but my question still remains unanswered! We are talking about an increase in CO2 of 0.002%! Logic tells me that there is no way that this will cause the world to warm! Please discuss if you think otherwise!
@AndrewHarding
it turns out that, for specific wavelengths of infrared radiation, CO2 absorbs the energy very, very effectively.
This was the work of a non-climate physicist who wanted to show the science behind co2 absorption.
you “logic” makes sense except that you can’t say that an increase of .002% of (something) will have no effect. without determining what the actual ability for that something to affect the environment is.
http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=4597
For jai:
http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/rni/lowres/rnin71l.jpg
http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/rro/lowres/rron256l.jpg
I’m sorry, in what dictionary is the word “ice” a synonym for the word “snow”? You said the Arctic ice is collapsing. Your link discusses Northern Hemisphere snow cover. Next time try to move away from the line of fire rather than actually trying to catch a bullet. In sabre fencing we call this “parrying with your head”.
@D.J. Hawkins
I was responding to RACook he was talking about temperatures, and snow cover.
@ur momisugly RACook
this one is better, its a map of may snow cover anomalies, see how Siberia is nearly snow free in may?
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_vis.php?ui_year=2013&ui_month=5&ui_set=2
Jai
Next time your scrolling on one of your warmest sites and you notice the skeptics are getting blocked remember this day. I for one admire your resolve. You’ve bought into it 100% that is obvious. Fight the good fight. In the back of your mind remember which side is not afraid to debate which side is the side of mature adults.
Jai
I guess as long as we have deep oceans we have nothing to fear.
@ur momisugly Shano,
I really do appreciate your comments, I was surprised that my comments were allowed. I think the mod may have been off duty 😉
its too bad people resort to name calling though. . .
Why does it surprise anyone that the models are wrong, when they are not based on valid physics?
(1) The Second Law of Thermodynamics must apply to a “system” in the strict sense of the word as used by physicists.
(2) If a system has anything more than a single component, then all components must form an interdependent set. (See Wikipedia “system”)
(3) Radiation from a small cool region in the atmosphere to a warmer region of the surface is a complete system, and any reverse flow of energy, (which could happen much later and be by non-radiative processes or radiative ones, or a mixture) is not an interdependent component. You cannot consider the two components as belonging to the one system.
(4) Hence the Second Law applies to the radiation from cold to hot, and so it cannot transfer any thermal energy.
(5) Now the IPCC authors claim that the Sun could only heat the Earth’s surface to about 255K, and so they looked for a reason which would explain the extra 33 degrees.
(6) But they completely overlooked the fact that gravity causes a temperature gradient to evolve spontaneously at the molecular level, quite independently of any upward convection or prior warming of the surface or cooling near the tropopause.
(7) Because they overlooked the gravity effect (which is virtually a direct corollary of the Second Law of Thermodynamics) they made the biggest mistake that “science” has ever seen, and they assumed back radiation could violate the Second Law.
@ur momisugly jai mitchell
Re: June 8, 2013 at 4:31 pm
You said: If there is any law that is true it is the fact that CO2 molecules store energy. That’s called “physics”.
They don’t store energy, they re-emit. Which is actually the point of concern.
I’m not going for a cheap ‘gotcha’; I assume you misspoke, and I agree with the point you were making, that in fact these gasses do contribute to keeping things warmer than they otherwise would be. Most sceptics also agree with that point.
Anthony Watts, Roy Spencer and Jo Nova all have articles to that effect on their blogs.
For us, one of the major points at issue is that we not persuaded that the ‘multiplier effects’ of most models are physically well-founded. Individuals on your ‘side’ who repeatedly assert “But you don’t understand, CO2 makes things warmer” are missing our point and not listening in the debate. Why should anyone take them seriously?
Bjorn Lomborg reports “The median impact estimate of a tonne of CO2 according to 391 peer-reviewed studies is $5.00”. People who argue for bigger financial disincentives than that are creating a bigger disaster than they are avoiding. Keep in mind that all those figures are from before the high-end climate sensitivity figures were aceepted as being fanciful.
Just as you allude to above, in 2,000 years if we don’t have AGW we can expect an ice age. Even if we accept we’ll have a heat wave from AGW instead, I unhesitatingly assert my preference for warmth. Avoiding AGW is a bigger disaster than accepting it.
I hope you’ll agree with me that some of the people on ‘your side’ have been too extreme in their forecasts. There was no 4 billion people dead from AGW by 2010 AD. There was no 100 million climate refugees by 2012. The icecaps did not melt by 2012. The IPCC now accepts it is not possible for the earlier high-end climate sensitivity figures to be correct. I hope you’ll further agree that it’s still possible for the revised high-end forecasts to be wrong. This is necessarily true by the definition of ‘uncertainty’, but I consider it probable: a major point in evidence is the failure of models as expounded very clearly in the article http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/06/climate-modeling-epic-fail-spencer-the-day-of-reckoning-has-arrived/ Do take a moment to read it if you haven’t already.
The trillions of dollars the world has wasted reducing CO@ur momisugly emissions growth fro 46.9 % to 46.6 percent over the Kyoto era could instead have provided everybody with clean drinking water, abolished hunger, and the abolition of several diseases throughout the world. Fighting CO2 was a bad choice.
Even from a CO2 fighting viewpoint it was a bad choice. Population growth drops below replacement levels as wealth increases. Cutting per capita CO2 emissions by a third is a net loss if the population doubles.
I pay $1,599.00 per tonne for gasoline to fill my car. I wouldn’t pay that amount if I weren’t getting more value than that for my purchase. Voters will not, in the long term, permit politicians to deprive them of $1,600 worth of value to avoid $5.00 of harm. And in the third world, that difference is not just measured in cash, it’s measured in life and death.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 6:32 pm
@ur momisugly RACook
this one is better, its a map of may snow cover anomalies, see how Siberia is nearly snow free in may?
Really? Only the darkest pixels, which indicate an anomaly from the 1979-2000 baseline of 75-100%, suggest areas that could be snow free, but not necessarily. By my, admittedly eyeball estimate, there seem to be nearly as many positive anomaly pixels as those which might be snow free. If you add in the Canadian areas the ratio of positive to possibly zero gets worse, or better, depending upon how you look at it.
Siberia does look fairly negative in your May’13 map, but the nice thing about the link you provided is that you can scroll back through the monthly maps
April ’13
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_vis.php?ui_year=2013&ui_month=4&ui_set=2
Oct ’12
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_vis.php?ui_year=2012&ui_month=10&ui_set=2
Between those Siberia seems to show a whole lot of normal.
What does all this mean? Beats the sh*t outta me! It might be nice to see what these maps look like with an 1989-2010 baseline, but in the end I wouldn’t recommend betting your life on any of it, because from my observation, even the best of modern “climate science” is barely worth the pixels it’s printed on. Remember to breathe and try not to get too excited.
“If there is any law that is true it is the fact that CO2 molecules store energy.” (Jai)
Jai, You may just have stated it wrong, but CO2 doesn’t “store” energy, it captures some energy very temporarily. The mean time between collisions of CO2 and other molecules is thousands of times less than the mean time between absorption and re-emission. This means that almost all the energy absorbed by CO2 is thermalized. This means there’s a “fight” so to speak between CO2 and H2O for the thermal energy of any give parcel of air and generally Water wins. This is because it emits energy over a much larger frequency range than CO2. so much more of it’s radiation escapes directly to space. But of course where CO2 is relatively enhanced (above the clouds), it will perhaps be responsible for more of the emissions to space.
Nope, jai, the mods read every message.
But, you see, you show one diagram of Siberia snow areas to try to dissuade one from understanding the facts – a graphic image quickly corrected and expanded upon by another WUWT reader! – but you missed the larger picture:
The global temperatures for the past 16 years (on average of all trends) and the specific monthly temperatures since 1982 show no warming despite a 19% increase in CO2.
CO2 has been steady, and temperatures have increased, been steady, and decreased.
CO2 has risen, and temperatures have increased, been steady, and decreased.
You’ve failed to answer my “simple physics” questions, so I question your understanding of science.
Are you simply repeating what you’ve been told, or do you understand the topics of science, heat transfer, the physical chemistry (ice – water – vapor -steam – superheated steam – condensation) and fluid flow, thermodynamics, math through Bessel functions and integral calculus and differential equations and their solutions 9numerically and their digital equivalents)? Do you understand what you are saying, or can you calculate real world equations on your own? What is your degree and what do you understand of the world you are trying to destroy through propaganda?
@ur momisugly Gail Combs
Wheee! Toothpaste power!
http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/quackcures/toothpaste.htm
@RACookPE1978
“The global temperatures for the past 16 years (on average of all trends) and the specific monthly temperatures since 1982 show no warming despite a 19% increase in CO2.
CO2 has been steady, and temperatures have increased, been steady, and decreased.
CO2 has risen, and temperatures have increased, been steady, and decreased.”
You don’t need a lot of high-powered maths and science to understand the implications of that.
Just Another Day in Climate Court
(bench trial of P– r-nc-i–pi – a v. WUWT, day 4,555, Plaintiff’s 643rd Motion for Summary Judgment)
Judge: Ahem. Mr. Jai. Please answer only questions you are asked. If you do not know the answer, just say, “I — don’t — know.” Will the court reporter please read back the last question:
Court Rptr: Given your assertion: ‘CO2 makes it harder for the sun’s heat energy to leave the planet … .’ [Jai @ur momisugly 11:42 AM today] Prove it.”
Jai: (spluttering in disgusted amazement) But, but, I just DID answer that question. I showed you a little bit of data from “near Guam” and I quoted Planck’s, and Stefan-Boltzmann’s and Wein’s Laws about Black Bodies. THAT’S ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW!
Judge: And that’s all you have to say?
Jai: Simple physics.
Judge: Ooo, boy. Okay, Jai, you may step down. Thank you. … Mr. Jai? You may STEP DOWN. Before we adjourn for lunch, has anyone seen Mr. Ed Hoskins? We seem to have a missing party, here.
Bailiff: Your honor, I tried contacting Hoskins, found his name on the P–r-n-c-p- ia website. No answer yet.
Judge: (frown) Files a Complaint and can’t be bothered to show up?
Jai: (from the back of the courtroom in a wee voice) He, uh, Hoskins, I mean, he sent me.
Judge: Aw, heck, who needs to come back after lunch. I am going to deny the Plaintiff’s motion. What’s the point in arguing further? And I will tell you, young man, [stern glare], if you or your P–r – i–n– ci – pia group waste this court’s time in this manner again, I will grant the Defendants’ motion for fees and terms, for this is CLEARLY A FRIVOLOUS COMPLAINT. (Pounds gavel a little more enthusiastically than usual.) Case dismissed, court stands adjourned until 1:30. [stands, and walks out]
JM meets a miserable, tired, hungry, Jai on the courthouse front steps: [jovially] Hey, Mr. Jai, why the long face?
Jai: (Sigh) I am JUST SO SICK AND TIRED OF ED HOSKINS SENDING ME TO DO ALL HIS DIRTY WORK. And he hasn’t even paid me from the last time.
JM: Why don’t you just quit?
Jai: Because I need the work!
JM: Well, come one, young man. Lunch is on me.
Jai: (miserably) No, (leans down and picks up sign laying on top step) I don’t get a lunch break. Now, I have to do THIS. [scowl] (starts marching slowly back and forth in front of courthouse with sign reading: “Save the Pink Unicorns!” (mutters under breath, “curse that Hoskins”))
*************************
@ur momisugly Phil in California — great cartoons — thanks for the laugh. #[:)]
“When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.” – Viscount Falkland
@Janice Moore
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/co2.pdf
Technical Report
JSR-78-07
The Long Term Impact of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide on Climate
April 1979
JASON
JASON Defense Advisory Panel Reports
JASON is an independent scientific advisory group that provides consulting services to the U.S. government on matters of defense science and technology. It was established in 1960.
JASON typically performs most of its work during an annual summer study, and has conducted studies under contract to the Department of Defense (frequently DARPA and the U.S. Navy), the Department of Energy, the U.S. Intelligence Community, and the FBI. Approximately half of the resulting JASON reports are unclassified.
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/
other unclassified JASON reports:
•Clouds and Radiation: A Primer, JSR-90-307, February 1993
This paper addresses a previously unknown complex interdisciplinary process providing a feedback loop which may have major impact on the effect on global climate of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.•Advanced Over-the-Horizon Radar, JSR-90-105, February 1993
The task of the study was to evaluate DARPA’s plans and roles for a proposed experimental test bed facility, which would be a precursor to an eventual operational AOTH system.•Structural Acoustics: A General Form of Reciprocity Principles in Acoustics, JSR-92-193, January 1993
A generalized Reciprocity Principle for Acoustics is obtained. By specialization, various principles which appear in the literature are obtained.•Verification of Dismantlement of Nuclear Warheads and Controls on Nuclear Materials, JSR-92-331, January 1993
This study addresses the question of verification of future agreements with respect to dismantlement and destruction of nuclear warheads, bans on the production of additional quantities of plutonium (Pu) and highly enriched uranium (HEU) for nuclear weapons and agreements on the end-use or ultimate disposal of special nuclear materials (SNM).•Self-Focusing Instabilities Induced by Over-The-Horizon (OTH) Radars, JSR-90-107, December 1992
•Drag Reduction by Polymer Additives, JSR-89-720, October 1992
The 1989 JASON Summer Study on Drag Reduction focused on the physics which underlies methods utilizing polymer studies.•Acoustic Warfare: Bubble Clouds, JSR-91-113, October 1992
In this report, we survey the basic ingredients that go into the bubble cloud hypothesis for the enhanced acoustic backscatter seen at high enough frequency and wind speed.•JASON Global Grid Study, JSR-92-100, July 1992 (5 MB)
An assessment of the emerging global communications grid.
I am pretty sure I have had to ban “Jai Mitchell” from my FB where I discuss climate change at other pages. Seems he is a SkS type.
Jai Mitchell said
“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..”
The glaciers melt and advance a relatively small amount every five hundred years or so but that is as distinct to a major Ice age. We are currently in one of those retreats after the relatively small advances of the LIA.. Can you clarify where you got your information from?
tonyb