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
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 4:31 pm
If there is any law that is true it is the fact that CO2 molecules store energy. That’s called “physics”.”
Yes, I a now sure I have “debated” with Jai before and gave up when s/he, repeatedly, made similar comments. It’s a clear indication, to me at least, that s/he has no concept nor understanding of physics at the basic level and likely obtains “science” from sites like SkS.
A poster to be avoided IMO.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 7:54 pm
@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 😉
++++++++++++++++
Jai: I’ve been reading your posts. And I can attest, –no the mods are not off duty. Sarcastic or not, WUWT is an open science forum with freedom of thought. You’ve learned to live with only seeing your side of the argument –your world is not the world I want to live in. It helps craft people who believe in other people’s opinions. Your world is in fact dominated by a new norm –and it’s dangerous.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 4:10 pm
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.
Nothing to do with faith, but by reading the two sides of the debate, which you obviously didn’t.
The models do take into account only the changes in direct energy of the sun, not the differences in feedbacks between sunlight (UV, visible, IR) and CO2 IR absorption/re-emission, mainly in the stratosphere and sea surface. Even Peter Stott e.a. show that solar influences are underestimated and that is within the constraints of the HadCM3 model:
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/StottEtAl.pdf
Further, Arctic sea ice now is near the average of the past 10 years, but Antarctic sea ice is at record surface area. See the sea reference pages on top here. Which is strange, as the main “cooling” by human aerosols is in the NH, where 90% of all human emissions of SO2 are. But the NH oceans warm faster than the SH oceans, all depths included.
And after the fact explanations don’t hold water: our current weather in West Europe shows the same variability as in previous decades with full ice cover. Only a few years ago, the same researchers declared that our children wouldn’t know what snow was. Now with sea ice on average compared to the full period, the cold spring is caused by the reduced sea ice. And we are supposed to believe that?
Trade winds drives ENSO, but that is not what happened in the past years since 2002. The trade winds increased such that despite the different ENSO periods, far more heat is moved into the deeper ocean layers (as far as that is measurable). There is no increase in surface heat content 0-700 m. The heat increase is now in the 700-1000 m layer, according to the ARGO floats. Thus at least there is no increase in incoming heat (based on the 0-2000 m data), while CO2 levels increased with top speed over the same period.
Have to say I do not understand this paper at all. The logarithmic effect is surely that every doubling of CO2 ppm has the same heating effect: around 1 degree C?
If we go from 400ppm to 800ppm, that will impart a further forcing which other things being equal, ie without taking account of feedbacks if any, whether positive or negative, is adequate to raise the global temperature by about 1C. If we want to deliver a forcing of the same efficacy again, we would have to take atmospheric ppm to 1600. None of that may be particularly likely, and one has to agree that raising ppm from the present level of 400 to 500 will have only a very small forcing, but this is the story isn’t it? If we raise it from 300 pre-industrial to 600, we’d get around 1C. So maybe by raising it from 300 to 500 we get something like 0.7C. Not a disaster (absent feedback) but not nothing either.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 3:53 pm
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.
———————————————————————————-
You lost me there, Jai. How is the balance going to be restored? If balance isn’t restored are we all DOOMED? What happened to the balance of the Earth in the first place or are you talking about the earth in your garden?
Or is that your attempt at haiku?
Jai, thank you for reply. I have read the link to Clive Best and from what I can gather he is saying that doubling of CO2 will cause an increase in global temperature of 1 Celsius. Michael Mann said that increasing it from 300ppm to 400ppm would have exactly the same effect. I therefore still consider my question unanswered. Given that the science appears to be far from settled, this begs the further question: Is it really worth destroying the world economy to prevent a possible rise in the temperature of the Earth?
I don’t think it is, the science behind AGW is dubious to say the least, as the two estimates of temperature change above demonstrate. The predicted temperature rise has not happened, which says it all, the goalposts are constantly being moved. If, as we were led to believe, 15-20 years ago, we would not now be seeing snow in the UK, we would have climate refugees heading North from the Mediterranean countries and Africa would be uninhabitable. None of those things has happened. The most preposterous claim was that Earth would end up like the planet Venus as CO2 levels rose out of control. To confirm all of this rubbish, the “scientists” then insult people like me by calling us “deniers”, making me 100% certain it is a scam.
climatereason [TonyB] asks Jai Mitchell:
“Can you clarify where you got your information from?”
I would also like an answer to that question.
If the answer is SkS, JM should be aware that SkS is a propaganda blog, not a science site. There is a big difference, and it is the reason that SkS has no credibility.
Eric Simpson says:
June 8, 2013 at 12:13 pm
Consider also the Records for Hot & Cold Temps…
Even most skeptics tend to agree that it’s indisputable “established science” that CO2 has a direct warming effect of maybe 1°C per doubling.
Eric, even this “established science” is subject to discussion and has been revised down.
The 1°C per doubling is a calculation based on measurements combined with models and is far away to be established science yet:
http://claesjohnson.blogspot.se/search/label/OLR
“The scientific evidence behind CO2 alarmism consists of OLR spectra produced by a combination of modeling and measurement (Modtran/Hitran/IRIS) predicting a radiative forcing of 3.7 W/m2 by doubling the concentration of atmospheric CO2 from a preindustrial level of 300 ppm to 600 ppm (with 390 ppm the present level) with an estimated warming effect of 1 C.”
“We see that the effect comes from a simple model of line broadening of the weak spectral real lines on the shoulders of the CO2 spectrum around the main resonance at 667. The model is simplistic and the effect is so small that it cannot be measured, and so from scientific point of view it can only be viewed as a speculation which could as well be half or twice as big, thus without much substance. ”
Also there have been major revision of the proposed 3.7 W/m2 forcing by doubling of CO2 based on later observations and other models…
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/05/major-30-reduction-in-modelers-estimates-of-climate-sensitivity-skeptics-were-right/
“For the number-junkies, one number that has been used ad lib as gospel for years appears to have changed. The hallowed forcing due to a doubling of CO2 was 3.7Wm^-2 is being lowered to 3.44Wm-2.”
This would bring down a little the supposed warming due to doubling of CO2 to 0.9°C.
You still miss the basic error in the green policies of reducing our CO2 output. Our input is 3-4% of the TOTAL annual CO2 budget the rest being NATURAL. Altering our minute bit would make zero difference even if CO2 was a climate driver.
There is no empirical data showing that CO2 drives climate only model output which, given that models assume CO2 drives climate, is not scientific proof.
Janice Moore says:
June 8, 2013 at 11:06 am
I agree wholeheartedly with your premise of NOT taxing or limiting CO2 (and would go further and say we ought to repeal E.P.A. auto-emissions restrictions, biofuel edicts, and all the other nonsensical CO2 regulations in the U.S. that all currently strangling our economy).
*********************************************************
For persuasive purposes, it might be helpful to include in the chart a column labeled:
“Percent of Global CO2″ (e.g., the U.S. % would be .177 times the Total Human CO2, which is some COMPLETELY NEGLIGIBLE number like .005).
Along with a footnote in bold: NON-human (i.e. natural) CO2: 97% or use 96% or 98%, if you prefer.
======
Isn’t the answer here then to tax the non-human producers of carbon dioxide?
Let them tax the volcanoes and ocean.
Or at least pro rata.
@ur momisugly jai mitchell
Apropos of the mods – don’t be in a hurry to assume that a delay is censorship. My own ‘party line’ comment above was delayed by a couple of hours. Presumably because of the link I inserted.
Anthony aims to keep debate open to all, regardless of their viewpoint. He takes steps to avoid commercial spam, to ban comments that breach the site’s policy on civility in debate, and to ban the view of the ‘sky-dragons’. Those last are banned only after having been given the opportunity to state their case repeatedly and in depth.
I have seen activist Greens complain that Anthony/the moderators are unfair in their enforcement of site policy. I don’t believe that complaint is valid. The specific complaint was that their banned comment was nowhere near as rude as a sceptic’s comment that was allowed through. Partisans will always see the umpire as one-eyed against their own team. The comment was nevertheless against site policy on civility, and they were therefore aware ahead of time of the rule that it would not be published.
I have commented twice on Tamino’s “Open Mind” site http://tamino.wordpress.com/ . It’s well worth visiting. He has much to say that is true and useful. Yet my comments have not been published, though they were civil in tone. Nor have the opinions of other sceptics.
That he doesn’t see that as intellectual dishonesty is sad. Even if he and his readers are absolutely correct in every detail, they can never know that to be the case. Even if they have considered every argument against their viewpoint, they still can’t know they are right, because the censorship means they cannot know they have considered all the arguments against their view. And, in fact, I don’t believe they have considered all of them. I don’t think they’ve heard all of them.
I respect Anthony’s comment policy. The downside of it of course is that anyone is free to comment, the hasty, the ignorant, the foolish, the wrong and the ridiculous are all free to do so. I don’t exclude myself from that group, by the way, I’ve been all of those things in my time. But to overgeneralise from this to everyone on the site being any of those things, or the site itself being any of those things, would be to make a grave mistake.
Mario Lento says:
June 9, 2013 at 12:15 am
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 7:54 pm
@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 😉
++++++++++++++++
Jai: I’ve been reading your posts. And I can attest, –no the mods are not off duty. Sarcastic or not, WUWT is an open science forum with freedom of thought. You’ve learned to live with only seeing your side of the argument –your world is not the world I want to live in. It helps craft people who believe in other people’s opinions. Your world is in fact dominated by a new norm –and it’s dangerous.
jai, I couldn’t more agree with Mario.
@dbstealy and Tonyb
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/images/data2-dome-fuji-lg.gif
I look at the point where the solar insolation is where it is at today compared with the last 4 interglacials, in previous cycles the temperature started to decline a couple thousand years before the sun’s energy got to the level that it is today on the solar (milankovitch)
@ferdinand meeus englebeen
Funny, I thought that western Europe has had significant variability in weather from the norms over the last several years. oh yes, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/03/29/cold-march-sets-records-across-europe/ and at the same time http://coloradobob1.newsvine.com/_news/2013/06/03/18731162-sudden-heat-wave-shocked-karasjokm-norway This is consistent with the variability of the jet stream that has been observed by Rutgers university professor Jennifer Francis has a good video presentation on the jet stream dynamics.
@goldminor
infrared radiation goes up with temperature. If some insulation is put on the earth then the temperature goes up until it reaches equilibrium again.
@Andrew Harding
water vapor and the rapidly melting arctic sea ice are both causing warming, together, more than co2 does. So 1 degree of co2 warming is really 2.4 degrees with those factors included. The arctic ice is collapsing rapidly. The new satellite data has confirmed that the annual volume of the arctic ice has gone down by over 80% since 1983 (at September minimum)
——————
sorry if I missed some, a lot of responses, trying to follow up with everybody.
one thing that needs to be said, all of the models up to this year expected the arctic sea ice to last to about 2080 or so. the fact that, during the summer, the arctic receives more of the sun’s energy than the tropics (because it is 24/7 sunshine!) makes the loss of ice cause an absorption of sun’s energy by the earth much more effective (albedo). so the models that didn’t have a strong loss of sea ice so soon will significantly underestimate the sensitivity of doubling CO2.
Gail Combs says:
June 8, 2013 at 4:53 pm
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.
You’re absolutely right Gail. The only thing that makes sense is to focus on thorium for energy production, use coal and oil for transportation and chemistry in the intermediate phase. The CO2 increase is benefiting at the moment, and will stay so for at least about a century or more, however it is almost pity to burn the good coal like this when it can be turned to liquid.
Wind, solar & biofuels are terrible wasteful fantasies that do harm and put us back for decades.
***
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
June 8, 2013 at 3:55 pm
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.
***
Exactly. Until & unless the avg deep-water reaches the avg global temp, “heat” transferred there is diffused & partially dissipated even if eventually “returned”. The cold, deep water is a memory of colder times and/or sequestered, downwelling near-freezing water.
Not to say deep-water warming would have no effect, just that its effect would be greatly diffused.
jai mitchell says:
June 9, 2013 at 7:55 am
one thing that needs to be said, all of the models up to this year expected the arctic sea ice to last to about 2080 or so. the fact that, during the summer, the arctic receives more of the sun’s energy than the tropics (because it is 24/7 sunshine!) makes the loss of ice cause an absorption of sun’s energy by the earth much more effective (albedo). so the models that didn’t have a strong loss of sea ice so soon will significantly underestimate the sensitivity of doubling CO2.
First, to put things into perspective the albedo that you talk about is a minor part in the energy budget:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Breakdown_of_the_incoming_solar_energy.svg
reflected by the earth surface: 7 PW out of 174 PW incoming solar energy
the greatest part of the albedo are clouds:35 PW.
Secondly, if we talk about ice albedo in general the total ice anomaly is positive, about half a million quadrat kilometers more covered with ice. Remember we talk global budget not only North Hemisphere.
Third, the max insulation is this month in the north. Now is the ice reflecting the incoming solar radiation, the incidence of the rays is between 22° and 32° in June, will go down to 0° to 10° in September. The sun may be shining 24 hours in the North but the rays have an incidence value of tropics value, multiplied with sin() of the incidence angle + they have a longer way through the atmosphere.
Fourth:
Water reflectivity increases highly with the incidence angle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Water_reflectivity.jpg
Therefore more ice free ocean at the North Pole in September is actually a negative feedback cooling the ocean. The ocean lose more heat not receives more.
Lars P
thanks for your reply.
While the water angle reflectivity is higher than direct it is still much less than ice. do you agree?
The amount of solar insolation at the arctic is measured directly, by equipment in the arctic. so the incident angle and the atmosphere absorption is already taken into account.
The “minor” part of the energy budget is actually about 25 watts per meter squared for the arctic region during the summer. It is exactly the reduction in arctic ice cover last year that led to the extremely strange winter and spring (and now summer) weather that we are experiencing.
——
what is your data for total global ice/snow cover increasing? I highly doubt that it is correct and can’t find anything to support it?
jai Mitchell said
@dbstealy and Tonyb
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/images/data2-dome-fuji-lg.gif
“I look at the point where the solar insolation is where it is at today compared with the last 4 interglacials, in previous cycles the temperature started to decline a couple thousand years before the sun’s energy got to the level that it is today on the solar (milankovitch”
—– ——-
It doesn’t work quite like that. Major ice ages are different to inter glacials whereby there can still be retreats AND advances . Here is a graph I had created that shows actual physical observations of glaciers in the last 500 years or so. It shows the last warm decades of the MWP, a decline to the LIA, a slight recovery, another decline then the current retreat.
http://climatereason.com/Graphs/Graph01.png
I
have graphed it back 3000 years and there are many similar advances and retreats. The term ‘Little ice Age” created by Matthes actually refers to the cooling period of the last 4000 years of the Holocene, not just what we think of the LIA in the 1600’s primarily, when there was considerable advance of glaciers
tonyb
Gail Combs says:
June 8, 2013 at 4:53 pm
While I agree with the first sentence, I strongly disagree with the second.
Lessee now: We’ve got plenty of coal – hundreds of years worth by some estimates – and we’ve been arguing here for years that CO2 isn’t really driving Earth’s climate, and we know how to remove most of the real pollutants from the coal we burn here in the West… so what on Earth would be the possible reason for abandoning a cheap fuel that we have in great abundance, and instead casting our fate with a technology that just may work real soon now, if ever?
There are two poorly quantified variables in the IPCC climate models:
Clouds – the factors influencing their formation, density, longevity..
Total energy in the global system – how it may affect atmospheric movements
An interesting article on clouds:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/05/01/science/earth/0501-clouds.html?_r=0
Average global cloud cover is 60%.
More low level cloud means less heat arriving at the surface = cooling.
According my own back of envelope calculation a variation of average low level cloud cover from 60% to 57% or a similar variation in density could account for all warming since 1800 if it were to be theoretically considered as the single factor.
But let’s accept that increased CO2 by the greenhouse effect causes increased heat to be trapped in the atmosphere: What is heat? Heat in the air is kinetic energy – the molecules bounce around faster. An analogy: When you begin to heat a pan of water, the water molecules begin to jig around faster; eventually those near the surface are fast enough to escape and water vapour visibly rises out of the water. Equally, if you allow natural evaporation, molecules escape by chance, and the water loses latent heat.
So: two basic facts:
1 Warmer air can contain a higher percentage of water vapour than cool air.
2 Temperature is simply a measure of molecular kinetic energy. If temperature increases, the system becomes more energetic or more dynamic – the terms are interchangeable.
What effect does a more energetic system have on low and high level cloud formation?
Answer: No climatologist can predict with any level of certainty. . They can only postulate various scenarios. There is no firm experimental basis on which to form predictions.
One hypothesis: An increased rate of evaporation from the warmer oceans. More water vapour in the air. A more dynamic system, a more unpredictable weather system. Faster convection currents in the air. More rapid cooling of water-packed low level air as it rises , and hence faster and denser low level cloud formation. Less water vapour reaches the upper atmosphere, less high level clouds form.
More or denser low clouds = natural cooling of the earth surface and oceans. Less high level clouds = less greenhouse effect. This is a natural negative feedback which would act to counteract warming.
Its a hypothesis. I have no idea if its a good one. But it seems to be as good as any other in the absence of knowledge of the mechanics of cloud formation in an increasingly energetic system. That is one of the biggest gaps in climatology knowledge.
2013 has certainly given the coldest spring in Europe for 50 years, prolonged low level cloud cover, rain, – and one of the best snowfall seasons ever.
Moving on to energy: a warmer system is a more energetic system. “Stirring up” a complex system is a notoriously hard mathematical modelling exercise – in many case impossible to model. More energy = more unpredictable results.
To summarise: The only IPCC prediction that I would accept with certainty is that there is some greenhouse warming due to manmade CO2, that this means a more energetic system, and therefore more weather extremes are likely (floods, droughts, windstorms). IPCC Models
can predict simple warming on a reasonably scientific basis. However, the long term side effects of more energy inputted into a dynamic global weather system are probably impossible to predict. Climate change could be much worse or could be much less than predicted. I doubt that anyone really knows.
climatereason says:
“The term ‘Little ice Age” created by Matthes actually refers to the cooling period of the last 4000 years of the Holocene…”
Yes, the term ‘Little Ice Age’ is generic. The unusual cooling during the 1600’s and afterward was the very cold Maunder Minimum [referring to sunspot numbers]. That was followed by the cold Dalton Minimum in the 1800’s.
Currently, we are in what I like to refer to as the ‘Goldilocks Optimum’: not too hot, not too cold, but ju-u-u-ust right.
All the nonsense about runaway global warming has been thoroughly debunked by comparing the current climate with past climate parameters — which have been much more severe, both in warming and cooling episodes. The Null Hypothesis has never been falsified.
The climate alarmists’ wild-eyed predictions have not come to pass. In any other scientific field, such a badly mauled conjecture would have caused scientists to admit that the conjecture has been falsified.
But not in climatology, which is kept afloat only by the enormous sums shoveled into the pockets of alarmist scientists and their institutions. Anywhere else, that would be called ‘propaganda’.
Lancelot says:
June 9, 2013 at 10:40 am
No, I think you’ve got that backwards. During the LIA, it got cooler, and there were more storms, especially early summer hail storms that smashed the crops. Human civilization has thrived during periods of warmth, but humans don’t do that well when their crops are smashed in the fields before harvest.
Lancelot says:
June 9, 2013 at 10:40 am
The only IPCC prediction that I would accept with certainty is that there is some greenhouse warming due to manmade CO2, that this means a more energetic system, and therefore more weather extremes are likely (floods, droughts, windstorms).
++++++++++++++++
Lancelot: Don’t be naive. It is known that the delta t between the tropics and poles causes weather extremes. As the average world temperature declines, it gets more cold in the norther hemisphere there is a larger gradient of temperatures between the tropics and poles. Observations clearly back up this notion. So please admit that you now understand this and retract your statement.
Mario
That interglacial chart really says it all. Looking at the 4 interglacial,s, the first thought that comes to mind is each one has it’s own characteristics. The current interglacial stands out with the extended warming after the peak. Is this partly because we have better resolution of that period versus longer periods? Either way one would have to say that we are fortunate to have this extended warming. I notice that this last peak is the lowest peak of the 4 peaks. Could this in part be why there is an extended warm cycle?
@ur momisugly Jai M. at 9:07 am . Re ice : Please see the sea ice page on this site. Scroll down to IMS total ice. [ Another excelent resource provided at this site] Sure looks to me like total ice is increasing for the time of the season. Have a nice day.