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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jai mitchell says:
June 9, 2013 at 9:07 am
“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.”
Of course everything that happens is due to the increase in CO2. Why it behaved differently to 2007? It is getting cold because it is getting warmer, yes that is logical…
On one side you can believe the cold is the new warm story and try to figure out why it was not the same in 2007 or you can try to question if there may be other reasons for the weather getting colder.
You seem to be full on the “climate weirding” story, but the story does not stand, as said global ice is above average. With this your energy budget is crap.
Sweet Old Bob gave you one direction to search for it above, WUWT reference pages contain a lot of good information, but you can search for it elsewhere.
jai mitchell says:
June 9, 2013 at 9:07 am
Lars P
While the water angle reflectivity is higher than direct it is still much less than ice. do you agree?
I am not sure I agree, I would be happier to do so with having the respective data, however I found ice reflectivity between 30 and 40 however but not dependent on the angle. That would be equal with water’s at 10 to 15°. Maybe you have such?
Ice covered with snow would be a different story.
@Larry Plume P
http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/processes/albedo.html
yes, the water absorption rate is much much much higher. even at low angles. they are not even close.
you have to realize that we aren’t talking about visible light. That is only a small amount of the energy coming in.
jai mitchell says:
June 8, 2013 at 2:08 pm
@Dirkh
The funny thing is that, yes there is warming if you plot from 1979 to now, but 98% of the heat did not go into the atmosphere, it went into the oceans. It takes a LOT more heat to warm up water than air.
However the measured warming of the oceans is far away from the modelled value. The discrepancy is huge, invalidating the models, look at the ARGO data and the modelled data for the same period.
Btw, another scare is not materialising El Nino is not becoming a steady state:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/2009-consensus-el-nino-to-become-permanent-and-california-to-slide-into-the-sea/
@sweet bob, LarsP
I found the chart here: it definitely shows a decreasing total ice area. by about 30% in the last 6 years during the minimum in September.
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/ims/images/ims_data.pdf
jai mitchell says:
June 9, 2013 at 1:24 pm
Jai that link talks about teaching basic albedo lessons and typical ocean albedo at high incidence rate, so it is not helpful in the conversation we have at low incident rates – it does not address my question.
I know we are talking of all incoming energy, which in particular do you have in mind?
That is only a small amount of the energy coming in.
Visible light is about 50% of incoming solar energy, that is not such small amount.
jai mitchell says:
June 9, 2013 at 1:29 pm
@sweet bob, LarsP
I found the chart here: it definitely shows a decreasing total ice area. by about 30% in the last 6 years during the minimum in September.
Jai, that is only the Northern Hemisphere again. The globe has 2 poles…
Currently the Northern Hemisphere has the anomaly of: -639 thousands sq km
and the Southern Hemisphere + 996 thousands sq km:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
the Global anomaly is thus at +357 thousands sq km
lars P
you are comparing apples to oranges. those aren’t southern hemisphere values, they are southern hemisphere sea ice values.
are those seasonal maximum values?
jai mitchell says:
June 9, 2013 at 9:07 am
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?
I can’t speak for Lars, but as for me, I’d have to say no.
! used to have some better links on this topic, but they got flushed during some computer problems I had some time ago. so I’m going to rely on the not so reliable Wikipedia for most of this. Their Albedo article doesn’t seem to be to egregious.
Sample albedos
Surface Typical
albedo
Fresh asphalt 0.04[2]
Worn asphalt 0.12[2]
Conifer forest
(Summer) 0.08,[3] 0.09 to 0.15[4]
Deciduous trees 0.15 to 0.18[4]
Bare soil 0.17[5]
Green grass 0.25[5]
Desert sand 0.40[6]
New concrete 0.55[5]
Ocean ice 0.5–0.7[5]
Fresh snow 0.80–0.90[5]
“Water [edit]
Water reflects light very differently from typical terrestrial materials. The reflectivity of a water surface is calculated using the Fresnel equations (see graph).” This is the graph Lars linked in his comment above.
“At the scale of the wavelength of light even wavy water is always smooth so the light is reflected in a locally specular manner (not diffusely). The glint of light off water is a commonplace effect of this. At small angles of incident light, waviness results in reduced reflectivity because of the steepness of the reflectivity-vs.-incident-angle curve and a locally increased average incident angle.[24]”
[24] is this work
http://vih.freeshell.org/pp/01-ONW-St.Petersburg/Fresnel.pdf
SPECTRAL APPROACH TO CALCULATE SPECULAR REFLECTION
OF LIGHT FROM WAVY WATER SURFACE
It certainly indicates that waves tend to mitigate the increase in reflectivity that occurs with a flat water surface as solar angles decline toward values seen as the equinox and sea ice minimum approach, but even with that mitigation, the water albedo still looks to about a wash with the 50-70% values given for sea ice
“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.”
Do you have a link for that? The only work in this area that I have found is rather weak model simulations from old satellite data along the lines of this
http://www.eumetsat.int/home/main/abouteumetsat/publications/conferenceandworkshopproceedings/2006/groups/cps/documents/document/pdf_conf_p48_s2c_01_smith_v.pdf
“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.”
And you “know” this exactly how? I realize this is the current meme, but I would have more confidence in it if someone had actually predicted it 10-20 years ago, instead of trying to draw ex post facto correlations to jetstream changes that had already occurred. Maybe I just missed those predictions and you can help me out. I like to learn at least one new thing every day.
The shares of solar energy are frequently given as 3% UV, 44% visible, 53% IR, but the actual fractions depend of course on altitude & latitude. More UV hits the upper atmosphere than the surface, for instance.
Also, interestingly to me but apparently not to The Team, the UV component fluctuates significantly, without a big change in TSI. Solar irradiance varies over the solar cycle by a factor of two at 120 nm, with 10% at 200 nm & with 5% at 250 nm, but less than one percent at wavelengths longer than 300 nm. The differential at longer wavelengths is far less than variations caused by cloud-cover & ozone, but IMO it’s possible, even probable, that the range of UV flux affects climate.
http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/fys/FYS3610/h04/undervisningsmateriale/Moan7.pdf
IMO variations in solar irradiance & magnetism, plus their affects on the atmosphere & oceans, have been ignored or down-played without warrant by The Team, although Dr. Trenberth seems to have discovered a new-found fascination for the briny deep. It seems to me that the sun is more powerful than the One True Gas, the effect of which looks trivial.
Dr. Svaalgard may be along to accuse me of being not only wrong, but an enemy of humanity & threat to the Republic, but I’d appreciate his comments.
dbstealey says in part on June 8, 2013 at 11:40 am:
“Of course it is possible that CO2 causes some minuscule warming. However, there is no verifiable and testable supporting evidence that this is so. There are empirical observations showing that CO2 levels are a direct response to changing temperatures.”
Modern atmospheric CO2 increase is not caused by nature adding CO2 to the atmosphere. On the contrary, atmospheric CO2 is rising despite nature accomplishing net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere.
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/global-carbon-budget-2010
I would prefer to argue on basis of effect of the increase of CO2. For example, about 40% of the waming in the steeply-warming1973 to 2005 period was from a periodic natural cycle that shows up well in HadCRUT3.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/
About 20% of the manmade-greenhouse-gas-caused warming from the 1950’s to 2005 was from manmade or man-released greenhouse gases other than CO2, and human contribution of those to the atmosphere was largely stalled in the 1990’s.
At this rate, increase of CO2 appears to me to have about 40-50% of the effect claimed by those who claim it is a big problem.
Donald L. Klipstein says:
June 9, 2013 at 3:30 pm
“At this rate, increase of CO2 appears to me to have about 40-50% of the effect claimed by those who claim it is a big problem.”
++++++++++
Well let’s see, it used to be argued that most “90 to 95%” of 20th century warming was caused by CO2. They are not dialing back to 40 to 50%. Next it will be we don’t know… but likely most of the warming was natural. Just saying something does not making it true. Show us how you came up with this figure and how it’s proof that CO2 caused 40 to 50% of the warming. And show us how, CO2 also caused 40 to 50% of the NO WARMING over in the 21st century.
Donald Klipstein,
My apologies if I did not make myself clear. My point was that there is solid empirical evidence showing that the rise in CO2 is due to warming. But there is no comparable evidence or observations showing that CO2 is the cause of any global warming. From real world observations it is obvious that CO2 does not have that effect.
Rather than CO2 having “40-50%” of the warming effect, there is actually no empirical, testable scientific evidence showing that CO2 has any measurable effect. If that is wrong, please post any such testable evidence you might have. Because I have not been able to find any.
@Dave wendt
said, “At the scale of the wavelength of light even wavy water is always smooth ”
-yes, smooth, but not flat so any ripple in the surface creates direct incidence angles
water vs. ice albedo, Here is Judith curry’s paper on the subject. the water abledo is about 45% of the ice albedo.
http://lightning.sbs.ohio-state.edu/geo622/paper_ice_Curry1995.pdf
the extremes were predicted after last year’s ice melt.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/14/arctic-sea-ice-harsh-winter-europe
Jai, please come back to WUWT, it has been a pleasure to debate AGW with you! Please though, can we have the same invitation on the Websites that promote AGW. Somehow I doubt it, which is the difference between our two “camps”. I will discuss AGW with you, because you do not dismiss me as a “Denier”, which is more than can be said for other websites. The Websites that do not post anti AGW comments are frightened that we may be right and try to stifle any debate.
Is that reason enough to rethink your thoughts on the bigotry of Climate Change?
I look forward to debates with you in the future!
jai mitchell says:
June 9, 2013 at 4:19 pm
@Dave wendt
said, “At the scale of the wavelength of light even wavy water is always smooth ”
-yes, smooth, but not flat so any ripple in the surface creates direct incidence angles
It might have helped if you had ventured past the opening sentence. The whole point of the piece was to attempt to derive a method to estimate the wave effect on a water surface’s reflectance.
“Using this method we can produce a real-time movies of the wavy sea surface and light reflected from a water body 1 with wavy surface.2″…
“To generate random numbers we used Mersenne Twister random number generator 5-8 capable to produce evenly distributed random numbers in a cube of 626 dimensions. So each value of Fresnel reflection coefficient for any value of wind speed and zenith angle represents an average value of 800 billion individual computations.”…
I can’t C&P the graphs, but I would suggest you look at their fig 2 . Example of ray-tracing Fresnel reflection coefficient from a rough water surface at wind speed equal to 4 m/s plotted against Fresnel reflection coefficient of flat water.
It does show a definite effect from the presence of waves as the angles of incidence approach near equinox values, but the reduction is only to about 60-70% of flatwater values, which at those angles are approaching 90%.
“water vs. ice albedo, Here is Judith curry’s paper on the subject. the water abledo is about 45% of the ice albedo.”
Dr. Curry’s paper was interesting. It includes some nice modelling work on snow melt, melt pools, and ice breakup, but I saw nothing that suggested they recognized or factored in the variable reflectance issues we were discussing. That doesn’t seem to be a problem for you, but for me it still is.
“the extremes were predicted after last year’s ice melt.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/14/arctic-sea-ice-harsh-winter-europe”
As I said I don’t find ex post facto correlations that convincing. Last Sept was several years too late from the point where the jetstream started to go walkabout. I have seen several presentations which attempted to describe a mechanism by which the declining ice could move the jetstream. Some even seemed, at first glance, to be somewhat reasonable, but only at first glance.
I suppose there is little chance that either of us will move the other off our personal dimes on any of this, but I would add my own welcome to those offered by others here. The quality of opposition has gotten fairly weak around here and we were in danger of becoming like RC and just sitting around congratulating ourselves about how smart we all are.
As my Granddad always said “You can’t sharpen your knife on a stick of butter.”
Lars P. says:
June 9, 2013 at 8:11 am
jai mitchell says:
June 9, 2013 at 7:55 am
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.
The AGW Greenhouse Effect energy budget (KT97 and ilk) claims “shortwave in longwave out” – it claims no longwave infrared heat direct from the millions of degrees hot burning Star which is our Sun is included in these figures, which is mainly visible light, and the two shortwaves either side, near infrared making up 1% of that total.
However, in real world physics the actual percent of infrared is around 53, the visible less than half, but that’s not the only problem.
The AGW Greenhouse Effect is built on fake fisics, real world physics manipulated by sleights of hand to promote the AGW concept which claims that “greenhouse gases backradiate heat, longwave infrared, from the upwelling heat of the Earth”. This is a complicated scam full of magicians’ tricks altering real world physics.
To this end they have eliminated the direct longwave infrared heat from the Sun so they can use all real world measurements of downwelling longwave infrared to pretend this comes from “backradiation from the atmosphere by greenhouse gases”.
They have done this by firstly making the claim that no direct longwave infrared heat reaches the Earth’s surface and secondly by giving the properties of longwave infrared, which is heat, to visible light, claiming it is visible light, shortwaves, which heat the Earth.
There are two versions of why there is no direct longwave infrared heat from the Sun in their GHE energy budget (KT97 and ilk.
The first is that “there is an invisible barrier like the glass of a greenhouse preventing the longwave infrared from the Sun at top of atmosphere (TOA), and the second “that the Sun produces insignificant amounts of longwave infrared”.
Neither version proponents see any absurdity in this claim because they have been brainwashed into believing the heat we feel from the Sun is from visible light, the AGWScienceFiction meme “shortwave in longwave out”.
Visible light is as is shortwave infrared, not a thermal energy, we cannot feel it as heat.
The second version has taken the “planckian curve” and estimated the temperature of the Sun from the thin 300 mile wide atmosphere of visible light around the Sun, and come up with 6,000°C.
So those educated by this fake fisics don’t miss the real heat from the millions of degrees hot Star which is our Sun which is transferred by the electromagnetic wavelenths of heat, longwave infrared.
This is an enormous science fraud introduced into the education system so the general population wouldn’t see the tricks they use in their “backradiation from greenhouse gas warming”.
The figures of “reflection” for example on that wiki cartoon from which you are working cannot be relevant to heating the Earth, because that is visible light reflecting off clouds and visible light from the Sun can’t heat matter of land and water.
Mario Lento says:
June 9, 2013 at 11:33 am
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, which observations are those?
Dave,
I found this, it shows the different albedos with incidence angles and scenarios (ice, water, clouds with ice clouds with water. . .etc)
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/TOAalbedo.jpg
dave,
you know the thing is, if you fundamentally disbelieve the basic science and sign onto conspiracy theories about scientific budgets, it would be impossible to “prove” to you that the earth travels around the sun.
That being said, the article stated that the scientist predicted a colder winter based on the 2007 experience with lower ice cover, causing a warming of the arctic and a weird jet stream.
if you want to see a weird jet stream, check this out. . .this might be the weirdest cut-off low ever seen, happening now on the west coast of the U.S.
@Jai; “weirdest cut-off low ever seen’…..
Taint so. You must not watch the west coast satellite gif much. I do.
Looks fine today.
You are talking about weather – not climate.
Having the courage to do nothing may actually be an example of “do no harm.”
I am not even speaking in the economic sense. I am speaking in the sense of maintaining a guard band between where we are, and, the cliff of disaster known as 200ppm and below.
jai mitchell says:
June 10, 2013 at 7:54 am
Dave,
I found this, it shows the different albedos with incidence angles and scenarios (ice, water, clouds with ice clouds with water. . .etc)
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/TOAalbedo.jpg
Jai, in the town I live in their is a sizeable lake, at least in relation to the size of the city. To get to my house from the center of town you must travel on a road that bisects the lake. As I was returning home last night close to sundown there were several people who had pulled over near the middle of the lake to take photographs of the developing sunset. What made the sunset a compelling photo opportunity was that it was that rarest of rare occasions, an almost perfectly windless moment. What they were trying to capture with their cameras the perfectly symmetrical image of the evening sky that was displayed on the very flat surface of the lake. Although this event was rare it was by no means “unprecedented”. It happens every time the conditions repeat themselves. I guess it comes down to, who am going to “believe”, your funky graph from SkS or my lying eyes.
Which brings me to this
jai mitchell says:
June 10, 2013 at 7:59 am
dave,
you know the thing is, if you fundamentally disbelieve the basic science and sign onto conspiracy theories about scientific budgets, it would be impossible to “prove” to you that the earth travels around the sun.
The thing is Jai, fundamentally, science is not meant to create “beliefs” nor is it ever really capable of doing so, when done properly. The best that properly done science can do is to perform experiments to collect, analyze, and present “evidence” that would cause us to suspect that some proposition is true, or at a minimum, more true than competing propositions. The best science, in any field, is always just the Best Available Guess. The best scientists “know” this, and while they may accept for use propositions that pass the pragmatic test of working better than anything else that is available at the moment, they also accept that a Better Guess may come along at any time.
When it comes to “climate science” the “evidence” that is presented which is supposed to cause us to suspect that their proposition is true is generally more “suspect” than the proposition itself. Even the fundamental datasets have been manipulated, adjusted, corrected, averaged, smoothed, edited, trended, detrended, regressed and basically been beaten upon like an ugly reheaded stepchild. Despite all that, it still doesn’t pass the pragmatic test i.e. it doesn’t work!
If you go back through the archives here, and you don’t have go back through more than several weeks worth, you will find numerous posts that demonstrate that. Often those posts are based on works or writings by people who would be considered card carrying members of the “consensus”.
What has sealed the deal for me from the very beginning is that the purveyors of all this climate wisdom have for several decades now, when asked to justify even the slightest aspect of their work, have had the temerity to rise up and declare that they have no need to answer questions because their incredible brilliance has left the matter entirely “settled”. I would challenge you to review the entire history of science to find another instance where even an individual has said something similar, let alone an entire field of enquiry.
Some years ago on PBS their was a program called “The Big Blue Marble” so named because the overwhelmingly dominant and defining characteristic of this planet is Water. This recent post
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/09/more-climate-models-fail-a-chink-in-the-armor-at-science/#more-87897
based on a work published in that bulwark of climate skepticism “Science”, rather strongly suggests that GCMs, which are at the heart of “consensus” climate dogma, have virtually no skill in dealing with…wait for it…that’s right it’s Water
Your comments seem to suggest that, because I am not willing to “believe” consensus climate dogma, i must be a knuckle dragging conspiracy nut. I prefer to think of myself as an epistemological hardcase. You, on the other hand, appear to be an epistemological mattress
back.
If you are, as I suspect. a victim the modern public indoctrination system i will give you this
EPISTEMOLOGY
: the study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge especially with reference to its limits and validity
i think you might benefit from exploring it.
jai mitchell says:
June 9, 2013 at 1:56 pm
lars P
you are comparing apples to oranges.
jai, I am not, please look at the data and pls read the text that I’ve written
those aren’t southern hemisphere values, they are southern hemisphere sea ice values.
are those seasonal maximum values?
That is the Southern Hemisphere anomaly, as I’ve written above: Currently the Northern Hemisphere has the anomaly of: -639 thousands sq km and the Southern Hemisphere + 996 thousands sq km. (That was yesterday, now it changed a bit)
I also explained you where to look for these values: at WUWT reference pages.
If you have trouble finding the link it is here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
or you can see it up under the WUWT banner under: “Reference Pages”
The sea-ice-pages have many references , direct from the respective source which you can directly click there. From there I linked you to the Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice anomaly
You can see there Global sea ice value and anomaly:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
Global, Arctic & Antarctic Sea Ice Area,
Global Sea Ice Cover,
Arctic Graphs, etc
What you posted above at “jai mitchell says: June 9, 2013 at 1:29 pm ” is: Northern Hemisphere Total (Sea and Lake) Ice Extent from the National Ice Center, not global ice.
Please page down there, current Northern Hemisphere Sea ice area and anomaly is a bit lower:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
and further down the Southern Hemisphere total area and anomaly:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
And no, those are not seasonal maximum values, the Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice area is now at 10860 thousands sq km, the seasonal maximum values goes further up usually between 15 and 16, last year even over 16 million sq km.
I am a medical scientist now retired. I worked and published on cholera and Vibrio cholerae. I became interested on climate change because it seems that there is some connection between cllimate and outbreacks of epidemic cholera like the last 7th pandemic. Now most if not all raw data on the issue debated refers to the north hemisphere. So there is no Global Warming but only North HW. .How about the southern half?