A poll follows, a first for QOTW.
Sometimes in the climate wars when things get ridiculous and emotional we often ask or see asked “what is this, high school”? A classic example is Al Gore’s “high school physics” when it comes to the CO2 effect:
“The deniers claim that it’s some kind of hoax and that the global scientific community is lying to people,” he said. “It’s not a hoax, it’s high school physics.” – Al Gore in an interview with MNN 9/14/2011
Unless you are a fringe skeptic (for example a “Slayer” at Principia Scientific) you wouldn’t call the greenhouse effect a hoax, I surely don’t. But as my replication of Al Gore’s “high school physics” experiment proved, Gore even got the “high school physics” wrong. Then, he faked the results in post production.
Steve McIntyre has some perspective on the “high school” nature of climate science that is worth repeating:
It seems to me that most famous “amateurs” from the past were highly professional in their field. Nor do I find invocation of their stories very relevant since the sociology of the science enterprise has changed so much.
In my opinion, most climate scientists on the Team would have been high school teachers in an earlier generation – if they were lucky. Many/most of them have degrees from minor universities. It’s much easier to picture people like Briffa or Jones as high school teachers than as Oxford dons of a generation ago. Or as minor officials in a municipal government.
Allusions to famous past amateurs over-inflates the rather small accomplishments of present critics, including myself. A better perspective is the complete mediocrity of the Team makes their work vulnerable to examination by the merely competent.
– Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit Aug 1, 2013 at 2:44 PM
h/t to Charles the Moderator
Please take a look at this graph from the essay Steve left a comment in:
The poll is about the graph:
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Here’s a bit of High School Physics using radiation estimates from the equilibrium diagram.
1) The earth’s surface at present radiates 390 W/M^2 and global average temperature is about 288K
2) The Insolation at top of atmosphere is 342 W/M^2
If the atmosphere was suddenly removed 342 W/M^2 would hit the surface and the temperature would be e*A*T^4=342 according to Boltzmann where T is avg temp at equilbbrium
With current atmosphere e*A*t^4=390 where t= 288K
A bit of High school maths means that t/T=(390/342)^(1/4)=1.033
ie T=288/1.033 = 278.6K ie 9.4 deg C cooler than current
ie all the atmosphere, CO2, water vapour, clouds, aerosols etc have warmed the earth by a mere 9.4 deg C.
I notice that Callendar’s model shows CO2 causing about 8 deg C warming at 400ppm. I assume the other 1.4 deg C is caused by everything else.
Why should I believe that adding another 200ppm of CO2 will cause a dangerous climate change?
OK, so where is my comment, Anthony? Is it held back because it contained the ‘S****r’ word? Or the ‘P*******a’ word? From quoting you …?
REPLY: it is right there above. Sometimes combination of links and words trigger the wordpress spam filter, you have to give people a chance to find and correct issues – Anthony
Its a great shame that time travel is not a realty because if it were we could return to a time when this frenetic idiocy about who what when or why one day we get rain and another sun or whether its warmer or cooler did not exist and folk could return to human sacrifices to whichever God seemed to offer the best odds of a good crop. Instead we are mithered at morning noon and night with obsessive halfwits on both sides of the debate those who little better to do with their lives than dance on the head of a pin and those smart enough like Al Gore who completely imune to criticism and contradiction and just happy to fill his bank account with cash. Lets face it the real attraction of climate is the fact that no side can land a killer blow which means ordinary folk will have continue funding this inate stupidity and living in an environment inundated with professional activists and the imposition of useless wind and solar farms that destroy the environment supposedly one side or the other or both were sworn to protect. Even worse is the mealy mouthed appeasment by sceptics agreeing with what remains an hypothesis at best just to avoid being seen as a real sceptic feeble minded. People live and people die why dont you all go away and get a life and stop bitching about something over which we can never exert any control push wwf to really focus on saving Tigers and stop ripping out rainforest for sugar based biofuel instead of wasting time writing reports that most people cant even understand in simple times go and get a life.
The rather close correlation is interesting, and one that Alarmists in particular should make note of. However, with cooling likely in coming decades, I would expect to see the correlation break down, with C02 continuing up.
“a first for QOTW”
I wondered what that was, then looked at the keyboard and realized it’s probably a typo.
Can’t believe I’m the first pedant to mention it. ;-p
REPLY: ??? QOTW= “Quote of the Week” – Anthony
I first saw a similar graph in Matt Ridley’s Angus Miller lecture. It made quite an impression.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/01/thank-you-matt-ridley/
Howard Hayden uses that graph in one of his books, I think. He personally drew it for me in a spreadsheet and explained it to me years ago.
“They use outstanding methods to achieve mediocre results?” This phrase was hijacked and paraphrased from an Air Force officer effectiveness report.
“REPLY: it is right there above. Sometimes combination of links and words trigger the wordpress spam filter, you have to give people a chance to find and correct issues – Anthony”
Totally fine. Thanks!
David Wells says:
August 4, 2013 at 10:55 am
Nature herself has repeatedly landed killer blows on CACCA, but the ideologically-motivated & ill-educated media refuse to report the events & corrupted “scientists” refuse to acknowledge them. Eventually, when the world returns to the temperature regime of the 1960s & early ’70s, it will become increasingly difficult to ignore reality.
[yeah, not getting into this, sorry these turn into food fights- Anthony]
Everyone should read McIntyre’s essay. He is offering one basis for criticizing the performance of climate models.
“A better perspective is the complete mediocrity of the Team makes their work vulnerable to examination by the merely competent.”
Wow! Not only was the knife serrated but it was twisted with a vicious upward thrust. Well done.
Richard111,
No, no, we do not refer to the “temperature” of an individual molecule. Temperature refers to the average kinetic energy of the molecules in a quantity of matter. No, no, CO2 absorbs 15-micron radiation due to induced dipole moment, which is the same way a microwave oven heats food. Yes CO2 can emit 15-micron photons too, but in the lower atmosphere this is unlikely as before a photon could be re-emitted the molecule has slammed into thousands of its neighboring molecules, thus ‘thermalizing” the absorbed energy. This is the actual greenhouse effect, which has nothing whatsoever to do with “back radiation.”
FrankK says:
August 4, 2013 at 10:28 am
IMO the graph doesn’t assume that CO2 is the primary driver of climate. It merely shows what might be expected from increasing the concentration of the trace gas in the atmosphere. Other factors are far more important in forcing climate.
If you accept the IPCC assumption that CO2 levels were fairly constant in the Holocene before c. 1850 (which is by no means incontrovertibly in evidence), then the graph indicates what the effect on temperature might be from higher concentrations. I don’t know if Callendar possible considered feedback effects, but so far going from three to four molecules of CO2 per 10,000 air molecules has indeed raised global temperature by about the 0.7 degrees C shown in the graph (if you believe the global temperature compilations, which I don’t, but will accept them for the sake of argument).
The take away is that the additional ~0.8 degrees rise forecast for continuing on to six molecules per 10,000 from the current four would not result in climatic catastrophe. The Team has to make unsupported assumptions about positive feedback effects to get anywhere near the Venusian calamity forecast by prophets of doom like Hansen.
Whether equilibrium has been attained or not is debatable. Nature is busily drawing the extra carbon dioxide out of the air & depositing it in various sinks, about which science knows little.
[yeah, not getting into this, sorry these turn into food fights- Anthony]
While the presumed net temperature effect of CO2 is a bit too high, the article linked ( http://climateaudit.org/2013/07/26/guy-callendar-vs-the-gcms/ ) illustrates how that 1938 publication had:
* Frankness on major carbon fertilization benefit without any attempt to treat it as info nobody is supposed to mention or ever know about
* Discussion of benefits to mankind and a pro-human rather than anti-human mindset (with the former about universal until an escalating combination of cultural factors reached a turning point by 3 decades after WWII)
* Comprehension of how the average net effect of increased cloudiness is “increasing the reflection loss and thus reducing the effective sun heat” (net cooling with days under white reflective clouds less hot on average), in contrast to how even that basic level of honesty is so rare today.
The last point comes close to the grand truth of climate:
Albedo change is what has dominated climate change now and over thousands of years past. On lengthy timescales of interglacials versus glacials, it does so through the feedback effect of ice sheets (a much whiter planet when continents are largely covered by glaciers) being what amplifies initial temperature change far more so than CO2. Short timescales are dominated by another kind of albedo change, up to multiple percent change in average cloud cover (having a relatively huge W/m^2 effect in climate terms) as influenced by cosmic ray variation (mostly solar modulated) as illustrated in http://s23.postimg.org/qldgno07f/edited4.gif (enlarging on further click).
Henry Clark says:
August 4, 2013 at 12:44 pm
Yeah, the graph comes in a little high at ~1.5 degrees C for doubling from three to six CO2 molecules per 10,000 instead of 1.2 degrees, but close enough for government work, IMO. Important point is that the climate sensitivity isn’t the 4.5 to 7.0 degrees wildly assumed by IPCC in its woollier, less restrained ARs.
Steve M’s observation way explain why it’s so hard to get members of the team to debate.
OldWeirdHarold says:
“…But this was plotted prior to the assertion of Clausius-Clapeyron feedback. It’s a statement of the obvious in graphical form sans feedback.
“Now as for feedback, that’s a whole other can of worms.”
+++++++++
Well, the feedback (often ignored when discussing forcing as if forcing = temperature change) also divides easily into two: the increase in absolute humidity with an increase in temperature giving an increased forcing, and the other feedbacks that cause quite the opposite: thermals, thunderstorms, increased cloudiness and earlier-in-the-day onset of cloudiness in the tropical zones.
The oversimplification I see most often is the calculation of forcing as if it means a temperature rise. The purpose of the misdirection is to pretend that a doubling of forcing equals a particular temperature rise, completely ignoring the multiple responses that kick in to prevent that from happening. CO2 forcing is straightforward. Methane forcing is straightforward. The reactions to that forcing are very complex and from what we can tell so far, very effective at stabilizing the global average temperature with an 8 month delay.
I’m surprised at the low % of people who have seen this graph before, or one’s like it. The fact that CO2’s effects are logarithmic is well known and constitute what should have been the beginning and the end of the debate.
Alone, CO2’s effects beyond 400 ppm are so small as to make debating them laughable. The only way to accept CO2 being logarithmic and still raise the alarm is to claim that feedback effects are very large (which is what the IPCC and the alarmists in general do). The problem with that argument is that it is self defeating.
1. If feedbacks were very large, then the effect would be readily apparent in the temperature record. It is not.
2. If feedbacks are low (as evidence suggests) then there’s nothing to worry about in the first place.
My opinion is that this aspect of the physics needs to get more exposure. Understanding the logarithmic nature of CO2 is all one needs to end the debate. It is why the warmists want to scream about tree rings, and hottest decades on record, and ice decline, and heat hiding in the ocean…. anything but this one simple fact that CO2’s effects are logarithmic.
The log relationship between CO2 and “forcing” is standard and everyone ought to be familiar with it. Howver, the log relationship between CO2 and temperature anomaly is not something that one commonly sees, or at all, presumably because of positive feedbacks. So you have to watch the distinction- Anthony, better it you pointed this out.
The direct effects of CO2 in the graph are a good starting point.
It is important to emphasize the climate feedback as well.
The last 11000 years showed a remarkable stability of the climate.
If the climate was less stable, it would have been pushed into an extreme, up or down, many times over.
We do not have the data and modeling ability to find that feedback now, except by looking at its results on the measured temperatures. As the recent record goes more toward a light cooling 1997-present, similar to the trend 1940-1970
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/trend:12/plot/rss/from:1997
the case for a CO2 sensitivity (feedback included) of 0 -1C becomes stronger.
PS The putdown of McIntyre is spot on. As a mathematical physicist I always said that an 8th grade kid, who is required to be able to read and understand data, can take down most of the conclusions of climate science.
davidmhoffer says:
August 4, 2013 at 1:21 pm
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If you study maths and sciences you might understand logarithmic effects.
Trouble is most kids today don’t get to use logarithmic paper or do science experiments that require one or both axes on a log scale, or to learn that you can turn an exponential curve into a straight line with a log. You can do everything with a calculator so that you don’t have any understanding of what you are doing. You just put the numbers in the way the teacher tells you and the “graphing” calculator does it all for you. I can recall 30 years ago, having to buy my kids special calculators for school. I still have trouble getting my offspring to understand logarithmic effects and they are both well educated but not in sciences. They get as sucked in by the media hype as any other member of the public. The school system didn’t require them to take a lot of chemistry, physics and calculus. Just enough to get by and use a calculator with appropriate programs. Thing is, how do they (or anyone) know that the programs they are using are correct?? They will use nomographs, but they don’t understand that there is complex math behind them. They don’t trust the system – but they will use products provided by the system without questioning what the little black box or nomograph is doing. Remember those old calculators that just wouldn’t give you a whole number for an answer? Remember writing Fortran programs to force a computer to give you the correct answer? Or at least what we assumed was the correct answer. Course that was about 40 years ago so maybe I don’t remember it quite right. My motto for my kids is “THINK”. One thing I knew and have confirmed from reading this blog is no one can be certain about science.
Can anyone think of an experiment that demonstrates that, in principle, non-condensing greenhouse gases are not essential to maintaining a model greenhouse with water vapor feedback.
It maybe appropriate to start with a frozen world as a potential source of water vapor, since that is the claimed outcome if long lived greenhouse gases are completely removed. I think the challenge would be to counteract in some way the effect of container if it was included in the design. Most of these experiments need a container to hold the gas in, and I feel a container would negate the purpose of the demonstration.