Guest essay by Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times
Climate scientists are obsessed with carbon dioxide. The newly released Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that “radiative forcing” from human-emitted CO2 is the leading driver of climate change. Carbon dioxide is blamed for everything from causing more droughts, floods, and hurricanes, to endangering polar bears and acidifying the oceans. But Earth’s climate is dominated by water, not carbon dioxide.
Earth’s water cycle encompasses the salt water of the oceans, the fresh water of rivers and lakes, and frozen icecaps and glaciers. It includes water flows within and between the oceans, atmosphere, and land, in the form of evaporation, precipitation, storms and weather. The water cycle contains enormous energy flows that shape Earth’s climate, temperature trends, and surface features. Water effects are orders of magnitude larger than the feared effects of carbon dioxide.
Sunlight falls directly on the Tropics, where much energy is absorbed, and indirectly on the Polar Regions, where less energy is absorbed. All weather on Earth is driven by a redistribution of heat from the Tropics to the Polar Regions. Evaporation creates massive tropical storm systems, which move heat energy north to cooler latitudes. Upper level winds, along with the storm fronts, cyclones, and ocean currents of Earth’s water cycle, redistribute heat energy from the Tropics to the Polar Regions.
The Pacific Ocean is Earth’s largest surface feature, covering one-third of the globe and large enough to contain all of Earth’s land masses with area remaining. Oceans have 250 times the mass of the atmosphere and can hold over 1,000 times the heat energy. Oceans have a powerful, yet little understood effect on Earth’s climate.
Even the greenhouse effect itself is dominated by water. Between 75 percent and 90 percent of Earth’s greenhouse effect is caused by water vapor and clouds.
Yet, the IPCC and today’s climate modelers propose that the “flea” wags “the dog.” The flea, of course, is carbon dioxide, and the dog, is the water cycle. The theory of man-made warming assumes a positive feedback from water vapor, forced by human emissions of greenhouse gases.
The argument is that, since warmer air can hold more moisture, atmospheric water vapor will increase as Earth warms. Since water vapor is a greenhouse gas, additional water vapor is presumed to add additional warming to that caused by CO2. In effect, the theory assumes that the carbon cycle is controlling the more powerful water cycle.
But for the last 15 years, Earth’s surface temperatures have failed to rise, despite rising atmospheric carbon dioxide. All climate models predicted a rapid rise in global temperatures, in conflict with actual measured data. Today’s models are often unable to predict weather conditions for a single season, let alone long-term climate trends.
An example is Atlantic hurricane prediction. In May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued its 2013 hurricane forecast, calling for an “active or extremely active” hurricane season. At that time, NOAA predicted 7 to 11 Atlantic hurricanes (storms with sustained wind speeds of 74 mph or higher). In August NOAA revised their forecast down to 6 to 9 hurricanes. We entered October with a count of only two hurricane-strength storms. Computer models are unable to accurately forecast one season of Earth’s water cycle in just one region.
The IPCC and proponents of the theory of man-made warming are stumped by the 15-year halt in global surface temperature rise. Dr. Kevin Trenberth hypothesizes that the heat energy from greenhouse gas forcing has gone into the deep oceans. If so, score one for the power of the oceans on climate change.
Others have noted the prevalence of La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean since 1998. During 1975-1998, when global temperatures were rising, the Pacific experienced more frequent warm El Niño events than the cooler La Niñas. But the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), a powerful temperature cycle in the North Pacific Ocean, moved into a cool phase about ten years ago. With the PDO in a cool phase, we now see more La Niña conditions. Maybe more La Niñas are the reason for the recent flat global temperatures. But if so, isn’t this evidence that ocean and water cycle effects are stronger than the effects of CO2?
Geologic evidence from past ice ages shows that atmospheric carbon dioxide increases follow, rather than precede, global temperature increases. As the oceans warm, they release CO2 into the atmosphere. Climate change is dominated by changes in the water cycle, driven by solar and gravitational forces, and carbon dioxide appears to play only a minor role.
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the new book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
-Owen in GA says:
October 7, 2013 at 5:20 pm
gbaikie says:
October 7, 2013 at 3:44 pm
Now, go back to ocean, below a meter most the sunlight is passing thru the water, and at certain deep no sunlight reaches. So what happen to the energy of sunlight which passes thru the first
meter of water? If it very slightly per second warms the water in 100 meter column of water, that heat doesn’t return to the surface [within a day or months]. So such numbers as “168 W/m^2″
“Actually a great deal of the heat does return to the surface the following night. There is an effect in tropical oceans called overturning which occurs a few hours after sunset. “-
After the top surface has cooled, then this denser cooled surface would fall to be replaced by warmer water below it.
Plus wave motion mixes the top 100 meters of ocean.
The ocean water will reach some balance [roughly speaking] just as solar pond will reach a balance.
So with solar pond in Texas, when there is less sunlight during the winter, a solar pool
will maintain an average temperature of about 70 C. In this situation of solar insolation during a period of time- the heat will of course more or less balance every day- if it didn’t balance you would not have a near constant temperature.
Now If you were to add cold water, to the solar pond in the winter and thereby lower the temperature below 70 C, it will warm back up to 70 C. The lower you cause this warmer water to cool the more heat is added into the solar pond each day.
And we know with our ocean the cold polar water, falls towards the equator, and vast currents of surface water flows poleward. So it’s engine which powers climate. Whereas one could use solar pond as engine to power whatever want to use it for.
So globally there a vast amount water being mixed and basically is stays at near constant temperature in such short time periods as a year or so.
So not arguing that the earth’s energy budget isn’t on average nearly constant.
The overturning during the nighttime is part of the reason the ocean surface has a near constant temperature- there is cooler water being added from it cooling at surface and falling and being replaced less dense warmer water.
So when ocean temperature is balanced no net heat will be added.
The ocean is currently not balanced, as your world is still cold from the time of last glacial period- glaciers, ice caps, and average entire ocean temperature of about 3 C. The last interglacial period became considerably warmer than our interglacial period- and it’s a good guess our interglacial will eventually reach similar levels [in terms glaciers/ice caps/warmer ocean].
Now suppose one start from premise that ocean should be cooler than it is, or instead of having warm ocean surface temperature- being the top 100 meters, the surface ocean were to be thoroughly mixed [not something normally possible] so that the surface was same temperature as deep ocean- so making the surface water around 3 C.
With such a cold ocean almost all the solar energy will stay in the ocean until such time as the ocean returns to the situation we have now- a warm surface ocean temperature.
As the average ocean surface temperature [down to 100 meter depth] approaches our current temperature the amount heat added decreases- or there is energy available at night, which keeps surface warmer at night [and since it’s warmer loses more energy at night].
Or said differently, if tomorrow we were to *somehow* get a cooled condition in average global air temperature so matches the same as middle of last glacial period- ocean water in the top 100 meter would lose some heat, but it will be a slow process of losing this heat- it would take centuries- for entire ocean somewhere in ballpark of thousand years or so per 1 C.
You could get somewhat quick change in air temperature, but not in ocean temperatures.
And to get actual glacial or interglacial period temperatures conditions requires a long time.
So we two different conditions: air temperature over the last 8000 year are very gradually decreasing, but since sea level is slowly rising over last thousands of year, we know that ocean temperature continue to increase over this same period and will continue even if it were to get quite cold in the coming decades.
Or if instead we were to get Hansen’s crazy hot, ocean will also, not warm rapidly.
Good point, Patrick (at 11:04pm), but… as far as the impact on the manufacturing sector goes, it will only hurt the water-powered sawmills, flour mills, … and the snow cone wagon at the fair (THAT is a bummer).
Taxing “carbon” is taking the economy by the scruff of the neck, shoving it down onto the pavement, and putting a heavy, jack booted, foot on its back. But, take heart, boys and girls! Don’t you worry. Tune in next week when U.S. Industry will get back on its feet and live to see another day — in India.
(really make you wonder why union members vote Dem. EVERY time — headshake)
ACTUALLY, seriously, take heart. THE TIDE IS TURNING — CAGW is on the WAY OUT.
Truth has won. It’s just a matter of mopping up operations, now.
Remember, it was over a YEAR after “D-day” (June 6, 1944) that the Allies were done fighting in Europe. Hang in there! Victory is assured. It is just a matter of time.
Bear in mind, all of you over 50 — in every age of human history, people of our age have started to grow more pessimistic — OPTIMISM IS A CHOICE: make it.
Pessimism has the false air of wisdom. In reality, it is simply an old woman’s or an old man’s fears. It is not wiser. It is simply choosing to live in despair instead of choosing to live in hope.
You can’t control much in this life, but you can control your attitude. Defeatism is powerful.
Keep your demoralizing, “we’ll never beat the giants,” comments to yourself.
This team is going to WIN — any of you who do not agree can
take off that uniform and
leave it on the field and
don’t let the door —
OKAY, COACH MOORE, THAT’S ENOUGH — I OWN THIS BALL CLUB AND ALL THOSE WHINERS GET TO STAY ON THE TEAM.
(Disclaimer: that wasn’t really A-th-y)
#(:))
For anyone new to WUWT, Ferdinand Englebeen‘s opinions are NOT representative of those of the WUWT Science Giants. He shows up virtually every time Dr. Salby’s work is mentioned like a modern-day Neville Maskelyne maligning John Harrison. Persevere in reading on WUWT for at least a month, and you, too, will see why F. E. is wrong 90% of the time.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
October 7, 2013 at 11:12 pm
———————————————————
Ferdinand,
many readers of climate blogs are familiar with your claims that it is not just that variations in atmospheric CO2 that can be determined from ice cores but also that actual atmospheric concentration can be determined. Many readers would also be familiar with claims that ice core diffusion problems can be dismissed along with plant stoma records and the early direct chemical measurements of Beck and others. It should be clear why many readers accept that ice cores do record lower frequency historical CO2 fluctuations and show that historical atmospheric temperature changes always proceed CO2 changes, but remain sceptical that ice cores can determine exact historical CO2 concentration in ppm. It would not be prudent to claim the science is settled on this.
Some readers would also be sceptical of Dr. Salbys claims that current CO2 increases during the period of electronic measurement cannot be attributed to humans. However human CO2 emissions are thought to be less than 5% of annual natural emissions. Further, biological CO2 sinks are known to vary in capacity with varying CO2 levels. We observe a significant (25%) annual variation in NH CO2 levels. Without better CO2 budgeting of the biosphere and oceans, it would also not be prudent to dismiss Dr. Salbys claims at this time.
The question of attribution of atmospheric CO2 increases must at this time remain open. However this does not stop the AGW question being solved in the meantime. All you need to be able to do is answer these simple physics questions –
1. Do radiative gases such as H2O and CO2 both absorb and emit IR radiation? Yes or No?
2. Are Radiative gases critical to strong vertical tropospheric convective circulation? Yes or No?
3. Does altering the quantity of radiative gases in the atmosphere alter the speed of tropospheric convective circulation? Yes or No?
4. Is convective circulation including water vapour the primary mechanism for transporting energy from the surface and lower atmosphere to the upper atmosphere? Yes or No?
5. Are radiative gases the primary mechanism for energy loss to space from the upper atmosphere? Yes or No?
6. Does down welling LWIR emitted from the atmosphere significantly effect the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool? Yes or No.
I understand you have put a lot of effort into ice cores, but when it comes to the question of whether AGW is even physically possible, they actually don’t matter.
Janice Moore says:
October 7, 2013 at 11:44 pm
Ferdinand Englebeen‘s opinions are NOT representative of those of the WUWT Science Giants.
I am certainly not at the same level as Willis Eschenbach and other giants frequently publishing here, but as far as I know, several of them, including Willis, agree that humans are the cause of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. The main difference is that Willis has very little patience for this kind of lost arguments, while I have a lot: explaining again and again why humans are the cause of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere…
BTW, if Salby is right about CO2 migration in ice cores, then the 300 ppmv measured during interglacials would have been 3000 ppmv, but as averaging doesn’t change the average over the resolution time, that would imply that the CO2 levels during glacials would be negative, effectively destroying all life on earth…
Konrad says:
October 8, 2013 at 12:12 am
However human CO2 emissions are thought to be less than 5% of annual natural emissions.
Non-argument: the 5% is one-way additional, the 95% is in, but 97.5% is out, thus largely circulating without much impact on levels (removing more than adding).
We observe a significant (25%) annual variation in NH CO2 levels.
The global seasonal variation is about +/- 5 ppmv, that is just over 1% of global CO2 levels, but again that is in and out, the residual (~2 ppmv/yr additional) is what counts. Humans add about 4 ppmv/yr. The year by year variation is +/- 2 ppmv/yr around the trend:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
About your questions:
1. Yes.
2. I suppose yes, but haven’t studied that in detail.
3. Probable, but haven’t studied that in detail.
4. Quite certain, but haven’t studied that in detail.
5. Yes and no: in the statosphere yes, but slightly more energy is retained in the troposphere by GHGs, which increases the height where most of the energy is emitted to space. CO2 IR emissions decreased over the years:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI4204.1
6. Yes, see the difference in diurnal temperature for clear skies between a desert and a humid environment (even less with clouds).
@Steve Goreham, well said! The tail wagging the dog indeed.
I have often used the analogy of tossing a pebble into the Ocean raising sea-level. But yours is great because it touches upon politics, where that famous phrase gets a lot of mileage.
Listen Guys,
This is really serious. We’ve been worrying about CO2 and now we have to worry about water too!!
If we are going to staop global warming we must never:
a) Wash our car.
b) Water our crops
c) Use the Lavatory
Lobby the EPA to make water a dangerous substance that need regulation! Bring on the water tax!
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
October 8, 2013 at 1:48 am
———————————————
Ferdinand,
Firstly, congratulations. You are the first from the pro AGW camp to attempt all 6 questions.
You are close to correct on 1 to 4. For question 5 I think you may have fallen for the ERL argument. It doesn’t work. Rising air masses are always radiating more strongly than the gases at the altitudes they are rising through. The ERL fudge is static atmosphere stuff. Our atmosphere however exhibits strong vertical circulation below the tropopause.
Sadly you got question 6 wrong. The question did not refer to land, but to oceans which cover 71% of the earth’s surface. The gas / liquid interface is a special condition. LWIR cannot penetrate more than 100 microns through the skin evaporation layer of liquid water. All that incident LWIR does to liquid water is trip some molecules in the skin evaporation layer into vapour sooner than they otherwise would, with evaporative cooling countering any temperature stagnation faster than conduction can transfer it to the liquid below.
You can try the empirical experiment for yourself –
http://i42.tinypic.com/2h6rsoz.jpg
– Start with water at 40C and run for 45 min. Now repeat with a square of LDPE (microwave safe cling wrap) floated on the surface of each water chamber. When the water can cool by radiation, conduction and evaporation, LWIR has no effect. When conductive and radiative cooling is allowed, but evaporative cooling is prevented (LDPE film 90% LW transparent) the effect of LWIR is measurable. Typically 1.5 C in 45 min. Land is not the same as ocean. Trenberthian energy budget cartoons showing “surface” are completely wrong.
However, regardless of question 6, consider your close to correct responses to 1 to 4. Now go back and look at the “basic physics” of the “settled science”. Did they increase the speed of tropospheric convective circulation, and thereby mechanical energy transfer from the surface, for increasing concentrations of radiative gases? No, they did not. Epic fail, and the Internet record of this is permanent.
PS. While I may be a sceptic, I’m still an environmentalist. The only vehicles my partner and I own are kayaks and mountain bikes. I call cars petrol burning ego boxes. You have expertise in polar ice cores. I say to you that the clean energy future we both want is in the empirical evidence you ignored. Flux tunnelling events every 8 minutes. Solar wind. Holes in the magnetosphere. It’s in your ice cores. Look again.
***
Konrad says:
October 8, 2013 at 5:01 am
The gas / liquid interface is a special condition. LWIR cannot penetrate more than 100 microns through the skin evaporation layer of liquid water. All that incident LWIR does to liquid water is trip some molecules in the skin evaporation layer into vapour sooner than they otherwise would, with evaporative cooling countering any temperature stagnation faster than conduction can transfer it to the liquid below.
***
Increased LWIR can’t “cool” anything — it adds heat. Granted, if you increase air-speed over water, evaporation would increase & cool the surface, but in that case there is no “added” heat. The question is how much of the increased LWIR shows up as a combination of increased water skin temp and latent heat from water vapor produced. This should follow simple rules of water skin temp & the resultant water vapor partial pressure, all else being equal.
RC Saumarez suggests in jest that the EPA be lobbied about the dangers of water.
You’re too late RC. The idiotic bureaucracy is already in place, at least here in the UK.
Paste the following into your search engine, and then click on ‘water’:
babec.org/files/MSDS/water.pdf
Read and be prepared to be amazed. Is any organisation safe from regulations dreamed up by dimwits? I imagine the company’s scientific and technical staff had a good laugh putting this little lot together.
beng says:
October 8, 2013 at 6:20 am
——————————————–
Perhaps you should try the empirical experiment.
And
Learn.
(full instructions on receipt of post paid return postcard.)
Konrad says:
October 8, 2013 at 5:01 am
You are the first from the pro AGW camp to attempt all 6 questions.
Sorry, but I am hardly pro-AGW: I am a skeptic on everything said by everyone, until convinced by evidence. That makes that I accept that some extra CO2 in the atmosphere will heat the surface somewhat. How much? Not much, the empirical (and physical) evidence gives not more than around 1 K increase for 2 x CO2. And I am very skeptic about all climate models, which all have been proven wrong.
But I am as skeptic about a non-human cause of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere: the evidence that humans are the cause is rock solid and all alternatives I have heard of, all fail one or several observations…
About your point 5: Satellites show a decrease in outgoing radiation in one of the CO2 band(s). That means that some energy is retained in the troposphere, wherever that may be: increased skin temperature of the sea surface, more evaporation and/or more convection. In all cases, that gives that more energy is retained somewhere in the system, until the temperature increased sufficient to put more energy into other outgoing IR bands besides the CO2 band(s)…
IMHO,This article was kinda like a ‘cloudburst’…hopefully nobody was having a parade.(IPCC ar5 report…paper dosen’t do well wet.)Water happens to be my favorite compound.
Sources for my opinion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phase_diagram_of_water.svg
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-psychrometrics-properties-t_8.html
http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/Physical_Chemistry/Physical_Properties_of_Matter/Atomic_and_Molecular_Properties/Intermolecular_Forces/Unusual_Properties_of_Water
and commonsence.
Thanks for the interesting articles and comments.
***
Konrad says:
October 8, 2013 at 6:50 am
beng says:
October 8, 2013 at 6:20 am
——————————————–
Perhaps you should try the empirical experiment.
***
Irrelevant. The ocean doesn’t have plastic wrap on top.
Learn.
Already did, on this matter, decades ago (isn’t engineering great?). All you need is the 1st Law of Thermo (energy conservation), the thermodynamic characteristics of water, and the Clausius–Clapeyron relation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clausius%E2%80%93Clapeyron_relation
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
October 8, 2013 at 6:56 am
——————————————–
There can be no answer form the A-train satellites. They are not fit for purpose.
You need to try the empirical experiment. There is no heat hiding in the oceans.
beng says:
October 8, 2013 at 7:39 am
“Irrelevant. The ocean doesn’t have plastic wrap on top”
—————————————————————————–
And that, in case you missed it, is entirely the point 😉
Liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool reacts in a different manner than other materials to incident LWIR. LWIR, even if emitted from a cooler material, can slow the cooling rate of most materials. It just does not work at the surface of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool.
Do the experiment.
Learn.
The answer is not in the text books, and it certainly is not on wikipedia.
It’s simple enough…if CO2 was a driver then temps would have increased during the last 15 years not stalled and dipped. Therefore the logarithmic nature of CO2’s heat creation is plain to see. The warmers have become so obsessed with their radioactive forcing they have forgotten commonsense and the only reason we are having this argument is due to the predicted Tropical Hotspots not being there. And if you want to know why your climate playstations are always wrong…try factoring in negative feedback…you know clouds, rain, volcanic ash…iris effect et al.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
October 8, 2013 at 6:56 am
I can be convinced that most of the alleged ~115 ppm increase in CO2 concentration since c. AD 1850 is attributable to human activity. But IMO all available evidence suggests that the effect of this increase on global temperature & other climatic metrics is at most negligible, largely beneficial & certainly not catastrophic. Nor can science at this point have high confidence that the net sign of all man-made effects is even to warm rather than to cool the planet.
Nicely done but not new. It does not address the question of whether doubling of CO2 will increase the mean global temperature by 2C (for example), and how that might be known. In other words, that’s a non-quantitative description of one of the heat flows in the climate system, and no quantitative evaluation of how the heat flows will change if CO2 concentration doubles.
@Carbon 500
Thanks for that! At least they said it with a straight face.
The trouble is that what I said isn’t a jest – it is likely to be taken up by some officious bureaucrat in the EPA or the EU commission as something that needs to regulated (of course some of it is, but you ain’t seen nothing yet).
I am reminded of a story about a new administrator at the National Physical Laboratory (UK) who wanted to know what these scientists were up to. He was assured that they were developing a new “Linear metric comparator”. When he asked what this was he was told that the key component was a prismatic rod, inscribed with metric data. Impressed, he went away.
When the BPL started to use their new rulers ……………….
Please see Jan Veizer 2005 – Full article at:
http://www.gac.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/GACV32No1Veizer.pdf
Pages 21-22: The hydrologic cycle, in turn, provides us with our climate, including its temperature component. On land, sunlight, temperature, and concomitant availability of water are the dominant controls of biological activity and thus of the rate of photosynthesis and respiration. In the oceans, the rise in temperature results in release of CO2 into air. These two processes together increase the flux of CO2 into the atmosphere. If only short time scales are considered, such a sequence of events would be essentially opposite to that of the IPCC scenario, which drives the models from the bottom up, by assuming that CO2 is the principal climate driver and that variations in celestial input are of subordinate or negligible impact….
page 25: Again, while CO2 may act as an amplifying greenhouse gas, the actual atmospheric CO2 concentrations are controlled in the first instance by the climate, that is by the sun-driven water cycle, and not the other way around.
Anyone know of any night time studies of how the earth loses heat during the night? Is it possible that the earth releases any extra energy into space during the night and then starts accumulating it again next morning?
Steve: Unlike the models used to forecast the coming week’s weather, climate models do not forecast hurricanes. In climate models, the atmosphere and ocean arre divided into cells much too big to accurately model a hurricane. The “failure” of this year’s Atlantic hurricane forecast says nothing about the ability of climate models to forecast climate change. Although the IPCC and CAGW alarmists frequently mis-represent the output from climate climate models, you don’t aid the cause of skeptics by unfairly linking hurricane forecasts to climate change projections. (If you weren’t the executive director of the CSCA, I wouldn’t nitpick.)
Climate models do forecast some large-scale weather patterns that have shown a correlation with the number of Atlantic hurricanes in the past: wind shear and SST in the Main Development Region, ENSO and AMO. The forecasts of ENSO and SST were reasonably accurate (and forecasting the AMO doesn’t require much skill since it takes decades to change). However, the forecast for wind shear was incorrect due to the Madden-Julian oscillation – a phenomena not reproduced by climate models. There have been 11 named tropical storms so far this year, so we will probably end up within the 13-20 range predicted with 70% confidence this May. NOAA failed to predict that so far only 2 of these 11 would develop into hurricanes and 0 would become major hurricanes . Historically, a much larger fraction strengthen. However, climate models certainly don’t have the resolution needed to predict how often tropical storms will strengthen into hurricanes!
NOAA certainly doesn’t properly describe the uncertainty in their hurricane forecasts: A 70% confidence interval from HINDcasts of hurricane activity doesn’t tell us anything about their ability to FOREcast hurricane variability in the coming season. As far as I know, all forecasting methods have soon no skill.
The question of attribution of atmospheric CO2 increases must at this time remain open. However this does not stop the AGW question being solved in the meantime. All you need to be able to do is answer these simple physics questions –
1. Do radiative gases such as H2O and CO2 both absorb and emit IR radiation? Yes or No?
Yes
2. Are Radiative gases critical to strong vertical tropospheric convective circulation? Yes or No?
The condensation and evaporation of water, yes, otherwise no
3. Does altering the quantity of radiative gases in the atmosphere alter the speed of tropospheric convective circulation? Yes or No?
Same as above. Or no.
4. Is convective circulation including water vapour the primary mechanism for transporting energy from the surface and lower atmosphere to the upper atmosphere? Yes or No?
Yes.
5. Are radiative gases the primary mechanism for energy loss to space from the upper atmosphere? Yes or No?
No.
6. Does down welling LWIR emitted from the atmosphere significantly effect the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool? Yes or No.
Something like 10-20% would be significant, so yes.
Or something radiating into 2 K sky will radiate more energy, as compared higher temperature sky- if sky is same temperature the surface would loses little to no heat. The Venus surface loses
little heat- Venus clouds are heated a lot by the sun and radiate a fair amount of heat. Clouds what is being warmed then cooled at nite. What important aspect on Earth and Venus are droplets of liquid in a the atmosphere. And the acid droplets of massive clouds on Venus is sole reason, Venus is much hotter than it seems it should be.