By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
I have just had the honor of listening to Professor Murry Salby giving a lecture on climate. He had addressed the Numptorium in Holyrood earlier in the day, to the bafflement of the fourteenth-raters who populate Edinburgh’s daft wee parliament. In the evening, among friends, he gave one of the most outstanding talks I have heard.
Professor Salby has also addressed the Parliament of Eunuchs in Westminster. Unfortunately he did not get the opportunity to talk to our real masters, the unelected Kommissars of the European tyranny-by-clerk.
The Faceless Ones whose trembling, liver-spotted hands guide the European hulk of state unerringly towards the bottom were among the first and most naively enthusiastic true-believers in the New Superstition that is global warming. They could have benefited from a scientific education from the Professor.
His lecture, a simplified version of his earlier talk in Hamburg that was the real reason why spiteful profiteers of doom at Macquarie “University” maliciously canceled his non-refundable ticket home so that he could not attend the kangaroo court that dismissed him, was a first-class exercise in logical deduction.
He had written every word of it, elegantly. He delivered it at a measured pace so that everyone could follow. He unfolded his central case step by step, verifying each step by showing how his theoretical conclusions matched the real-world evidence.
In a normal world with mainstream news media devoted to looking at all subjects from every direction (as Confucius used to put it), Murry Salby’s explosive conclusion that temperature change drives CO2 concentration change and not the other way about would have made headlines. As it is, scarce a word has been published anywhere.
You may well ask what I might have asked: given that the RSS satellite data now show a zero global warming trend for 17 full years, and yet CO2 concentration has been rising almost in a straight line throughout, is it any more justifiable to say that temperature change causes CO2 change than it is to say that CO2 change causes temperature change?
The Professor headed that one off at the pass. During his talk he said it was not global temperature simpliciter but the time-integral of global temperature that determined CO2 concentration change, and did so to a correlation coefficient of around 0.9.
I had first heard of Murry Salby’s work from Dick Lindzen over a drink at a regional government conference we were addressing in Colombia three years ago. I readily agreed with Dick’s conclusion that if we were causing neither temperature change nor even CO2 concentration change the global warming scare was finished.
I began then to wonder whether the world could now throw off the absurdities of climate extremism and develop a sensible theory of climate.
In pursuit of this possibility, I told Professor Salby I was going to ask two questions. He said I could ask just one. So I asked one question in two parts.
First, I asked whether the rapid, exponential decay in carbon-14 over the six decades following the atmospheric nuclear bomb tests had any bearing on his research. He said that the decay curve for carbon-14 indicated a mean CO2 atmospheric residence time far below the several hundred years assumed in certain quarters. It supports Dick Lindzen’s estimate of a 40-year residence time, not the IPCC’s imagined 50-200 years.
Secondly, I asked whether Professor Salby had studied what drove global temperature change. He said he had not gotten to that part of the story yet.
In the past year, I said, four separate groups haf contacted me to say they were able to reproduce global temperature change to a high correlation coefficient by considering it as a function of – and, accordingly, dependent upon – the time-integral of total solar irradiance.
If these four groups are correct, and if Professor Salby is also correct, one can begin to sketch out a respectable theory of climate.
The time-integral of total solar irradiance determines changes in global mean surface temperature. Henrik Svensmark’s cosmic-ray amplification, which now has considerable support in the literature, may help to explain the mechanism.
In turn, the time integral of absolute global mean temperature determines the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. Here, the mechanism will owe much to Henry’s Law, which mandates that a warmer ocean can carry less CO2 than a colder ocean. I have never seen an attempt at a quantitative analysis of that relationship in this debate, and should be grateful if any of Anthony’s readers can point me to one.
The increased CO2 concentration as the world warms may well act as a feedback amplifying the warming, and perhaps our own CO2 emissions make a small contribution. But we are not the main cause of warmer weather, and certainly not the sole cause.
For the climate, all the world’s a stage. But, if the theory of climate that is emerging in samizdat lectures such as that of Professor Salby is correct, we are mere bit-part players, who strut and fret our hour upon the stage and then are heard no more.
The shrieking hype with which the mainstream news media bigged up Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, ruthlessly exploiting lost lives in their increasingly desperate search for evidence – any evidence – as ex-post-facto justification for their decades of fawning, head-banging acquiescence in the greatest fraud in history shows that they have begun to realize that their attempt at politicizing science itself is failing.
Whether they like it or not, typhoons are acts of God, not of Man.
I asked Professor Salby whether there was enough information in the temperature record to allow him to predict the future evolution of atmospheric CO2 concentration. He said he could not do that.
However, one of the groups working on the dependence of global temperature change on the time-integral of total solar irradiance makes a startling prediction: that we are in for a drop of half a Celsius degree in the next five years.
When I made a glancing reference to that research in an earlier posting, the propagandist John Abraham sneeringly offered me a $1000 bet that the fall in global temperature would not happen.
I did not respond to this characteristically jejune offer. A theory of climate is a hypothesis yet to be verified by observation, experiment and measurement. It is not yet a theorem definitively demonstrated. Explaining the difference to climate communists is likely to prove impossible. To them the Party Line, whatever it is, must be right even if it be wrong.
The group that dares to say it expects an imminent fall in global mean surface temperature does so with great courage, and in the Einsteinian spirit of describing at the outset a test by which its hypothesis may be verified.
Whether that group proves right or wrong, its approach is as consistent with the scientific method as the offering of childish bets is inconsistent with it. In science, all bets are off. As al-Haytham used to say, check and check and check again. He was not talking about checks in settlement of silly wagers.
In due course Professor Salby will publish in the reviewed literature his research on the time-integral of temperature as the driver of CO2 concentration change. So, too, I hope, will the groups working on the time-integral of total solar irradiance as the driver of temperature change.
In the meantime, I hope that those who predict a sharp, near-term fall in global temperature are wrong. Cold is a far bigger killer than warmth. Not that the climate communists of the mainstream media will ever tell you that.
Sorry Richard, it should have been richardscourtney, the spelling mistake unintentional.
dikranmarsupial:
Firstly, and to get trivia out of the way, please don’t worry about misspelling my name: it was obviously a typo and I make worse ones all the time.
Your post at November 13, 2013 at 4:09 am says to me
And follows that with another false analogy of the ‘mass balance argument’ concerning the bank ballance of “Mrs Marsupial”.
What is implied to “most people” is not relevant. Only what is happening in reality is relevant.
Many natural systems vary within limits set by equilibrium conditions. For example, your heart rate increases to provide additional blood supply to your muscles when you run. But it also increases in response to e.g. fear. Can you infer that when you are running from a raging bull that your heart rate started to rise because you were later going to decide to run from the bull (it may or may not have)?
The factors affecting change to atmospheric CO2 concentration are more varied and more complex than the factors affecting your heart rate. And they are much, much more complicated that the factors affecting the bank balance of Mrs Marsupial.
Richard
Richard, we will make very little progress if you dismiss analogies without making an attempt to discern the point they are making.
Your analogy about heart rates is invalid because it is not in the form X takes more Y out of Z than it puts in yet X is a cause of the increase in Z and hence does not address the issue on which we differ (we seem to agree that the natural environment is a net sink, but apparently disagree on what this means, the puropose of the question is to decern where this disagreement arises).
Please provide an example of a situation where X takes more Y out of Z than it puts in where X is the cause of the increase of Y in Z.
I have already given a counter example of this form, where X is Mrs Marsupial, Y is money and Z is our bank account, where its is obvious that X is not the cause of the increase of Y in Z. I can give plenty of others. It would make your point very clearly if you could provide a single good example that supports your usage (just to be clear, please specify what corresponds to X, Y and Z in your analogy). If you are unable to do so, perhaps this is because you are using an unusual definition of “causes the increase”.
dikranmarsupial:
At November 13, 2013 at 5:26 am you say to me
Say what!?
I did “discern the point” of your an analogy and I clearly rejected it as being wrong because the analogy is inappropriate. Indeed, I explained WHY it is inappropriate. I don’t have time to waste discussing twaddle which is so inappropriate that it deserves no consideration.
You asked me to give an example of what I am trying to explain to you. I did.
I gave you one of the – very many – natural systems which vary within limits constrained by equilibrium conditions. You have ignored that and instead you have demanded that I discuss your inappropriate analogy which I have rejected and you provide no consideration of the reasons I stated for my rejection!
pffft!
Richard
You will note that I was confident enough in my position to help Richard demonstrate that I am wrong by specifying exactly how he could construct an example that would show that he was right. Sadly, rather than provising an example of that form, he provided an analogy of a different form and has now descended into abuse. It is a shame that Richard has taken that route, genuinely trying to come up with an example of that form might indicate to him why there is an apparent contradiction in saying that nature is a net sink and yet it is causing CO2 levels to rise, and allow him to make his case more clearly. Oh well, you can lead a horse to water…
@Dik
go back to start
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/24/the-earths-biosphere-is-booming-data-suggests-that-co2-is-the-cause-part-2/
and please stop using analogies with uhh’s and ahh’s and ehh’s
Say what you want to say without putting it into so-called mathematical formula’s which are then subsequently used by you to prove “that the math” is right which of course is ludicrous…
Any dry gas below the DALR (dry lapse rate) is convectively stable. It takes energy to lift an air parcel, because it becomes cool and more dense for its level. So the lapse rate would still be maintained. A clue here is that its value is g/cp. No mention of radiative properties.
Dear Nick,
In general I have no problem with your corrections and additions — I was only trying to point out that if you have a non-radiative atmosphere its structure is going to be very different, and the primary difference is that the atmosphere itself cannot cool in the sense of lose heat anywhere but at the surface.
Regarding the rest of your argument concerning things like the DALR — I’m not convinced. The DALR doesn’t mention radiative properties, it is true, but it does without question require vertical transport of air parcels — updrafts and downdrafts.
I have no problem with the following picture. A parcel near the surface absorbs heat from the surface. It warms, expands, experiences a positive buoyancy force and rises (displaced by cooler air moving in from laterally cooler regions). As it rises it expands further adiabatically cooling but retaining its heat. Eventually it reaches a region where it can lose its heat at constant pressure via radiation coupled via GHGs, and its density at constant pressure increases. It then becomes net negative buoyant and falls, adiabatically compressing on the way down but remaining net negative buoyancy on the way down compared to uprising warmer air that is displacing it. At the bottom it warms and the cycle starts over, self-organizing into e.g. convective rolls or more often on the surface of the rotating earth, into high (downfalling) and low (uprising) pressure centers in some loose pattern that is itself being pushed around by persistent upper level winds. Some of these patterns are as small as a patch of clouds above a warmed plowed fields. Some of them are as large as hurricanes. They are, however, predominantly driven by vertical transport, not lateral transport, because radiation maintains the temperature difference upon which the DALR depends.
I do have a problem with a picture where the heat loss at altitude — note heat loss — does not occur. In fact, I have a hard time imagining that even polar circulation would be maintained. The air over the poles would accumulate heat just like air over all the other planetary surfaces, and there exists a simple, stable solution where the air gets warmer as one goes up. You’ll have to convince me that this obvious solution isn’t the one that would eventually be realized in a steady state, with the gradient maintained most strongly at the poles.
rgb
HenryP says:
November 13, 2013 at 6:35 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/24/the-earths-biosphere-is-booming-data-suggests-that-co2-is-the-cause-part-2/
HenryP, the net uptake by the total biosphere (land- and seaplants, microbes, insects, animals,…) is quantified as about 1 GtC/year calculated from the oxygen balance:
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
The ocean surface absorbs maximum 10% of the increase in the atmosphere, that is this about 0.5 GtC/year. The rest goes into the deep oceans, as all other possible sinks for CO2 are (much) too slow.
The sink rate in the deep oceans currently is about 3 GtC/year. Together with the 1.5 GtC/year into other reservoirs, that makes that about halve the human emissions (in quantity) are absorbed by natural sinks.
That means that either the natural sinks can’t cope with human emissions over time (which is what all the observations say), or that the natural circulation increased enormously without leaving a trace in any observation. Which is impossible…
Stephen Wilde says:
In other words, you don’t like the actual physical laws of the universe that have been well-verified as being correct, so you will just invent your own physical laws that have never been shown to be correct because they aren’t.
An object emits radiative energy due to its temperature; you can’t just decide that you get to deduct some amount of energy from what it emits because that happens to suit your own prejudices.
Richard S Courtney says:
Don’t humor yourself. We jumped in because your argument is so ridiculous. In fact, in a setting dominated by scientists, I would be happy to have you presented as a “poster child” for the AGW “skeptics” because the ludicrousness of your claims would do your cause no good whatsoever.
Nick Stokes says:
November 12, 2013 at 8:29 pm
“Joel’s fountain is in equilibrium.”
A contrived equilibrium. A fountain is an artificial device constructed specfically to do what it does. He has no leaks. He has no evaporation. He has a steady, perfect pump which pulls its energy from a perfectly regulated, outside source. It is a cartoon analogy, and it lacks any dynamic elements which respond as feedback elements.
“Respiration/combustion has to match photosynthesis. “
Photosynthesis is a drain, in the analogy. There is no drain in Joel’s fountain. In the drainless fountain analogy, the population of plantlife is a constant.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 13, 2013 at 2:57 am
I thought you had given up the silly “mass balance” argument.
dikranmarsupial says:
November 13, 2013 at 4:09 am
“For instance, if Mrs Marsupial takes more money out of our joint bank account each month than she puts in, but our balance still rises because I put more money in than I take out, it would be deeply counter-intuitive to argue that she is causing the increase in our bank balance… Perhaps it would help to make your position if you could give a famailiar example where X consistently takes more Y out of Z than it puts in over some interval of time, where it would be correct to say that X is nevertheless the cause of the increase of Y in Z.”
But, Mrs. Marsupial watches what you put in, and precisely takes that amount out. The increase in your bank account is wholly due to interest.
A few months ago, you started putting more in, and were pleased to see that your account started increasing. But, it wasn’t because of you. Mrs. Marsupial took exactly that much more out. But, you missed the notification from your bank that they were increasing the rate of interest at the same time you started putting more in.
Simple example. In this example, Mrs. Marsupial is the “sink” which expands to take out whatever you put in. The bank’s interest policy is the natural source, which puts in or takes out whatever it decides to put in or take out at any particular time.
dinkummarsupial says: “For most, the fact that the natural environment is taking more CO2 out of the atmosphere than it puts in (i.e. it is a net sink) would imply that the natural envrionment is opposing, rather than causing the rise in atmospheric CO2. To suggest otherwise seems a rather counter-intuitive use of “causing the increase”.”
Most what?! Most people?
Most people don’t have the slightest idea what a differential equation is let alone how to solve or interpret it. They might just about understand your bank account. Indeed it appears that you are part of that “most” , which is probably what you meant in the first place.
Since most climate science seems to want to reduce everything to a linear approximation of reality, let’s start there.
In a linear system we can analyse each component separately, holding the others constant and simply add the results to get the overall system resonse.
If the sinks are not saturated and are sufficiently fast in reacting , which would seems to be at least possible in view of the magnitude and speed of the annual cycle, all human emissions in a year can be absorbed.
There will be an out gassing effect if surface temperatures rise. There does not seem to be much doubt about that.
Now when we add the two effects (in whatever proportion is appropriate) we see an absorption of emissions that is modulated by the temperature dirven out gassing.
At times when temp driven out gassing is higher a lesser proportion of emissions will be absorbed, in cooling periods more will be absorbed. The two descriptions are not contradictory and , at least to withing the limits of the linear approximation there is nothing anomalous about the idea of out gassing and absorbing at the same time. The two effects are superimposed.
You may find you need to take you maths beyond the level of a tive year-old buying sweeties to understand climate. The level required is not incredibly complicated but may be beyond the capacities of “most”.
dikranmarsupial says:
November 13, 2013 at 4:09 am
For your benefit, allow me to repost my comment here.
The net anthropogenic input is the emissions minus the portion of the natural sinks which respond to that forcing.
Na = Ea – Una
The net natural input is the total natural input minus the natural sinks plus that portion of the sinks which responded to human inputs.
Nn = En – Un + Una
Total is
C = Nn + Na
En – Un can be negative, yet still we can have Nn positive. And, that is why the “mass balance” argument is trivial and meaningless.
Addendum: Una is sink capacity which exists because of the anthropogenic input. If Ea ceases, Una shrinks back to nothing. It is therefore artificial sink capacity. Nature is responsible only for Nn = En – (Un – Una). Nature is a net sink only if Nn is positive. But, solely on the basis of this mass balance argument, you have no way to determine Nn.
Sorry, stumbled a bit there: Nature is a net sink only if Nn is negative.But, solely on the basis of this mass balance argument, you have no way to determine Nn.
Bart, you are over-extending the analogy in order to avoid addressing the point being made.
Just to spell it out. My deposits into the bank account represent anthropogenic emissions into the atmosphere. Mrs Marsupials deposits represent total carbon emissions into the atmosphere from ALL natural sources, and her withdrawals represent total carbon uptake by ALL natural sinks. As I represent all anthropogenic sources and Mrs Marsupial all natural sources and sinks, then you can introduce bank interest if you like but the only things left for it to represent are extraterrestrial sources and sinks and supernatural sources and sinks, take your pick!
You can make up different analogies if you like where Mrs Marsupial are the sinks and the bank the sources, but that is not addressing the analogy that I raised, it is merely evasion on your part.
Joeldshore’s fountain needs not just an ordinary drain, but one which is capable of expansion to carry away ever larger amounts of water as more is added, from whatever source. Science doesn’t know all the sinks for carbon dioxide that exist in nature, but does know that they can expand if take up more of the magic gas & sequester it again, however there may be some limit. We’re far from reaching it yet, however.
dikranmarsupial says:
November 13, 2013 at 4:09 am
Note that, in this analogy, if we assume that the bank’s interest payments are less than what you are putting in, then you can claim that the bank and Mrs. Marsupial together are a net sink. Yet, in truth, the bank is paying you money.
This is precisely the error you are committing in your mass balance argument. You are blaming the bank for the fact that your account is not growing as fast as you expect, but you are unaware of Mrs. Marsupial’s active role.
milodonharlani says:
November 13, 2013 at 9:31 am
“Joeldshore’s fountain needs not just an ordinary drain, but one which is capable of expansion to carry away ever larger amounts of water as more is added, from whatever source.”
Drains generally do that. The rate of outflow is proportional to the height of the water column above the drain. So, if the fountain is at equilibrium, and you start putting in 3% of the flow of new water that is coming from an outside source, then the water level will rise 3%, and stop. Your inputs will not accumulate and overflow the fountain.
dikranmarsupial says:
November 13, 2013 at 9:24 am
Projecting much? You are guilty of every sin of which you accuse others several times over. You don’t read the counterarguments. You don’t consider for a moment your blinkered outlook may be (is) totally fallacious.
Bart wrote “The net anthropogenic input is the emissions minus the portion of the natural sinks which respond to that forcing.”
This is a rather strange definition of net anthropogenic input. To reuse my bank analogy it is a bit like saying that my net input to the bank account is my salary minus the portion of Mrs Marsupials withdrawals made in response to the deposit of my salary. So if my wife spends everything I earn, that means I have made no contribution to the bank balance?
Bart @ur momisugly November 13, 2013 at 9:31 am
You are still ignoring the fact that Mrs Marsupial represents all natural sources and all natural sinks. You can include interest if you like, but it would have to represent either supernatural or extraterrestrial sources and sinks, as that is all that is left. So which is it?
joeldshore says:
November 12, 2013 at 6:49 pm
rgb says:
“Because it doesn’t. Adiabatic expansion and compression increase the temperature of a gas as it rises and falls, but the energy content of the parcel does not change. That’s what adiabatic means. You might want to get a book on the physics of this stuff and work through it. At no point in the derivation of the DALR does anyone ever assert that the cooling is conversion of potential energy into kinetic energy. In fact, if you understood the equipartition theorem, you’d see why this is not, in fact, relevant. The gas is at all times in a near-thermal equilibrium (“quasi-static”) state. It cools for the same reason that a compressed gas quickly expanding into a vacuum cools, or why the gas in a cylinder in a Carnot cycle cools in the adiabatic leg of the cycle, and gravity has nothing to do with it.”
I agree with the general gist of your comments to Stephen Wilde. I would especially second, “Based on your responses I can only conclude that you don’t understand physics well enough to usefully participate in model building,” although I would probably say physics AND mathematics. In fact, it may be his lack of abilities to translate physics into any sort of mathematical model with equations and look at the implications of those equations that really makes his musings an exercise in nonsense.
I agree with both of you, I spent a lot of time trying to educate Stephen on thermodynamics and physics of gases on a similar thread, unfortunately he just doesn’t get it. He thought that the specific gas constant was something to do with non-ideal gases, that molecules of different species rise independently to different heights depending on their KE as a result of their different molecular masses not temperature, and that the Ideal Gas Law should be replaced by one of his own devising in which the units didn’t match!
dikranmarsupial says:
November 13, 2013 at 9:24 am
You are trying to constrain the argument to a simple system which behaves in the way you want. But, that simple system bears no resemblance to the actual carbon cycle. You must consider active elements which respond to the forcing.
So, when you “prove” something relative to your contrived example, you can feel nice about it, but it has no relevance to the system we are discussing.
dikranmarsupial says:
November 13, 2013 at 9:38 am
“This is a rather strange definition of net anthropogenic input.”
No, it isn’t. If Una exists because of the anthropogenic input, and goes away when there is no anthropogenic input, then it is not natural. You cannot include it in the “natural” column of your ledger.
“To reuse my bank analogy…”
In your bank analogy, the bank is the only natural system. It is a net source to you, because of the interest payments. Mrs. Marsupial is the sink capacity activated by your inputs. Together, they are a net sink. But, the rest of us are interested in what the bank alone is doing.
Bart says: “In your bank analogy, the bank is the only natural system.”
No, I clearly explained that Mrs Marsupial represents the natural system. You can redefine what the components mean all you like, but it is then a different analogy, it becomes YOUR analogy not mine.
How about a compromise analogy. My deposits to a private bank account represent anthropogenic emissions, the bank represents all natural sources and sinks, interest represents ALL natural sources bank charges represent ALL natual sinks. If I deposit $1000 a week into the account and make no withdrawals, then if the balance only rises by $500 then I can be sure that the bank has taken more out in charges than it has paid in in interest (i.e. it is a net sink). Explain in this case how the rise in the bank balance is being caused by the bank, given that the bank is taking more money out of the account than it is putting in?
P.S. I suspect there will be an attempt to introduce bank robbers or some other additional component, but again as the bank represents ALL natural sources and sinks, the additional factor would have to represent extraterrestrial or supernatural sources and sinks. Good luck with that one.
henry@ferdinand meeus
the paper you quote does not take into account the cooling that is taking place
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2014/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2002/trend
hence the sink rate of CO2 must now be increasing…
as explained
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/10/towards-a-theory-of-climate/#comment-1471619
we all want to have more crops, more lawns, more trees, and whole cities that used to be desert or semi desert have been converted into green areas (Johannesburg/Pretoria/Sun City/ Las Vegas etc.etc)
It is all happening because of the increased CO2 in the air…..and because we bring water where we want or need it.
no wonder there is no trace…. there are no formulae to quantify all these changes? I take it you are not challenging the fact that the biosphere is booming because of the increased CO2 in the air?
I hope you agree with me that more carbon dioxide is ok!!