Guest essay by Donald C. Morton
Herzberg Program in Astronomy and Astrophysics, National Research Council of Canada
ABSTRACT
The Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released in September 2013 continues the pattern of previous ones raising alarm about a warming earth due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases. This paper identifies six problems with this conclusion – the mismatch of the model predictions with the temperature observations, the assumption of positive feedback, possible solar effects, the use of a global temperature, chaos in climate, and the rejection of any skepticism.
THIS IS AN ASTROPHYSICIST’S VIEW OF CURRENT CLIMATOLOGY. I WELCOME CRITICAL COMMENTS.
1. INTRODUCTION
Many climatologists have been telling us that the environment of the earth is in serious danger of overheating caused by the human generation of greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is mainly to blame, but methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and certain chlorofluorocarbons also contribute.
“As expected, the main message is still the same: the evidence is very clear that the world is warming, and that human activities are the main cause. Natural changes and fluctuations do occur but they are relatively small.” – John Shepard in the United Kingdom, 2013 Sep 27 for the Royal Society.
“We can no longer ignore the facts: Global warming is unequivocal, it is caused by us and its consequences will be profound. But that doesn’t mean we can’t solve it.” -Andrew Weaver in Canada, 2013 Sep 28 in the Globe and Mail.
“We know without a doubt that gases we are adding to the air have caused a planetary energy imbalance and global warming, already 0.8 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times. This warming is driving an increase in extreme weather from heat waves to droughts and wild fires and stronger storms . . .” – James Hansen in United States, 2013 Dec 6 CNN broadcast.
Are these views valid? In the past eminent scientists have been wrong. Lord Kelvin, unaware of nuclear fusion, concluded that the sun’s gravitational energy could keep it shining at its present brightness for only 107 years. Sir Arthur Eddington correctly suggested a nuclear source for the sun, but rejected Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar’s theory of degenerate matter to explain white dwarfs. In 1983 Chandrasekhar received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his insight.
My own expertise is in physics and astrophysics with experience in radiative transfer, not climatology, but looking at the discipline from outside I see some serious problems. I presume most climate scientists are aware of these inconsistencies, but they remain in the Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), including the 5th one released on 2013 Sep 27. Politicians and government officials guiding public policy consult these reports and treat them as reliable.
2. THEORY, MODELS AND OBSERVATIONS
A necessary test of any theory or model is how well it predicts new experiments or observations not used in its development. It is not sufficient just to represent the data used to produce the theory or model, particularly in the case of climate models where many physical processes too complicated to code explicitly are represented by adjustable parameters. As John von Neumann once stated “With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.” Four parameters will not produce all the details of an elephant, but the principle is clear. The models must have independent checks.
Fig. 1. Global Average Temperature Anomaly (°C) upper, and CO2 concentration (ppm) lower graphs from http://www.climate.gov/maps-data by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The extension of the CO2 data to earlier years is from the ice core data of the Antarctic Law Dome ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/law/law_co2.txt.
The upper plot in Fig. 1 shows how global temperatures have varied since 1880 with a decrease to 1910, a rise until 1945, a plateau to 1977, a rise of about 0.6 ºC until 1998 and then essentially constant for the next 16 years. Meanwhile, the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere has steadily increased. Fig. 2 from the 5th Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2013) shows that the observed temperatures follow the lower envelope of the predictions of the climate models.
Fig. 2. Model Predictions and Temperature Observations from IPCC Report 2013. RCP 4.5 (Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5) labels a set of models for a modest rise in anthropogenic greenhouse gases corresponding to an increase of 4.5 Wm–2 (1.3%) in total solar irradiance.
Already in 2009 climatologists worried about the change in slope of the temperature curve. At that time Knight et al. (2009) asked the rhetorical question “Do global temperature trends over the last decade falsify climate predictions?” Their response was “Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”
Now some climate scientists are saying that 16 years is too short a time to assess a change in climate, but then the rise from 1978 to 1998, which was attributed to anthropogenic CO2, also could be spurious. Other researchers are actively looking into phenomena omitted from the models to explain the discrepancy. These include
1) a strong natural South Pacific El Nino warming event in 1998 so the plateau did not begin until 2001,
2) an overestimate of the greenhouse effect in some models,
3) inadequate inclusion of clouds and other aerosols in the models, and
4) a deep ocean reservoir for the missing heat.
Extra warming due to the 1978 El Nino seems plausible, but there have been others that could have caused some of the earlier warming and there are also cooling La Nina events. All proposed causes of the plateau must have their effects on the warming also incorporated into the models to make predictions that then can be tested during the following decade or two of temperature evolution.
3. THE FEEDBACK PARAMETER
There is no controversy about the basic physics that adding CO2 to our atmosphere absorbs solar energy resulting in a little extra warming on top of the dominant effect of water vapor. The CO2 spectral absorption is saturated so is proportional to the logarithm of the concentration. The estimated effect accounts for only about half the temperature rise of 0.8 ºC since the Industrial Revolution. Without justification the model makers ignored possible natural causes and assumed the rise was caused primarily by anthropogenic CO2 with reflections by clouds and other aerosols approximately cancelling absorption by the other gases noted above. Consequently they postulated a positive feedback due to hotter air holding more water vapor, which increased the absorption of radiation and the backwarming. The computer simulations represented this process and many other effects by adjustable parameters chosen to match the observations. As stated on p. 9-9 of IPCC2013, “The complexity of each process representation is constrained by observations, computational resources, and current knowledge.” Models that did not show a temperature rise would have been omitted from any ensemble so the observed rise effectively determined the feedback parameter.
Now that the temperature has stopped increasing we see that this parameter is not valid. It even could be negative. CO2 absorption without the presumed feedback will still happen but its effect will not be alarming. The modest warming possibly could be a net benefit with increased crop production and fewer deaths due to cold weather.
4. THE SUN
The total solar irradiance, the flux integrated over all wavelengths, is a basic input to all climate models. Fortunately our sun is a stable star with minimal change in this output. Since the beginning of satellite measures of the whole spectrum in 1978 the variation has been about 0.1% over the 11-year activity cycle with occasional excursions up to 0.3%. The associated change in tropospheric temperature is about 0.1 ºC.
Larger variations could explain historical warm and cold intervals such as the Medieval Warm Period (approx. 950 – 1250) and the Little Ice Age (approx. 1430 – 1850) but remain as speculations. The sun is a ball of gas in hydrostatic equilibrium. Any reduction in the nuclear energy source initially would be compensated by a gravitational contraction on a time scale of a few minutes. Complicating this basic picture are the variable magnetic field and the mass motions that generate it. Li et al. (2003) included these effects in a simple model and found luminosity variations of 0.1%, consistent with the measurements.
However, the sun can influence the earth in many other ways that the IPCC Report does not consider, in part because the mechanisms are not well understood. The ultraviolet irradiance changes much more with solar activity, ~ 10% at 200 nm in the band that forms ozone in the stratosphere and between 5% and 2% in the ozone absorption bands between 240 and 320 nm according to DeLand & Cebula (2012). Their graphs also show that these fluxes during the most recent solar minimum were lower than the previous two reducing the formation of ozone in the stratosphere and its absorption of the near UV spectrum. How this absorption can couple into the lower atmosphere is under current investigation, e. g. Haigh et al. (2010).
Fig. 3 – Monthly averages of the 10.7 cm solar radio flux measured by the National Research Council of Canada and adjusted to the mean earth-sun distance. A solar flux unit = 104 Jansky = 10-22 Wm-2 Hz-1. The maximum just past is unusually weak and the preceding minimum exceptionally broad. Graph courtesy of Dr. Ken Tapping of NRC.
Decreasing solar activity also lowers the strength of the heliosphere magnetic shield permitting more galactic cosmic rays to reach the earth. Experiments by Kirkby et al. (2011) and Svensmark et al. (2013) have shown that these cosmic rays can seed the formation of clouds, which then reflect more sunlight and reduce the temperature, though the magnitude of the effect remains uncertain. Morton (2014) has described how the abundances cosmogenic isotopes 10Be and 14C in ice cores and tree rings indicate past solar activity and its anticorrelation with temperature.
Of particular interest is the recent reduction in solar activity. Fig. 3 shows the 10.7 cm solar radio flux measured by the National Research Council of Canada since 1947 (Tapping 2013) and Fig. 4 the corresponding sunspot count. Careful calibration of the radio flux permits reliable comparisons
Fig. 4. Monthly sunspot numbers for the past 60 years by the Royal Observatory of Belgium at http://sidc.oma.be/sunspot-index-graphics/sidc_graphics.php.
over six solar cycles even when there are no sunspots. The last minimum was unusually broad and the present maximum exceptionally weak. The sun has entered a phase of low activity. Fig. 5 shows that previous times of very low activity were the Dalton Minimum from about 1800 to 1820 and the Maunder Minimum from about 1645 to 1715 when very few spots were seen. Since
these minima occurred during the Little Ice Age when glaciers were advancing in both Northern and Southern Hemispheres, it is possible that we are entering another cooling period. Without a
physical understanding of the cause of such cool periods, we cannot be more specific. Temperatures as cold as the Little Ice Age may not happen, but there must be some cooling to compensate the heating that is present from the increasing CO2 absorption.
Regrettably the IPCC reports scarcely mention these solar effects and the uncertainties they add to any prediction.
5. THE AVERAGE GLOBAL TEMPERATURE
Long-term temperature measurements at a given location provide an obvious test of climate change. Such data exist for many places for more than a hundred years and for a few places for much longer. With these data climatologists calculate the temperature anomaly – the deviation from a many-year average such as 1961 to 1990, each day of the year at the times a measurement
is recorded. Then they average over days, nights, seasons, continents and oceans to obtain the mean global temperature anomaly for each month or year as in Fig. 1. Unfortunately many parts of the world are poorly sampled and the oceans, which cover 71% of the earth’s surface, even less so. Thus many measurements must be extrapolated to include larger areas with different
climates. Corrections are needed when a site’s measurements are interrupted or terminated or a new station is established as well as for urban heat if the meteorological station is in a city and altitude if the station is significantly higher than sea level.
Fig. 5. This plot from the U. S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency shows sunspot numbers since their first observation with telescopes in 1610. Systematic counting began soon after the discovery of the 11-year cycle in 1843. Later searching of old records provided the earlier numbers.
The IPCC Reports refer to four sources of data for the temperature anomaly from the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research and the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forcasting in the United Kingdom and the Goddard Institute for Space Science and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States. For a given month they can differ by several tenths of a degree, but all show the same long-term trends of Fig. 1, a rise from 1978 to 1998 and a plateau from 1998 to the present.
These patterns continue to be a challenge for researchers to understand. Some climatologists like to put a straight line through all the data from 1978 to the present and conclude that the world is continuing to warm, just a little more slowly, but surely if these curves have any connection to reality, changes in slope mean something. Are they evidence of the chaotic nature of climate with abrupt shifts from one state to another?
Essex, McKitrick and Andresen (2007) and Essex and McKitrick (2007) in their popular book have criticized the use of these mean temperature data for the earth. First temperature is an intensive thermodynamic variable relevant to a particular location in equilibrium with the measuring device. Any average with other locations or times of day or seasons has no physical meaning. Other types of averages might be more appropriate such as the second, fourth or inverse power of the absolute temperature, each of which would give a different trend with time. Furthermore it is temperature differences between two places that drive the dynamics. Climatologists have not explained what this single number for global temperature actually means. Essex and McKitrick note that it “is not a temperature. Nor is it even a proper statistic or index. It is a sequence of different statistics grafted together with ad hoc models.”
This questionable use of a global temperature along with the problems of modeling a chaotic system discussed below raise basic concerns about the validity of the test with observations in Section 2. Since climatologists and the IPCC insist on using this temperature number and the models in their predictions of global warming, it still is appropriate to hold them to comparisons with the observations they consider relevant.
6. CHAOS
Essex and McKitrick (2007) have provided a helpful introduction to this problem. Thanks to the pioneering investigations into the equations for convection and the associated turbulence by meteorologist Edward Lorenz, scientists have come to realize that many dynamical systems are fundamentally chaotic. The situation often is described as the butterfly effect because a small change in initial conditions such as the flap of a butterfly wing can have large effects in later results.
Convection and turbulence in the air are central phenomenon in determining weather and so must have their effect on climate too. The IPCC on p. 1-25 of the 2013 Report recognizes this with the statement “There are fundamental limits to just how precisely annual temperatures can be projected, because of the chaotic nature of the climate system.” but then makes predictions with confidence. Meteorologists modeling weather find that their predictions become unstable after a week or two, and they have the advantage of refining their models by comparing predictions with observations.
Why do the climate models in the IPCC reports not show these instabilities? Have they been selectively tuned to avoid them or are the chaotic physical processes not properly included? Why should we think that long-term climate predictions are possible when they are not for weather?
7. THE APPEAL TO CONSENSUS AND THE SILENCING OF SKEPTICISM
Frequently we hear that we must accept that the earth is warming at an alarming rate due to anthropogenic CO2 because 90+% climatologists believe it. However, science is not a consensus discipline. It depends on skeptics questioning every hypothesis, every theory and every model until all rational challenges are satisfied. Any endeavor that must prove itself by appealing to consensus or demeaning skeptics is not science. Why do some proponents of climate alarm dismiss critics by implying they are like Holocaust deniers? Presumably most climatologists disapprove of these unscientific tactics, but too few speak out against them.
8. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
At least six serious problems confront the climate predictions presented in the last IPCC Report. The models do not predict the observed temperature plateau since 1998, the models adopted a feedback parameter based on the unjustified assumption that the warming prior to 1998 was primarily caused by anthopogenic CO2, the IPCC ignored possible affects of reduced solar activity during the past decade, the temperature anomaly has no physical significance, the models attempt to predict the future of a chaotic system, and there is an appeal to consensus to establish climate science.
Temperatures could start to rise again as we continue to add CO2 to the atmosphere or they could fall as suggested by the present weak solar activity. Many climatologists are trying to address the issues described here to give us a better understanding of the physical processes involved and the reliability of the predictions. One outstanding issue is the location of all the anthropogenic CO2. According to Table 6.1 in the 2013 Report, half goes into the atmosphere and a quarter into the oceans with the remaining quarter assigned to some undefined sequestering as biomass on the land.
Meanwhile what policies should a responsible citizen be advocating? We risk serious consequences from either a major change in climate or an economic recession from efforts to reduce the CO2 output. My personal view is to use this temperature plateau as a time to reassess all the relevant issues. Are there other environmental effects that are equally or more important than global warming? Are some policies like subsidizing biofuels counterproductive? Are large farms of windmills, solar cells or collecting mirrors effective investments when we are unable to store energy? How reliable is the claim that extreme weather events are more frequent because of the global warming? Is it time to admit that we do not understand climate well enough to know how to direct it?
References
DeLand, M. T., & Cebula, R. P. (2012) Solar UV variations during the decline of Cycle 23. J. Atmosph. Solar-Terrestr. Phys., 77, 225.
Essex, C., & McKitrick, R. (2007) Taken by storm: the troubled science, policy and politics of global warming, Key Porter Books. Rev. ed. Toronto, ON, Canada.
Essex, C., McKitrick, R., & Andresen, B. (2007) Does a Global temperature Exist? J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. 32, 1.
Haigh. J. D., et al. (2010). An influence of solar spectral variations on radiative forcing of climate. Nature 467, 696.
IPCC (2013), Climate Change 2013: The Physicsal Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, http://www.ipcc.ch
Li, L. H., Basu, S., Sofia, S., Robinson, F.J., Demarque, P., & Guenther, D.B. (2003). Global
parameter and helioseismic tests of solar variability models. Astrophys. J., 591, 1284.
Kirkby, J. et al. (2011). Role of sulphuric acid, ammonia and galactic cosmic rays in atmospheric
aerosol nucleation. Nature, 476, 429.
Knight, J., et al. (2009). Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 90 (8), Special Suppl. pp. S22, S23.
Morton, D. C. (2014). An Astronomer’s view of Climate Change. J. Roy. Astron. Soc. Canada, 108, 27. http://arXiv.org/abs/1401.8235.
Svensmark, H., Enghoff, M.B., & Pedersen, J.O.P. (2013). Response of cloud condensation nuclei (> 50 nm) to changes in ion-nucleation. Phys. Lett. A, 377, 2343.
Tapping, K.F. (2013). The 10.7 cm radio flux (F10.7). Space Weather, 11, 394.
Dear Donald C. Morton (author of this essay)
There is a rumor going around that Carbon dioxide (CO2) is also plant food. Your thoughts?
I’m aware of many politicians who are at least partly socialist, but communist? Aren’t too many of them about.
I think the term has been cheapened by the way it is bandied freely as an insult to anyone who supports government action on an issue, regardless of why it is they believe that particular thing actually requires government intervention.
I remember my dad, who is strongly for small government, being called a communist by local businesses when he finally called for government intervention after years of our local river becoming more and more polluted.
Box of Rocks – The source of my no climate without GHG is Roy Spencer at http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/12/what-if-there-was-no-greenhouse-effect/
“””””…..Jim Cripwell says:
February 17, 2014 at 6:29 am
Prof. Morton I have one nit to pick, and one observation. You write “. The CO2 spectral absorption is saturated so is proportional to the logarithm of the concentration.” Beer/Lambert predicts the logarithmatic response of absorption. When absorption is saturated, Beer/Lambert no longer applies, and the response is no longer logarithmatic. There is no more absorption once saturation has been reached……”””””
Well I would pick nits with both Prof Morton, and Jim Cripwell.
Prof Morton says: “. The CO2 spectral absorption is saturated so is proportional to the logarithm of the concentration.”
That seems a wild leap of fantasy to me. Now I’ll even accept the claim that the CO2 15 micron is “saturated” at present CO2 atmospheric abundance; never seen any evidentiary proof of that, but I accept it just as I accept Richard S. Courtney’s assertion that the bottom 100 meters of atmosphere, absorbs all the CO2 band radiation from the surface; or words to that effect. Not trying to put words in Richard’s mouth, just saying he mentions this from time to time.
If that was all there was to it, there would be NO CO2 15 micron band radiation detectable above that first 100 meters, all the way to outer space. I doubt that is true.
Moving on to Jim’s comment That the Beer-Lambert Law predicts a logarithmic absorption response.
Beer’s Law , which relates to the absorption of a specific radiation (not all radiation) as a function of the concentration of “dilute” solutions of some chemical species, describes the ABSORPTION of the INPUT signal wavelength. It DOES NOT relate to the total radiant energy transmission of the medium. It assumes that the absorbed radiation energy, STAYS DEAD !
So it DOES NOT apply to cases where the medium fluoresces, or otherwise RE-EMITS the energy at some other wavelength. It is limited to the attenuation of the specific input signal wavelength; not to the energy transmission. They all ultimately re-emit absorbed energy at some thermal wavelengths due to Temperature increase
CO2 in the atmosphere DOES NOT conform to Beers law; the LWIR radiant energy, does not stay dead. The atmosphere thermalizes it and re-emits it at some other thermal spectral wavelength, so the energy continues to propagate (and generally isotropically scatter), and some portion of that re-emission spectrum, will again fall foul of the next higher layer of CO2 containing atmosphere. If you increase the CO2 concentration, the 1/e absorption depth simply diminishes to contain the same number of CO2 molecules.
And all of this is of little practical concern anyhow, because the gospel according to CACCGW asserts that it is the surface TEMPERATURE, or the lower troposphere Temperature, that allegedly tracks the logarithm of the CO2 abundance; that is what climate sensitivity is the change in global TEMPERATURE for a doubling of CO2. So why is it that it seems as though EVERY POSSIBLE CLIMATE VARIABLE tracks the logarithm of CO2.
And for the doubling of CO2, that of course means going from 280 ppm to 560 ppm, or going from 28 to 56, or 2.8 ppm to 5.6 ppm. Last time I checked, that is precisely what the logarithm function is.
And we have believably from, Mauna Loa data, perhaps a 1.27 factor increase in CO2, and that fits logarithmically, or linearly, or even exponentially with the observed global Temperature over the same time frame. Well I don’t even believe that Hadcrud CRUTEM, is even a measure of any global Temperature.
But for Prof Morton, I have a more fundamental question, since he is a radiation physics expert.
Kevin Trenberth’s Earth “radiation budget” cartoon shows 390 W/m^2 surface LWIR emittance, which is about equal to the total black body radiant emittance for a 288 kelvin surface Temperature (for scientists) or 15 deg. C for the rest of the world, and 59 deg. F for the USA.
I fully believe that is about what one might measure from a pretty much cold to the touch road surface in the USA, say 30 minutes after sunset on an average day. So that figure is what Trenberth takes for the entire earth surface, on average, full time. Seems reasonable to me.
I notice that his cartoon also includes some upward conductive and convective “heat” energy transport to the upper atmosphere. So what the hell is that doing in “the earth’s radiation budget” ??
Now the chart also shows TSI from the sun as 342 W/m^2, which is lower that the 390 W/m^2 surface LWIR BB emittance, which is the absolute maximum possible radiant emittance for a body at 288 K or thereabouts. So clearly the sun cannot possibly warm the earth up even to 288 K, with only 342 W/m^2 .
Ah!, I think I see a snag in here. Watts per meter squared, is not a measure of RADIATION ; it is a measure of POWER areal density; a RATE OF ENERGY PASSAGE / arrival / usage / wastage / whatever. !!
Well you see, the actual incident power areal density at TOA is actually 1366 W/m^2, and maybe 1,000 W/m^2 at the earth surface in say air mass 1.5 conditions. It is NOT 342 W/m^2.
So now I see why the sun can actually warm the earth’s surface way above 288 K; maybe even to 333K in tropical deserts.
So why do we continue to propagate this nonsense, that CO2 in the atmosphere is required to raise earth’s Temperature from around 255 K up to 288 K.
Clearly the sun can do that all by itself. It can cook the sunlit half of the planet for from 8-16 hours depending on time of year and latitude, and at sunset, the surface reverts to around 288, and cannot radiate faster than the BB rate of around 390 W/m^2.
During the day of course, with much higher Temperatures (if global anomalies have changed about 1 deg. C in 150 years; then ANY average diurnal Temperature change qualifies as MUCH HIGHER TEMPERATURES) .
I noticed, that in addition to the oddball inclusion of some non-radiative thermal conduction and convection “heat” power transfers, to earth’s “radiation budget”, Trenberth has surprisingly left off the chart; an enormous contribution to “earth’s radiation budget”.
Hey Kevin ! Want to know where your “MISSING HEAT” went ??
Well what happened to your “radiation budget” that throws it out of whack, is that SOME OF THE SOLAR RADIATION ENERGY refused to turn into “heat”, so there isn’t any missing “heat”; there is simply less heat made here on earth, from the solar radiant energy (EM radiation).
Some of it got turned into Soy beans, and wheat, and wood, and flowers, and natural gas, and oil, and coal, and nowadays, some even gets turned into electricity instead of “HEAT”., and of course all the little critters on the land and in the sea, from ants to sea urchins, and coral reefs; acid oceans or not.
That’s where your missing “heat” is Kevin; we aren’t making it at all.
And the more CO2 we have in the atmosphere, the more solar energy we turn into wood, for later free clean green renewable stored chemical energy usage. Like coal, it just sits there coldly, until we light a match to it, to turn it into “heat”.
Of course, these days, with 43.5 %efficient solar cells, with a dichroic mirror window reflecting most of the unconvertible radiant energy back into space, we can add high efficiency LEDs (I didn’t say cheap LEDs), we can turn maybe 80-90% of that solar PV electricity back into EM radiant energy (probably yellow/amber color), and shine that back to the outer solar system, and then we would really cool things down. Well you get that this is just a mind experiment.
These climate post doc fellows, with PhDs in Physics, who can’t get a permanent job, seem to have ignored biology, and other ways to not turn solar radiant energy, into waste heat here on earth.
As for “positive feedback”, Professor Morton, that is when a cloud passes in front of the sun, and it gets warmer in the shadow zone. Never seen it happen yet.
By the way; I do in fact like your guest essay, and will digest it more fully, as I get some time, before it scrolls down off the page; lot of information to ingest.
Gail Combs says:
February 17, 2014 at 7:41 pm
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Gail,
the process you describe is the most powerful mechanism for surface cooling, given that 71% of the earth’s surface is ocean. However my claim regarding radiative gases relates to atmospheric cooling.
Ian W’s comment @ur momisugly February 17, 2014 at 4:15 pm is relevant here. In talking of atmospheric cooling I am referring to energy exiting the atmosphere.
The atmosphere has many ways of acquiring energy, including intercepted solar and surface radiation, surface conduction and the release of latent heat as water vapour condenses. However the atmosphere has fewer ways of losing energy, via LWIR to space or conduction back to the surface. Simple empirical experiment shows that for a moving gas atmosphere, conduction back to the surface is ineffective (even Dr. Spencer gets this one wrong.). This leaves LWIR to space as the atmospheres primary cooling (energy loss) mechanism. Basically without radiative gases, our atmosphere would still be heated by surface conduction, but would have virtually no way to cool.
It is notable that no planets or moons in our solar system have managed to retain an atmosphere without radiative gases.
You are correct in part when you state – “There is also convection where warm air rises and we get all the various circulation cells that drive our weather.” Tropospheric convective circulation is the primary driver of all weather, with pole-wise energy flow a secondary player. But you should consider the corollary of “warm air rises”. Cool air descends. How do the air masses that have risen in the Hadley, Ferrel and Polar convective cells cool and descend? Adiabatic cooling on ascent is matched by adiabatic heating on decent, therefore has a neutral effect on vertical circulation. It is only radiative gases that allow energy loss from the atmosphere at altitude.
Those like myself claiming that the net effect of radiative gases is atmospheric cooling are not as “bat-shit crazy” as some may say. Disappointingly many here at WUWT are trying to claim MandBearPig does not exist while still trying to claim that ManBearPiglet does. Allan M.R. MacRae’s comment @ur momisugly February 17, 2014 at 9:11 am is relevant here.
dp says:
February 17, 2014 at 9:41 pm
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That was an excellent post by Dr. Spencer. He correctly describes why strong vertical tropospheric convective circulation would stall in the absence of radiative gases and that atmospheric circulation would be limited to advection winds in a near surface layer.
That was also a terrible post by Dr. Spencer. After he gets it so right, he gets it horribly wrong. He claims that the resultant isothermal temperature of such a non-radiative atmosphere would be set by surface Tav (which he incorrectly calculates as -18C), when in fact the simplest empirical experiment shows that it would be driven by surface Tmax. Argggh!
Surface conduction is effective at heating a moving atmosphere in a gravity field, but ineffective at cooling it. Without radiative gases our atmosphere has no effective way to cool. If our atmosphere has no way to cool, the oceans have no way to cool. They could reach 80C if not beyond. But that is irrelevant, well before then most of our atmosphere would have expanded beyond the geomagnetic field and been swept into space by the solar wind. Breathing privileges would be revoked for all.
Lesson? Do not remove radiative gases from the atmosphere, we need those to live.
george e. smith says:
February 17, 2014 at 9:46 pm
“So now I see why the sun can actually warm the earth’s surface way above 288 K; maybe even to 333K in tropical deserts”
—————————————
Getting close 😉
Want to see those precious Stefan-Boltzmann equations fail?
You may want to try a little empirical experiment I call “Shredded Lukewarm Turkey in Boltzmannic vinegar”-
Get two 100 x 100 x 10mm blocks of clear acrylic. Paint one black on the top surface, and the second black on the base. Spray both blocks with several layers of clear-coat on their top surfaces to ensure equal reflectivity and IR emissivity. Attach thermocouples to upper and lower surfaces. Insulate the blocks on the sides and base. Enclose each in a small LDPE greenhouse to minimise conductive losses. Now expose to strong solar SW. Three hours should result in a 17C differential between the blocks. The block with the black base runs hotter. SB equations alone clearly do not give the correct answer. (caution – experiment temperatures can exceed 115C)
Both blocks have the same ability to absorb SW and emit LWIR, yet after three hours in full sun the temperature differential is 17C. Which block most closely models our oceans, and which is closer to how climate scientists modelled our oceans?
Here I go further and place the blocks under intermittent halogen light sources with air cooled IR shields between the blocks and the halogen lights. –
http://i61.tinypic.com/2z562y1.jpg
While the lights are less powerful than the sun, this set up demonstrates that when the SW heating is intermittent, the block with the black base can achieve not just a higher average temperature, but a higher surface temperature as well. The experiment also works if clear water filled blocks are used, one with a black top surface and one with a black base.
Climate “scientists” were the “C” grade students. They couldn’t pass engineering. They wouldn’t have even made the entry mark.
The oceans are not being heated at the surface by a ¼ power sun at 240 w/m2, they are being heated at depth by intermittent SW pulses of over 1000 w/m2. Non-radiative energy transports control the energy flow back to the ocean surface and thereby the heating of the oceans. Those trying to calculate the temperature of the oceans through the use of SB equations are fools.
drumphil:
At February 17, 2014 at 5:54 pm you say of me
Well, the only part of that which you got right is that you are a sniveling troll.
Will you now apologise for your unjustifiable behaviour when avoiding justification for your statement that that CO2 emissions should be accounted “as a negative” when assessing power generation costs which you made here.
Or do you want to continue with your evasions, irrelevancies and Red Herrings which you kept up for days instead of answering my clear question in response to your assertion? It is
Increased plant growth being the ONLY discernible effect of increased atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Richard
PS I see you fail in another attempt at an insulting Red Herring at February 17, 2014 at 6:17 pm where you make the funny accusation
I never looked under it because I sleep on it and I am a “Red” (i.e. a socialist).
I’m a big fan of people pointing out that averaging a spatiotemporal field of intensive properties has no physical meaning.
We read in the article: “At least six serious problems confront the climate predictions presented in the last IPCC”
The seventh serious problem (or perhaps it should be the zeroth) is that a study of temperature records has shown that an increase in water vapor leads to cooler mean daily maximum and minumum temperatures, not warmer.
Water vapor does not raise the surface end of some isothermal temperature profile in the troposphere, more so in a moist area. Rather, it reduces the steeper gravitationally-induced thermal profile so that it meets the surface at a lower temperature where the wet adiabatic lapse rate prevails.
Konrad says:
FebruaryTl,
…..
You are correct in part when you state – “There is also convection where warm air rises and we get all the various circulation cells that drive our weather.” Tropospheric convective circulation is the primary driver of all weather, with pole-wise energy flow a secondary player. But you should consider the corollary of “warm air rises”. Cool air descends. How do the air masses that have risen in the Hadley, Ferrel and Polar convective cells cool and descend? Adiabatic cooling on ascent is matched by adiabatic heating on decent, therefore has a neutral effect on vertical circulation. It is only radiative gases that allow energy loss from the atmosphere at altitude.
….”
****
Say what?
Can you plot your “warm air rises and cool air descends” on a T-S diagram?
No work is done?
If I have large vertical cloud that has a lot of warm moist air being drawn in and cold air along with water and ice being removed as rain, where does the energy go? As the water vapor condenses and solidifies, latent energy is given up, why is that not just radiated into space??
Box of Rocks says:
February 18, 2014 at 2:49 am
——————————————
What are we, thick as a box of rocks?
http://i45.tinypic.com/29koww6.jpg
No one who challenges me wins. Those are the rules. Questions?
Konrad, I looked at your picture, and have a question. A non – radiative atm, that is transparent to IR, why wouldn’t the surface just radiate right through it to space?
“Will you now apologise for your unjustifiable behaviour when avoiding justification for your statement that that CO2 emissions should be accounted “as a negative” when assessing power generation costs which you made here.”
So why did you ask me about why I though enhanced plant growth was negative, rather than asking me why I thought CO2 emissions should be counted as a negative? Why didn’t you ask that instead of what you did ask? If you wanted me to justify my statement, then why did you ask about plant growth, and not simply ask me what I have to justify my actual position? Why include the premise in your question when you know I do not agree?
Why don’t you quote what you actually asked me, so that everyone here can see what a sniveling troll I am for not answering your straightforward, un-loaded question, and so they can see the simple, straight forward, forthright manner in which you have asked?
What you have done is say:
“All increased CO2 levels do is enhance plant growth, so are you against increased plant growth?”
which is OK because you believe this to be a fact.
but if I say:
“Increased CO2 levels have more effects than that, and do is cause environmentally damaging warming, so are you for damaging warming?”
it is OK because I believe that to be a fact….
Oh wait, you don’t accept that, but that is completely different issue to when you declare facts. Obviously.
Whatever you do, don’t actually ask me to justify my assertion that increased CO2 concentrations harm the environment, because to do so would be to admit that you asked a different question before. Why would an honest man ask something other that what they wanted the answer to?
drumphil:
You continue your obnoxious and egregious trolling with your post at February 18, 2014 at 4:43 am which pretends to answer my post at February 18, 2014 at 1:04 am which is here.
I could go through every falsehood and misrepresentation in your post but I see no reason to flatter your ego so I will address this question which it poses to me
I did quote it in my post. Your assertion that I did not is a lie.
My post says
You compound that outrageous lie that I did not quote my question (I did and I linked to it in its original thread as I have again in this post) when at February 18, 2014 at 4:52 am you write saying in total
You really, really don’t know what honesty is. In the other thread I went so far as to tell you that you could prove me wrong when I wrote to you saying
As on this thread, your reply was more pure bollocks.
Crawl back under your bridge but first answer the question and apologise for your behaviour.
Richard
“Why do you think it is “a negative” to have enhanced plant growth resulting in greater harvests and greater biodiversity?”
There is your original question. That is it in it’s entirety. How is that asking me about anything other than my opinion on enhanced plant growth?
If you feel that your question, as stated, implies something else, then you should ask that too. What is this? Questions by proxyquestion?
You also need to learn how to isolate questions and statements from each other.
drumphil:
I am responding to your daft post at February 18, 2014 at 5:27 am so others can see I am not running from your trolling.
I answered that in my post at February 18, 2014 at 5:18 am where I quote the answer I gave you in the other thread.
I repeat
Crawl back under your bridge but first answer the question and apologise for your behaviour.
Richard
And, I need to wait until I’ve got everything I want to cover in order before I post, so I don’t end up with four posts in a row… Oh wait.. damn.
drumphil:
Stop thread bombing.
Richard
Yes, well, I could write a few paragraphs on my opinion of you, but anything that isn’t directly dealing with the issue at hand is at best a sideshow distraction, and at worst a deliberate misdirection.
OK, so you’re reduced to repeating our questions to try to ???
Why is greater plant growth – more food, fuel, fodder, farming, feasting and fortunes – a negative?
I don’t think that it is. I also don’t think that increased CO2 doesn’t have any other negative effects, and I don’t think that the supposed positive effects of CO2 necessarily lead to feasting and fortune either.
See how an honest, straightforward answer to that question doesn’t satisfy richard, who believes that the question demands that I justify my position on why increased CO2 levels are a bad thing.