(Note: this originally published on Dr. Spencer’s blog on April 25th, and I asked if I could reproduce it here. While I know some readers might argue the finer points of some items in the list, I think it is important to keep sight of these. – Anthony)
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
There are some very good arguments for being skeptical of global warming predictions. But the proliferation of bad arguments is becoming almost dizzying.
I understand and appreciate that many of the things we think we know in science end up being wrong. I get that. But some of the alternative explanations I’m seeing border on the ludicrous.
So, here’s my Top 10 list of stupid skeptic arguments. I’m sure there are more, and maybe I missed a couple important ones. Oh well.
My obvious goal here is not to change minds that are already made up, which is impossible (by definition), but to reach 1,000+ (mostly nasty) comments in response to this post. So, help me out here!
1. THERE IS NO GREENHOUSE EFFECT. Despite the fact that downwelling IR from the sky can be measured, and amounts to a level (~300 W/m2) that can be scarcely be ignored; the neglect of which would totally screw up weather forecast model runs if it was not included; and would lead to VERY cold nights if it didn’t exist; and can be easily measured directly with a handheld IR thermometer pointed at the sky (because an IR thermometer measures the IR-induced temperature change of the surface of a thermopile, QED)… Please stop the “no greenhouse effect” stuff. It’s making us skeptics look bad. I’ve blogged on this numerous times…maybe start here.
2. THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT VIOLATES THE 2ND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS. The second law can be stated in several ways, but one way is that the net flow of energy must be from higher temperature to lower temperature. This is not violated by the greenhouse effect. The apparent violation of the 2nd Law seems to be traced to the fact that all bodies emit IR radiation…including cooler bodies toward warmer bodies. But the NET flow of thermal radiation is still from the warmer body to the cooler body. Even if you don’t believe there is 2-way flow, and only 1-way flow…the rate of flow depends upon the temperature of both bodies, and changing the cooler body’s temperature will change the cooling rate (and thus the temperature) of the warmer body. So, yes, a cooler body can make a warm body even warmer still…as evidenced by putting your clothes on.
3. CO2 CANT CAUSE WARMING BECAUSE CO2 EMITS IR AS FAST AS IT ABSORBS. No. When a CO2 molecule absorbs an IR photon, the mean free path within the atmosphere is so short that the molecule gives up its energy to surrounding molecules before it can (on average) emit an IR photon in its temporarily excited state. See more here. Also important is the fact that the rate at which a CO2 molecule absorbs IR is mostly independent of temperature, but the rate at which it emits IR increases strongly with temperature. There is no requirement that a layer of air emits as much IR as it absorbs…in fact, in general, the the rates of IR emission and absorption are pretty far from equal.
4. CO2 COOLS, NOT WARMS, THE ATMOSPHERE. This one is a little more subtle because the net effect of greenhouse gases is to cool the upper atmosphere, and warm the lower atmosphere, compared to if no greenhouse gases were present. Since any IR absorber is also an IR emitter, a CO2 molecule can both cool and warm, because it both absorbs and emits IR photons.
5. ADDING CO2 TO THE ATMOSPHERE HAS NO EFFECT BECAUSE THE CO2 ABSORPTION BANDS ARE ALREADY 100% OPAQUE. First, no they are not, and that’s because of pressure broadening. Second, even if the atmosphere was 100% opaque, it doesn’t matter. Here’s why.
6. LOWER ATMOSPHERIC WARMTH IS DUE TO THE LAPSE RATE/ADIABATIC COMPRESSION. No, the lapse rate describes how the temperature of a parcel of air changes from adiabatic compression/expansion of air as it sinks/rises. So, it can explain how the temperature changes during convective overturning, but not what the absolute temperature is. Explaining absolute air temperature is an energy budget question. You cannot write a physics-based equation to obtain the average temperature at any altitude without using the energy budget. If adiabatic compression explains temperature, why is the atmospheric temperature at 100 mb is nearly the same as the temperature at 1 mb, despite 100x as much atmospheric pressure? More about all this here.
7. WARMING CAUSES CO2 TO RISE, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND The rate of rise in atmospheric CO2 is currently 2 ppm/yr, a rate which is 100 times as fast as any time in the 300,000 year Vostok ice core record. And we know our consumption of fossil fuels is emitting CO2 200 times as fast! So, where is the 100x as fast rise in today’s temperature causing this CO2 rise? C’mon people, think. But not to worry…CO2 is the elixir of life…let’s embrace more of it!
8. THE IPCC MODELS ARE FOR A FLAT EARTH I have no explanation where this little tidbit of misinformation comes from. Climate models address a spherical, rotating, Earth with a day-night (diurnal) cycle in solar illumination and atmospheric Coriolis force (due to both Earth curvature and rotation). Yes, you can do a global average of energy flows and show them in a flat-earth cartoon, like the Kiehl-Trenberth energy budget diagram which is a useful learning tool, but I hope most thinking people can distinguish between a handful of global-average average numbers in a conceptual diagram, and a full-blown 3D global climate model.
9. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GLOBAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE Really?! Is there an average temperature of your bathtub full of water? Or of a room in your house? Now, we might argue over how to do the averaging (Spatial? Mass-weighted?), but you can compute an average, and you can monitor it over time, and see if it changes. The exercise is only futile if your sampling isn’t good enough to realistically monitor changes over time. Just because we don’t know the average surface temperature of the Earth to better than, say 1 deg. C, doesn’t mean we can’t monitor changes in the average over time. We have never known exactly how many people are in the U.S., but we have useful estimates of how the number has increased in the last 50-100 years. Why is “temperature” so important? Because the thermal IR emission in response to temperature is what stabilizes the climate system….the hotter things get, the more energy is lost to outer space.
10. THE EARTH ISN’T A BLACK BODY. Well, duh. No one said it was. In the broadband IR, though, it’s close to a blackbody, with an average emissivity of around 0.95. But whether a climate model uses 0.95 or 1.0 for surface emissivity isn’t going to change the conclusions we make about the sensitivity of the climate system to increasing carbon dioxide.
I’m sure I could come up with a longer list than this, but these were the main issues that came to mind.
So why am I trying to stir up a hornets nest (again)? Because when skeptics embrace “science” that is worse that the IPCC’s science, we hurt our credibility.
NOTE: Because of the large number of negative comments this post will generate, please excuse me if I don’t respond to every one. Or even very many of them. But if I see a new point being made I haven’t addressed before, I’ll be more likely to respond.
Scott Wilmot Bennett says:
May 1, 2014 at 7:12 pm
You straight out contradict your own #7: “Warming causes CO2 to rise, not the other way around” when you say in comments:
“Yes, warmer emits more CO2. Even the IPCC admitted that in an earlier report…”
It is about quantities: a warming of the earth (oceans, land) of 1°C doesn’t give more than 4-5 ppmv (short time) to maximum 8 ppmv (very long term) CO2 extra in the atmosphere. For the period since the Little Ice Age, the maximum thus is 8 ppmv extra (if we may assume that the temeprature increase was not more than 1°C). What is measured is over 100 ppmv increase, while humans have emitted over 200 ppmv CO2 in the same period…
Thus while in all times CO2 changes follows temperature changes, that isn’t true for the past 160 years. If the influence of CO2 on temperature is high or even catastrophical, that is doubtful…
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
At May 2, 2014 at 12:32 am you assert
NO! You are plain wrong, and you know you are plain wrong because we have repeatedly been here before.
Please see my post at May 1, 2014 at 3:29 pm. It includes
When the data refutes your assertion then your assertion is wrong.
Richard
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
At May 2, 2014 at 12:58 am you assert
That is absolutely untrue!
See e.g.
Kuo C, Lindberg C & David J. Thomson DJ, ‘Coherence established between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature’, Nature 343, 709 – 714 (22 February 1990); doi:10.1038/343709a0
Their abstract says
Subsequently several others have determined the same but length of the time the lag in CO2 after temperature varies with latitude.
Richard
Nullius in Verba, err, so your modeling and calculation lead to the water being warmer in the bottom of a pool? You sound very high and mighty but i’m sorry, i think i have a problem, because when i swim in a lake, the bottom water feels colder than surface water. Did you ever swim in a lake? I’d be ready to take some thermometers and check that, it’s pretty easy…
Julien says: May 2, 2014 at 1:15 am
“i think i have a problem, because when i swim in a lake, the bottom water feels colder than surface water”
Try swimming in winter. You’ll find your toes are relatively warm. The top layer changes seasonally, the bottom less so.
The effect is real – solar ponds. Temperatures up to 90°C.
David Middleton says:
May 1, 2014 at 7:32 pm
200 times as fast as what?
The fastest natural rise of CO2 over the past 800 kyears is during the transition between a glacial period and an interglacial: 100 ppmv CO2 increase over a period of 5,000 years. The opposite transition is even slower. Even with the low resolution of 560 years in the Dome C record, that is pretty clear. That gives a rise of 0.02 ppmv CO2/year.
The current rise is 2.1 ppmv/year, while humans emit about 4.5 ppmv/year. Humans increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere in 160 years, where nature needed 5,000 years to do the same with 12°C temperature increase…
Plant stomata data, Greenland ice cores and the high resolution reprocessing of the Law Dome DE08 ice core clearly demonstrate that some of the rise in CO2 was driven by the warm up from the Little Ice Age.
Forget plant stomata data: the absolute values of the past are unreliable, as they are by definition grown on land, where the local bias can change with land changes and plant growth in the main wind direction and even the main wind direction may change with climate.
Greenland ice core CO2 is unreliable due to frequent highly acidic volcanic dust from Icelandic volcanoes, producing in situ CO2 from seasalt dust (carbonates).
And the Law Dome DSS ice core demonstrates that the MWP-LIA difference was not more than 6 ppmv for ~0.8°C temperature drop. Because the MWP is alleged to be as warm or warmer than the current period, the increase due to temperature is maximum 6 ppmv since the LIA. The rest of the 100+ ppmv is from human emissions:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_1000yr.jpg
thegriss says:
May 1, 2014 at 1:03 pm
This site is now heading the same way of most alarmist sites,
Blocking and deleting dissenting views.
This is how CONSENSUS works.
[?? Mod]
——————————–
@ur momisugly [??Mod]
It seems pretty obvious that Roy wants everyone to “agree” with his views, and like any warmist and GHG believer, is going to ridicule those who don’t agree with him.
He is trying to establish a CONSENSUS based in HIS ideas.
This forum has banned differing views from the so-called ‘slayers”,
Earlier in the thread someone cut one of Steven Wilde’s posts.
If it doesn’t cow-tow to “the site’s” TRUTH about the sceptical view.. its GONE. !!
More warmist views are allowed than alternate sceptical view..
Think about that. !!!
oh look, no reason I can see why that post would go into moderation.
but it has.
pic taken.
hmmmm..
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/maxwell-established-that-gravity.html
NO Greenhouse effect..
An atmospheric gravity effect !
Gees, who would have guessed. !!!
richardscourtney says:
May 2, 2014 at 1:02 am
There is no reduction to the rate of sequestration as the sequestering ‘sinks’ fill. Clearly, the sinks do not fill.
When the data refutes your assertion then your assertion is wrong.
Richard, have a look in detail of the seasonal data, here for Barrow and Mauna Loa:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/seasonal_CO2_d13C_MLO_BRW.jpg
The CO2 uptake starts in May at Barrow (after thawing or the tundra) and ends in August/September when the tundra starts to freeze over and the decay of fallen leaves of that and previous growing seasons give more CO2 release than the remaining uptake by plants.
The point is: plants can take a lot of CO2 away in the growing season, but loose a lot of carbon in winter. Does that change much year by year? No. Maximum +/- 1 GtC/year for the whole biosphere combined. Does that change over time? Yes, but very modest: the oxygen balance demonstrates that since 1990, the whole biosphere is an increasing sink for CO2, but not more than 1 GtC/year. Despite 100 μatm more CO2 pressure in the atmosphere.
Thus your residual CO2 uptake after a full seasonal cycle is only 1 GtC/year with a lot more CO2 pressure in the atmosphere. Which demonstrates that the biosphere can’t cope with the extra 9 GtC human emissions.
In Law Dome ice core we trust (no matter what)…
The current lack of warming is no less a scientific fact than any dubious results of any ice core analysis. If human emissions of CO2 must cause a greenhouse effect, where is it, oh sages?
Nick, i think you’re right. There’s a strong seasonal effect to it. Also, i think the incoming angle of solar radiation does affect the result… It only works well if the sun is perpendicular to the water. In all other cases, and at night, the water basicaly transfers its energy to the air, and keeps transfering energy inside the layers of water.
Now, can you explain *why* a smaller pond will warm faster than a larger body of water?
“We are now 100 ppmv above the historical equilibrium.”
You mean the base-line biosphere survival amount !
The “all gone, all dead” amount.
A study of any predator-prey scenario shows that things settle down to where both species JUST survive. !!
That’s where CO2 has been for a long, long time.
richardscourtney says:
May 2, 2014 at 1:11 am
Subsequently several others have determined the same but length of the time the lag in CO2 after temperature varies with latitude.
Richard, the short term CO2 variation follows the short term temperature variation, but that is a small variability (+/- 1 ppmv, yearly average) around the trend:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
The trend itself can’t be explained by the temperature increase of less that 1°C since the LIA: maximum 8 ppmv, including a negative temperature trend 1945-1975 and curently 17.5 years of no temperature increase with steady increasing CO2 levels at an extremely fixed ratio with human emissions:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_emiss_increase.jpg
Alexander Feht says:
May 2, 2014 at 1:49 am
In Law Dome ice core we trust (no matter what)…
The current lack of warming is no less a scientific fact than any dubious results of any ice core analysis
The lack of warming is as good a scientific fact as the CO2 levels analysed in any ice core, with some particularities for every specific core. See:
http://courses.washington.edu/proxies/GHG.pdf
Maybe we can add to the list of Dr. Spencer:
15. Ice core measurements are unreliable.
as one of the top skeptical arguments that don’t hold water…
I have no doubt that humans are releasing sequestered CO2 into the atmosphere and increasing the CO content.
And the biosphere thanks us very much.
Well done China, India, Germany for your continued biosphere support.
Keeping the world ticking over.
Why aren’t the tree-lovers cheering !!!
This an excellent and useful post by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D., as usual .It is exactly the sort of thing that the Warmistas would never dream of posting. However, now, Roy, we need a top 10 good arguments that Sceptics use, just to show the colours still flying high.
“Nullius in Verba, err, so your modeling and calculation lead to the water being warmer in the bottom of a pool? You sound very high and mighty but i’m sorry, i think i have a problem, because when i swim in a lake, the bottom water feels colder than surface water. Did you ever swim in a lake? I’d be ready to take some thermometers and check that, it’s pretty easy…”
My modelling and calculation was offered as a joke. The oceans are 4500 K a metre down?! That’s about 4200 Centigrade! If this mechanism was true, the oceans would boil! My pond argument obviously doesn’t hold water.
But it raises the big question, of course, of what’s wrong with it? Does anyone understand the physics of the greenhouse effect well enough to explain? Is there back radiation in a pond or not?
When Nick suggests you go swimming in winter, you would be well advised to wear something warm! Water is unusual in that below 4 C it gets less dense as it gets colder and floats to the top, which is why water freezes from the top down.
He’s also correct that the limiting cases of the mechanism I described is called Rosseland transport, but that doesn’t really explain why the water isn’t super-hot. His reference to solar ponds (and even ponds freezing over in winter) is closer to the mark. I’m guessing he knows, (I’ve given this argument many times before, after all), but I appreciate him giving other people a chance to think about it. 🙂
Nick, thanks for the winter lake example, I hadn’t thought of that one. But it’s good. 🙂
Ferdinand:
We are in danger of usurping the thread.
1.
You continue to assert that the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration has an anthropogenic cause.
2.
I do not know if that rise has an anthropogenic or a natural cause in whole or in part, but I do know the data indicates the true cause is not the asserted anthropogenic cause which you champion.
3.
We have gone over this repeatedly – including on WUWT – for many years so I see no purpose in usurping this thread to again reprise the matter.
Richard
“Nick Stokes says:
May 2, 2014 at 1:26 am
Julien says: May 2, 2014 at 1:15 am
“i think i have a problem, because when i swim in a lake, the bottom water feels colder than surface water”
Try swimming in winter. You’ll find your toes are relatively warm. The top layer changes seasonally, the bottom less so.”
Since water reaches maximum density att 4C you’re right that it can be warmer at the bottom of the lakes if it’s below 4C above the bottom of the lake.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
May 2, 2014 at 2:13 am
The lack of warming is as good a scientific fact as the CO2 levels analysed [sic] in any ice core, with some particularities for every specific core.
And, of course, a single link you provided proves it unequivocally for all ages. Give me a break.
Joe Postma has this Spencer claim well covered on his climateofsophistry web site. You would do well to read this Anthony, but of course you won’t.
Sorry to disagree, but #7 is wrong. Warming does cause CO2 to rise (and cooling causes CO2 to fall), plausibly due to the relative temperature-sensitivities of respiration and photosynthesis in the biosphere. .The ice-core records provide evidence of this cause-and-effect. Unprecedented burning of carbonaceous fuels also causes CO2 to rise; if Dr. Spence believes this negates the effect of the biosphere, which seems to be thriving at present, I would be grateful for an explanation.
thegriss says: May 2, 2014 at 1:40 am
“It seems pretty obvious that Roy wants everyone to “agree” with his views, and like any warmist and GHG believer, is going to ridicule those who don’t agree with him.”
That was my thought also, but couldn’t spell it out so clearly. How many times has history shown us the point where truth becomes secondary?
Although I agree with the 10 points after Dr Spencer clarified n° 7 in the discussion chain, it’s a mystery to me why should all skeptics wear the same tight cap. While fitting it on, the strongest political anti-cAGW argument, humanity, was lost in my opinion.
E.M.Smith says:
May 1, 2014 at 8:26 am
==============================================
So good to see you posting here again. You began to detail everything I tried to say in the broadest possible terms in my earlier post here…
…”There is more then one straw man in Dr. Spencer’s overall OK post. Basically the CAGW enthusiast all agree, so it is natural that skeptics fall into every other possible camp. This means it will be natural for skeptic’s to have disparate views. It would have been best to call those considering a different view wrong because… The use of the word stupid is antagonizing and counter productive.
Just one example for now is number 4. Very few skeptics claim CO2 ONLY causes cooling. However the question of the net affect is debated rationally and constructively, as the radiation of energy from the top of the atmosphere being the earths only effective way to dissipate energy to space. Questions on the interaction of convection, conduction, evaporation and radiation, which all interact in complicated manners, are very legitimate, and the net affect is not known in any kind of engineering style analysis, such as what Steven McIntyre has consistently called for.