(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.
Mike Rossander says:
May 2, 2014 at 8:23 am
The measurement precision of the Vostok ice cores and of every other non-instrumental record is insufficient to proved that CO2 levels never spiked within their assumed periods.
The accuracy and repeatability of the CO2 measurements in the same ice core is 1.2 ppmv – 1 sigma. For the same average gas age, the CO2 measurements between different ice cores differ not more than +/- 5 ppmv.
The resolution (averaging) of CO2 levels over the years varies with the accumulation speed and so does the length of the record: it is about a decade over the past 150 years, 2 decades over the past 1,000 years (from different Law Dome ice cores), ~40 years over the past 70,000 years (Taylor Dome) and ~560 years over the past 800,000 years (Dome C). Vostok has less resolution (~600 years) over the past 420,000 years.
Any 20-year spike of 100 ppmv would spread over the 560 years and still be measurable in the ice core record. Thus the current 100 ppmv increase over 160 years anyway would be detected, even if it was part of a 600-year cycle.
And there is no measurable migration of CO2 in the cold inland ice cores. If there was even the slightest migration, the quite constant ratio between temperature changes and CO2 changes would fade for each interglacial 100 kyear back in time.
Ferdinand Engelbeen,
Thank you for participating in the carbon cycle discourse introduced by Spencer’s # 7.
In my past enjoyable critical view of your positions, the focus I usually have had is on how well circumscribed is our knowledge of the natural sinks and sources in the: land masses (which include fresh water bodies); in the salt water bodies; and in the polar snow/ice masses.
My position has usually been that the land sinks and sources are inadequately known in carbon cycle analysis of attribution of increases in atmospheric CO2.
In that respect I recall these quotes from Salby:
John
Thanks, Doc. Agree w/everything you point out.
This will be interesting recreating Venus. If they get 700 degrees out of it our energy worries are over.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9024912/Nasa-climate-change-test-chamber-to-simulate-Venus-toxic-conditions.html
Marc77 says: May 2, 2014 at 7:55 am
“Without greenhouse gases, the atmosphere would not be isothermal.
The one molecule atmosphere has a gradient of temperature … “
This is a very tempting conclusion, but it is incorrect. The “temperature” at a given altitude will be proportional to the average kinetic energy of the molecule at that altitude (KE = 3/2 kT). To get that average KE, we must look at many flights of this one molecule.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume the surface is 300 K. As the single molecule leaves the surface, sometimes it will be moving faster than average, and sometimes slower (ie the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution). If we look right at ground level, the average will clearly give 300 K for the temperature of teh one molecule in the atmosphere.
What if we go up 1 km? Well, for many of the flights of the molecule, it will never even get that high and hence will not be part of the average KE there. To get that high, the molecule must have had above-average KE to start. And of course, it loses some of that KE on the trip 1 km up. Not coincidentally, the KE lost on the trip up reduces the average KE 1 km to exactly enough to make the few remaining trips STILL average to 300 K!
PS there are OTHER reasons it would not be isothermal (eg day/night swings in temperature), but the true equilibrium temperature gradient is indeed isothermal.
Interesting list Dr. Spencer. I’d be interested in seeing your “10 best arguments against climate catastrophe” list.
On #7, I’m not sure what you’re saying. It seems to say that today’s rates of CO2 emissions overwhelm cause and effect as suggested by ice cores. The argument about ice core is that CO2 follows warming, ergo, CO2 is probably not the causal factor. And if it’s not causal to those earlier warming periods, the higher rate of emissions today is non-sequitur, isn’t it?
On #5, are there any space-based measurements that support Richard Lindzen’s theories about warm periods diminishing cirrus clouds allowing more outbound IR transmissions? Are there any measurements to indicate the Earth’s IR brightness increases during periods of higher near-surface air temperatures?
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
May 2, 2014 at 7:13 am
I have avoided getting into this stuff with you on this thread, because you keep on trotting out the usual proof by assertion you have always used. Your view of nature is not tied to physical and mathematical laws.
For those who are not aware, Ferdinand and I have been arguing about this topic for years on these boards. You will note that he only cites data which supports his narrative, and arbitrarily dismisses that which does not. His narrative relies on data which are open to multiple interpretations, yet he insists with no basis that his interpretation is Truth. His description of short term and long term processes arbitrarily segregated by nature is not physically realizable in a world governed by mathematical laws.
Everything one needs to know about CO2 concentration in the last 56 years is contained in this plot. The rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere is wholly accounted for by some temperature dependent process. As human inputs are not temperature dependent, they cannot be the major driver of atmospheric CO2 levels.
It’s not even a close question. This particular observation is not subject to multiple interpretations. The laws of mathematics require the conclusion. With the continuing divergence between emissions (which are increasing exponentially) and atmospheric CO2 concentration (which is increasing only linearly), it will soon become undeniable that humans are having little effect on atmospheric concentration.
I’m not going to respond any further, and will let Ferdinand have the last word. He is simply wrong.
Marc77 says:
May 2, 2014 at 7:55 am
“The one molecule atmosphere has a gradient of temperature, this molecule must go faster as it moves toward the ground.”
There is no way for that molecule to make it to the ground. It is going to collide with other molecules, imparting its energy, as it goes. Air molecules are not in free flight, orbiting about the Earth. In fact, the entire atmosphere moves more or less with the Earth up to very high altitudes, with velocity R*omega, where R is the radius and omega is the Earth angular rate, rather than the sqrt(mu/R) of orbital velocity.
Without being flippant, and not wanting to repeat anything already posted here (I am unable to sift through all of the comments), is there ANY possibility that we could get Anthony, Dr. Roy, Dr. David Evans, Ian Plimer, Dr. Lindzen, and any of the other heavy hitters, to put together something like JoNova’s “Skeptic’s Handbook”; something about 20 – 30 pages, maybe even published on-line (like right here, for example) of what the concise skeptic position is, how to maintain that position against warmist arguments, referenced sources, etc etc etc.
One of the best resources I’ve ever seen is Howard Hayden’s “A Primer on CO2 and Climate”. It is possible to read the 70+ pages in one sitting, and it is heavily sourced.
I would ditto the comments that we need a “top ten” skeptic arguments. This is good; there is no downside to Dr. Roy’s comments here, but the flip side of the coin would help all of us.
Just my two cents; thanks to all who have commented here,
Mark H.
Further to Richard Courtenay’s comment about an 83 year temporal enclosure time there is also a 70 year smoothing average applied to the graphical ice core displays.
I should have read the whole comment thread before I posted… sigh. lots of discussion on #7.
Dr. Spencer, I applaud you for your reserve in dealing with people who you probably consider to be, er, well, idiots. I’m loathe to use the word, even, because of it’s trolling effects. On the upside, the comments in this thread have been wonderful to read, for the most part. Compare to the comments on many other blogs that deals with climate issues, such as Huffington Post, DeSmog, SkS or WatchingTheDeniers. One of the reasons WUWT is my favorite blog to read.
Konrad says:
“What Dr. Spencer got wrong in his 2009 post was that –
A. Surface Tav would not be -18C under a non-radiative atmosphere.
B. The temperature of a non-radiative atmosphere would be set by surface Tmax not Tav.”
For clarification, it seems you are talking about 2 different things:
A) seems to be the surface temperature of the ground/ocean
B) seem to be the temperature throughout the atmosphere
Is that correct?
So two questions:
A) Are you saying the ground/ocean surface would be above -18C? If so where does it get the extra energy, since it will be radiating more power to space as thermal IR than it is receiving as sunlight.
B) Suppose one spot ( say 1 km^2) on earth was 1500 C lava. Are you saying that the entire atmosphere would eventually reach 1500 C for a 100% non-radiative atmosphere?
This article nicely demonstrates the dilemma facing every open-minded person when confronted by any highly technical issue strictly beyond his or her level of training or expertise – SCIENTIFIC CREDIBILITY HAS CEASED TO EXIST.
The two main social mechanisms of destroying scientific credibility have been academia-imposed orthodoxy, of which an early example was the witch-hunt against scientists supporting Immanuel Velikovsky in the 1950s, and legislative determination of “truth”, originally debuting as “holocaust denial” legislation, but increasingly coming into play as a means of suppressing any notion considered by the “public” (or at least its opinion makers) as politically incorrect.
It must be obvious to any reasonable person that one cannot expect a majority of the public to become knowledgeable in every branch of science and technology. How then can they be expected to determine rationally whose advice to follow when there is scientific controversy?
As someone endowed with more native intelligence, formal education, and leisure time than most citizens of the developed world, I can assure this forum with absolute certainty that neither the article above, nor the posts responding to it, nor any conceivable number of like postings, can solve this problem.
And so the most critical long-term decisions humanity faces will continue to be determined by the factions with the most effective marketing/propaganda teams, regardless of the merits of the “science” supporting them.
This is the ultimate cause of humanity’s inability to come to grips with all of its global challenges, from the solar EMP threat, through possible interplanetary impact, pollution, production and distribution of water, fuel, food and medicine, to organized and individual violence. The issue of scientific credibility is the problem we must solve in order for human society to survive and continue to evolve.
The only solution I can imagine is the development and implementation of a regimen for inculcating strict adherence to rational thought, and a screening program for certifying those who are not prone to irrational thinking. This would at last create a cadre of credible scientists whose advice could be trusted.
The question is how such an initiative could be launched in the face of certain opposition from established religious and political groups and institutions, including educational institutions.
Allan M.R. MacRae says:
May 2, 2014 at 5:35 am
I suggest that temperature drives CO2 in nature because CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales and the only significant signal I can detect in the CO2 curve is its ~9 month lag AFTER (LT) temperature.
However, temperature is not the ONLY driver of CO2, and other factors such as fossil fuel combustion and deforestation are probable major drivers of CO2.
Hmmm…
We can say that “temperature change happens before atmosphere CO2 change”, but the correlation doesn’t necessarily mean that “temperature drives CO2”. Perhaps the effect of temperature change on the flora then effects how much or how little CO2 is added/removed from the atmosphere? The lag time would factor in quite well with that possibility, would it not?
In any case, I would hope we all agree that temperature is not the only thing that effects, either directly or indirectly, the level of atmospheric CO2. While there may not be much agreement on exactly how much, it seems clear that fossil fuel combustion is adding CO2 to the atmosphere.
John Whitman says:
May 2, 2014 at 9:00 am
It is approximately balanced by natural sinks, which absorb about as much. The key word is “approximately”.
The key word is balance: while the individual and total fluxes of natural sources and sinks are known with large margins of error or not even known, the balance is known with reasonable accuracy: We measure the increase in the atmosphere at a lot of stations and we know the human CO2 emissions with reasonable accuracy, based on sales (taxes!) and burning efficiency of the different fuels. That gives next graph:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
Where it is clear that the natural unbalance is negative over the full past 50 years of accurate measurements and that the year by year variability of the unbalance also is quite small: not more than +/- 2% of the estimated carbon cycle…
the balance is known with reasonable accuracy:…….
That is just not possible…..we can’t even describe the nitrification denitrification ammonification cycle properly
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
May 2, 2014 at 10:31 am
I know I said I would let you have the last word, but this needs some response. IOW, I lied. Sue me.
“Where it is clear that the natural unbalance is negative over the full past 50 years of accurate measurements…”
Utterly meaningless in a dynamic system, which responds to increased partial pressure from human emissions to dynamically create more sink capacity.
– – – – – – – –
Ferdinand Engelbeen,
Thanks for your quick reply.
I think contrary to you; that is I think land sources and sinks details are not known enough to even approximately demarcate that CO2 increase which belongs to nature and that which belongs to Big Fossil.
So, my thought is that without increasing the detailed knowledge of land sources and sinks, then the current presumptive hand waving that is the basis of attributing to Big Fossil virtually all of the increase in atm CO2 remains just that; just presumptive hand waving.
I think this issue cannot be resolved until more research on land sources and sinks enters the marketplace of scientific ideas. N’est ce pas? I look forward to that research occurring and our discussion advancing.
John
milodonharlani has kindly drawn my attention to the relative weightings that can be applied to atmospheric gases.
According to the table to which he has pointed me, taking the “Global Warming Potential – 100 year time horizon” for CO2 as 1, the GWP of CH4 is 28 and that of NO2 is 265. Taking the estimated recent average tropospheric concentrations of CH4 as 1.8 ppm and that of NO2 as 0.335 ppm, in their existing concentrations these two gases together have the potential to warm the globe by about a third of the potential of CO2 in its current concentration. Even ignoring all the other gases and assuming that any effect that they might have on global warming is de minimis, no climate model can hope to approach reality unless it allows for the variability of both CH4 and NO2.
At least these gases are measurable and there are, apparently, historic measurements. Not so H2O, of which the NOAA states “Also, while we have good atmospheric measurements of other key greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, we have poor measurements of global water vapor, so it is not certain by how much atmospheric concentrations have risen in recent decades or centuries…” But any climate model, in order to be realistic, should include the variable H2O for which there are no good historic measurements.
And this assumes that other possible forcings, of which there are at least thirty, can be accurately modelled.
My scepticism as to the validity of any global model as a forecasting tool remains.
Bart says:
May 2, 2014 at 9:28 am
I was expecting a much earlier comment from you, but here – again – my main arguments:
– Both the human emissions and the increase in the atmosphere show a steady, slightly quadratic increase in the atmosphere over the full 110+ years. The increase in temperature is with ups and downs, but since 1960 it is more linear with a leveling off in the last 1.5 decade:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_emiss_increase.jpg
Bart takes only the data since 1960 into account.
– We can exclude the biosphere as cause of the increase in the atmosphere as there is no indication of a firmly increased seasonal cycle (based of O2 and d13C measurements) and the biosphere as a whole is a net sink for ~1GtC/year (based on O2 measurements).
– The ocean surface layer can be excluded, as that shows a slight increase in total C in a ratio of 10% of the increase in the atmosphere, its capacity is too small.
– Rests the deep oceans as possible cause. But any increase in temperature of the ocean surface where the deep oceans upwelling shows up and where the downwelling occurs is completely compensated with an increase of 17 ppmv/°C in the atmosphere (at a more or less constant up/downwelling of CO2, see further):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_temp.jpg
That also shows that the CO2 increase lags the temperature increase.
It can be shown that a relative fast (2-3 years) sinusoïd in temperature change is followed by a CO2 sinusoïd with a lag of pi/2 of the frequency.
In the first graph we have shown that the increase in the atmosphere follows the increase in total emissions both with a slightly quadratic curve. If we plot the derivatives, that does give a linear increase of the rate of change, while the linear increase of temperature gives a flat (even slightly negative) slope in the derivative
Again, we see a pi/2 shift between the rate of change of temperature and the rate of change of CO2, as taking the derivative shifts both pi/2 back.
What Bart does is comparing the variation in temperature with the variation in the rate of change of CO2. Besides that this has no physical meaning, one can fit any linear trendline with any other one by adding an offset and an appropriate factor (there are problems with the amplitudes of the variability, because of that factor, but that is not the main point). His whole theory is based on the fact that the variability in temperature has a perfect fit in timing with the variability of the rate of change in CO2. But that is caused by the fact that CO2 follows temperature with pi/2 and that taking the derivatives shift both pi/2 back in time, which makes that temperature changes and CO2 rate of change changes always match in timing…
Anyway, if the deep oceans should be the cause of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, that is only possible via an increased deep ocean – atmosphere – deep ocean circulation in exact ratio to human emissions. But there is not the slightest indication of such an increase in circulation, to the contrary. Moreover, that also would influence the 13C/12C ratio of the atmosphere:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/deep_ocean_air_increase_290.jpg
the orange line is what is the calculated 13C/12C ratio if Bart’s theory was right…
Latitude says:
May 2, 2014 at 10:36 am
That is just not possible…..we can’t even describe the nitrification denitrification ammonification cycle properly
The nitrogen fluxes are very difficult to estimate/calculate, but it would be possible to know the balance in the atmosphere, if there was an analytical method accurate enough to measure a fraction of a ppmv N2 in the near 790,000 ppmv of the atmosphere… For oxygen they succeeded for 0.4 ppmv in about 210,000 ppmv… For CO2: no problem at all to measure 0.2 ppmv in 400 ppmv…
Regarding Global Average Temperature, not sure that 30 gallons of water in the fiberglass tub in the upstairs bathroom is much of an analogy for the almost 200 million square miles of the earth’s sea and land surface and the incredibly complex dynamics it presents in terms of identifying an “average.”
Fred…you just made my point
Ferd…not Fred….
Bart says:
May 2, 2014 at 10:41 am
Utterly meaningless in a dynamic system, which responds to increased partial pressure from human emissions to dynamically create more sink capacity.
Even in a dynamic system, the natural balance is negative over the past 50 years. That is simply what is measured. If that is caused by more natural circulation, as you think or only by human emissions, that is the point of discussion…
TFolkerts says (to Konrad)
B) Suppose one spot ( say 1 km^2) on earth was 1500 C lava. Are you saying that the entire atmosphere would eventually reach 1500 C for a 100% non-radiative atmosphere?
==================================================
Interesting question. How does a non GHG atmosphere cool? Does the conducted heat to the atmosphere have to back conduct back to the surface in order to radiate away? Back Conduction?