Guest essay by Ed Hoskins
Using data published by the IPCC on the diminishing effect of increasing CO2 concentrations and the latest proportional information on global Man-made CO2 emissions, these notes examine the potential for further warming by CO2 emissions up to 1000ppmv and the probable consequences of decarbonisation policies being pursued by Western governments.
The temperature increasing capacity of atmospheric CO2 is real enough, but its influence is known and widely accepted to diminish as its concentration increases. It has a logarithmic in its relationship to concentration. Global Warming advocates and Climate Change sceptics both agree on this.
IPCC Published reports, (TAR3), acknowledge that the effective temperature increase caused by growing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere radically diminishes with increasing concentrations. This information has been presented in the IPCC reports. It is well disguised for any lay reader, (Chapter 6. Radiative Forcing of Climate Change: section 6.3.4 Total Well-Mixed Greenhouse Gas Forcing Estimate) [1]. It is a crucial fact, but not acknowledged in the IPCC summary for Policy Makers[2].
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The rapid logarithmic diminution effect is an inconvenient fact for Global Warming advocates and alarmists, nonetheless it is well understood within the climate science community. It is certainly not much discussed. This diminution effect is probably the reason there was no runaway greenhouse warming caused by CO2 in earlier eons when CO2 levels were known to be at levels of several thousands ppmv. The following simplifying diagram shows the logarithmic diminution effect using tranches of 100ppmv up to 1000ppmv and the significance of differing CO2 concentrations on the biosphere:
§ Up to ~200 ppmv, the equivalent to about ~77% of the temperature increasing effectiveness of CO2. This is essential to sustain photosynthesis in plants and thus the viability of all life on earth.
§ A further ~100 ppmv was the level prior to any industrialisation, this atmospheric CO2 made the survival of the biosphere possible, giving a further 5.9% of the CO2 Greenhouse effect.
§ Following that a further 100ppmv, (certainly man-made in part), adding ~4.1% of the CO2 effectiveness brings the current level ~400 ppmv.
§ CO2 at 400pmmv is already committed and immutable. So CO2 has already reached about ~87+% of its potential warming effect in the atmosphere.
Both sceptics and the IPCC publish alternate views of the reducing effect on temperature of the importance of CO2 concentration. These alternates are equivalent proportionally but vary in the degree of warming attributable to CO2.
The IPCC have published views of the total effect of CO2 as a greenhouse gas up to ~1200ppmv, they range in temperature from +6.3°C to +14.5°C, shown below:
There are other views presented both by sceptical scientists and CDIAC, the Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Centre. What these different analysis show the is the amount of future warming that might be attributed to additional atmospheric CO2 in excess of the current level of ~400ppmv. Looking to the future in excess of 400ppmv, wide variation exists between the different warming estimates up to 1000ppmv, see below.
A comparison between these estimates are set out below in the context of the ~33°C total Greenhouse Effect.
This graphic shows in orange the remaining temperature effect of CO2 up to 1000ppmv that could be affected by worldwide global decarbonisation policies according to each of these alternative analyses.
Some of the IPCC data sets shows very large proportions of the temperature effect attributable solely to extra CO2. The concomitant effect of those higher levels of warming from atmospheric CO2 is that the proportion of the total ~33°C then attributable the water vapour and clouds in the atmosphere is displaced so as to be unrealistically low at 72% or 54%.
It has to be questioned whether it is plausible that CO2, a minor trace gas in the atmosphere, currently at the level of ~400ppmv, 0.04% up to 0.10% achieves such radical control of Global temperature, when compared to the substantial and powerful Greenhouse Effect of water vapour and clouds in the atmosphere?
There are the clearly divergent views of the amount of warming that can result from additional CO2 in future, but even in a worst case scenario whatever change that may happen can only ever have a marginal future effect on global temperature.
Whatever political efforts are made to de-carbonize economies or to reduce man-made CO2 emissions, (and to be effective at temperature control those efforts would have to be universal and worldwide), those efforts can only now affect at most ~13% of the future warming potential of CO2 up to the currently unthinkably high level of 1000ppmv.
So increasing CO2 in the atmosphere can not now inevitably lead directly to much more warming and certainly not to a catastrophic and dangerous temperature increase.
Importantly as the future temperature effect of increasing CO2 emissions can only be so minor, there is no possibility of ever attaining the much vaunted political target of less than +2.0°C by the control of CO2 emissions[3].
Global Warming advocates always assert that all increases in the concentration of CO2 are solely man-made. This is not necessarily so, as the biosphere and slightly warming oceans will also outgas CO2. In any event at ~3% of the total[4] Man-made CO2 at its maximum is only a minor part of the CO2 transport within the atmosphere. The recent IPCC report now admits that currently increasing CO2 levels are probably only ~50% man-made.
On the other hand it is likely that any current global warming, if continuing and increased CO2 is:
§ largely a natural process
§ within normal limits
§ probably beneficial up to about a further 2.0°C+ [5].
It could be not be influenced by any remedial decarbonisation action, however drastic, taken by a minority of nations.
In a rational, non-political world, that prospect should be greeted with unmitigated joy.
If it is so:
· concern over CO2 as a man-made pollutant can be mostly discounted.
· it is not essential to disrupt the economy of the Western world to no purpose.
· the cost to the European economy alone is considered to be ~ £165 billion per annum till the end of the century, not including the diversion of employment and industries to elsewhere: this is deliberate economic self-harm that can be avoided: these vast resources could be spent for much more worthwhile endeavours.
· were warming happening, unless excessive, it provides a more benign climate for the biosphere and mankind.
· any extra CO2 has already increased the fertility of all plant life on the planet.
· if warming is occurring at all, a warmer climate within natural variation would provide a future of greater opportunity and prosperity for human development, especially so for the third world.
De-carbonisation outcomes
To quantify what might be achieved by any political action for de-carbonization by Western economies, the comparative table below shows the remaining effectiveness of each 100ppmv tranche up to 1000ppmv, with the total global warming in each of the five diminution assessments.
The table below shows the likely range of warming arising from these divergent (sceptical and IPCC) views, (without feedbacks, which are questionably either negative or positive: but probably not massively positive as assumed by CAGW alarmists), that would be averted with an increase of CO2 for the full increase from 400 ppmv to 1000 ppmv.
The results above for countries and country groups show a range for whichever scenario of only a matter of a few thousandths to a few hundredths of a degree Centigrade.
However it is extremely unlikely that the developing world is going to succumb to non-development of their economies on the grounds of reducing CO2 emissions. So it is very likely that the developing world’s CO2 emissions are going to escalate whatever is done by developed nations.
These figures show that whatever the developed world does in terms of decreasing CO2 emissions the outcome is likely to be either immaterial or more likely even beneficial. The table below assumes that the amount of CO2 released by each of the world’s nations or nation is reduced universally by some 20%: this is a radical reduction level but just about conceivable.
These extreme, economically destructive and immensely costly efforts by participating western nations to reduce temperature by de-carbonization should be seen in context:
§ the changing global temperature patterns, the current standstill and likely impending cooling.
§ the rapidly growing CO2 emissions from the bulk of the world’s most populous nations as they continue their development.
§ the diminishing impact of any extra CO2 emissions on any temperature increase.
§ normal daily temperature variations at any a single location range from 10°C to 20°C.
§ normal annual variations value can be as much as 40°C to 50°C.
§ that participating Europe as a whole only accounts for ~11% of world CO2 emissions.
§ that the UK itself is now only about ~1.5% of world CO2 emissions.
As the margin of error for temperature measurements is about 1.0°C, the miniscule temperature effects shown above arise from the extreme economic efforts of those participating nations attempting to control their CO2 emissions. Thus the outcomes in terms of controlling temperature can only ever be marginal, immeasurable and thus irrelevant.
The committed Nations by their actions alone, whatever the costs they incurred to themselves, might only ever effect virtually undetectable reductions of World temperature. So it is clear that all the minor but extremely expensive attempts by the few convinced Western nations at the limitation of their own CO2 emissions will be inconsequential and futile[6].
Professor Judith Curry’s Congressional testimony 14/1/2014[7]:
“Motivated by the precautionary principle to avoid dangerous anthropogenic climate change, attempts to modify the climate through reducing CO2 emissions may turn out to be futile. The stagnation in greenhouse warming observed over the past 15+ years demonstrates that CO2 is not a control knob on climate variability on decadal time scales.”
Professor Richard Lindzen UK parliament committee testimony 28/1/2014 on IPCC AR5[8]:
“Whatever the UK decides to do will have no impact on your climate, but will have a profound impact on your economy. (You are) Trying to solve a problem that may not be a problem by taking actions that you know will hurt your economy.”
and paraphrased “doing nothing for fifty years is a much better option than any active political measures to control climate.”
As global temperatures have already been showing stagnation or cooling[9] over the last seventeen years or more, the world should fear the real and detrimental effects of global cooling[10] rather than being hysterical about limited, beneficial or now non-existent warming[11].
References:
[1] http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc%5Ftar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/222.htm
[2] http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/05/why-global-warming-alarmism-isnt-science-2.php
[3] http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/ccctolpaper.pdf
[4] http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
[5] http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9057151/carry-on-warming/
[6] http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.fr/2013/11/lomborg-spain-wastes-hundreds-of.html
[7] http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=07472bb4-3eeb-42da-a49d-964165860275
[8] http://judithcurry.com/2014/01/28/uk-parliamentary-hearing-on-the-ipcc/
[9] http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3436241/the-inescapable-apocalypse-has-been-seriously-underestimated.thtml
[10] http://www.iceagenow.com/Triple_Crown_of_global_cooling.htm
[11] http://notrickszone.com/2010/12/28/global-cooling-consensus-is-heating-up-cooling-over-the-next-1-to-3-decades/
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Matthew R Marler says, August 11, 2014 at 8:39 am:
“Net heat flow is always from warmer to cooler parcels (…)”
There is no such thing as ‘net heat’ in a thermal exchange between two objects at different temperatures. There is ‘net energy’ and this net energy is defined as the HEAT. This might seem like pure semantics, but it’s not. It is a very important distinction.
“Warming of the surface is caused by the radiant energy of the sun; the net warming effect of CO2 is caused by the reduction in the surface cooling rate.”
There exists no such net warming effect from CO2, Matthew. Only on a theoretical level and in closed glass boxes in lab experiments. Not in the real dynamic surface/atmosphere system. For the simple reason that more CO2 in the atmosphere can never reduce the atmospheric temperature gradient up from the solar-heated surface and hence reduce the rate of energy loss from it.
Kristian, maybe you can address my question no one responded to. What about CO2 and “optical depth”. That is that as CO2 density increases, it is delivered higher into the atmosphere. Higher up is colder with less or no water vapor to slow outward IR. The newly added CO2 now does that slowing. How do you understand this?
Vince Causey says, August 11, 2014 at 9:08 am:
OK, I see that you don’t understand at all what I’m saying.
AlecM 12:11am: “Real GHE is obtained by calculating no cloud or ice albedo, 341 W/m^2, mean surface temperature and subtracting that 4 to 5 deg C from present ~15 deg C, ~ 11 K”
That 11K is just using your different definition of GHE. Satellites measure Tmean = 255K in thin atm. at their orbit and surface thermometers in Earth thick surface atm. measure Tmean = 288K. This is not disputed unless you can find a basic physics error in one of them. Which would make the evening news.
10:26pm: “…the heat generation rate in the atmosphere is 238.5 SW..”
Heat doesn’t exist in nature. There is no energy generated in the atm. either as the atm. uses up no fuel. This comes from your confusion over applying the generalized 1st law in non-atm. text books from your 10:02pm:
“(monochromatic heating rate of matter/unit volume) = – ∇.(monochromatic radiative flux density)”
Your 1st term for the atm. is = 0 as no energy is generated within the atm. and the term on the other side for the atm. is (net energy in from sun – net energy out from surface) for the volume of interest. For the surface volume balance, the mass of the atm. radiates a real flux incident on the surface all the time at all frequencies at all of its temperatures and has to be included as in nature.
******
Ghengis 6:53am: There is a difference; not my research interest to figure out how exactly.
Nick Stokes says:
August 10, 2014 at 4:05 pm
“Care to explain the arithmetic behind
[quoting] “CO2 at 400pmmv is already committed and immutable. So CO2 has already reached about ~87+% of its potential warming effect in the atmosphere.”
Anyone?”
—————-
Explaining the arithmetic …. is easy.
Trying to explain one’s belief that CO2 ‘s ability to “trap” heat declines logarithmically …. is not easy.
Especially given the FACT that there is no known entity in the universe that is capable of “trapping” thermal (heat) energy other than the proverbial Black Holes that exist at the center of galaxies.
Thermal (heat) energy can be converted to mass [e=mc2], but it can’t be trapped. (Unless one invents a container whose inside surface is a 100% perfect reflector of IR/thermal (heat) energy)
And without said “trapping” ability being possible, ……. then said “logarithmically decline” is an impossibility.
If one uses an instrument to release a “2 second burst of IR from the surface” …. it does not simply disappear after traveling 2 or 3 feet through the air as a result of being “trapped” by the CO2 molecules therein.
A “point” measurement of the IR intensity decreases the farther it travel from its source, but that is due to its “scattering” …. and not because it is being “trapped”.
What’s good for the “IR” goose …. is good for the “IR” gander, …. regardless of whether it is a H2O vapor “goose” …. or a CO2 “gander.”
Now iffen you are talking “buckets under a leaking roof”, then “yes”, the ability of the buckets to “trap” rainwater decreases logarithmically as the buckets fill up.
Samuel C Cogar, I haven’t heard anyone say, or mean to say, CO2 “traps” heat. My layman understanding is that upward IR heat is like ball in a pinball machine. CO2 is the bumpers.
climatereason says:
August 11, 2014 at 3:26 am
///////////////
Tony
When I typed my comment, I initially had 280ppm, but before sending it, I reduced the figure, perhaps i should have reduced to about 255/260ppm rather than 200ppm. That said, I would not forcefully argue against using 280ppm as the base figure.
RMB says:
August 11, 2014 at 8:52 am
If my explanation is crap as you put it I need an explanation as to why I cannot get heat into uncovered water but if I float a metal object on the surface killing the surface tension underneath and apply the heat source to the floatin object the water heats as one would expect, explain that without surface tension. This reply is for Richard Verney.
+++++++++++
Well I am not Richard, but I am the one that said your explanation was crap : )
Surface tension allows evaporation which cools the surface. Increased airflow increases evaporation. Evaporation always takes energy from the surface of the water and transfers it to the air.
IR is only capable of penetrating a few microns into the water which increases the rate of evaporation. Are you starting to get the picture here? Surface tension isn’t really a factor in this.
Surface tension does inhibit convection and diffusion through the water though which makes it harder to heat the water under the surface.
Basically the only way the oceans are warmed is by SW radiation from the sun which penetrates many meters down into the ocean.
Genghis, aren’t you leaving out the sloshing, tradewind furrowing, la nina piling, and ocean conveyer effect for mixing warm water down and forcing cold water up from the thermocline? You put cold water in a tub, then warm water on top of it, then put a kid in, the warm and the cold will get mixed.
AlecM says:
August 11, 2014 at 8:10 am
@agfosterjr: the warming of the camel’s back from solar SW energy is by the physical process called ‘thermalisation’. This is the absorption of SW energy quanta by raising electron orbitals to higher energy states followed by emission of lower energy quanta, a process called fluorescence.
The lower energy quanta cause the energy to be transferred to greater molecular motion; heat.
=================================================================
Again, the word ‘heat’ was around before ‘molecules’ were identified. Your neologism ‘thermalization’ is the same as ‘heating,’ and I don’t think we need it (your new word). Why do you feel the need to eliminate the gerund–and verb? –AGF
Vince Causey says:
August 11, 2014 at 9:08 am
/////////////////////
Now apply that to the real world.
You can cook your steak say 10 inches above a BBQ, but you cannot cook it 10 inches from the side of the BBQ, still less 10 inches below the BBQ. But if you measure the IR budget, it is the same below the BBQ as above it.
In the real world other energy exchanges dominate other the radiative budget, and that is why it is likely that the radative energy budget is unlikely to explain how the climate on planet Earth works.
Indeed, if the energy budget was as K&T depict, ie., some homogenous whole, there would be little in the way of weather. It is only because the system is not dynamically balanced and it is not some homogenous whole, that we get weather patterns as energy is distributed around the oceans and the atmosphere (bother laterally and vertically).
Richard Verney, My IR gun uses batteries because the display and chip in it require more energy than is produced by the IR source.
It so happens that my primary use of the IR gun is to monitor the various engine temperatures. One of the amazing things is how well all the radiant IR sources manage to heat up my engine room and make hot water for me.
If you really want a demonstration of IR’s effectiveness at heating objects I would invite you to spend an afternoon working on my engine with me 🙂
Kristian,
“OK, I see that you don’t understand at all what I’m saying.”
Believe it or not, I have read all your posts twice and I agree with everything you have said. If my response sounds pedantic it is because it is the only thing I could argue with. 🙂
A C Osborne;
Your ignorance is astounding, if you tried your experiment
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I already admitted my mistake upthread when Leanard Weinstein pointed it out to me. Whipping a dead horse?
As for the rest of it, nothing much changes. Kristian has claimed that only heat can make something else hotter. I gave him two examples that a ten year old can understand that falsify that claim. When I did so, he started complaining he was talking about heat transfer. That’s precisely the problem. We’re talking about radiated energy which is not heat. It only turns into heat when it is absorbed by something.
The amount of energy any given body radiates is governed by Stefan-Boltzmann Law:
P=5.67*10^-8*t^4
Notice that this formula has no term in it for the temperature of the ambient surroundings. A body at 15 C in an atmosphere at -40 C radiates 390.1 w/m2. A body at 15 C in an atmosphere at +40 C radiates 390.1 w/m2. The difference is that one will, over time, be cooling off and the other will be, over time, warming up. But at that point in time, the body is radiating 390.1 w/m2.
The important take away is that what the body is radiating is not heat. It is energy carried by photons (which have no mass and hence cannot carry “heat”). But when the photons are absorbed by matter, the energy is then converted to heat. Since two bodies radiating toward each other cannot change the amount of energy they radiate to be anything other than in accordance with SB Law, that energy has to go some where and turn into heat when absorbed.
So put a cold object next to a warm object, and the cold object will warm and the warm object will cool based on the net transfer of energy between them. But make no mistake about it, there is energy going both ways, with the net satisfying the requirements of both 2nd Law of Thermo and Stefan-Boltzmann Law.
RMB says:
August 11, 2014 at 8:52 am
/////////////////////////
First of all, I should just point out that I am not the one who is calling your explanation crap. That is not my style of writing. I was simply quoting and expanding upon a comment made by another commentator, which other commentator although largely agreeing with you, called your expllanation crap.
Second, surface tension may play a role, but how effective a role is moot. The ocean is rarely as calm as a mill pond, and wind will tend to rip apart the very top of the ocean and in the process this may weaken the effect of surface tension. Surface tension may inhibit convection, but probably has little effect on conducton, but I have not seen experiments that truly deal with that issue.
Third, we know that LWIR pentrates water. We know from this that the surface tension of water does not cause an impenetrable barrier to LWIR. However, the optical absorption of LWIR in water is such that it becomes fully absorbed within a very short distance. See http://scienceofdoom.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/dlr-absorption-ocean-matlab.png from which you will note that 60% of LWIR is fully absorbed in just 4 microns. This is of course a vertical distance, and because of the omnidirectional nature of DWLWIR such that about 10% of it intersects with the ocean at a grazing angle of 10deg or less, 20% at a grazing angle of 20deg or less, 30% of it at a grazing angle of 30deg or less, etc I suggested that about 80% of all DWLWIR is full absorbed within 3microns of vertical depth (that figure may be may be a little too high). So theoretically IR is capable of heating water. But does it cause only the very top (ie., the first few microns) to evaporate or can it in some way heat the bulk of the ocean below? My post was about heating the bulk, and I was suggesting that it cannot be by conduction since the energy flux is upwards (the very top of the ocean is cooler than the 10 micron layer which is cooler than the 15 micron layer, ie., the temperature profile of the ocean is warmer at shallow depth ( see: http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/oceans/additional/science-focus/modis/MODIS_and_AIRS_SST_comp_fig2.i.jpg ). I suggested that unless the energy absorbed in the first few microns can be dissipated and diluted to depth at a speed greater than the speed at which DWLWIR absorbed in the first few microns would power/drive evaporation, then it would be difficult for it to heat the oceans; it would predominatly drive evaporation rather than raise water temperature.. I suggested that ocean overturning was a slow mechanical process and therefore that does not look a promising mechanism.
Fourth, I suspect that what you see with your IR heat gun is that it cannot heat the bulk liquid since it simply boils off the top because nearly all the energy is absorbed within just a few microns, causing rapid evaporation from the very top down. To the extent that it warms the bulk this is probably because the container is being warmed, and the warmed container warms the water by conduction. I agree that water that is free to evaporate is very difficult to heat by LWIR coming from above.
Fifth, your example of floating a steel plate is an example of heating by conduction. That is something rather different. Floating a steel plate on top of water and heating the steel plate from above involves much the same process as heating water in a metal sauspan placed on a cooker element and heating the base of the sauspan from below, only that it is less efficient since convestion wasista in carrying heat upwards.,
The upshot is that Ghengis and myself are to some extent with you in that we both see difficulties in DWLWIR effectively heating the ocean. We both consider that it is likely that to the extent that it is doing anything, it is predominantly driving evaporation.
We both agree that it is solar that heats the ocean; fortunately the optical absorption of solar is very different such that solar energy is diluted and dissipated over a volume about a million times larger than that at which DWLWIR is absorbed, with the effect that solar does not burn off the ocean from the top down, but rather it gently warms it at depth.
Richard Verney, I’m trying to understand these concepts as a layman. You said” ocean overturning was a slow mechanical process and therefore that does not look a promising mechanism” for warming the ocean. This makes me think of a description of la nina I saw awhile back. It said that trade winds blow toward the western Pacific pushing warm surface water along with it. The warm water “piles up” in the western Pacific and weighs and pushes warm water down on the thermocline. With the thermocline pushed down in the western Pacific, it rises in the eastern Pacific delivering cold water to the surface. This has been used as an hypothesis for the “pause”. Seems altimetry supports this idea as the sea level is shown to be higher in the western Pacific with a falling incline to the east.
@richard verney: for atmospheric temperature <= sea surface temperature, net LWIR direction is surface to atmosphere; it cannot heat the sea surface.
@davidmhoffer: A body creates a propagating electromagnetic field. When it interacts with an opposing field, net EM energy transfers from the hotter to the cooler body at the rate:
Net EM Flux = σ(εhot.Thot^4 – εcold.Tcold^4) (parallel plates). The heat transfer rate to the hotter body is the negative of the EM flux, so it cools. At the cooler body, the absorbed net EM energy thermalises to kinetic (heat) energy.
A single S-B equation implies that Tcold = 0 deg K, so it is a potential, not a real energy flux.
This is standard radiative physics. On average there is zero EM flux from cooler to hotter. You have to consider thermal incoherence, but it averages to zero.
@agfosterjr: thermalisation is a specific physics term which is used when energy quanta are converted to molecular motion. It is the process of producing heat, not heat itself.
@Trick: satellites measure mean 255 deg K OLR emission temperature but that is the flux-weighted mean of the partial spectral temperatures.
There is no single -18 deg C/255 deg K at 5-6 km as claimed by Climate Alchemy; it is a virtual construct with no physical existence.
Therefore 33 K GHE does not exist as a physical entity. The real GHE is set by albedo change but is superimposed on cyclical temperature changes from solar induced ocean heating and cooling. There is near zero warming from well-mixed GHEs, as is being proved experimentally.
Hence the change of GHE from 2 K at the last glacial maximum to the present 11 K is from biofeedback reducing albedo.
“DWLWIR could be 1,000,000 W/m^2 and if you emitted 1,000,050 W/m^2 worth of UWLWIR, you wouldn’t feel it any more than if the DWLWIR were a mere 300 W/m^2 and your UWLWIR 350 W/m^2. Only the net energy matters in a heat transfer.”
Not exactly. If DWLWIR transfer efficiency is 20% and UWLWIR transfer efficiency is even just 20.5%, you’d absolutely notice the difference. Spectral analyses matter!!
Kristian says:
August 11, 2014 at 9:12 am
I can’t make a lick of sense out of that. Do you claim precedent for these defintions (if so please cite authorities) or do you just make them up as you go along? –AGF
Just noticed another howler: ‘So put a cold object next to a warm object, and the cold object will warm and the warm object will cool based on the net transfer of energy between them. But make no mistake about it, there is energy going both ways, with the net satisfying the requirements of both 2nd Law of Thermo and Stefan-Boltzmann Law.’
WRONG: for purely radiative heat transfer between the two bodies, the heat energy lost by the hotter body equals the heat energy gained by the cooler body; the EM energy transfer is one way only on average (thermal incoherence superimposes an oscillation about zero mean)
Since nobody seems to agree on what heat is might I suggest we distinguish between radiating transfer of energy (over long distances) and molecular transfer of energy (over short distances)? Call them T1 and T2 just for the purposes of this thread (they’re ultimately the same thing). –AGF
Matthew R Marler says: August 11, 2014 at 8:48 am
“12ppm to 800 ppm is 6 doublings, of which 5 have occurred already.”
So a lower bound of 12ppm has been plucked out of the air as well? I actually think his denominator involves the 33°C. But that’s the effect of all GHG, not just CO2.
But the thing is, no-one knows what the arithmetic of % that is basic to the essay actually means. Yet you thought it was a good essay?
Samuel C Cogar says: August 11, 2014 at 9:36 am
“Explaining the arithmetic …. is easy.”
But no-one can do it?
StuL says:
August 10, 2014 at 4:14 pm
I used to believe that CO2 causes a limited warming too, but I am not so sure now, Ithink Venus shows that there is no effect whether 0.004% or 95% http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html
i want to this site and it is very interesting. I don’t have the time now but if correct this should hold true for every planet with an atmosphere in the solar system if so it is definitive and irrefutable.
Maybe someone that has a little more time can take a look at this.
Nick Stokes says
I am not a big fan of Nicks nor do I typically agree with him but he is correct the basic % statement made makes no sense.
Nick Stokes: Yet you thought it was a good essay?
Sure. Good books have been written that contain detailed elaborations of the equilibrium model of the Earth, even though Earth doesn’t have an equilibrium climate. All the laws are approximations, and little filling in helps to clarify the author’s meaning in this case. It would be helpful if he would make the case more explicitly, but it isn’t a terrible flaw.
What did you think about my propositions that the next 3 doublings, at current rates, would take about 450 years and produce around 3C of warming? If that happens, only 6/9th or about 67% of the warming achievable through the next 450 years (starting long ago) will have occurred already. Some people have written that another doubling after 800ppm can not occur from fossil fuel burning, in which case more than 80% of the achievable heating has already occurred.
The author is a little loose, but the idea is hardly mysterious.
A point I’ve been trying to make, with little success, by describing the atmospheric resistance to radiation as a set of resistors in series rather than a single resistor. The marginal change to the resistance near the Earth’s surface, where the resistance is the largest is much smaller than the marginal change at height, where the resistance is the smallest. Because there are processes that “short circuit” the radiative loss channel — notably convection and convection carrying latent heat — even this distributed, nonlinear shift in total resistance in the radiative channels is diminished in its impact by the shunt resistance. GCMs appear to be largely incorrect in their coarse-grained treatment of this — the vertical slab size is too large to see the one, and far, far too broad to see the others, so both are replaced with ad hoc linearized approximations for the entire cell(s).
Not to mention the fact that this all still assumes that one can break the net heat transport down in terms of linearized “forcings” at all in an open nonlinear chaotic system.
In the end, it all comes down to the GCMs. Either this problem is solvable with our currently accessible computational resources, or else it is not. If it is, all well and good but sooner or later in this case the models will need to come way down off of their literally too high horses and start corresponding to the actual observed climate history as it evolves into the future. If not, it is sadly rather probable that it will never be solvable, because of the many, many orders of magnitude more compute power that should be necessary to solve the problem correctly, according to what we already know about problems of this type.
We cannot predict the weather more than a few weeks into the future, and fail to predict even very simple, large scale numbers like “number of hurricanes expected this year” or “whether or not El Nino will form” a mere six months in advance with any significant accuracy, and what accuracy we do have comes as much from human art as it does from any specific computational model.
What is truly amazing is that the modellers have managed to sell the world the idea that even though the models do not generate predictions (if they did they would be instantly falsified) and even though their projections are falsified anyway, even though we know that the weather models that are the direct antecedents of the climate models are not integrable over years such that they get anything but noise almost fully decorrelated from the actual weather, we should still take them seriously even as the world’s actual climate does something completely unpredicted by the models. As we might have predicted! It would have been amazing if the climate models had worked, but it is completely unsurprising that they are not working.
Beyond that, the computing “forcings” and “feedbacks” and so on is all model dependent, and we know — or at this point, should know — that the models we have are rather unreliable and hence so are all assertions of forcings, feedbacks, and other attempts to linearize the problem into politically usable terms!
Humans just aren’t going to respond well to the fact that hey, it could actually cool some over the next five years — or not — storms could get worse — or better — we could have great droughts — or normal rainfall — or massive floods — or some mix of all three — but what the heck, we cannot predict any of what will happen with any reliability, so give me five percent of your annual income every year anyway to help solve the problem that won’t be solved by any measures we take to solve it using that money, according to those models, even if the models we have that aren’t working turn out to work after all.
In fact, they might just say: Keep your damn hands off of my wallet unless and until you have at least one model that manifestly works, not just over its reference period (training set) but works to predict — not project — the actual future in such a way that the actual future doesn’t immediately falsify the robust prediction.
And then, of course, we could start worrying about thirty years, or fifty years. Or not.
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