Guest essay by David Archibald
One Senate inquiry is addressing Australia’s drift towards a fuel crisis, a sin of omission on the part of the Rudd/Gillard government and the current Liberal one. Another Senate inquiry is investigating a sin of commission that started under Howard’s watch and continues to this day, namely the proliferation of wind turbines under the RET Scheme.
Submissions to the latter inquiry are online here. I commend submission number five by your humble correspondent. It is reproduced following:
Submission to the Senate Inquiry into Wind Turbines
No electric power producer would take power from a wind turbine operation if they had the choice. All the wind turbines in Australia have been forced upon the power companies that take their output.
So the question has to be asked why do we have wind turbines in the first place?
Wind turbines are commonly considered to produce renewable energy. This is distinct from energy sources that are once-through and thus finite.
The rationale for renewable energy is that its use reduces the consumption of fossil fuels by substitution. The rationale for that in turn is that fossil fuels contribute to the warming of the atmosphere through the greenhouse effect. This last rationale goes to the source of the wind turbine problem. So it is apposite to examine that claim.
While climate change is real in that the climate is always changing, and the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide is real, the effect at the current atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is minuscule.
The greenhouse gasses keep the planet 30°C warmer than it would otherwise be if they weren’t in the atmosphere. So the average temperature of the planet’s surface is 15°C instead of -15°C.
Of that effect, 80% is provided by water vapour, 10% by carbon dioxide and methane, ozone and so on make up the remaining 10%. So the warming provided by carbon dioxide is three degrees. The pre-industrial level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 286 parts per million.
Let’s round that up to 300 parts per million to make the maths easier. You could be forgiven for thinking that if 300 parts per million produces three degrees of warming, the relationship is that every one hundred parts per million produces a degree of warming. We are adding 2 parts per million to the atmosphere each year which is 100 parts per million every 50 years and at that rate the world would heat up at a fair clip.
But the relationship isn’t arithmetic, it is logarithmic. The University of Chicago has an online program called Modtran which allows you to put in an assumed atmospheric carbon dioxide content and it will tell you how much atmospheric heating that produces. It turns out that the first 20 parts per million produces half of the heating effect to date. The effect rapidly drops away as the carbon dioxide concentration increases.
By the time we get to the current level in the atmosphere of 400 parts per million, the heating effect is only 0.1°C per one hundred parts per million. At that rate, the temperature of the atmosphere might rise by 0.2°C every one hundred years. The relationship between atmospheric concentration and heating effect is shown in Figure 1 following:
Figure 1: Heating Effect of CO2 per 20 ppm increment
The total atmospheric heating from carbon dioxide to date is of the order of 0.1°C. By the time humanity has dug up all the rocks we can economically burn, and burnt them, the total heating effect from carbon dioxide might be of the order of 0.4°C. This would take a couple of centuries. A rise of this magnitude would be lost in the noise of the climate system. This agrees with observations which have not found any signature from carbon dioxide-related heating in the atmosphere.
The carbon dioxide level of the atmosphere is actually dangerously low, not dangerously high. During the glacial periods of our current ice age, the level got as low as 180 parts per million. Plant growth shuts down at 150 parts per million. Several times in the last three million years, life above sea level came within 30 parts per million of extinction due to a lack of carbon dioxide. The more humanity can increase the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, the safer life on Earth will be.
Further to all that, belief in global warming from carbon dioxide requires a number of underlying assumptions. One of these is that the feedback loop of increased heating from carbon dioxide causes more water vapour to be held in the atmosphere which in turns causes more heating in a runaway effect. And that this feedback effect only starts from the pre-industrial level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – not a higher level or a lower level, but exactly at the pre-industrial level.
Figure 2 illustrates some of the mental gymnastics and self-delusion required to believe in global warming. It shows the cumulative increase in temperature for a given carbon dioxide concentration:
Figure 2: Required Feedback Effect for Global Warming from Carbon Dioxide
Some estimates of the heating effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide are as high as 6.0°C for a doubling of the concentration from the pre-industrial level. For this to be true, atmospheric heating of at least 2.0°C should have been seen to date.
In the real world, there has been a temperature rise of 0.3°C in the last 35 years as measured by satellites. This is well short of what is predicted by global warming theory as practiced by the CSIRO, Bureau of Meteorology and others.
This is also a far more plausible reason for the warming of the planet during the current Modern Warm Period which followed the ending of the Little Ice Age in 1900. The energy that keeps the Earth from looking like Pluto comes from the Sun and the level and make-up of that energy does change.
The Sun was more active in the second half of the 20th century than it had been in the previous 8,000 years. As shown by the geomagnetic Aa Index, the Sun started getting more active in the mid-19th century and the world’s glaciers started retreating at about the same time.
It is entirely rational to think that a more active Sun would result in a warmer Earth and this is borne out by empirical observation. To wit, the increased Antarctic sea ice cover observed during the satellite period. This is shown in Figure 3 following of 12 month running average sea ice extension from 1979 to December 2014:
Figure 3: 12 Month Average Sea Ice Extension 1979 – 2014
Source: Professor Ole Humlum, University of Svalbaard
As Figure 3 shows, Arctic sea ice extent retreated for the last 20 years of the 20th century. That is compatible with global warming for any reason. At the same time, Antarctic sea extent increased by an amount similar to the Arctic sea ice loss.
This is not possible with global warming due to carbon dioxide. It also means that global warming due to carbon dioxide did not cause the bulk of the warming in the rest of the planet because carbon dioxide’s effect was overwhelmed in Antarctica by some other force.
The increase in Antarctic sea ice extent is entirely consistent with increased global temperatures due to high solar activity as explained by Henrik Svensmark’s theory. This theory holds that high solar activity produces a lower neutron flux in the lower troposphere from intergalactic cosmic radiation, in turn providing fewer nucleation sites for cloud droplet formation and thus less cloud cover.
Sunnier skies over Antarctica in turn mean that more solar radiation is reflected by high-albedo snow and ice instead of being absorbed in the cloud cover. Thus Antarctica has cooled.
The rest of the world has enjoyed the best climatic conditions, and thus agricultural growing conditions, since the 13th century. But what the Sun gives it can also take away. Solar physicists have been warning for over a decade now that the Sun is entering a prolonged period of low activity similar to that of the Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1710.
Most recently, Livingstone and Penn have predicted a maximum amplitude for the next solar cycle, Solar Cycle 25, of 7. By comparison, the previous solar cycle, Solar Cycle 23, had a maximum amplitude of 120.
The longest temperature record on the planet is the Central England Temperature Record from 1659. Using the solar-based forecasting model developed by Dr David Evans and the Livingstone and Penn estimate of Solar Cycle 25 amplitude of 7, a prediction can be made of the effect on the Central England Temperature out to 2040. That is shown in Figure 4 following:
Figure 4: Central England Temperature Record 1659 to 2040
As shown in Figure 4, the reduction in solar activity now being observed will result in temperatures returning to the levels of the mid-19th century at best, with the possibility of revisiting the lows of the 17th and 18th centuries. Peak summer temperatures may not change much but the length of the growing season will shorten at both ends, playing havoc with crop yields.
The notion of global warming has resulted in an enormous miss-allocation of resources in some Western societies but we can be thankful to it for one thing. If it had not been for the outrageous prostitution of science in the global warming cause, then the field of climate would not have attracted the attention that has determined what is actually happening to the Earth’s climate. Humanity would otherwise be sleepwalking into the severe cold period in train.
As demonstrated above, there is no moral basis for Australian society’s investment in wind turbines if the purpose of that investment is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through a form of renewable energy. Global warming due to carbon dioxide is of no consequence and the world is cooling anyway.
Wind turbines may lack a moral purpose but might there be some other good involved? Let’s go on to examine the claim that wind turbines provide renewable energy, thus reducing our depletion of finite energy resources.
Wind turbines are made using energy from coal at about 4 cents per kWh and provide energy thought to cost of the order of 10 cents per kWh. In effect, they are machines for taking cheap, stable and reliable energy from coal and giving it back in the form of an intermittent and unpredictable dribble at more than twice the price.
That is one thing. But what stops wind turbines from being renewable is that the making of wind turbines can’t be powered using energy from the wind turbines themselves.
If power from wind turbines costing 10 cents per kWh was used to make more wind turbines, then the wind turbines so produced would make power at something like 25 cents per kWh. The cost would compound away and any society that attempted to run itself on wind energy would collapse.
Wind energy as a component of a power system relies upon transfer of energy at its inception from another source. It is not renewable energy. It is no consolation that solar power from photovoltaic panels is much worse in this respect.
That wind energy is renewable energy is the second lie that the RET Scheme is based on, the first lie being that renewable energy is a palliative against global warming.
There is not much more that needs to be said. The RET Scheme is a monstrous misallocation of the nation’s resources and continues to make the Australian people poorer for no good reason. Those who concocted it and voted for it have sold the Australian people into the servitude and oppression of rent-seekers to the tune of $5 billion per annum.
The science and economics it is based on are no better than voodoo and witchcraft. The wind turbines scattered around the Australian countryside are a physical manifestation of the infestation of the body politic by the self-loathing, millenarian cult of global warming.
Unfortunately the RET Scheme and its ilk have drawn resources away from the development of energy sources that would power Australia cheaply, efficiently and with enough of a return on energy invested to maintain Australia’s high standard of living into the next millennium.
The same kind of intense interest from the wider scientific community that determined what is really happening with climate has also determined that the optimum nuclear technology for society to adopt is the thorium molten salt reactor. Any middle-ranking industrial power, such as Australia, could develop this technology, and should do so.
Much time and treasure has been lost already chasing the phantom menace of global warming. The sooner the RET Scheme is put to rest, the sooner that the nation’s efforts can be properly directed towards our security and welfare in developing the best possible energy source. This inquiry’s interest in wind turbines is timely and I recommend that the Senate go on to redirect the ship of state towards the better energy future that the nation needs if it is to survive and prosper.
David Archibald is a visiting fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington DC where his research interest is strategic energy policy. The Institute is a graduate school for US security agencies, State Department and Department of Defense: http://www.iwp.edu/faculty/page/David-Archibald
Mr Archibald has published several books and a number of papers on climate science. He has lectured on climate science in both US Senate and Congressional hearing rooms. His most recent book is Twilight of Abundance (Regnery, 2014).
There’s no greenhouse gas – at all. You have a atmosphere that is warm because of the sun and the sun’s heat trapped in water – what is called latent heat, nothing else. Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is an IR gas, nothing else.
He just about said it all.
Eugene WR Gallun
Eugene, as regulars here know, David Archibald’s essay exposes the same world-wide issue that affects all nations who have been sucked in to the ‘immediate urgency’ to erect wind turbines. By substituting the word ‘Australia’ with ‘A.N.Other Country’, the essay becomes yet another international argument against the global renewables industry.
Unfortunately, until the Earth’s ‘elders’ admit that they screwed up, then essays such as this will be brushed aside in support of all those who have such a vested interest in the CAGW whitewash (which includes this link to Belgium consortium who clearly want to ‘follow the money’):
http://www.glassforeurope.com/images/cont/117_57609_file.pdf
What makes you think they screwed up?
Renewable energy is not a mistake, it is a deliberate policy entered into by people who knew full well it was expensive, deeply antisocial and pointless.
The more interesting question is ‘Cui bono?’
+1 for Leo Smith
One edit perhaps?
“…deeply antisocial and pointless.”
“…deeply anithuman and evil.”
Thanks, David, a great read. I just wish some of those useless figures in politics read it. I’ve been eye-ing off the tender for the Government’s 20 million trees, then a stumbling block appeared. This comment by one of our group said: “As also discussed, if we don’t offer information on in-kind contributions or carbon incomes for deduction from the costs tendered , then we will probably be non-compliant.”
Carbon incomes? What do you think?
We still decided to put the tender in, and be non-compliant!
No, he did not say that. We skeptics should first agree whether CO2 is able or is not able to warm atmosphere. I think that it is not able.
Agreed on that one. When you take into account the lapse rate – a simple enough calculation based on the Gas Laws, a long-established part of real “hard” science – there simply isn’t anywhere for the mythical “greenhouse effect” to go. The terrifying consequences of the even more mythical “anthropogenic greenhouse heating”, even more so, as reality continues to demonstrate.
Skeptics should agree with reality. It has worked so far. The lapse rate is what makes the effect work. Yes CO2 acts as an insulator in the atmosphere. This makes it warmer than it would otherwise be. Try sleeping without a blanket in winter.
Actually, water vapor is the blanket, and CO2 the sheet beneath it. Insignificant difference if you have one sheet or two.
Gas law says adding CO2 would actually make it colder. If we assume CO2 jumps to 600 ppmv and assume that the increased CO2 replaces O2 (from burning those evil hydrocarbons) in the mix, the atmosphere’s gas constant should increase by 3.5E 10^-5 and equilibrium temperature should drop by somewhere around 0.0000035°C/K… give or take and order of magnitude since the tables I’m working with only go out to 10^-4 in resolution. I’m not going to be worrying about those kinds of changes any time soon.
I don’t think CO2 can constitute a blanket effect in the present or even quadrupling of CO2. it isn’t a blanket and it isn’t a sheet …not even a thin sheet.
the ones stirring up the alarmists don’t care how much energy you expend trying to refute them. They have taken over the education system and almost all politicians BLANKETING their views.
Then need to be called what they are …communists or their useful idiots.
If one considers the equation for radiation absorption developed by Prof Hoyt Hottel at MIT (eg equation 5-145 in the Chemical Engineering Handbook) it can be determined that absorptivity of CO2 in the atmosphere at the present level is so small to be unmeasurable. The suggestion that CO2 contributes 20% to the total of so-called greenhouse gases is nonsense, Firstly, some 30% of the sun’s radiation that gets to the earth’s surface (of which about 70% is water surface, plus another large amount that is covered by some snow and ice at least for part of the year) is radiated directly to space particularly at night. Secondly, of the remaining 70% some 90% or more is radiated to space by water vapor, and water drops+ice particles in clouds. The temperature of the atmosphere comes from convective transfer of heat from the surface and from the phase change when water vapor condenses and freezes to form clouds. CO2 contributes to the radiation to space but this is not due to the IR absorption. It is due to convective exchange with other gases in the atmosphere and is at an average temperature of 220K to space at 4K. .As indicated CO2, so-called “greenhouse”, contribution is not measurable.
Next one needs to look at the many measurements (from balloon and ground stations) of CO2 in the atmosphere over 150 years and in ice cores. It has been found that CO2 lags temperature over the progress of one day (lag about 1hr), over a week, over a month, over a year, over cyclical periods of 60 years (lag upto 5yrs), and in ice cores by some 800 years. over long periods. This is measured proof that CO2 makes no “greenhouse” contribution.
@Esa-Matti:
You are correct. Below the tropopause, CO2 does no heating (just drives convection / precipitation a bit faster) and above that point it is a radiative gas to space, so cools. (Thus no tropospheric ‘hot spot’)
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/le-chatelier-and-his-principle-vs-the-trouble-with-trenberth/
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/tropopause-rules/
It is water that drives the planetary weather and climate and CO2 is just along for the ride, at most.
Excellent article! Thanks.
From the article:
Some estimates of the heating effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide are as high as 6.0°C for a doubling of the concentration from the pre-industrial level.
Yes, even as recently as a year ago we still saw the occasional comment telling us to get ready for that 6º of global warming. But those predictions have been quietly abandoned, without anyone admitting how totally wrong they were.
The first graph says it all: CO2 likely has some minuscule warming effect. However, most of that warming took place within the first 100 ppm. But at the current 400 ppm, there has been no measurable warming from the addition of more CO2. Human CO2 emissions could add another 20% – 25%, without any measurable global warming. The top chart makes that very clear.
Mr. Archibald states that the problem is not enough CO2 — not that there’s too much. He is 100% correct. The biosphere needs more CO2! It LOVES the rise in that harmless, beneficial trace gas. And there has been no downside ever identified. CO2 is completely harmless at current and projected concentrations.
The only thing keeping the carbon scare on life support is the immense piles of taxpayer loot added every year. Maybe with the recent change in political parties, that funding will finally be cut. There are certainly many more deserving science programs where the money would do some good. But they have been starved of funding because the money has been funneled into “climate change” carp.
The sooner we get our priorities in order, the better. I have no sympathy for riders on the ‘manmade global warming’ grant gravy train. They need to find productive work, instead of demonizing harmless, beneficial CO2. The sooner the better, and I look forward to hearing the squeals of anguish from those rent-seekers, as their fingers are removed from taxpayers’ wallets.
“Maybe with the recent change in political parties, that funding will finally be cut.”
Maybe, but I won’t be holding my breath. It is important to remember that this whole mess has been fueled by “good intentions”.
The key idea is: “I at least am willing to challenge greedy, over-consumers in the 1st world, for the sake of poor, battered Mother Earth. If you disagree then you must be in the pay of the oil companies, and are obviously indifferent to the devastation wrought on our grandchildren. Therefore, you should be on the moral defensive and silent in my presence while my ideas, and I, take precedence.”
That is the charge leveled against all climate skeptics, and it will still apply no matter how weak the AGW evidence becomes. Republicans in government in particular, are exquisitely sensitive to being charged as uncaring, unscientific, collaborators with the oil companies.
The real question is: What is the optimal response when the argument one faces is objectively untrue, but nonetheless has tremendous power and energy due to a conspicuous and pious claim of “good intentions”.
By the time humanity has dug up all the rocks we can economically burn, and burnt them, the total heating effect from carbon dioxide might be of the order of 0.4°C.
We can start calling it mother nature’s processed, condensed, stored solar energy instead of rocks. Or you can call every pound of coal the equal of 2 hours of the world record man-powered energy.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/12/climate-craziness-of-the-week-we-have-five-years-to-stop-building-coal-plants-and-gas-powered-cars/#comment-1735125
“Yes, even as recently as a year ago we still saw the occasional comment telling us to get ready for that 6º of global warming. But those predictions have been quietly abandoned, without anyone admitting how totally wrong they were.” About 1 week ago a spokesman from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said on the ABC that temperatures could rise up to 4.5 degrees by 2100.
Aussies will keep building wind turbines as long as people from other countries pretend to like us for doing it.
+100
I didn’t realize Aussies cared what other people thought of them….
Most of us down here don’t care what others think of us.
I think less of you (Aussies) the more wind mills you build.
So long as they build them in South Australia, I couldn’t care less of either.
The model-observations graph is not updated. How well is that model doing with updated CET-data? 2014 being the warmest year in that series and all.
And for those who do not like adjusted data: That series is adjusted. Adjusted down after the seventies. Is it OK to use adjusted data?
What are you talking about? “model-observations graph”? What graph are you reffering to? Adjusting temperatures down after the 1970? Well, I have never seen a temperature data series that did that. Maybe you should attempt to enlighten us.
Jeff: Reading is your friend:
“Using the solar-based forecasting model developed by Dr David Evans and the Livingstone and Penn estimate of Solar Cycle 25 amplitude of 7, a prediction can be made of the effect on the Central England Temperature out to 2040. That is shown in Figure 4 following:”
Hope that helps. How is the performance of that model? After all Hadcet’s warmest year was 2014.
And that includes a downward adjustment for the most present years. Hadcet has been adjusted down after 1974. 0.1 – 0.3 deg C (most during summer months and increased adjustment with time). An UHI adjustment. So it is not “raw unadjusted data” some are asking for.
Is it OK to use adjusted data?
My thoughts have been that the one thing to come out of the past Global warming meme that might be of value is the raising of domestic energy costs that will eventually make it a no brainer to move into some form of Nuclear Energy program. But what an expensive grossly wasteful way of accomplishing this political move?
Do we have or need to reduce the community to a base state of energy poverty, cripple our industrial capacity when the alternative, if this expense increasing sham attack on C02 was put aside, we can utilize the extensive coal reserves of Australia for the next three or four hundred years or more with clean modern and efficient use of coal to electricity power and so gradually pave the way, moving progressively towards the most modern scalable molten salt reactors that our richly endowed and economically secure economy can create. Or if there are health benefits from moving quickly to nuclear, then we have the economic capacity to make that choice.
All done without any need to lower living standards for our wider community. Cheap available power, jobs and a secure vibrant economy is an ideal base for the support of new ideas and development of better technology, a win for all and within that parameter, the ability to help other less fortunate countries move to new cheaper technology
I disagree with the whole Greenhouse gas hypothesis, but love to use the logarithmic graph to make a simple point. That is, even if the hypothesis was true a simple graph from zero CO2 and it’s assumed role in temperature, plotted through known temperatures and CO2 levels of pre industry and today quickly show any future projections of “catastrophic warming” to be mathematically absurd!
Very well put, I will send it to my grandchildren for information.
From the figures given above for Australia there seems to be an enormous difference in the cost of installing and using wind turbines and the price being paid by the consumer in the UK . According to a media report a few days ago the energy companies are being paid a guaranteed £85/MWhr when the turbines work and £130 /MWhr when they do not (I cannot provide the exact ref – you either accept that the figures are quoted in good faith and to the best of my memory or you do not).
Have I misunderstood the report , which on the face of it suggests that the energy companies make more money by not bothering to do any maintenance- surely not.
As to the general economic argument for renewables I thought that the paper by Weissbach that WUWT highlighted a few months ago established conclusively that reliance on renewables was incompatible with the life style currently enjoyed by the developed world.
“Some estimates of the heating effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide are as high as 6.0°C for a doubling of the concentration from the pre-industrial level.”
We have not been able to detect any warming that is directly caused by CO2. Some have claimed that any warming had to be CO2 but the data so far has not supported that idea. Some say that the net effect of CO2 in the atmosphere is one of cooling and not warming. Some say other things. What we know for sure is that after almost 20 years of no warming while at the same time CO2 has risen dramatically we have no proof of the magic molecule CO2 being the driver of climate.
Heck, we don’t even know if the rise in CO2 levels over the last decades is really due to anthropogenic emissions or due to natural warming causing more CO2 to be released from the oceans and more from plant life on land. The issue is not as Kindergarten simple as the “experts” make it out to be.
The relationship between CO2-concentration and forcing is indeed logarithmic. This is how that looks like in comparison to temperature:
http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/cCO2-to-T-volcano.jpg
Rooted!
Or this:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SZQS7bzEf1U/VMtageyyD9I/AAAAAAAAATk/QPvS-LfWFxs/s1600/TMEAN%2Band%2BCMIP5%2BRCP60%2Bvs%2BCO2.png
…. in answer to this bizarre nonsense:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/clip_image004_thumb.gif
Or maybe this
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_RXGJAF_XL5cnQ0Slc0NjBQM28/view
phlogiston,
Kudos … 500 ma is what I call perspective. May be a bit like comparing apples to oranges. To wit ….
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn11647/dn11647-5_738.jpg
…. notice the icehouse earth regime circa 425 ma with CO2 in the neighborhood of 4,000 ppmv. Corresponding data points are found in Bill’s plot. The problem I have with the “CO2 is the climate control knob” meme is that it lends itself to just this sort of oversimplified analysis. I’m guilty of it too:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-W0dggL-4e68/VMzoRRfoyHI/AAAAAAAAAUE/yAHA4IAVS4c/s1600/Temp%2Bvs%2BCO2%2BScatterplot%2BEDC%2Bwith%2Bmodern.png
Two of those regression coefficients are very wrong. But at least the planet’s configuration for the past 800 kyrs is roughly similar to today, so we can at least get into the ballpark with these sort of back of envelope calcs.
Yes, we KNOW HadCrut has been adjusted to fit the CO2 concentration. !!
Something like an R2 of 0.99 between CO2 concentrations and the “adjustments” iirc !
NOT by luck !!!
Really? How do you know that Hadcrut has been adjusted to fit CO2 concentratrion? How do they do that?
Andy can of course not answer.
AndyG55, make that R^2 = 0.83. Adding in volcanoes gets it to 0.84. And no, not by luck. It’s called physics.
Good grief, rooter, what is your purpose in publishing a graph and statement like that?
Observations.
Of course no purpose in dealing with that. Get rid of it.
rooter
Your incoherent response adds nothing to the conversation. Your manipulated graph and original statement did nothing but obscure the truth. Why do you bother to post in these threads?
Alan Robertson:
My manipulated graph? It is not my graph. It is rgbatduke’s graph. Address him and tell him he is producing manipulated graphs. Making ti is not that hard. Make a fit between these two forcings and temperature. The correlation is of course striking.
What is the TCR in that fit, rooter?
Looks like it is about 1.8°C, which matches the assumption all net warming equals CO2 related forcing. According to SkS, the current best estimate for TCR is 3K. How come? Got my ln’s wrong?
Huge: Good question.
See Hugh’s answer. About 1.8 dev C. That is TCR. ECS is higher. Table for results in ar4:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8s8-6-2-3.html
1,8 is close to the middle there. Same goes for models in ar5:
http://www.realclimate.org/images/tcr_landc.jpg
So far the models are not so far off it seems. And a low climate sensitivity ex less than 1 seems unlikely.
rooter
Models are formulations of the ideas of people. I prefer the indications of reality.
The feedbacks in the climate system are negative and, therefore, any effect of increased CO2 will be probably too small to discern because natural climate variability is much, much larger. This concurs with the empirically determined values of low climate sensitivity.
Empirical – n.b. not model-derived – determinations indicate climate sensitivity is less than 1.0°C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 equivalent. This is indicated by the studies of
Idso from surface measurements
http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/Idso_CR_1998.pdf
and Lindzen & Choi from ERBE satellite data
http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf
and Gregory from balloon radiosonde data
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/OLR&NGF_June2011.pdf
Indeed, because climate sensitivity is less than 1.0°C for a doubling of CO2 equivalent, it is physically impossible for the man-made global warming to be large enough to be detected. If something exists but is too small to be detected then it only has an abstract existence; it does not have a discernible existence that has effects (observation of the effects would be its detection).
Richard
richardscouourtney:
You say you do not like models. Well, don’t use models then. How well does ECS less than 1 correspond to observed warming the last century? ECS less than 1 implies even smaller TCR. But for the sake of argument, let us say TCR 0.8. If so how much temperature increase would a forcing increase the temperature increase should have been half of the observed temperature increase.
And then you can of course ignore the fact that the GCMs are in line with the observations. Does not matter.
rooter
You say to me
That is a blatant falsehood. I have never said any such thing!
As every scientist would say in the context, I said
and I cited – and linked to – empirical data from three different sources; viz. surface measurements, ERBE satellite data, and balloon radiosonde data. The different measurement methods each shows climate sensitivity is less than 1.0°C for a doubling of CO2 equivalent.
That is science.
Your assertion that climate models agree with observations is not science: it is falsehood e.g. see this.
Richard
richardscourtney_
What kind of observations did you refer to? A study by Lindzen & Choi that even Lindzen said contained “some stupid mistakes”. Then paper with data from radiosondes The most rotten dataset of all. Lots of inhomogenities, starting from the last part of 1950, very limited coverage especially in the first years and a result with climate sensitivity in the region 0,26 – 0.4 (how well does that fit with the observed temperature increase?) and a paper where observations of temperature increase isn’t even considered (actually it is modelling)
“That is science”.
Your kind of science I guess.
And again, if you do not like models, stick with the observations. Increase of forcing vs temperature rise. But no, you will refuse that. Your Tisdale link misses the point entirely. If the models miss the temperature rise after 2005 that will have very little with the estimate of TCR the models produce. Those estimates does not depend on the temperature vs models after 2005.
Rooter,
I simply have no idea what to make of your graph. The CO2 increase has been very roughly linear over time, so a log of that increase will FLATTEN as a function of time. Your graph instead shows an EXPONENTIAL increase in the behavior of your model curve!
What the heck are you talking about!
TYoke , Yea . What’s with the exponential ?
Really guys?
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Nk-Ocxso19c/VMxmxqRZfZI/AAAAAAAAAT0/TVdG0duJrGI/s1600/CO2%2BPolynomial%2BRegression%2B1850-2014.png
Brandon,
Yes Really. You, unlike Rooter, showed a graph that goes back to 1550. Everybody agrees that the CO2 was more or less flat until the beginning of the industrial revolution, after which it began to increase in a “very roughly linear” way. If you take the log(CO2) of that increase, IT WILL FLATTEN OVER TIME!
Your graph does not show log(CO2). It uses a polynomial regression to suggest an exponential looking increase of CO2, not log(CO2). Even if the CO2 increase were exponential increase, the LOG of that increase would be linear. No matter how you look at it, Rooter’s graph is bogus!
TYoke,
My second-order polynomial fit began in 1850 because that’s where rooter’s plot starts. [1] If I’d started it in 1550, the regression line would have made the post-industrial revolution CO2 rise look even more “exponential”. Which was my point in including the pre-industrial curve for comparison — ALL time series trend analyses suffer from sensitivity to starting and ending points.
Well sure, parabolic and hyperbolic curves tend to get more linear at values far removed from the vertex. A sigmoid function is the better application here, and those often resolve to a nicely almost linear section in the growth/decay portion of the fit.
Sure. Growth curves … end. The question is when.
I could have, and perhaps should have, done an exponential fit instead of the 2nd order polynomial. I knew someone would balk that I didn’t take the log. But I also know it doesn’t make much difference in the shape of the curves:
CO2 (ppmv):
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/ico2_annual.png
ln(CO2):
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/ico2_log.png
It’s not rooter’s plot. Here’s the link to the ln(CO2) data from the image just above: http://climexp.knmi.nl/getindices.cgi?WMO=CDIACData/co2_log&STATION=log_CO2
KNMI has data for HADCRUT, GISS, NCDC. The fit is not bogus — it works against all three individually or combined. I’ve done it myself more times than I can count. [2]
———————
[1] One wonders when folks will stop calling it rooter’s plot.
[2] Which means at least 20. After that I have to start using other peoples’ digits, and that often doesn’t go over too well.
That graph assumes that positive feedback will increase the water-vapor level.
The graph assumes nothing. It is just a fit between observations. Temperature vs log CO2 change. If you try to explain that fit it is difficult to do so without positive feedback.
Yep I get a similar result with implied ECS of 1.8C. Only difference is I don’t fit to volcanoes – don’t have the data – but also overlay a linear time trend which predated AGW plus a 60 yr sine. The sine would likely improve your fit but not change the ECS estimate.
This assumes there were no other coincident causes – just a single factor model, and therefore implies an UPPER bound to the ECS.
It is not ECS. It cannot be. The forcing increase has not reached equilibrium. When that happens the oceans no more accumulate energy. That has definitely not happened yet
Andrew, for volcanoes, KNMI to the rescue: http://climexp.knmi.nl/getindices.cgi?WMO=NASAData/saod_gl&STATION=stratospheric_AOD
It does not dramatically improve overall fit, but when trying to explain interannual and decadal fluctuations with AMO, PDO, ENSO, etc., it does make the wiggles due to Agung, Pinatubo, El Chichon et al. fall into place quite nicely.
I continue to see no justification for the assertion that “The greenhouse gasses keep the planet 30°C warmer than it would otherwise ” . It is far too crude to be useful in evaluating effects on the scale of the 0.3% variation in temperature this whole fiasco is about .
The number comes from an assumption that a naked earth would have a reflectivity with respect to the solar spectrum of 0.3 while being effectively black in the IR , ie , a reflectivity of 0.0 , giving a ratio of 0.7 whose 4th root , ala Stefan-Boltzmann , is about 0.915 . That times the 278.7 approximate gray ( flat spectrum ) body temperature in our orbit gives the 255K parroted year after year .
I have never seen any justification for using this value for the equilibrium temperature of our planet’s surface . For instance an ocean blue ball would have a reflectivity of about 0.08 wrt the solar spectrum and near black in the IR giving a temperature quite close to the real tipping point worthy of fear around 273K .
So , even the crudest approximation to our surface spectrum leaves only about 15K to be explained by the delta in our spectrum as seen from the outside .
There is zero chance that we will ever analytically explain both our 3% excess temperature over the gray body temperature in our orbit and the 0.3% variation we’ve seen over the last couple of centuries as long as this extreme , crude meme of a 30K atmospheric effect continues to be used as the starting point .
Excellent post. In fact, I was posing this question for long as worked solar radiation since early 70s. The question I asked is what is the relationship between anthropogenic co2 addition to the atmosphere with temperature. Nobody gave me the answer except saying so and so model is predicting this or that. Now the present article provides the answer — non-linear drop in temperature rise with anthropogenic CO2 addition to atmosphere. Through my other way deductions, I estimated 0.2 oC/century [it is 0.1 oC from 1951 to date] is the global warming component of the global temperature rise.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
You say
Well, you could have used the WUWT Search facility and found this.
The above article is a very good summation of flaws in the AGW hypothesis but it is a very poor submission to a committee of politicians interested in wind farms.
Politicians are interested in existing policy commitments, economics and voter support. They are not interested in science.
The important issues for inclusion in the submission are that
(a)
wind-powered subsidy farms are an expensive addition to existing power supply systems and
(b)
wind-powered subsidy farms increase emissions and costs of the existing power supply systems and
(c)
wind-powered subsidy farms cannot replace the existing power supply systems because the subsidy farms only generate electricity when the wind is strong enough but not too strong.
I explained these issues for the UK context here.
Richard
excellent thank you.
This article is an excellent dose of reality. I hope it helps wake up some who may be wake-able.
Great read! Any layman/woman could understand it!
If the planetary surface were at 255 deg.C, the temperature it would be without a greenhouse effect, then it would be too cold to hold much water vapour. So, you could say that all the 33 degrees of warming that we get from the greenhouse effect is due to CO2. This acts as ‘control knob’ whose effect is amplified by water vapour.
You could say that.
Mike B
Yes, “You could say that”.
You could also say that if pigs had wings then they would defecate when flying so people would need steel umbrellas.
You could say that.
Richard
“If the planetary surface were at 255 deg.C, the temperature it would be without a greenhouse effect, then it would be too cold to hold much water vapour.”
You, of course, mean 255 deg K? 255 deg C is two and a half times higher than the boiling point of water.
By what hypothesis does one conclude our bare planet would be 24 degrees below the temperature of a gray ball in our orbit ?
The only claims for a 0.3 albedo wrt the sun’s spectrum required to generate that deficit is as a value observed for the planet as seen from the outside .
Clearly it is not matched by our surface which is dominated by ocean with an albedo more on the order of 0.08 .
I like Polywell Fusion.
An excellent post.
CO2 isn’t a greenhouse gas, it’s a green gas. Greenhouses don’t work by trapping radiation, they work simply be trapping warm air. And the increased CO2 is almost certainly making the Earth greener.
“By the time we get to the current level in the atmosphere of 400 parts per million, the heating effect is only 0.1°C per one hundred parts per million.”
Is this statement correct? I understand that the theoretical warming from a CO2 doubling is about a degree C. But if the above statement is correct, a doubling from 400 to 800 would give just 0.4 degrees C (actually less, due to the logarithmic effect).
I take exception with the argument that wind turbines are not renewable sources of energy. Unless I’m completely missing the elements of the argument, wind turbines would be producing “free”, renewable energy after the initial energy cost of construction was recouped. The argument in the article says that 4 cent per kwh coal energy is used to create 10 cent per kwh turbines, which, in turn, are used to create turbines that create even more expensive energy, eventually running the economy of energy production to ruin. This argument ignores the eventual payoff of the initial costs of construction. It is not a valid argument against wind turbines. There are a number of other, valid reasons to reject wind turbines as a desirable energy source, except for small, isolated remote application. Their intermittent production of energy still require other generation sources as back up, they require subsidies to make them cost-competitive, the rare-earth magnets required for their production make us dependent upon Chinese sources and, as a biologist, I abhor the numbers of birds and bats that are killed by these behemoths. The argument that turbines are not sources of renewable energy doesn’t wash and only provides opportunity for AGW advocates to ridicule the opposition. Again, perhaps I’ve completely missed the elements of the argument.
From my short experience of visiting this site the main objection from opponents of increased dependence on renewables is not that they are not “renewable sources” in the sense that you have described , but that they are not reliable, at present , without storage , and need an indefinitely ongoing subsidy from the consumer.
The low return on investment compared to nuclear , hydro (a renewable) , gas and coal makes them viable only in a society that has an established infrastructure of communication, technical education and land management and sufficient financial resources to cope with the cost disadvantage.
That, apart from the scientific argument for or against the more extreme aspects of global warming via CO2 , is what worries many of the visitors to this site .
The world would be a strange and depressing one indeed if that were not the case.
I would have to disagree Don. There is nothing that is “free” about industrial wind.
In many low-wind areas, Industrial Wind Turbines do NOT produce enough power to even pay for themselves over their very short 5 – 13 year lifespans. How is that “renewable”? How is leaving the skeletons of these behemoths littering the landscape after they quit working “renewable”?
Articles: Wind Energy’s Ghosts
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2010/02/wind_energys_ghosts_1.html
And there is nothing that is “free” or “renewable” about the permanent devaluation that occurs to the countrysides, or to the communities that are forever divided, or to the environment as massive Habitat Fragmentation causes more species decline, wherever these sprawling industrial wind factories are placed.
Big Wind comes in, buys off some large landowners for what amounts to peanuts in the scheme of things, so that they can line their pockets with lots of money – OUR money (the only thing that’s “green” about the whole industrial wind scam). The diffuse energy of wind can never provide modern power.
The Great American “S-WIND-LE” Not Clean, Not Green, Not Free!
http://citizenpowerallianceblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-great-american-s-wind-le-not-clean.html
Mary Kay Barton
I agree the point which you state so well, but I write to provide an alternative view which is correct physics.
All energy is ‘free’ and all energy was created at the ‘Big Bang’ that started the universe, but collecting and concentrating energy so it can do useful work is expensive. Fortunately, nature has done much of the collection and concentration so useful energy is available as fossil fuels, hydropower and radioactive materials.
Diffuse energy such as wind power and food to supply the muscles of slaves and animals is very expensive to collect and, therefore, it was displaced by the concentrations of energy in fossil fuels when invention of the steam engine enabled that concentrated energy to conduct work.
Richard
Your point is very well taken, Thus, I put “free” in quotes to denote it’s other than certain truth. There truly is no such thing as a “free” lunch.
Mary, Richard
You’re right – the whole wind power thing + solar is really a fiasco in the making.
Good point Richard. That’s exactly why it’s so irksome when ‘green’ ideologues try and label their idolized sources as “free.”
Don,
When David compares the 4c/kwh coal price to a 10c/kwh wind price, he presumably is amortizing the costs of each over the lifetime of each. If the initial cost of wind is so high that the amortized cost is 2 1/2 the coal cost, then David’s point is correct.
There is a larger point here that David only touches on. By the 1st law of Thermodynamics, energy is conserved. Therefore, we do not “consume” energy, what we actually consume is the “usable work” available in that energy. This is a 2nd law effect, variously expressed as Gibbs Energy, Helmholtz Energy, or Neg-entropy. The point is that more dispersed, lower grade energy sources (like wind energy) have less Gibbs Energy or associated Neg-entropy and hence they are INHERENTLY more expensive.
This whole question bleeds over into the subject of perpetual motion machines. Using 10c/kwh of energy to produce 10c/kwh of energy is effectively a perpetual motion machine of the 1st kind. An attempt to use 10c/kwh of energy to produce 4c/kwh of enegy is an attempt to make a perpetual motion machine of the 2nd kind.
Both types of perpetual motion machine are useless, though the drain produced by the 2nd kind is obviously worse. However, that certainly hasn’t stopped endless attempts to create such a thing!
I agree with Don: The 4c / 10c argument doesn’t work; over the lifetime of a wind turbine the energy return on energy invested is around 20 according to various studies. These may be exaggerated, but it certainly seems likely the EROEI is at least > 2. But there are plenty of other reasons why wind turbines are a bad idea: the additional costs in $ and fuel to provide backup for intermittency, long windless periods with negligible power output, grid costs to transport power from remote wind sites to population centres, the amount of land required and rendered uninhabitable due to flicker and turbine noise, destruction of the landscape and bird & bat deaths etc.
More strange facts about CO2: The emissions of CO2 caused by burning fossil fuels dissappear somewhere in the the atmosphere according to the following link:
http://3000quads.com/2015/01/09/surprising-information-about-co2-concentrations-something-important-here-but-its-halfway-down-the-post/
First graph: plant growth shuts down. Add BELOW this level.
David, you missed the big reason why W turbines are not renewable. They require spinning backup of other power sources -fossil fuel or hydro.
Gary you’re not on the bandwagon. You use solar panels for the spinning backup. Or possibly ethanol.
mkelly
You say
Yes, and the solar panels worked at night in Spain because their output was provided by diesel generators so the solar farms could continuously obtain the lucrative subsidies for their output.
Richard
Solar isn’t dispatchable power either… what do you do when the wind dies down at dusk? In your scenario you’re stuck with ethanol… unless you want a more efficient system. In that case, just dry out the corn and burn it directly in a cogen plant since that would give you more energy. (Remember that corn ethanol is a net user of energy as well… just like wind and the current solar systems,)
Ethanol — another pig in a poke.
I thought ethanol provided 29 kJ/g hence is often blamed for making Pompous Gits fatter than they would be if they didn’t drink chardonnay and sauvignon blanc.
Excellent article! Thank you David Archibald!
Unfortunately, the public cannot at first distinguish between science and the output of the scientific lofos that has created this global warming scam. Fortunately, the public now seems to be catching on.
I quote: “.. the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide is real, the effect at the current atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is minuscule… ”
Don’t keep saying that. The greenhouse effect, as defined by the IPCC, is not rteal. It is falsified by observations of nature. There has been no warming for 18 years while carbon dioxide steadily increased. Their greenhouse theory requires that addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will cause warming and this has not happened.From this it follows that the greenhouse effect is not real. Their claim that the greenhouse effect as defined by IPCC exists is simply pseudo-science, an assertion contrary to the laws of nature.
The current situation does not disprove the green house effect per se. The IPCC’s view of the green house effect is not the be-all and end-all. What the recent trend does is to seriously weaken the case for CO2 as the primary driver, at current concentrations, of the green house effect. It strongly suggests that other climate drivers, in aggregate, are more important than CO2.
Incorrect. The PDO is significant enough to pause temps in a generally weakly rising trend. Mistaking a pause for definitive disproof of minor AGW is the opposite error to ignoring the 1970-2000 PDO warm phase and extrapolating a fitted ECS forever.
A great article, very clearly put. And yet another article highlighting the “benefit” of wind power was published Wed 21st Jan in the UK’s Daily Telegraph. “UK Demand hit 52.54 gigawatts (GW). between 5pm and 5:30pm.on Monday, according to official data from the Nationa Grid. But wind power contributed just 0.573GW during the same time., just over 1pc of the total.
Have the greens yet worked out how to heat our homes/run our factories when the wind doesn’t blow and they have managed to shut down all our real poewer generators!!
Apologies no link to the article, but it should be available on the DT’s web site
“The University of Chicago has an online program called Modtran which allows you to put in an assumed atmospheric carbon dioxide content and it will tell you how much atmospheric heating that produces”. Well, I took a look at http://www.modtran5.com/ and I did not find this feature. So some more explanation would be in order as to how the claimed numbers were obtained.
http://forecast.uchicago.edu/modtran.html
“The greenhouse gasses keep the planet 30°C warmer than it would otherwise be if they weren’t in the atmosphere. So the average temperature of the planet’s surface is 15°C instead of -15°C.”
Absolutely wrong. Adiabatic lapse rate will provide the same difference between surface and top of athmosphere without any “greenhous” gases if pressure at the surface is the same. 70% surface cooling is due to convection, only at the top of atmosphere radiative cooling becames more important. And universal gas constant defining adiabating lapse rate is, indeed, universal.
Gas law says somewhere around 16°C at 1 atm, depending on what constant/density you use for dry air.
David Archibald says,
I actually question whether it is possible to melt ore or produce aluminum or steel using wind turbines alone. Has this ever been done?
Considering the insane amount of electricity used to smelt aluminum from ore and the fact that the process has to be continuous I seriously doubt that you could do it with wind. One lull and your smelting cell would be a solid, useless lump of sintered alumina and cryolite with your anode and cathode stuck in the top. I believe I once heard aluminum referred to as “solidified electricity” by an Alcoa engineer.
Now we are getting somewhere! (:
PS, I don’t mean to suggest that David Archibald was carrying his thought experiment out to mean that ore and aluminum can be processed with worthless wind turbines. He just meant to make a limited application to the price of replaceing worthless wind turbines using the power from worthless wind turbines.
If we assume electrically powered furnaces for steel making then a mid-sized modern furnace would have a transformer rated at ~60,000,000 volt-amperes (60 MVA), with a secondary voltage between 400 and 900 volts and a secondary current in excess of 44,000 amperes. I don’t see how wind would power such a furnace.
“No electric power producer would take power from a wind turbine operation if they had the choice. All the wind turbines in Australia have been forced upon the power companies that take their output.”
This is called a mandate. It is the use of an environmental regulation to outlaw a legitimate product which people want, and which is inexpensive, reliable, safe and plentiful, and forces people to purchase another product. These often prove to be unreliable, expensive, and can cause shortages and high prices.
Everyone needs to learn what a mandate is.
Mandates are not free market, because the free market is based on voluntary purchases. Mandates are based on a system of involuntary purchases. Mandates and other coercions can be carried out behind the scenes where activists take over the legal system and banks, stores and restaurants must comply with government and NGO threats. The environmentalists become the only customer. Not you.
“The notion of global warming has resulted in an enormous miss-allocation of resources in some Western societies but we can be thankful to it for one thing. If it had not been for the outrageous prostitution of science in the global warming cause, then the field of climate would not have attracted the attention that has determined what is actually happening to the Earth’s climate.”
I disagree. People were fearing the cold in the ’70s. This puzzle would have continued to be worked at, just like other sciences. The hype and mis-allocation of funds towards thwarting carbon dioxide was completely unnecessary – complete political garbage that so many amazingly fell for. This whole debacle tells us far more about human stupidity than it does anything else.
Sociologists and psychologists will be all over this for decades, what with the noble cause, confirmation bias, and just plain stupid human sheep syndrome.. The ease of manipulation of public opinion got us into this ridiculous paradigm, and, with the help of scientists like Humlum and Svensmark, public opinion (as slow as it is to shift due to butt-hurt egos), will pull us back out. Thank Gawd for the blogosphere and PUBLIC peer review.
Excuse me while I find some phlogiston to the light this cigarette. Oh, wait.
Forced conversion to nuclear or thorium would be a mandate also.
You would get artificially high regulation and strike prices for the reactors. For example, the Hinckley nuclear plant in the UK was to be built by the Chinese and French for a strike price of two times the going rate of electricity. However, with frakking and coal, there is no reason the price of electricity can’t come down by half, according to some analysts based on energy markets in Texas.
Environmentalist regulation and mandates consistently result in granting foreign control of domestic natural resources. Examples include the use of foreign companies to manage water in Australia, or Chinese-operated power plants in the UK, or forcing Europe to rely on Russia for gas and Germany for coal power. All of this is accomplished by governments who overregulate and overtax legitimate domestic producers and give contracts to foreign nations. However, notice the pattern: China, Russia and Germany. Remember the Greatest Generation.
I searched this thread for the for the word “fatigue”. It’s not there, but that’s the single most important wind turbine killer. There has been a thread here before on bearing failures, due to fatigue ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_%28material%29 ) but that may be peanuts compared to what happens to the blades.
This shows the problem a bit:
http://www.powerengineeringint.com/articles/2014/09/causes-of-wind-turbine-blade-failure-revealed.html
But the cause idea is a smoke screen. It’s trailing edge gravity fatigue. When a blade moves up the is a torque force pulling it down at the tip, causing a compression stress on the trailing edge, alternately when the blade is moving down, the gravity torque is causing tension stress at the trailing edge.
Very early studies have idientified this mechanism but in smaller windturbines the torque is not that great, so it was considered to be negliglible at that time. However if you double the length of the vanes, the gravity stress increases exponentially with the weight, which increases with the third power, which is making it very unnegliglible very quickly. Wind vanes are now plagued with excessive cracking due to fatique, severely limiting their useful live time and skyrocketing maintaince cost$.
“As Figure 3 shows, Arctic sea ice extent retreated for the last 20 years of the 20th century. That is compatible with global warming for any reason. At the same time, Antarctic sea extent increased by an amount similar to the Arctic sea ice loss.”
That is compatible with the decline in solar plasma strength to the polar regions since the mid 1990’s. The Arctic (and AMO) warming since then is associated with increased negative NAO causing increased ocean transport to the North Atlantic and Arctic, with similar higher latitude SST rises also in the Pacific. Which is the larger proportion of the global mean surface warming since 1995. Without such a negative feedback the Arctic would have gained sea ice like the Antarctic has.
Even if every overwrought word and every hysterical prediction about CO2 doom made by the most fanatical Warmist were true, wind turbines would still be an ecological and economic disaster.
(For all the reasons mentioned above.)
The only thing they do well (and what I suspect they were intended for in the first place) is transfer enormous sums of money to people who are already stinking rich.
But that is what most things are for, anyway.
Current temperature inside my greenhouse at 4:30 pm (summertime) in Southern Tasmania 15.7°C. Temperature @ Castle Forbes Bay 11°C. Expected temperature for this time of year ~23°C. Estimated “Global Warming” minus 12°C.
Global Warming Fatigue = Lassitude or weariness resulting from repeated claims it’s the “hottest year evah”…
AGw is the ruse. Politics the reason. Redistribution, retribution, open borders and UN governance the goals.
A mechanical engineer will tell you that when water flows in a pipe, even at a high rate of speed, that the flow is almost non-existent on the surface of the pipe. A river-boat captain will tell you the same about the flow of water along the bank of the river compared to the surface. I believe they call this boundary effect. The same happens to the air around a golf ball in flight. It you apply heat to the outside of the pipe, the layer of water that is not moving very fast will get hotter than the moving portion of the water in the pipe. Surely the same principle must apply to the boundary layer of atmosphere around the earth (any planet). How much will this effect “warm” the air above the surface of the planet?
Why does the temperature rapidly drop down to the “dew-point” temperature when the sun sets? Would not a change of less than 1/2 to 1% of the percentage of moisture in the air cause more global warming than a doubling of CO2?
My field of expertise is electronics, and I was taught long ago that when one feedback is more than 10 times another source of feedback that, for all practical purposes you can ignore the smaller. Many amplifiers and radios rely on this principle – they call it “Swamping,”